The New Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research

I have been studying social presence and teacher immediacy. Both are established through verbal and nonverbal behavior. However, when you are looking at student’s video comments it is hard to separate the two. I just did a little experiment and watched several video comments with the sound turned off and I tried to guess their emotional state. At times the expressions and gestures allowed me to guess correctly and other times the video was little help at all. Once I was sure that the student was confused but when I turned on the sound and listened to what she said and the tone that she used when she said it I found that she wasn’t confused at all. In fact it was quite the opposite. I knew I needed help understanding nonverbal behavior and how to measure it. I found The New Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research eds. Jinni A. Arrigan, Robert Rosenthal, and Klaus R. Scherer (2005).
The chapter I read was Nonverbal Behavior in Education by Elisha Babad. She starts by saying that verbal behavior is most important for education. However, nonverbal behavior can facilitate or hinder learning. In a face-to-face environment teachers are often not allowed to express how they really feel—carefully choosing their words and sentences and it is the nonverbal communication that tells the truth.

History of Nonverbal Research

Stanford University Teacher Education Program began video recording teachers as way to facilitate self-inquiry. Although it wasn’t their original purpose they quickly discovered that nonverbal communication had an effect of teacher-student interaction and as a result on student learning. These behaviors included “teacher’s position toward the entire classroom, focusing on appearance, dress, poise, use of voice, body and hands, movement in the classroom, teacher’s enthusiasm, eye contact etc.” (p. 285).

They also talked about the controversial “Doctor Fox” studies in which a charismatic, interesting, and funny actor played the role of a lecturer to a group of in-service teachers. Although the lecture lacked any substance the actor received great reviews on his expertise and grasp of the content. This was used to show that student ratings lacked validity but others disputed that contention.

They also talked about teacher immediacy and teacher enthusiasm research. I was very familiar with teacher immediacy but I had not heard of teacher enthusiasm research. It turned out that they are nearly identical but teacher enthusiasm came from research on student evaluations in higher education. Both fields of research showed that nonverbal communication produced higher course outcomes.

The chapter also mentions that students nonverbal behavior is important because it “provides the teacher with information about a student’s comprehension, motivation, and involvement at a given time, enabling him/her to handle the student in the most appropriate and effective way” (p. 291) They talk about this in a synchronous context in the “flow” of the lesson but I obviously is important in asynchronous learning.

They also talk about how skill training is important for teachers. I think that an interesting article would be how to effectively use asynchronous video to establish presence or immediacy. I know that Rick published a similar article in tech tends on how students can develop community in an online course.

Methodological and measurement issues in nonverbal research in education

Mostly educational research uses “low-inference measurement.” This happens when the researchers has operationalized the behaviors and records to behaviors that they observe. This made research less practical and expensive. High inference is much more practical and cost effective. It is where “the observer not only records the classroom behaviors but also makes inferences and judgments about their meaning and about what occurred in the classroom” (p. 293). In addition you can use student surveys to make judgments about the class climate.

How can Nonverbal behavior be measured?
1. Ask participants their impressions
2. Conduct behavioral observations
3. Videotape ongoing behavior

After the data is gathered researchers will use a theory to measure it. On page 298 it has some lists of what immediacy looks like.

What this didn't have was guidelines for coding video. I know that Rick and Peter have done some of that and I think that I will talk with them. Coding video is also low inference which is good but it feels like the field no longer does that because of cost and practicality issues. I that is the case I'm not sure how helpful a video coding paper would be.