Measuring sustainable communication in education

Abstract

Although aspects of sustainability in communication such as nonviolence are discussed from time to time, hardly any theoretical basement with an empirical validation can be found. In the broadest sense, sustainability refers to the ability to maintain or support a process continuously over time. This paper asks for the theoretical approach that helps to understand the challenges of teaching in schools of diverse societies (2) and explains some core aspects of the ongoing research on sustainability and communication (3). After that, this paper presents the research question this project tried to answer (4) and explains the used instruments, the data, and some of the most relevant outcomes of this study (5). Finally, some conclusions describe the opportunities and threats of sustainable communication for teacher education. The outcome of this paper is that a specific theory of sustainable communication is missing. Furthermore, the results of the empirical investigation show that intercultural communication, nonviolent communication, cooperation, problem solving and, reflection are statistically related as constructs and predictors of sustainable communication. Also, the teaching experience of the participants in the sample is a significant predictor of the sustainable communication.

Keywords

• sustainability
• communication
• nonviolence
• collaboration
• problem solving