A Study of non verbal communication cues and their uses in pre-school classroom interaction, a case study of Nsakina kindergarten

Abstract

The ability to identify, understand and interpret non-verbal cues makes communication among people high quality and successful. In this study, special attention is paid to non verbal communication in the classroom, with emphasis on the non-verbal behaviour of teachers. The main purpose of the present study was to examine the role of nonverbal communication in preschool classroom interactions with a view to looking at how the adult can develop positive ways of responding to and using nonverbal communication to avoid frustration on the part of the children and to encourage inclusion and consequently a safe environment for learning. To this end, a naturalistic observation was conducted with a group of pre-schoolers between 2 and 4 years old, and the teachers involved during 6 different classroom activities over a period of two weeks. The participants for that morning’s observation therefore included all children in Nsakina M/A kindergarten as well as the teachers who reported for work in the centre within the period of observation. The findings of the study showed that teachers and children used nonverbal communication extensively in their interactions, but there were instances where children’s nonverbal signals were either not responded to or misinterpreted, leaving children unfulfilled. Because this study is qualitative, it should be made quantitative and scale up the number of kindergartens, that way a generalisation can be made on the various nonverbal communication cues that are used in the kindergarten. From the finding of the study, the interaction that took place was between teacher to child and child to child. A future study can focus on parent to teacher interaction, and parent to child interaction on nonverbal communication cues.