Communacation Skills of Modern Educator as Viewed by Students

Abstract

The paper contributes to the problem of development and evaluation of educators’ communicative competency. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the attitude of students to teachers’ proficiency in communication, and to assess its importance through the eyes of students at Kalashnikov Izhevsk State Technical University. The results of the survey are compared with the requirements for Vocational Education graduates set in Federal State Educational Standards of Higher Education (FSES HE). Students' understanding of educators’ communication competency and the importance of this quality for them were evaluated through questionnaires and observation. The survey involved 94 first and second year students of Engineering Science at Kalashnikov Izhevsk State Technical University. The survey results demonstrate that students clearly recognize the relation between the teacher’s communication competency and the ability to explain complex information and establish contact with students. Students consider the educators’ communication competency as a necessary skill, but do not prize it above everything. Most respondents (80%) still note that the teacher’s knowledge for them is more important than his communication skills. Comparison of the results of the survey and the requirements set by FSES HE showed that in educational standards, the requirements related to communicative skills firstly concern the form of the process of communication. As for students, the majority considers the ability of the teacher to explain complex information to be more important, and it is this quality that is associated with their concept of “communicative competency of an educator”.