Communication

Executive Summary for Educators

Education researchers at Pearson teamed up with the Partnership for 21st Century Learning
to conduct a review of the research literature on teaching and assessing communication skills
in K-12 and college classrooms. What follows is a summary of the most significant findings
and implications.

Why Is Communication Important?

Communication skills are central to success in school, work, and life. The P21
Framework for 21st Century Learning includes communication as one of the four
Cs, along with collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. Research indicates that
developing strong communication skills is important for a variety of reasons:

• Strong communication skills are associated with improved

interpersonal relationships and health outcomes.

• Reading skills early in elementary school are predictive of academic

success in middle and high school, and strong communication skills upon
entering college are linked to higher grades and graduation rates.

• Employers seek job candidates with strong communication skills.

What Communication Skills Do Learners Need?

Communication can be defined as a social process in which information is exchanged in order to
convey meaning and achieve desired outcomes. Communication takes many forms, from writing
a paper or reading a book, to delivering a presentation, to engaging in conversation or debate.

Numerous theoretical frameworks of communication have been proposed.

From those frameworks, we identify the following core communication
skills (see the full paper for examples of each skill in use):

• Identifying desired outcomes: determining desired

results or consequences of the communication.

• Crafting clear messages: creating messages that clearly convey intended meaning
and appropriately utilizing nonlinguistic cues such as body language and visual aids.

• Modeling others’ minds: recognizing and accounting for

others’ knowledge, beliefs, dispositions, and emotions.

• Adhering to conventions: following the rules or norms

of specific disciplines or communicative contexts.

• Accounting for social and cultural differences: identifying

and accounting for variability in social and cultural norms.
 • Selecting appropriate channels: utilizing the communication training. Ideally, activities will require many of the
most appropriate communicative channel. core communication skills, though it may not be possible for certain
tasks to incorporate all skills. Many instructional activities can be
• Active listening: actively attending to modified to incorporate various skills; for example, a book report can
communication, withholding judgment, and require students to identify idioms or cultural references in the book
monitoring and clarifying understanding. or in their own writing and to determine how the same idea could
be communicated without relying on culturally specific language.
• Deep reading: critically analyzing text or
speech, monitoring comprehension, drawing Any communication activity should include time for students to plan
inferences, questioning, and reflecting. and reflect before engaging in communication itself. Students should
be encouraged to consider desired outcomes, other communicators’
How Can I Teach Students to Communicate? knowledge and beliefs, communicative conventions and strategies,
and so forth. Less advanced students likely will benefit greatly from
Teaching across all disciplines and levels should include direct direct instruction in the planning and reflection phase, including
communication-skills instruction. Direct instruction is often limited to opportunities for practice and feedback on each component skill.
certain disciplines (e.g., composition), with other disciplines teaching Advanced students may need less direct instruction; still, activities
communication skills indirectly through activities such as reading should be structured to require planning and reflection of all students,
or writing assignments, presentations, or class discussions. Any possibly through independently graded components of the activity.
course can teach communication skills alongside other material by
identifying the forms of communication in the discipline, integrating Activities should require careful consideration of feedback. Instructor-
engagement with those communications into the curriculum, provided feedback is valuable, but it can be difficult for an instructor to
and providing direct instruction of relevant communication provide detailed feedback in large classes. Peer review can be helpful
skills. For example, math teachers can provide a brief lesson on here, and research has shown peer review to be valuable for both
reading strategies for comprehending mathematical proofs, or a reviewer and reviewee. It is important to provide guidance to peer
history teacher can give a lesson on writing conventions in history reviewers, including rubrics, and to have students receive feedback
before assigning a term paper. Instruction ideally would include from multiple peers. Finally, students should have the opportunity to
demonstrations of effective use of skills as well as opportunities incorporate feedback into a revision or follow-up activity when possible.
for practice and feedback. Communication skills should not be
treated implicitly by assigning students a communication activity How Should I Evaluate Students’
without providing direct communication skill instruction.
Communication Skills?
Research on communication skills teaching has established a
Many instructors develop their own assessments, which have
variety of effective practices, which are reviewed in detail in the
the strength of being tailored to specific educational contexts
full paper. Communication skills are often taught holistically in
and goals. When designing any assessment, it is important to
the context of specific forms of communication (e.g., writing a
ensure alignment between the skills to assess, the evidence of
report, conducting an interview). The most effective teaching
those skills, and the tasks meant to elicit that evidence. Tasks
practice will depend on the form of communication in which
should approximate real-world communication scenarios, and
students will engage and the specific skills targeted in instruction.
evidence can be obtained through direct observation of the task
In classrooms that include nonnative speakers or students with
or examination of an artifact of the task. Peer scoring can be used
language disabilities, some practices reviewed in the full paper may
when large class sizes make instructor scoring impractical.
benefit from modification to meet these students’ unique needs.

Many organizations have developed assessment instruments

How Should I Design Communication and rubrics that can be adopted and adapted as needed. Rating
scales and rubrics generally enhance assessment reliability.
Activities for My Classroom?
While recent advances in technology have driven development
Multiple communication skills can be taught in combination through of numerous automated assessment systems, some skepticism
activities built around specific communicative tasks. Activities remains regarding their validity. Automated assessments may
ideally will mirror the communicative tasks that students are likely be useful for students to receive formative feedback but should
to encounter later in school, work, and life, becoming progressively be approached with caution in summative assessment.
more specialized throughout a student’s education. It is important
The main conclusions and implications of the research
that all activities be accessible to students with a range of skill
for classroom practice are as follows.
levels. Importantly, activities that are intended primarily to teach
other knowledge or skills can also be used as opportunities for
 Conclusion Recommendation
Communication skills are associated with Teach communication skills explicitly throughout all levels of education.
personal, academic, and career success.
Core communication skills extend beyond those required for Provide direct instruction in higher-order skills such as identification
fundamental reading, writing, speaking, and listening fluency. of desired outcomes, channel selection, and active listening.
Peer feedback has been shown to benefit speaking, reading, and writing Incorporate peer feedback into communication-skills teaching and
skills and to be a valid form of assessment when implemented properly. assessment, ensuring that peers receive proper training and support
(e.g., rubrics) and that students receive feedback from multiple peers.
In written and oral presentation, crafting a clear message involves an Provide direct instruction in the process of effectively planning
iterative revision process requiring numerous self-regulatory skills. and iteratively revising written and oral presentations.
Role play can serve as an effective means for teaching Utilize role play in teaching interpersonal communication.
and assessing interpersonal communication.
Self-assessment of video recordings can improve learning Have students view and self-assess video
of public speaking and interpersonal communication. of presentations and role plays.
Students must be prepared to communicate Teach students to recognize and account for cultural
effectively with people from different cultures. differences in communicative norms.
The modern world presents a proliferation of digital communication Explicitly teach and assess communication
channels, but research on teaching and assessing effective skills for modern digital channels.
communication skills in those channels is lacking.
Research effective teaching and assessment strategies for
communication skills in modern digital channels.
Many instructors use locally developed assessment techniques. Utilize the evidence-centered design framework to develop
assessment techniques that accurately capture the
communication skills students are meant to acquire.
A variety of established rubrics have proven useful for Utilize rubrics in assessment and consider using
assessing a variety of communication skills. or adapting existing validated rubrics.
Recent years have seen advances in development Avoid using current automated assessment systems for high-
of automated assessment systems, though there stakes summative assessment but consider using them to
is skepticism surrounding their validity. provide formative feedback when doing so might otherwise
not be possible (e.g., in large student-to-teacher ratios).