A Qualitative and Quantitative Study of the Relationship between Interpersonal Communication Skills and Successful Teaching

Abstract

Today, establishing any productive professional relationship stands in the need of developing proper interpersonal communication skills. Since teaching is amongst those professions that requires remarkable interpersonal skills, the current research was an attempt to shed light on those components of interpersonal communication skills which have direct role in success of teaching. To this aim, a mixed method design was employed to investigate quantitatively the relationship between these skills and successful teaching and qualitatively portray a conceptual framework that actualizes this relationship. Therefore, 12 teachers and 100 students were selected conveniently and purposefully to fill in the blanks of two adopted questionnaires. The results of quantitative analysis showed that there is positive relationship between interpersonal communication skills and teaching success with coefficient of r = 0.473.T results of qualitative analysis gave birth to a conceptual framework which believes in, an at least hypothetical, relationship between components of interpersonal communication skills and effective teaching. These findings, rather than having implications for teachers, teacher trainers and researcher, shed lights on the way of future researchers in this area.