Classroom communication must be

Concept: Classroom communication is a transactional process rather than a one-way transmission. In the transactional model the participants encode and decode messages at the same time, and the receiver's response travels back along a feedback channel that continuously reshapes the message. Applied to teaching, this makes the learner the reference point of the whole act: what is said, how fast it is said and in which words are all governed by the learner's entry level and by the response that comes back.

Application: The purpose of a classroom act of communication is comprehension by the learners, so the learners are both the destination of the message and the source of the feedback that regulates it. When the exchange is organised around the learners, the feedback channel stays open: they question, answer and signal confusion, and the teacher revises vocabulary, pace and examples on that evidence. Communication organised around the learner therefore satisfies both halves of the transactional model, which is why classroom communication must be student centric.

Cross-check: reading the remaining orientations against the same model shows why each one breaks it:

• Teacher centric makes the teacher the sole originator and the learners passive receivers, which collapses the feedback channel and reduces the transaction to one-way transmission.

• General centric pitches the message at an undifferentiated general audience, so it cannot be matched to the entry level of the particular class in front of the teacher.

• Textbook centric fixes the sequence and the wording by the prescribed text, so the content is decided by the book instead of by the learners' response.

Result: classroom communication must be student centric.