Ron Gordon, Professor of Communication
Professor of Communication Ron Gordon’s fields of expertise are in interpersonal communication, and in human dialogue theory and research.
Ronald “Ron” Gordon is a professor of communication at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo. His fields of expertise are in interpersonal communication, and in human dialogue theory and research.
Professor Gordon received his master of arts in communication from San Jose State University, and doctor of philosophy in communication and human relations with a minor in psychology from the University of Kansas.
He arrived at UH Hilo in 1984.
The very first article on the German philosopher Jaspers published in the literature of communication studies
Among Professor Gordon’s most significant contributions to the communication studies literature includes an article for a special double-issue on human dialogue that appeared in the Southern Communication Journal. The paper, titled “Karl Jaspers: Existential Philosopher of Dialogical Communication” (2000), was the very first article on the German philosopher Jaspers published in the literature of communication studies.
“The journal editor identified it as his favorite article in his double-issue on human dialogue, and this was gratifying,” says Gordon in an email describing his work.
Gordon explains that Jaspers actively wrote across the first half of the 20th century and into the second, and was a cheerleader extraordinaire for the powers of human communication. He cites the following as “Some of my favorite lines from Jaspers, just to give a flavor of his passion”:
- “Communication liquefies all things, to let new solidities emerge.”
- “The supreme achievement in this world is communication from personality to personality.”
- “It is only in communication that I come to myself, to communicate is to become oneself with another.”
“Jaspers was ahead of his time in championing ‘the will to authentic communication,’ and in honoring the fact that through high quality interpersonal communication people can ‘flash sparks of life to each other as boundless existential communication,'” says Gordon. “It was most satisfying to bring Dr. Karl Jaspers to the attention of modern communication scholars.”
In the most recent five-year period, Gordon has authored three other articles on Jaspers’ philosophy: “Karl Jaspers on Listening to Sacred Symbols Within Empirical Existence”(2022, Journal of Communication and Religion), “William James, Karl Jaspers, and the Call to Transcendence” (2024, Global Journal of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences), and “Karl Jaspers as Philosophical Practical Mystic” (2024, Journal of Arts and Humanities).
“Sometimes we academics strongly connect with certain historical figures with whom we resonate, and Jaspers has been such an individual for me,” Gordon says. “Whether Jaspers would approve my characterizations of his philosophical ideas and practices, I cannot be certain — though I tend to doubt it, for Jaspers thrived on the ‘loving struggle’ of humans in dialogue. But I can say that all of what I’ve written about Jaspers has emerged from sincere respect for, and appreciation of, his efforts.”
Sparking important thought on communication theory failures, cultural discourse and social responsibility, and the concept of Caring
Another scholarly contribution of particular significance for Gordon is an article published in the Journal of Multicultural Discourses: “Beyond the Failures of Western Communication Theory” (2007).
“This was a bold title and statement, and I to this day have no regrets,” he says. “I attempted to argue that in the West we had conflated ‘American’ communication theory to the level of ‘human’ communication theory, and that greater multicultural perspective was needed.”
“It was also suggested that in our Western communication theorizing we had insufficiently attended to ‘relational’ notions of self, to human ‘feeling,’ to our embodiedness, to nature, and to other ‘depth dimensions’ of humans communicating,” he adds.
Another article Gordon authored for Journal of Multicultural Discourses appears in their latest 2026 issue, this time on the relationship between “Cultural Discourse Studies and Social Responsibility,” where he argues, “Further direction and inspiration are necessary in these dark days of political discourse around our planet.”
In the past handful of years, he’s also published in Global Journal of Transformative Education and Journal of Transformative Learning, among others. A couple of years ago in an article titled “The Transformational Teacher’s Caring Presence” (2023, Journal of Transformational Learning) Gordon set out to highlight the importance of high-quality teacher “Caring,” and how very much such “Caring” can mean to today’s students in what he describes as “a highly uncertain, divisive, and chaotic era.”
“Quality of ‘Caring’ matters in this lifetime and across our world, including within our educational classrooms,” he says.
Learner-centered and dialogue-based pedagogical style
A newly published article is titled “Creating Dialogue-Based Transformational Communities of Learners via Synchronous Online Education” (2025, Global Journal of Transformative Education).
“I’ve argued there that a learner-centered and dialogue-based pedagogical style, versus an instructor-centric ‘sage on the stage’ style, can successfully work even in the synchronous online delivery medium; that the limitations of a two-dimensional plastic-screened delivery device can in fact be transcended,” Gordon explains.
“My students and I know this, because we’ve been living this out in real time for a half-dozen years now, with overall global course and instructor evaluations both averaging to above 4.9 on a 5.0 scale across a timespan of six full years,” he says. “This has been fabulous to discover and experience!”
Relatedly, Gordon has also developed a simple model of the core values and practices for a dialogue-based pedagogy, consisting of these foundational elements: Warmth, Empathy, Genuineness, Vulnerability, Imagination an Improvisation, Being Present, Equality of Participation, and Suspending.
This is the WEG-VIBES dialogue model, presented in Gordon’s book, The Way of Dialogue: 1+1=3 (2020, Wipf & Stock), and in a couple of journal articles. “This model has brought focus, and offers direction to the aspiring dialogue facilitator,” says Gordon.
- Communication Professor Ron Gordon authors book with unique approach to group dialogue (Nov. 30, 2020, UH Hilo Stories)
The book introduces a unique perspective on productive interaction for groups, facilitators, and students of human dialogue, presenting a contrast to traditional win-lose debate and problem-solving group discussion, both of which he says narrow down a set of alternatives. Gordon posits that shared inquiry is at the heart of person-centered dialoguing, with the group inquiring together into a topic area, wondering about it out loud, without anyone trying to make anyone else wrong.
In this type of dialogue, people set out to discover what it means to be truly thinking together and not in opposition to one another. This concept — that the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts — sparked the 1 + 1 = 3 subtitle to the book: when generative dialogue has occurred, a dyad or group comes away having benefited from the interactive strength of the whole.
Discovery of people’s peak and plateau communication experiences
In another interest area, a paper of Gordon’s was published in the European journal KOME: Journal of Pure Communication Inquiry on “Peak and Plateau Communication Experiences: A Call for International Inquiry” (2023).
“I was attempting to build upon work I had done long ago, when I conducted a small study, the first ever, on our moments of highest communication happiness and fulfillment, our ‘peak communication experiences’ (or) PCEs,” he explains. “I was interested in mapping the terrain of this physiological, mental, and emotional state, those times when we felt as if we were on the same ‘wavelength’ with another person, our ‘greatest moments’ of interpersonal communication. I borrowed Maslow’s 19 descriptors of the generalized ‘peak experience’ and translated them into an interpersonal communication context. The findings were exciting.”
Gordon cites as an example that there were only two items that over 85% of both females and males identified as applying to their “greatest moments” in interpersonal communication: 1) “I was completely absorbed in the other person I was communicating with, and in what we were talking about — my total attention was present,” and 2) “It’s as though I compared this person with no other person — as we talked, this person became more and more special, and not interchangeable with anyone else.”
Closely behind was this item: “I saw the beauty of the person I was communicating with, and the beauty of our communication itself, just as it was” (90% of females, 78% of males).
“In the KOME paper published a couple of years ago, I summarized research that others had done since that first study, and attempted to rally other researchers around the world to rise to the task of further exploring our ‘peak’ and ‘plateau’ communication experiences, for this remains cutting-edge territory in which to theorize, research, and practice,” says Prof. Gordon.
Parsing feeling defensive and feeling understood
Another very early study that Gordon says he still holds closely in his heart is “The Differences Between Feeling Defensive and Feeling Understood” (1988, International Journal of Business Communication).
Gordon cites out of 365 descriptive items, the top-chosen item by over 75% of both females and males was this one for the state of feeling defensive: “The world seems no good, hostile, and unfair.” Top-chosen for feeling understood was this: “I’m optimistic and cheerful, the world seems basically beautiful, people are essentially kind, life is worth living, the future seems bright.”
“This is a dramatically striking contrast,” Gordon explains. “It is apparent that it is far more productive to attempt to help another person to sense that they are being deeply ‘understood’ than to in any way threaten their psychological-emotional sense of safety and arouse their ‘defensiveness.’ Practical implications abound.”
Current explorations in teaching and learning
Gordon has just finished co-authoring an article currently in press for the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence, titled, “Revitalizing Course Communication, Climate, and Culture: A New Model for Transformational Teaching and Learning.”
“We re-visit and expand a standard mainstream instructional communication model, emerging with the following retrofitted core components for enhancing transformational classroom possibilities: Caring, Community, Mutual Understanding, Playfulness, Mindful Presence, and Learner Empowerment,” Gordon describes. “We suggest that these values and practices can become a North Star toward which transformational teachers might head.”
The professor is also currently co-editing a book for Routledge with Sherry Morreale of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, titled, Communication Wisdom for Educators: Practical Counsel from Expert Teacher-Scholars. The book is set to be published in 2027, and is a follow-up to their initial Communication Wisdom series opener published in 2025.
“We’re almost finished collecting invited essays from over 20 heavy-hitters from sixteen different universities, all active within the field of instructional communication,” says Gordon. “We’ve been carefully editing the received essays, and starting this summer we’ll be writing an introduction and an epilogue to our collection, once we get better vision of the whole.”
Gordon’s own essay for this volume is titled “The Educator’s Deeper Calling: Pedagogical Love.”
“In recent years I’ve moved beyond only caring about my students, I now ‘pedagogically love them,’ to borrow a term from Paulo Freire,” says Gordon. “I love my subject matters, I love teaching at UH Hilo, and I love my student learners. It has taken many decades to get here, but I’ve finally arrived. This is bringing tremendous meaning and satisfaction.”
By Susan Enright, public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of Keaohou and UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.
