{"title":"Editors’ introduction: sustaining ourselves as scholars","authors":"Melissa A. Broeckelman-Post, Joseph P. Mazer","doi":"10.1080/03634523.2023.2207027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2023.2207027","url":null,"abstract":"For this forum, we invited essays exploring ways that we can build resilience and sustain our work as faculty and scholars. Authors were asked to address one of the following questions in their essays: How can we build resilience in our academic communities? As the COVID-19 pandemic becomes endemic, it is time to pause to reflect on how we want to move forward as a scholarly community in ways that sustain our work as teachers, scholars, and human beings. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Communication Education is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)","PeriodicalId":47722,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47540761","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Academics like us … : Creating a process for sustainability as teacher-scholars","authors":"Angela M. Hosek, China Billotte Verhoff","doi":"10.1080/03634523.2023.2207026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2023.2207026","url":null,"abstract":"Academics like us ...: Creating a process for sustainability as teacher-scholars In this essay, we call for teacher-scholars to honor the coconstructed nature of academic culture and to create systems that sustain us at individual and community levels. The COVID-19 pandemic created space for us to deeply question previously held ways of understanding and navigating the entwinement of our academic and personal lives. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Communication Education is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)","PeriodicalId":47722,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44655050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The absolute state of research in Communication Education: facing Hanlon’s Razor","authors":"C. K. Rudick","doi":"10.1080/03634523.2023.2171449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2023.2171449","url":null,"abstract":"The opportunity to write critiques, self-appraisals, or agenda-setting essays is perhaps one of the great vanities of academia. That the scholars who write them are often, themselves, a part of the very group of people who created the problem is rarely acknowledged. Rather, authors often write with the hubris that their scholarly intervention will be the one to save the day. It is, therefore, with some trepidation that I write this essay. I make no pretensions to possessing a God’s eye view nor being a Promethean fire-bringer—I recognize my scholarship has contributed to some of the problems I will discuss. However, I do take some solace in knowing that this essay adds to a chorus of voices (within and beyond this forum and journal) who have sought to address the quality, direction, and tone of communication and instruction scholarship. In fact, in preparing for this response, I was struck by how many of these types of essays have been written over the past 30 years. And, simultaneously, how little has changed despite these pleas. The lack of substantive change in our field begs the question: what has prevented our scholarly community from advancing? Here, we might adopt Hanlon’s Razor to explore whether our failure to progress is due to stupidity or malice (Bloch, 2003). And, with all due respect to the adage, I think (historically speaking) our best answer is the latter in this case. That is, the reason we have not seen it is because it was not in the self-interest of many within our field to do so. Questionable research designs, methodological exclusion, and vacuous findings were accepted as normal for far too long. As Communication Education became dominated by research characterized by these failings, it became a self-reinforcing loop: why spend the resources to do excellent research when unsophisticated work would be published in one of the most prestigious journals of the discipline? This problem, in turn, produced a fiercely insular, self-congratulatory, and defensive group of scholars who maintained their dominance over this outlet by advancing the careers of others who would keep accepting poor-quality scholarship (as reviewers or editors) with the expectation that they would return the favor when they submitted (as authors). In many ways, the problems with methodology that we deal with today are the result of inertia from this time, which has created a culture where high-quality research remains the exception rather than the rule. My argument, then, is that our field must break out of the well-worn path of mediocrity blazed by the scholars of the past by creating a culture that produces and rewards","PeriodicalId":47722,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47706625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editors’ introduction: research methods in communication education scholarship","authors":"Melissa A. Broeckelman-Post, Joseph P. Mazer","doi":"10.1080/03634523.2023.2171448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2023.2171448","url":null,"abstract":"While communication education scholarship has been conducted using a range of methods, and the current Aims and Scope of Communication Education are explicit about welcoming “scholarship from diverse perspectives and methodologies, including quantitative, qualitative, and critical/textual approaches,” there have been limitations in the extent to which some methods have been utilized and accepted in the past. At the same time, many complementary disciplines have developed new or more rigorous methods for conducting research using a wide range of epistemological approaches that could be useful in exploring deeply meaningful questions in communication education scholarship. For this forum, we invited essays exploring ways that we can learn from other disciplines (and from other areas within our own discipline) to expand the methodological tools that we use in our research. Authors were asked to address the following question in their essays:","PeriodicalId":47722,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48168756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Metasynthesis in communication research: synthesizing the past to aid the future","authors":"Leah E. LeFebvre, Luke LeFebvre","doi":"10.1080/03634523.2023.2171447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2023.2171447","url":null,"abstract":"We conducted a comprehensive content analysis of Communication Education in order to determine the type of article and its subsequent methodology (if an original article) in an e ff ort to make an argument for greater appreciation and inclusion of metasynthesis in instructional communication scholarship. 1 Articles published in Communication Education between January 2012 and May 2022 were analyzed as the unit of analysis similar to Conley and Yun (2017). We categorized articles into the following types: editor ’ s note, forum, meta-analysis, metareview, metasynthesis, mixed methods, qualitative, quantitative, and rhetorical/critical. Our content analysis authenticated that the over-whelming majority of original research articles utilized quantitative methods. Conley and Yum ’ s (2017) research found similar fi ndings from 2000 to 2016. Quantitative methodologies have predominated the methods used by communication researchers who published in Communication Education . Qualitative methodologically driven research articles occupied a signi fi cantly smaller portion.","PeriodicalId":47722,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45140309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Brammer, Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter, Ryan J. Martinez
{"title":"Connecting communication and learning through investigations of educational assessments","authors":"S. Brammer, Narissra Maria Punyanunt-Carter, Ryan J. Martinez","doi":"10.1080/03634523.2023.2171446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2023.2171446","url":null,"abstract":"The communication studies discipline is at its best when scholarship balances attention to quality, student-centered instruction, and ethical, future-oriented research. Though there are many avenues for research that can better inform educational communication by homing in on logistical approaches such as classroom management or curriculum design, research that explores the more abstract connections between communication and learning can o ff er important philosophical insights that impact the logistical ones. One approach to research that can bolster our understanding of the relationship between learning and communication is to revisit assessment and the methods used to gauge learning outcomes.","PeriodicalId":47722,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45520859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Diverse insights in measurement development","authors":"S. Kelly, S. Croucher, K. James","doi":"10.1080/03634523.2023.2171444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2023.2171444","url":null,"abstract":"The call for this forum challenges scholars to suggest new methodologies to introduce into instructional communication research. This essay lies adjacent to that call, suggesting we can create more representative and meaningful research by improving our sampling techniques in measurement development studies to support quantitative research investigations","PeriodicalId":47722,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44432752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Missing data and careless responses: recommendations for instructional communication","authors":"Zac D. Johnson","doi":"10.1080/03634523.2023.2171445","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2023.2171445","url":null,"abstract":"Data collection is, without question, a resource intensive process. Unfortunately, many survey responses are returned incomplete, or individuals respond carelessly. These issues are exacerbated by the increase in online data collection, which often results in lower response rates and higher instances of careless respondents than paper-andpencil surveys, which are not without their own drawbacks (Lefever et al., 2007; Nichols & Edlund, 2020). The issues of missing data and careless responses ultimately equate to more sunk costs for researchers only for the data to be incomplete or otherwise problematic. Notably, these issues are accompanied by higher rates of type I or type II error (see Allison, 2003), meaning that claims drawn from these datasets may not be easily replicated due to faulty parameter estimates related to the original dataset. These issues hinder the ability for researchers to more deeply explore the relationship between communication and learning. Thankfully, there are strategies that quantitative researchers may utilize to address these issues, and in so doing more thoroughly and accurately ascertain communication’s relationship to learning. Each of the following methodological strategies is largely absent from the current instructional communication research canon and is relatively accessible. First, instructional communication researchers should begin by considering the length of their measurement instruments. As our methods have grown more sophisticated, we have included more and more in our models and research questions; each additional construct equates to more items to which participants must read and respond. Scholars routinely consider four, five, or even more variables, resulting in participants being asked to provide upwards of 100 responses (e.g., Schrodt et al., 2009; Sidelinger et al., 2011). Participants lose interest and stop responding carefully or stop responding entirely; this, as described above, is a significant problem. Thus, instructional communication scholars should consider shortening measurement instruments (see Raykov et al., 2015). Perhaps we do not need 18 items to assess teacher confirmation (Ellis, 2000) or teacher credibility (Teven & McCroskey, 1997); perhaps far fewer items would suffice while maintaining validity. Shorter instruments would help to address some of the issues underlying missing data and careless responses. Additionally, shorter instruments may afford researchers the opportunity to consider more complex relationships between additional variables without overburdening participants. A reconsideration of these scales validity may also reveal factor structures that are more accurate representations of communication related to instruction (Reise, 2012).","PeriodicalId":47722,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47621765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Response: why instructional communication scholars should use accurate, applicable, and inclusive methodologies","authors":"Andrew M. Ledbetter","doi":"10.1080/03634523.2023.2171443","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2023.2171443","url":null,"abstract":"I must start by commending all forum authors for their contributions here. These five essays should provoke discussion that far exceeds their brevity, and although diverse in topic, they nevertheless cohere and intersect with each other in important ways. It is these intersections I will explore in this response, identifying themes that appear in most or all of the essays. From this, I will consider topics implied by these essays—one might say, that lie in the shadows between them—that might further elaborate the important claims in this forum. Three of the five essays primarily focus on how we use research methods, with each of those three emphasizing a specific aspect of that how. Brammer et al. focus on practical application, considering how researchers and practitioners might leverage research methods to engage in assessment. Johnson highlights accuracy and completeness, underscoring how data collection procedures and handling of missingness may bias obtained results. And Kelly et al. center inclusion, elaborating how research practices have systematically spotlighted some groups while excluding others. Although each essay places emphasis on a particular theme, all three themes cut across all three essays. For example, Brammer et al. weigh assessment biases (accuracy) that might arise from ignoring the experiences of students with disabilities (inclusion), and Johnson considers the reduction of research burden for participants (inclusion) while continually focusing on the link between communication and learning (application). This weaving of themes makes sense because, following Kelly et al., inclusive methodologies lead to more accurate/complete results, which is crucial for effective instructional practice. The remaining two essays focus on whatmethods instructional communication scholars might use. Specifically, each of these essays advances a methodological approach that instructional communication scholars have ignored. Of note, these two also repeat the themes considered in the three how essays. Goodboy and his colleagues discuss mixture modeling as an approach that can reveal groups hidden in the data, obscured by other approaches (such as the general linear model). In some sense, this recasts the argument of Kelly et al. in quantitative language, providing a tool whereby quantitative scholars can investigate groups whose experiences might be rendered invisible beneath statistics that aggregate across the majority. Without question, a clearer understanding of student groups should foster practical application of practices that enhance learning (Brammer et al.).","PeriodicalId":47722,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45594287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mixture modeling: a person-centered approach to studying communication and learning","authors":"Alan K. Goodboy, San Bolkan, Matt Shin","doi":"10.1080/03634523.2023.2171442","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2023.2171442","url":null,"abstract":"Instructional communication scholars have traditionally adopted a process-product paradigm to estimate how teacher communication behaviors associate with student learning outcomes (Cortez et al., 2006). This traditional paradigm has generated much foundational research on effective teaching. At the same time, this approach might be appropriately described as narrow because it deemphasizes the fact that students are unique learners with their own roles, responsibilities, motivations, and abilities (and so on) that they bring into their learning environments. Substantively speaking, this process-product approach is limited because it overemphasizes the importance of how effective teaching, both principally and generally, fosters the same learning outcomes for all students in the same way (effective teaching is assumed to result in learning for all students despite their uniqueness in who they are). Statistically speaking, process-product scholarship typically examines communication and student learning relationships using the general linear model (e.g., correlation, t-test, analysis of variance, ordinary least-squares regression). This paradigm takes a variablecentered approach when scholars associate communication variables with learning variables. Taking a variable-centered approach has been foundational to the discipline, but it assumes that students from a sample belong to a single population. Assuming that students come from a homogeneous population yields a single parameter estimate for a communication and/or learning association; that is, one statistical estimate will suffice for all students in a study. For instance, if an estimated correlation is r = .30, it is implied that this is the correlation for all students in the population. Similarly, in confirmatory factor analysis, if a factor loading is λ = .88, this is the estimated factor loading for everyone. A variable-centered approach places the emphasis on variables rather than people by providing single estimates that describe relationships between variables under study. Alternatively, the analytical focus can be shifted from variables to people through the application of finite mixture modeling which offers a person-centered approach to studying communication and learning. Unlike a variable-centered approach, a person-centered approach allows for population heterogeneity to the extent that the sample embodies an unknown mixture of homogeneous subpopulations. In the truest application of mixture modeling (a direct application), the goal is to uncover latent","PeriodicalId":47722,"journal":{"name":"COMMUNICATION EDUCATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48454391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}