engleski

Communication in teaching in higher education – comparison of experiences in public and private colleges

Reflections about quality teaching in higher education as a prerequisite of developing students’ skills necessary for efficiently adjusting to varying life circumstances, employment and better socioeconomic outcomes often rely on the need of strengthening teacher competences. University teachers’ communication competences are the basis for developing other teacher competences. This paper starts from the idea that it is necessary to identify and become aware of advantages and disadvantages of communication in teaching (from the perspective of students, as they are the ones who most efficiently steer changes in teachers) with the ultimate goal being improvement of quality in teaching in higher education. This research was conducted using an on-line questionnaire and snowball sampling technique with 227 research participants – undergraduate and graduate students. The aim of this research was to determine differences in estimations of students attending private and public higher education institutions regarding teacher characteristics effecting their communication in teaching, communication styles, features of interpersonal communication, frequency of student-teacher communication, and communication-fostering party (these could be detected as predictors of satisfaction with communication in teaching). Research results generally indicate that students attending private colleges are more satisfied than students attending public colleges in relation to all the examined variables. At this point, it is irrelevant whether private institutions recognized the importance and encouraged communication competences of their teachers sooner than public institutions, or were they simply responding to the satisfaction of their self-funded students. It is, however, important to recognize the factors contributing to quality student-teacher communication and improve the quality of the overall teaching process by improving teachers’ communication competences and making them aware of their roles and communication styles, and changing their roles and communication styles.

communication ; teachers ; higher education teaching

Indexed in: Web of Science, EBSCOhost, RePEc, EconPapers, Socionet