Key Words
- Model: “people’s implicit or explicit theories about how communication works” (396)
- Transmission models of communication: “models which do not recognize the role of context in shaping interpretation and which assume that stable, fixed meanings can be neatly transmitted from person to person” (393). “Although many scholars who discuss transmission models do view them as a single entity…this article will, instead, conceptualize them as a continuum. On one end of this continuum is the assumption that meaning is automatically transferred; at a mid-point is the assumption that meaning should be transferred but is occasionally blocked by a faulty sender or receiver (what could be called a ‘messy’ transmission model); and at the other end is the assumption that a variety of factors such as ‘noise in the channel,’ faulty senders, and faulty receivers often block transmission of meaning…The alternative to transmission models is referred to as ‘post-transmission’ model” (396).
- Activity Theory: “the basic unit of analysis won't be discrete entities such as ‘the teacher,’ ‘the students,’ or ‘the student texts’ but rather an entire system of student-teacher communication - a system that involves complex interconnections among teachers, students, student texts, and means of responding to those texts, in addition to the myriad beliefs, histories, material conditions, etc. that influence these people, tools, and practices