Communication and Learning

Jason Teven and James Katt

8Instructor Credibility

Abstract: For centuries scholars have believed source credibility to be one of the central elements of persuasive communication. Aristotle envisioned ethos or credibility as an audience’s image of a particular source and suggested that it was the most potent means of persuasion. During the 1960s, communication scholars advanced empirically based approaches to the study of Aristotle’s theory of ethos. Students make attributions about an instructor’s credibility based on that instructor’s communication behavior. Instructor credibility – perceived character, caring, and competence – has emerged as a super-variable that affects teacher-student interactions and instructional outcomes. In this chapter ...