A Research on persuading students at secondary school by talking and listening

In this research, persuasive communication in education is studied. What is analyzed in this frame are how often teachers use spoken and auditory persuasive communication skills in their communication with students during class hours, and the factors affecting the use of these skills. Teachers teaching at secondary schools in the center of Ankara and the students studying at these schools constitute the environment of this research. The research was carried out by taking samples from this environment. 150 Turkish Language teachers and 750 of their 7th and 8th grade students provided the samples. This research is based on determining whether teachers use persuasive communication behaviors and techniques, of course in their own viewpoint. To test the consistency of the teachers who were taken in the sampling group at the same time, their students were asked different questions about whether their teachers display the stated behaviors or not. 46 skills or techniques that can be used during persuasive communication between teachers and students are presented in these questionnaires. SPSS 11.5 (Statistic Package For Social Science) programme was used to analyze the gathered data. The results of the research are as follows: The factors which affect a teachers? communicating with their students persuasively during a class hour are the gender of teachers and the number of students in a classroom. The following do not have a meaningful effect on teachers? using persuasive communication elements: length of service, alma mater, having a university or postgraduate education, financial situation, marital status, number of children, having a supplementary job, number of classes per week, and attending activities related to persuasive communication. While teachers state that they use persuading skills and techniques ?well?, students? opinions do no not support this. This result is interpreted like this: Teachers believe that they display the stated behaviors and use the techniques ?well?, or believe that they should be used; however, at students? level, they cannot use them in a way to affect most of the students and attract their attentions.