TEACHING STRATEGIES RELATED TO LISTENING AND HEARING IN TWO SECONDARY CLASSROOMS

Abstract

The data for this study is taken from a research project [1] looking at year 7 students’ (aged 11–12) ‘need for algebra’ (Brown and Coles, 1999) in four teachers’ secondary classrooms. I introduce notions of evaluative, interpretive and transformative listening, (adapted from Davis, 1996), to analyse five transcripts taken from the lessons of two teachers on the project. The project design was informed by ideas of enactivist research (Varela, 1999, Reid, 1996, Brown and Coles, 1999, 2000). A significant change occurred in Teacher A's classroom, as shown in three transcripts, and the listening of both students and teacher became transformative. There is evidence that specific teaching strategies were linked to this change and that once the change occurred the students started asking their own questions within the mathematics. The listening in Teacher D's classroom was transformative from the start and there is evidence of the use of the same teaching strategies.