Status of communication skills of prospective teachers

Pages: 246-251
Aruna Mathur (Department of Education, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, Rajasthan)

A good teacher is one who is able to inspire and motivate her/his students. For this, it is crucial for her/him to have excellent communication skills. Communication skills help teachers in motivating students, building an effective teaching-learning environment, using information and technologies, understanding students and making oneself understood, connecting with students and colleagues, collaboration, maintaining discipline, using resources effectively, facilitating class and out-of-class activities, etc. These skills are not only fundamental to teaching but also interacting with different stakeholders in the educational set up and beyond, and in all aspects of life in general. The objective of this research is to study the Status of Communication Skills of Prospective Teachers. Data was collected from a total of 400 prospective teachers from eight teacher training colleges of Udaipur district, Rajasthan, India, selected using the Stratified Random Sampling Method. A self-developed tool ‘Communication Skills Questionnaire’ was used for data collection using the survey method. The findings of the research indicated that overall, the Status of Communication Skills of the Prospective Teachers is unsatisfactory. As compared to Prospective Teachers from the Social Science Faculty, the Communication Skills of Prospective Teachers from the Science Faculty were found to be better. No significant difference was found in the Communication skills of Graduate and Postgraduate Prospective Teachers. In the context of Male and Female Prospective Teachers, no significant difference was found in their Communication Skills.