How students perceive teachers’ nonverbal and verbal communication at agricultural universities in Austria, Slovenia and Albania

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This study attempts to close the research gap created by the fact that existing studies neglect the problem of how effectively agricultural professors from different European countries communicate. The aim is to identify similarities and differences in the numbers of agricultural professors perceived by students as engaging in verbal and nonverbal immediacy communication.

Methodology: An online survey was conducted among students of agricultural universities from Austria, Slovenia and Albania.

Findings: The results show that professors of agriculture from Austria, Slovenia and Albania should generally not be satisfied with their own communication patterns and should thus try to improve their communication. The result also reveals cultural differences in the shares of agriculture professors employing different communication patterns in Austria, Slovenia and Albania. Compared to Austrian and Slovenian students, their Albanian peers perceive that most of their professors use nonverbal immediacy communication. According to Austrian students, the majority of their professors use verbal immediacy. On the contrary, Albanian students assessed that some of their professors employ verbal immediacy.

Practical Implications: The results show the professors of agriculture should improve the way they communicate to students. In particular, the Albanian professors should improve their verbal communication especially in terms of providing timely and quality feedback to students.

Theoretical implications: The study reveals differences in immediacy communication among countries (Austria, Slovenia and Albania) which the scientific literature considers to have a high-context culture.

Originality/Value: Given that no study has yet examined how students perceive professors’ communication in different European countries, this research helps understand the characteristics of agricultural professors’ communication.

KEYWORDS:

• Verbal communication
• nonverbal communication
• immediacy
• agriculture
• education
• Slovenia
• Austria
• Albania

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Asist. Prof. Dr Marija Klopčič is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Animal Science at the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her main interests are breeding and sustainable livestock production. She works intensively in the area of transferring knowledge from research to practice where communication capacity and skills are very important.

Prof. Dr Renata Bažok is a Professor at the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Zagreb, Croatia. Her chief interests are phytomedicine, the protection of arable crops against pests, soil fertility, and food safety. She is currently Vice Dean for International Relations at the Faculty of Agriculture. She is deeply involved in various international projects relating to sustainable agriculture.

Helena Virić Gašparić, MSc. is an administrative assistant for TEMPUS projects conducted at the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Zagreb, Croatia.

Prof. Dr Karmen Erjavec is a Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Informatics of the University of Novo mesto, Slovenia. She mainly focuses on business and agricultural communication. She has authored and co-authored over 130 scientific publications.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by TEMPUS IV programe - Lifelong learning for sustainable agriculture in Alps-Danube-Adriatic Region - LifeADA project funded with the support of the European Union [Project Number - 544595 - TEMPUS - 1 - 2013 - 1 - HR - TEMPUS - JPHES].