Designing a course in family communication

Abstract

Family communication is expanding rapidly as a specialty area in the communication discipline, as demonstrated by the growing number of family communication textbooks and well-attended family communication pedagogy panels at Speech Communication Association (SCA) conventions. Founded in 1989, the SCA Commission on Family Communication attracted 290 members in 1991— 1992, the first year of the SCA unit membership checkoff system (K. Richley, SCA National Office, personal communication, October 27, 1992). While this growth has contributed to a burgeoning array of teaching resources unavailable even five years ago, the rapid expansion of the field also means that there are few well-trod paths to follow in designing a course in family communication. To complicate matters, students who register for the course tend to have unrealistic expectations about the role of communication in marriage (Burggraf, Pearson, Folske, & Sotos, 1992) and families; also, tapping into students' family lives raises knotty ethical issues (Berko, 1992; BuerkelRothfuss, 1990). Thus, teachers of family communication are confronted with pedagogical decisions unique in our discipline. The purpose of this article is to identify some of the paths being developed in family communication with respect to philosophical and pedagogical issues, and to examine current controversies in developing a family communication course. A suggested syllabus and some techniques for teaching family communication from a variety of approaches are presented. The article concludes with a discussion of methods for terminating and following up the family communication course.