Co-authors included UW-Madison’s Bailey Smolarek, Kelly Norris Martin of the Rochester Institute of Technology, and UW-Madison’s Luke Scrivener.

The study is titled, “Exploring the Situated and Cultural Aspects of Communication in the Professions: Implications for Teaching, Student Employability, and Equity in Higher Education.” This report explains how skills, like communication, are defined and used is shaped by cultural, political, and situational factors. Hora, the director of UW-Madison’s Center for College-Workforce Transitions (CCWT), notes that one of the problematic features of skills discourse is the view that skills are decontextualized pieces of knowledge and disposition.

Through the integration of communication studies theory, critical discourse analysis, and cognitive anthropology, Hora and his team examined how 96 students, educators, and employers in nursing and engineering define and describe communication skills.

Hora reveals that his results suggest a need for new approaches in research and practice regarding teaching and cultural diversity in higher education.

Hora is an assistant professor of adult and higher education in the Department of Liberal Arts and Applied Studies, and is an affiliate with the School of Education’s Department of Education Leadership and Policy Analysis. He is also a research scientist with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), and is the director of CCWT, housed within WCER.

Smolarek is a researcher with WCER and earned her Ph.D. from the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction.

The study this paper comes from is EMPOWER, which is based within WCER.

Read the full paper here.