Assessing preservice teachers' Presentation capabilities: Contrasting the modes of communication with the constructed impression

A research-based understanding of how to develop and assess classroom presentation skills is vital for the effective development of preservice teacher communication capabilities. This paper identifies and compares two different models of assessing pre-service teachers' presentation performance - one based on the Modes of Communication (voice, body language, words, and alignment between those elements) and another based on features of the Constructed Impression of the communication acts (confidence, clarity, engagement and appropriateness). The Modes of Communication and the Constructed Impression of 164 pre-service teacher presentations were rated. The Constructed Impression model provided a better fit to data, while averaging of Modes of Communication elements offered more accurate prediction of overall score. All elements in both models made a significant contribution to the overall perception of communication performance. The study also reports on the relative contribution of voice, body language, words and alignment to the perceived confidence, clarity, engagement and appropriateness of the pre-service teacher presentations. Implications for developing pre-service teachers' presentation capabilities are also discussed.