About
23
Publications
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Introduction
Dr. Stephen Kromka is an Assistant Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication at The University of Tampa. His research focuses on Instructional Communication and Family Communication. He is interested in narrative pedagogy; how instructor narratives may influence student learning in the classroom. His current research interests include instructor self-disclosure, classroom content relevance, and family storytelling.
Current institution
Publications
Publications (23)
The purpose of this study was to examine whether learner
-
oriented
students rated their instructor higher in credibility (i.e., competence,
character, and caring) than grade-oriented students. Participants were 140 undergraduate students enrolled in communication studies courses at a large Mid-Atlantic university. The results obtained from self-re...
The Dark Tetrad personality traits exhibit socially undesirable behaviors that can often lead to conflict. These negative personality traits might not only cause conflict, but they may play a role in resolving conflict as well. Using established psychology and communication research, this study sought to identify the conflict management styles asso...
Fake news is on the rise on many social media platforms. The proliferation of fake news is concerning, yet little is known about the characteristics that may motivate social media users to denounce (or ignore) fake news when they see it posted by strangers, close friends, and family members. Active social media users (N = 218) completed an online s...
Higher education is changing. Like other large organizational entities, colleges and universities have to adapt to ever-changing factors related to new technologies, world-shifting pandemics, and student desires. Modern market-driven university systems have recently been described as going through the process of "McDonaldization" by which universit...
This study examined whether instructors and students differ in their perceptions of how effe ctive teaching behaviors contribute to student learning. Participants (N = 356) included 130 college instructors and 226 college students who indicated the extent to which they believed 30 effective instructional communication behaviors contribute to studen...
The purpose of this study was to continue the trend of identifying the course offerings of National Communication Association (NCA) department members started by Wardrope (1999). A curricular profile of U.S. communication departments. Communication Education, 48(3), 256–258. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634529909379173 and followed by Bertelsen and Go...
When educators walk into the classroom, they come prepared with an arsenal of teaching tools to help them construct their lessons and build relationships with their students. These tools may include storytelling, personal self-disclosure, and question asking to name a few. Another valuable teaching tool is instructional humor. At this point, you ma...
The purpose of this longitudinal study was to model student trajectories of instructional dissent over the course of a semester. Participants were 312 undergraduate students who completed panel surveys on their worst course of the semester at three time points: during the beginning, middle, and end of a college course. Latent growth curve modeling...
The purpose of this teaching experiment was to examine the causal effect of relevant (compared to irrelevant) instructor self-disclosure on student affect and cognitive learning. Undergraduate students (N = 288) were randomly assigned to a 19-minute classroom lecture with an instructor who taught the same lesson but self-disclosed either relevant o...
Social network site users report being concerned about Fake news, but little is understood about what motivates them to denounce it when they knowingly encounter it. An online experiment showed that the presence of a political ingroup social identity threat in fake news content indirectly affected participants’ willingness to publicly denounce a fa...
Instructors tell stories for pedagogical reasons, but not all classroom stories are necessarily relevant to students and their learning. This study examined how instructors tell stories in ways that students find relevant or irrelevant to their lives. Participants were 388 undergraduate students who responded to an open-ended survey asking them to...
This study examined how college students’ class-related achievement emotions are related to their tendencies to dissent about a college course. Student participants (N = 383) completed a survey about their worst course of the semester by reporting on their class-related achievement emotions and how they dissented about their class. Results from ord...
We conducted this study to create a measure of instructional narratives and to validate the new instrument by assessing its construct validity. In particular, we created an item pool reflecting three aspects of instructor-told narratives including their course orientation, concreteness, and memorability. Students (N = 598) responded to a series of...
Responding to evidence that the silent treatment is a relational-harming means of communicating disappointment in interpersonal relationships, this study focused on the silent treatment’s role and transmission within the family. Adult children’s (N = 182) self-reported silent-treatment behaviors were negatively related to their own self-esteem, and...
To address Americans’ general attitudes and behavioral intentions toward adult children who are estranged from their parents, the current study employed online survey data from 151 Americans recruited through Amazon MTurk. Their responses revealed negative stereotypes (e.g., childish, ungrateful) and positive stereotypes (e.g., independent, strong)...
This quasi-experiment examined how incorporating an instructor narrative into teaching augmented students’ recall, affect, and sustained attention. One hundred and ninety-four undergraduate students were assigned to one of two teaching conditions in a college classroom: a lecture that included an instructor narrative summarizing the lesson’s key po...
Unlike other generations, Millennial students enter the college classroom
with a set of specific expectations for how they want their college education
to unfold. Not only do Millennial students want instructors who communicate
with them in a caring, enthusiastic, and immediate manner, but they also
want to develop close and meaningful relationship...
Guided by rhetorical/relational goal theory, the purpose of this study was to examine whether students’ impressions of their instructors’ credibility, attraction, and homophily are influenced by four specific rhetorical and relational communication behaviors that instructors use when communicating with their students in the classroom. Participants...
