Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Conclusion: Connecting the Dots


This morning, I began reflecting on my blog entries, as well as some other entries posted by my fellow grad students. I started to question, ‘what is the one thing that every blog entry has in common?'
 
And soon, I was able to answer my own question: It’s my own theme- VOICE.
Voice embodies our everyday actions. It helps us create our identities, form experiences, helps build relationships, creates dialogue, engages others, etc. However, for the pedagogy blog, voice assists us with our learning processes as instructors and students. 

On my first blog post, I wrote about The 10 Statements Teachers May Think About, Concerning Their Voice, relating the concerns to Dannel’s (2015) 8 Essential Questions Teachers Ask: A Guidebook for Communicating with Students as it provides a voice for those who hold teaching positions and are concerned with certain anxieties in the classroom

The second blog entry is all about the power of tone in a teacher’s voice. I stated in the blog that there is much power in a teacher’s tone of voice that can engage students and make an impact for the future of learning. According to Chory and Goodboy (2010), their research on power examines perceptions of instructor power and instructional outcomes. From their research, they identified 5 bases of power and with those powers result in either positive or negative effects to affective learning. However, I voiced out how these 5 bases are correlated to tone in a teacher’s voice that can strengthen or weaken a certain base.

My third blog entry talks about the use humor in the classroom. From my experience, my instructor was trying to be a “comedian” in the classroom as he continuously voiced certain jokes that were 1) inappropriate, 2) not connected to the content, and 3) was forced onto the students. According to Booth-Butterfield and Wanzer (2010), if these categories are involved in the classroom, it can cause distractions and students view the instructor’s use of humor as offensive (p. 231).

My final posting connects immediacy and voice, as they work hand-in-hand to reach the goal of building relationships. Verbal communication becomes an important factor in building immediacy in the classroom. From yesterday’s experience in the blog, the professor voiced in a warm, touching way that he was acquaint with us by stating his familiarity with names and faces. His voice was not only warm, but inviting, like he was using the warmth of his voice to invite his students to build an ideal teacher/student relationship. And through this ideal relationship the professor is attempting to create through voice, this could answer, according to Witt, Schrodt, and Turman (2015) “why and how immediacy works” (Witt, Schrodt, and Turman” (p. 214).

From our postings, we can conclude that voice is a main factor in achieving the goals in our themes. But I do not want to just boast about my own theme. Each of our themes connect to each other to create an environment where teaching our students to comprehend the world around them becomes the main goal in instructional settings. 

#letsgetloud
#letsworktogethertocreateabetterworld

 Dannels, D. P. (2015). 8 essential questions teachers ask: A guidebook for communicating with students. New York: Oxford University Press. 


Fassett, D. L. & Warren, J. T. (Eds.) (2010). The Sage Handbook of  Communication and Instruction (Chapters 10, 11, 12) Los Angeles: Sage.

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