This is a difficult ability to teach because gestures are not universal. What means one thing in a certain country or culture may have a completely different meaning to someone else. According to Hackman and Johnson (2004), “leadership effectiveness increasingly depends upon intercultural emotional competency” (p. 33). They further assert that this can only be accomplished by learning as much as possible about how emotional messages are conveyed in other cultures. This knowledge is gained mostly by experience, which is why it is important, as Pearce (2003) points out, to establish a connection with the audience. This is also true of the relationship between teachers and students. Johnson (2007) has reported some success in improving the ability by studying taped lessons. She noted that when student teachers evaluate their session, they sometimes notice obvious cues that were missed during the class. This awareness causes the teacher to look for certain cues during future classes, so it would seem that as the experience level of the teacher grows, so should the ability to interpret non-verbal …show more content…
In this study, lessons were filmed using two cameras, one focused on the teacher and the other on the entire classroom. The researchers tabulated frequency and duration counts of eye contact, facial expression, body movements, and touching. After the lesson, external judges evaluated the effectiveness based on observations of both cameras. The students were also asked to evaluate the effectiveness of the instruction. Surprisingly, there was no correlation found between student evaluations and gesture frequency and duration, while there was some correlation in the judges’ evaluations. This discrepancy may be explained by the concept that students’ perception of effectiveness may be influenced by factors that are irrelevant to actual effectiveness (Attia, Honeycutt, & Leach, 2005). The fact that the external judges had the perception that the more effective lessons included a greater frequency of non-verbal communication also supports the idea that emotional contact between teacher and student is