A Retrospective Study on the Nonverbal Credibility Manifested by the 2005 Metrobank Foundation’s Outstanding Teacher-Awardees

Abstract

Communication can be best summarized as the transmission of a message from a sender to a receiver in an understandable manner. In the classroom setting, the sending and the receiving of messages are actively participated by both the students and the teachers. However, during the teaching process, which includes the inputting and the encoding of knowledge, the teacher serves as the main sender. In conveying the message, teachers may think that they communicate mainly through verbal means, when in fact they also communicate many nonverbal messages. Extensive research has been done on nonverbal communication. One is that of Mehrabian (1972), suggesting that up to 93 percent of meaning is communicated nonverbally. Nonverbal messages are communicated through the categorized nonverbal cues. This study recognizes the fact that teachers are continuously being observed by the students, and the behaviors or the nonverbal cues they send could positively or negatively communicate credibility. Teacher's credibility includes his or her competence, trustworthiness, and dynamism. It is the entirety of the instructional competence, the teacher's knowledge and expertise, honesty and sincerity, and energy and confidence in communicating. Previous studies on nonverbal communication in the classroom usually have the students as the focus; only a few studies were done on teachers as the sender of nonverbal messages. Thus, given the scarcity in knowledge on the teacher as a communicator and on credibility as the nonverbal message sent by them, this paper which attempts to describe the nonverbal credibility component of the communication of recognized credible teachers, posed this problem: “What are the nonverbal components of teachers' credibility which were manifested by the awardees of the 2005 Metrobank Foundation Search for Outstanding Teachers (SOT)?”. To find out the answer to this problem, the following sub-problems are also posed: (1) What is the nature (i.e., philosophy, objectives, and search process) of the Metrobank Foundation Search for Outstanding Teachers?; (2) What is the nature (i.e., environment, material, and duration) of the teaching demonstration?; (3) From the observed teaching demonstrations of these teachers, what nonverbal cues on credibility predominantly occurred?; and (4) Among the teacher-awardees, who was perceived to have the most positive nonverbal credibility? This paper used a retrospective approach, studying the 2005 Metrobank Foundation’s outstanding teacher-awardees. Thus, the particular event that was the main source of data was the teaching demonstration of each of the 2005 teacherawardees during the SOT’s semi-final judging. This event was recorded for Metrobank Foundation’s documentation only. Following the ethical considerations, the researcher was given access to the original video tapes by the organization. Because the data were behaviors, both qualitative and quantitative were utilized in results analysis. The study’s population consists of the 10 teacher-awardees, and through availability sampling the researcher had six teachers as the sample. To obtain the teacher’s nonverbal credibility, through judgment sampling, the researcher had graduates of Bachelor of Arts in Organizational Communication academic year avoiding crossed arms stance, he exuded confidence. His good voice projection and vocal quality, use of varied pitches, conversational speaking style, fluency in the English language, as well as good pronunciation, added up to his being perceived as the most credible or competent among all the observed teacher-awardees. However, Teacher E’s postural shifts, along with his leaning forward though considered as signs of interest were frequent and considered “too much.” This study concludes that nonverbal components of credibility are manifested through four nonverbal categories-eye behaviors, gestures, posture, and vocal cues, plus the factor-pronunciation or appropriate articulation of the words, which falls under the category vocal cues or paralanguage. Poor pronunciation can lower credibility along with too much movement or non-movement, for these distract understanding of the message which the teacher is trying to convey.