Teaching Communication: Theory, research and methods

Teaching Communication: theory, research and methods

A. L. VANGELISTI, J. A. DALY SC G. W. FRIEDRICH (Eds), 1999

Mahwah, NJ and London, Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. ISBN 0-8058-2836-2

The teaching of Communication as a discipline has a 70-year history in the USA. A contemporary equivalent of the medieval discipline of Rhetoric, Communication is a broad field. Initially centred on public speech and the writing of cogent arguments, it has evolved into a multifaceted programme. Within a department of Communication, one might find courses on speech forensics, elocution, rhetoric, public speaking, debate, drama, theatre and related subjects.

Teaching Communication: theory, research and methods speaks primarily to graduate students and junior faculty members who are beginning to teach communication at the college or university level. It also aims to assist the professional growth of experienced teachers of the subject at this level. To achieve this goal, the editors have attempted to provide a comprehensive approach by including chapters written by a host of authors, each dealing with one specialised facet of the field. These chapters are grouped into six general divisions, including an introduction, along with sections on preparing specific communication courses; organising the instructional context; selecting and evaluating instructional strategies and tools; tackling some unique teaching assignments; and exploring important professional issues. As a teacher of drama/theatre, and as a reviewer for this drama education journal, I looked, immediately, for a segment dealing specifically with the teaching of my subject and was disappointed to find that there was none.

It would appear that the scope of the field was just too broad to permit the inclusion of separate articles on every related subject. Or perhaps, the essential concepts of the field are too narrow to fully embrace such related subjects as drama/theatre and speech forensics. Those subjects that were highlighted seem to reflect the rhetorical core of the discipline. Of...