Beyond the “Right Answer”: Listening to Understand Students’ Thinking

• In Event: Roundtable Session 57
  In Roundtable Session: Listening to Student Voices

Abstract

  
     Listening is ubiquitous in educational settings, yet little is known about if and how students and teachers listen to one another, and how it matters. Teachers call to their students to “listen up,” but do they listen to students? Students listen, but perhaps only for the “right answer.” As we gain greater awareness and understanding of learning as social phenomena, a better understanding of listening as a social practice will be central to theories of learning and education. What we hear and how we are heard and responded to has to do, not only, with what we come to know, but also with how we participate and who we come to be.
My findings are from a qualitative comparative case study in two upper elementary classrooms where students have been traditionally under-served. I analyzed 70 hours of classroom data in order to understand more about what teachers and students heard, how they experienced being heard and responded to (or not), and if and how hearing, being heard, and/or being responded to affected how they participated in their classrooms.

Author

• Kersti Tyson, University of New Mexico