Why it is important to keep communication with students in order to improve their knowledge?

Mexican education has a new challenge, to become a formative education, this means that students must learn not just about historical dates, facts and concepts, but they also must develop abilities and good attitudes for become an positive and important element of society.

Traditional education used to teach students to memorize concepts, students must be able to know a lot of dates, mathematical concepts, parts of the sentence and parts of the body, but it didn´t matter if they were not able to apply that knowledge to the real life (Monereo, 2007).

Actual education concerns about students being able to apply knowledge to the real world, but also they must develop abilities and attitudes such as responsibility, respect, team work and others in order to become a competent element for society (Monereo, 2007).

So, nowadays education must be communicative. This means teachers and students must feedback each other, and talk about their objectives, their goals, their desires, their problems and their interests. This way teacher will help students to get ready for live in a society.

When people communicate each other they can know about each other and they can help each other to reach common goals. I traditional education, teacher must talk and students must be quiet, but with this way of education teachers couldn´t really know if the students had personal problems that limited their learning or they didn´t understand the topic.

However, actual education promotes communication, specially from students to teachers. Students need to ask questions, to give their ideas, to make discussion, to defend their point of view. In first place because with communication abilities they will have a better development in their future job and relationships with society; in second place because secondary school students are teenagers, and is our duty as teacher to guide them when they feel insecure, Mexico has a lot of problems such as addiction to drugs, familiar issues, violence etc., and if a teenager is in the middle of a problematic situation, that can affect not just their academic development, but their entire life too.

Because of the importance of communication in education I made a research about the opinion of the students around the topic.

55 students answered a small interview with the following questions:

Do your teachers talk to you about your personal life or the school?

Would you like they talk to you? Why?

What would you like to talk to your teachers about?

Do you think communication between students and teachers will help you to improve your learning process? Why?

Most of the students answered their teachers didn´t talk to them about anything. This shows how Mexican communication between teachers and students must get better.

When students were asked if they would like to talk a little bit more with their teachers they answered:

	Number of students	Percent
Yes, I would like to talk more to my teachers.	27	49%
I don´t know, maybe.	14	25%
No, I would like to talk more to my teachers.	14	25%

Those students who answered they would like to talk more with their teachers, said that teachers don´t talk to them a lot, but they would like to talk to them about their learning process, about hobbies and other stuff, in first place because maybe that would help them to reach a better understanding of the subject, but also because if students and teachers can talk, they will get more confidence with each other.

The students who didn´t know said that maybe they would like to try this idea, that could be interesting and help them in school.

The students who said they would not like to talk to teachers said that they had friends for talking about their problems, they have no confidence with the teachers and the students´ life is not business of the teacher.

As we can notice must of the students would like to have a better communication with their teacher; there are also students who are not pretty sure about the idea, but they are considering that possibility; and finally those students who are not interested say that there is no confidence with teacher.

With the results of the research I conclude that we teachers must improve communication with students and show them how they can count on us when they have any kind of problem, show interest in their life and in their learning process. Even if they seem not interested, we must show them support and maybe they will come to us if they need help.

Finally there are some advices to improve communication with students:

1) “Begin on the first day of school”

2) “Be proactive”

3) “Become an active listener”
4) “Make sure you say, “I heard you.”

5) “Do unto others”

6) “Use non-judgmental and non-accusatory communication”

7) “Communicate clearly and briefly."

8) “Serve as a model of honesty and dignity."
9) “Accept repetition”

10) “Make humor an integral part of your communication.”
 (USC TA Wiki, n.d.)

Information sources

-      Monereo Carlos Conference (2007). Available on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbugPz0nMyk

-      USC TA Wiki. Communicating Effectively with your students. Available on: http://uscta.wikidot.com/conduct-effective-communication-with-your-students

Students surveys

Research*