Throughout its history, instructional communication research has played an important role in the discipline of Communication. In tracing its lineage, Myers (2010) explains that instructional communication research has focused on communicative behaviors that instructors use with their students to better understand and facilitate affective and cognitive learning. Thus, it has been instrumental in elucidating the ways in which communication influences the messages instructors and students send in the classroom. David Kahl, Jr. suggests that instructional communication research suffers from a somewhat myopic view of instruction. He sees a need to expand the scope of instructional communication research in order to better understand and resist increasing neoliberal pressure on education. Kahl argues that instructional communication research is well suited to address this problem, as it directly investigates communication at the site of the problem--the classroom. Therefore, he contends that instructional communication research can respond to this problem by coupling itself with the critical paradigm. Coupling the paradigms will provide a more comprehensive understanding of neoliberalism than either paradigm would alone. Doing so will allow for the production of scholarship that examines communication pedagogy through empirical and critical lenses to understand the effect that neoliberalism has on communication, teaching, and learning.