Listening to and ‘Hearing’ Students
Trying to find out what and how students are learning is central to teaching, although
it seems impossible to know with certainty what students learn. Teachers make sense
of their students’ work and understanding nearly all the time when working with
them in classrooms; it is not a separate activity but an integral part of instruction.
Listening to students ‘carefully’ seems to be an important factor in this and, indeed,
is assumed in terms of constructivist teaching: “. . . researchers and teachers must
learn to listen and to hear the sense and alternative meanings in these [students’]
approaches.” (Confrey, 1991, p. 111)
However, this is a difficult task and many studies have identified the difficulties in
attending to pupil understanding and strategies (e.g. Even &Wallach, 2004). Mason
(2002) illustrates that noticing what students say and do is complex; he proposes
the discipline of noticing which enhances awareness and sensitivities to student
experiences. Moreover, there are various ways in which teachers can listen to their
students’ mathematical ideas. Davis (1997) outlines three different orientations:
(1) an evaluative orientation – where teachers listen to students’ ideas in order to
diagnose and correct their mathematical understanding;
(2) an interpretative orientation – where the purpose is to access pupil thinking,
rather than to assess;
(3) a hermeneutic orientation – where teachers listen by engaging pupils in the
process of negotiation of meaning and understanding.
Despite reform efforts, the first appears, interestingly if expectedly, to be the
most common where teachers tend to ‘tell’ and explain rather than ‘listen’ (Crespo,
2000).