Assessing Multilingual Multicultural Teachers' Communication Styles

Abstract

As many educational institutions become more globally competitive, and the number of diverse teachers increases, it becomes even more imperative to avoid what some cultures might deem as inappropriate and unprofessional verbal and non-verbal forms of communication. Those behaviors are sometimes interpreted in different ways, depending on the cultural perspective. Any unwanted verbal and non-verbal actions often increase stress, unwelcomed job pressures, and hinder a positive work environment. At the institutional level where teachers are very diverse, understanding verbal and nonverbal behaviors must be addressed. The researchers propose a methodology which will help multilingual, multicultural teachers' communication styles within the workplace and how to improve cross-cultural team collaborations. Additionally, the information provided in this study allows educational leaders to make inferences about their teachers' team performance and expectations based on their motivation, experiences, and skills used when working with a multicultural team.

Psychometric Properties and a Preliminary Validation Study of the Italian Brief Version of the Communication Styles Inventory (CSI-B/I)

“…The tool appears agile and versatile, prefiguring an application during the assessment in multiple contexts where it could be important to obtain information on the communicative attitudes of the person: companies, institutions, staff selection, individual, and group profile analysis, coaching, psychotherapy, counseling, career guidance. Several recent contributions have emphasized the importance of taking into account communication styles in education, health and in the dissemination of news by the media (Ashton et al, 2004;Minnema, 2014;Fourie, 2018;Chlopicki and Laineste, 2019;Labreche et al, 2019;Lõrincz, 2019;Ramachandiran and Mahmud, 2019;Trant et al, 2019;Iskandarova and Griffin, 2020).…”