Learning to Listen in Educational Research

Abstract

Despite the fact that listening is at the core of teaching, pedagogical literature has paid very little attention to listening. In this paper, we echo this absence of research and try to explore some of listening’s pedagogical and training possibilities. We move away from the kind of listening that underlies relationships of power, trying to find a pattern of listening in which our presence becomes important and related research activity is seen as a transformational experience. We address these matters on the basis of some learning experiences arising from a recent study in which we analyzed, by means of a narrative methodology, the experiences of academic failure of three adolescents. The article concludes with proposals of some principles which served as the basis and guidelines for our conduct in the course of the study, and which are an example of our concept of listening for educational research.