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Communicating.
Communicating effectively
Teaching, like other forms of information transmission, is a
communication process. Usually the teacher sends a verbal
message, which contains some information, to the learners who
are expected to receive it and integrate it into their existing
knowledge.
This process is not so simple. First, teachers have to encode
their thoughts into words and/or other forms of communication.
Then students have to decode the message; this means they
have to make sense of it. Of course, teachers assume and take
steps to assure that what they send is received and decoded by
their students in the right way. The clearer the message, the less
chance there is of it becoming distorted during the transmission
and the easier it is to be decoded by students. To make sure that
this actually happens, teachers can do two things: strengthen
their verbal messages by additional means such as visual
teaching aids, thus enabling students to receive the message
over two or more parallel communication lines (the ear and the
eye). However, the two parallel messages must be matched in
order to have an amplifying effect. If they are not, they create
confusion ("noise", in the language of communication).
Agricultural teachers have an advantage when teaching in the
field. Students can observe by themselves and through different
channels of perception a situation which the teacher might find
difficult to put (encode) into words. On the other hand, being in
the field, students are exposed to many more messages
(impressions) coming from the environment which can distract
them. Therefore, teaching in the field must be as task-oriented as
teaching in the classroom.
To make sure that students receive and decode their messages,
teachers should look for feedback ¬p; a sign that students have
understood the message and integrated it into their conceptual
framework. This feedback can be in different forms, for example
verbal, when students answer questions. Feedback is often
encoded in non-verbal signs, for example when students express
in body language their reaction to what they have decoded from
the message: they nod with their heads, they laugh after a joke,
they look bored and so on. Messages that are received by the
students are filtered and stored temporarly in the short-term
memory. They are forgotten after about 30 seconds if they cannot
be kept in mind or transferred to the long-term memory. Thus, we
forget casual telephone numbers very quickly unless we make an
intellectual effort to remember them. The long-term memory
receives new information better when it fits into a framework of
concepts which already exists. Incomprehensible and unclear
messages are not easily stored in the long-term memory and
they are quickly forgotten. Competing verbal and audiovisual
messages are difficult to cope with. Showing something to
students and talking about something different, weakens the
transmission of the message. Even a blackboard left over with
notes from a different subject can distract students' attention and
weaken their reception of the teacher's new message.