This paper attempts to isolate some implications for secondary and
adult education emerging from an exploratory study of perceived
effective interactional communication in a religious organisation.
Leaders of the local parishes of the Catholic Church in Australia are in
the process of moving from the traditional basic communication
structure of an hierarchical model to the lateral and collaborative
interaction of a more participative model of management.
This descriptive study records the perceptions of a sample of parish
workers in the Church throughout Australia as they describe some of the
problems they experienced in communication processes and attempted to
identify the reason why these problems emerged. In doing so, they also
identified the more effective communication processes emerging in this
new form of pastoral ministry. They listed a number of attitudes which
they believed would lead to greater communication effectiveness and
without which genuine constructive communication usually does not
take place (Carl Rogers 1957 in Bolton, 1983 p. 259). The media and
written communication are not explored, except in their relation to
effective meeting procedures. Verbal and non-verbal communication
amongst people interacting with one another in the interpersonal
organisational setting is the focus of this work.
The findings of this study point in the short term, to the need for
empowering people engaged in pastoral work with the necessary skills
of effective communication processes. In the long term, the paper
proposes the need for continuing educational emphasis on communication
skills especially in secondary schools when students move towards a
more personalised form of self-assertion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219199 |
| Date | January 1990 |
| Creators | McKenzie, Monica M., n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Monica M. McKenzie |
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