A goodbye (for now) to K-12 communication education

Abstract

In 1989, Cassandra Book called on scholars to examine how communication was taught in K-12 classrooms. For nearly 30 years, scholars have expressed concern regarding the decline of K-12 communication scholarship (Hunt et al., 2014), argued for the importance of communication in K-12 teacher certification (Rudick & Dannels, 2020; Wright, 2020), and most recently, advocated for the National Communication Association’s (NCA) involvement in developing a K-12 communication pedagogy research agenda (Yastremski & Morreale, 2021). In their article, Yastremski and Morreale’s (2021) proposed four strategies for advancing scholarship and advocacy in this realm. This essay will address their first strategy, which asks scholars to develop a communication pedagogy K-12 research agenda. Sadly, through the years and across the different calls for advocacy, very little has changed regarding K-12 communication pedagogy research. Perhaps it is remorse for our failures as a discipline in recognizing the importance of K-12 communication pedagogy research which draws us to periodically revisit Book’s 1989 argument. Intellectually, we are aware of the importance of communication in K-12 classrooms; however, we have failed to produce scholarship or support when called upon to do so. Or maybe, it is nostalgia, as many of us began our careers as K-12 teachers or speech and debate coaches, that keeps us in a conversation with a haunting absence of scholarship. There is something unsettling about our discipline’s lack of interest in K-12 communication pedagogy scholarship. Unsettling as it may be, the reality is grim. In the 32 years since Book’s call, we have failed to develop this line of research. Then, perhaps by lack of action, the discipline has spoken—this is not a line of research worthy of forwarding resources to support. The communication discipline owes its success to a history linked with K-12 educators. NCA was born out of K-12 communication teachers separating themselves from English teachers. Although scholars frequently acknowledge the history and express admiration to our K-12 educators, they seldom do more than performative cordial gestures to these roots. For example, NCA no longer has specific standards on K-12 communication. While NCA does have a position statement that supports communication as a high school graduation requirement and resolves to provide support toward this cause, a cursory glance at the resources shows one NCA produced resource and web links to the following: College Board, TeAchnology, PBS LearningMedia, and The Learning Network (National Communication Association, n.d.). The glaring absence of