Learner Reticence at the Time of the Pandemic: Examining Filipino Students’ Communication Behaviors in Remote Learning

Between the uncertainty of a global pandemic, the unfamiliar territory of fully remote education, and the detrimental effects of related crises on the educational system, emerging research on pandemic pedagogy have underscored the universal presences of 1) anxiety in students and teachers, 2) decreased communication opportunities, and 3) challenges with communication technologies –all of which have been found to affect students’ communication behaviors in their remote classes. Learner reticence –students’ inadequate ability in self-expression usually manifested in reluctance to engage in classroom discourse– remains one of the biggest instructional communication challenges most teachers face today. Recent pandemic-related changes in learning delivery have put students at an even bigger disadvantage in terms of self-expression, participation, and discourse since the majority of the difficulties they experience in remote learning involve and are affected by their resources’ capacities to sustain communication with their teachers and classmates. This study investigated the self-perceived experiences of learner reticence of Filipino higher education students. With phenomenology as the main method of inquiry, all participants disclosed experiences of reticent behaviors in their remote classes during the pandemic; individual and personality-based factors were found to contribute the most to the students’ experienced reticence. The participants’ narratives also gave rise to insights on teacher immediacy and interpersonal communication in remote classes.