Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Session 4, 2:30-3:15pm
Harnessing the Power of Nonverbal Persuasion: How You Can Make Your Students Better Advocates and Yourself a Better Teacher
Michael Higdon & Rebecca Scharf
Program Code: T4C
Studies have revealed that, when evaluating a speaker’s ethos, audience members are largely influenced and persuaded by nonverbal cues, including the speaker’s gestures, voice quality, stance and even dress. Using film clips as illustrations, this presentation will discuss the findings of these studies and how we can implement this knowledge to (1) help our students gain a more in-depth understanding of how to persuade their audience; and (2) help ourselves to better understand how nonverbal persuasion can help us become stronger and more effective classroom teachers.