Friday, July 5, 2013
WK 1 Competent Communication
I can think of a time when
I had to go to an early childhood conference for training hours. The speaker was teaching about challenging
behaviors and ways to working with challenging behaviors. The speaker did keep eye contact and her
tones during the sessions and I felt was a strong communication part. What I
did not think was effective communication was the examples she gave to exampling
the challenging behaviors. I am an early
childhood professional and I know you should never use the child’s first and
last names when giving examples at a conference. The speaker even went on to talk about the
parents and added comments of what these parents said on how they would punish their
child. The speaker had videos of these
children to show us challenging behaviors and staff to show how to deal with
them. I knew the speaker personally and
knew the child care center that was recorded to show these examples. I felt confidentiality of the children and
parents were broken. I have seen a lot of
videos that have children in them and know the adults used different names for
the children or just use first names. I
would never model this type of communication if I was a speaker at
conference. Confidentiality should never
be broken in any conversations.
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Nina- I am shocked to hear this, especially when you stated that you knew the people being discussed. I agree with you that was a violation of their rights, I wonder if anyone has ever said anything to her about leaving names out of her trainings. I did enjoy reading your blog though, thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteHi Nina,
ReplyDeleteThat is really unprofessional. Confidentiality is a key part of competent communication. Confidentiality is a component of trust. That person is not trustworthy. What a shame. Our business is a delicate, sensitive one and it depends on educators being honest and trustworthy.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Nina,
ReplyDeleteI was also shocked to read that the speaker used the first and last names of the children she gave examples of. Though she may have had good speaking abilities and used eye contact, she did not respect privacy and confidentiality which is essential in ethical communication. I hope that this was brought to her attention and that she made corrections in future presentations.
Nina,
ReplyDeleteConfidentiality is such a huge part of an profession, especially education! I was shocked that this presenter not only showed video clips of children that the audience (namely you) knew, but also shared first and last names. It may be acceptable to show video clips of children, if permission is obtained from the parents. (As a parent, I have had to sign numerous photo/video releases.) However, this does not mean that first and last names show be shared. This even breaks the principle of ethical communication about "respecting privacy and confidentiality" (National Communication Association Credo for Ethical Communication, as cited in O'Hair & Wiemann, 2012, p. 15). I hope that this individual was corrected and has not done this again. Thanks for sharing an example of ineffective communicator - we can learn from that too!
Erin
Reference: O'Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2012). Real communication: An introduction. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.
If anyone of us is able to be in the presence of someone who has the ability to communicate their skills, that will make an impact on something we learned that day, then we were at the right place at the right time. Communication is largely a part of how we learn positive and negative behaviors. If anyone is able to model a behavior that may effect us to handle situations in the future, they've made a difference and that's contagious, pass it on.
ReplyDelete