A Phenomenological Study on the Role of Teacher Communication Behaviours in High School Students' Willingness to Attend AI ‐Enhanced Classrooms

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present study adopted a phenomenological approach to explore how high school students perceive their teachers' rhetorical and relational communication behaviours in artificial intelligence (AI)‐supported classrooms and how these behaviours influence their willingness to attend such classes. Data were collected through semi‐structured interviews and written reflective narratives from a purposive sample of high school students ( n = 63) who regularly engaged in AI‐enhanced classrooms. A descriptive phenomenological method was used to analyse the dataset. The findings revealed that teachers' rhetorical and relational communication behaviours—particularly clarity, credibility, care, confirmation, stroke and verbal and nonverbal immediacy—played a critical role in shaping students' willingness to attend AI‐enhanced learning environments. These findings underscore the importance of preserving human rhetorical and relational dynamics in AI‐mediated classrooms and offer new insight into how teacher communication behaviours can influence students' readiness to be present in contemporary educational contexts.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. European Journal of Education, 2025 · DOI ↗