Some authors think of educational communication as of a one-way process of transmission of knowledge which goes from the teacher to pupils (Sorensen, Christofel, 1992). However, as Kendrick and Darling note (1990), even is spite of the teacher’s efforts, each message can be understood in many ways. Thus, all participants of the educational process take part in negotiation of meanings which is a non-linear, iterative process. This means that shared understanding is not the result of a mere uttering of the message; rather, it comes about as a result of negotiation between the teacher and pupils (or between pupils themselves, Mercer, 2000).

Educational communication consists of two simultaneous and interdependent processes: (i) in the first process the teacher attempts to effectively convey the meaning to pupils while using adequate verbal and non-verbal messages (Chesebro, McCroskey, 1998), and paralinguistic features. Their explanation focuses both on content and on the process of describing of the content, and it comprises both verbal and visual messages; (ii) in the second process pupils actively enter the process of the construction of meaning and through their interaction with information their ascribe significance to the meanings (McCallum, Hargreaves, Gipps, 2000). To this aim, pupils use clarification strategies (Civikly, 1992; Darling, 1989). This paper is based on micro-analysis of particular speech acts (Keating, 2001) and its research question is as follows: How does the teacher’s explanation correspond with pupils’ perception of it? The answering of the question allows to identify (i) how meanings that are ascribed to various speech acts by pupils and teachers differ; (ii) what causes these different perceptions; (iii) what the implications are for the processes of teaching and learning.

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