Communication – Relationships To Other Domains

Introduction

This advice identifies how concepts and skills from the Communication domain are an integral part of student learning across the curriculum. It provides a starting point for teachers to consider opportunities for developing student activities that incorporate these essential knowledge and skills.

The Arts

The Arts offer a broad range of communication forms that enable students to understand and express different meanings in unique ways. Art forms draw upon physical, visual, kinaesthetic, vocal, non-vocal, musical and written modes of expression. Through Arts education students develop communication strategies that assist them to make meaning, listen, express, view, deconstruct and respond to a diversity of art forms as both consumers and producers and to develop sensitivity and familiarity with the discourses of various art forms. Arts education provides students with access to language and expression experiences and the opportunity to explore different modes of communication including aesthetic, literal and conceptual. Exploring the qualities of arts works, draws on research into the purposes, functions and audiences for which the works were created and presented. Students develop knowledge and understanding of the language relevant to specific arts forms and disciplines. The Arts provide unique contexts for students to engage with and extend their understanding of diverse cultures.

Arts education encourages reflection on presentation, and Arts teachers and students engage in dialogue with each other and their audiences about the communicative qualities of the arts work.

Civics and Citizenship

Communication skills are essential for active participation in society, for persuading others to a point of view and engaging others. In Civics and Citizenship education, students require skills for decoding and analysing the messages presented to them by a range of media, and separating fact and evidence from opinion and rhetoric. They also require skills in effectively presenting and expressing their own points of view. Communication develops understanding of the messages and motives of others. Students learn that effective communication is dependent on understanding audience and context. They listen to speakers from an increasing range of contexts and respond appropriately. They learn to read verbal and non-verbal messages. They develop skills for communicating in a wide range of media, organising information, and using language and conventions which are appropriate to a variety of audiences.

Design, Creativity and Technology

In Design, Creativity and Technology, students communicate for many purposes and in a variety of contexts. They are required to be autonomous and creative problem solvers, as individuals and as members of a team. They learn to develop design briefs to clearly define the idea, problem, need, want or opportunity and requirements for a solution. They use specialised technical language when designing and devise plans to outline processes in a logical order to realise a product. Students learn to describe, analyse and evaluate the impact of their own and others’ technological products, systems, processes and innovations (past, present and predicted future) on the individual, society and culture, the environment and the economy. They provide feedback and present information to others about designs, products and systems.

English

The Communication domain is centrally concerned with the capacity to construct meaning and to convey information and understanding to others in a range of ways and in a variety of settings. Students develop awareness that discourses differ across the disciplines and other areas of the curriculum, that they need to learn the literacies appropriate to each and that they need to use language and communication media as appropriate in each.

The English domain is centrally concerned with language and texts. Students read, view, write, compare, research and talk about literary, everyday and media texts. They explore the meaning of texts and how meaning is conveyed. They develop understanding of the way purpose, audience and situation influence the structures and features of language, and apply this knowledge in their own reading, writing, and speaking and listening.

Health and Physical Education

Communication involves developing the knowledge, skills and behaviours that empower students to respond to, make meaning of, and deconstruct a range of communication forms. Effective communication is a key skill in Health and Physical Education (HPE). It is essential that students develop the ability to listen, view and respond with respect to the content and context in which the communication occurred. Learning in HPE involves developing familiarity with forms, language and conventions used in different forms of public, personal and interpersonal communication.

HPE provides the opportunity for students to develop knowledge and skills in communication through their use of language in:

working with peers during class-based activities, practical activities, games and sports
describing movement, physical responses to activity and feelings about participation in physical activity
setting goals as a group or team and working together for achievement
providing feedback to individuals and groups in relation to skill development, team strategy or game concepts and rules
presenting information on health-related topics and strategies
listening to the opinions and feelings of others in class discussions.

The Humanities – Economics

Economics requires students to read and process information from a variety of texts, including books, newspapers, journals, reports, magazines and the Internet; to use specialised economics language and terminology in both written reports and oral presentations. In addition, Economics literacy requires the ability to read, process, analyse and interpret a variety of information from sources such as statistics, charts, tables, graphs, diagrams, photographs, cartoons, film and other non-print media. Economics students use generic communication skills to express economic information, ideas, theories, models and issues, supporting such expression (both written and oral) with statistical, visual, graphic and mathematical forms of representation.

The Humanities – Geography

In Geography, students learn to use and apply language specific to the domain, including a range of key spatial concepts, and demonstrate an understanding of these, such as the distinction between absolute and relative locations. They use geographic language to identify and describe the human and physical characteristics of local and global environments. They learn to use primary sources in fieldwork, and secondary sources including scales, photographs, satellite images and statistical data. They record, represent and interpret data in different types of maps, graphs, tables, sketches, diagrams, and photographs.

The Humanities – History

Communication is central to the capacity to construct meaning and convey understanding. In this process students learn the importance of historical language including such terms as primary and secondary sources and terms specific to particular historical contexts such as medieval and revolution. They also learn to listen, view and respond to a range of sources including oral histories, artefacts, narratives, pictures, documents, films and digital resources. In Listening, viewing and responding they learn about the communication conventions and strategies to make meaning of and evaluate a range of historical sources. Through Presenting students learn the conventions and strategies to communicate their understanding of History. They learn the conventions of a range of forms of representations such as timelines, media reports, multimedia presentations, oral presentations, posters, and photographic and written essays.

Information and Communications Technology

In Information and Communications Technology, students create information products in a range of forms using structures, layouts and presentations that conform to accepted conventions and that are appropriate for different audiences. They evaluate information obtained from online sources and analyse the effectiveness of selected e-learning tools. Students maintain a digital record of their learning and use this to reflect on and, if necessary, modify their communication skills to improve their effectiveness. Students use and evaluate current communication tools such as email, blogs, electronic portfolios and online forums. They evaluate the presentation of information produced in these forms, assess the appropriateness of the language and explore the explicit and implicit meaning of messages created for transmission using these forms of communication.

Interpersonal Development

The Communication dimension, Listening, viewing and responding, is congruent with the skills and behaviours practised in Interpersonal Development in both of the dimensions, Building social relationships and Working in teams. The Communication domain requires students to develop familiarity with and be able to use language in a range of contexts. In the Interpersonal Development domain language is used to describe feelings, display empathy and resolve conflict. The development of communication skills is interdependent on interpersonal skills such as assertiveness, negotiation, active listening and an awareness of diverse perspectives. Students use communication skills to respect and build on the ideas and opinions of team members and reflect on the effectiveness of learning in a team. Students also require emotional and self-efficacy skills when presenting to an audience in order to maintain focus and manage performance anxiety.

Languages Other Than English (LOTE)

Communicating in LOTE involves the development of knowledge of the connections between language and culture and how culture is embedded throughout the communication system. It involves an understanding of language conventions across a range of cultures. An important focus includes the development of skills in listening, speaking, writing, viewing and the use of body language, visual cues and signs that are appropriate for effective communication and enhanced literacy skills. The LOTE learner, through the use of appropriate communication strategies, develops a greater sensitivity to intercultural understanding. Opportunities for self evaluation and the evaluation of others readily exist when using various presentation formats.

Communication activities relate to LOTE in many ways. Language teachers can draw attention to how language is organised according to diverse communication patterns, such as who may speak to whom, about topics that may be discussed and others that may not, the role and attitude towards silence, and the rules of taking turns to speak and listen in a conversation.

Learners can gain awareness of how better communication can improve relationships between people, how students can be more effective in expressing their views, wishes, feelings and attitudes about issues; how difficult issues can be dealt with sensitively, how disagreement can be conducted amicably, and generally how young people can learn to express themselves, their views, experiences, aspirations and problems effectively.

Teachers can support students from language backgrounds other than English in their ability to communicate effectively with their families where sometimes differential levels of English competence can add extra difficulty to the stress and problems that can arise in normal adolescence. Teachers can help these and other learners to think about the role and place of dialects and their connection to standard languages. Students can learn about social codes of other kinds: how speech and writing vary between various in groups and out groups. Students can compare their own ways to use English and what ‘school English’ is like, how these differ and how they are similar. Projects to find out these differences in the target language can be undertaken by older learners. All students can study the complex multilingual and communication patterns in Indigenous Australia. Communication is not only linguistic, or oral, and so how different cultures have recorded history can be explored, for example, the role of cave painting, the Bayeux Tapestry, how SeaSpeak operates on the seas, Sign Languages and today multimedia texts produced with computers.

Students can make oral and written, multimedia or mixed mode presentations. Students can learn about register, or levels of formality in speech and writing, and the diverse functions and effects of using different registers. These involve communication with others such as strangers, people in authority, intimates, people of a different gender, and people the student is seeking to persuade.

Mathematics

Mathematical Structure and Working mathematically play essential roles in understanding natural and human worlds. In communicating about these worlds, students use a combination of everyday language and mathematical symbols involving numerals, operations, connectives, variables and relations.

Development of the language of Mathematics is crucial to its practical application. Students learn to use the language and concepts of mathematics both within the discipline itself, and also its applications to modelling and problem solving across the other domains. In this process they employ a range of communication tools for illustrating relationships and displaying results such as venn diagrams, tree diagrams and Karnaugh maps.

Personal Learning

Communication is central to the concepts and skills in the Personal Learning domain which is concerned with the development of skills and behaviours to learn effectively. To become effective communicators students need to understand and become proficient users of language through the process of planning, reflecting and acting on their learning. Students progressively take responsibility for their learning and develop competencies in the domains through an understanding of the specialised language or literacies. Students are able to explore and use both verbal and non-verbal responses to support their preferred learning style. Through this exploration students learn to respect the rights of others to express opinions.

When preparing and presenting communication products in any area of the curriculum, students develop time management and organisational skills to meet schedules and deadlines. They ensure they have the materials required to enhance their communications. Students modify their communication by being aware of their audience. They seek feedback from teachers, peers and significant others and give relevant and constructive feedback in return.

Students use their communication skills to justify the choices they make about their own learning, identify areas for improvement in their learning and describe their progress towards achieving short and long term learning goals.

Science

Contemporary learning in Science requires students to be able to interpret and use multimodal texts to make and communicate meaning. In Science, students need to understand the forms, language and conventions of Science and other areas of the curriculum to be able to communicate effectively within scientific and non-scientific communities at local, national and global levels. Skills developed through the Communication domain enable students to consider their scientific work from the perspectives of Listening, viewing and responding with respect to content and context, and Presenting with respect to communicating information and learning to audiences in formats that suit the audience and purpose. Students:

describe their scientific activities and observations in both general and Science-specific language; they use diagrams, symbols, tables, graphs and digital images to communicate the procedures and findings of investigations
identify examples where scientific language has been misused in common communication formats and distinguish between their skewed meaning in non-scientific contexts and the correct meaning of such terms
select and use appropriate structure, organisation and media to convey clear messages and relevant scientific information for particular audiences and purposes; for example, when presenting and debating the merits and problems of contentious and/or ethically based issues of broad community concern, when making reports of investigations or when preparing media articles.

Thinking Processes

Thinking Processes strategies assist students to become effective communicators within and beyond school. Students use critical thinking skills to identify, interpret and evaluate meanings in different contexts using a variety of mediums. These strategies enable students to reflect and become more discriminating of their own and others’ ideas. They use questions to clarify messages and to identify strategies used by the author to convey meaning. As students move from discrete thinking skills to higher order processes they are able to communicate complex ideas in a variety of ways with increasing sophistication. Students become adept at choosing the best vehicle for communicating messages. They use thinking tools to gather data and plan effective communication strategies and content. Through reflection and evaluation of the effectiveness of their thinking processes and strategies students become more successful communicators.