Learning to listen: from historical sources to classroom practice

Abstract

Listening to students in productive ways seems to be at the core of teaching practices aligned with the basic tenets of the constructivist world view. We present a definition for productive ways of listening, discuss the challenges involved in implementing it, and propose a way to support the “decentering” needed to learning to listen for teacher education programs. The proposal is based on reading and understanding historical texts as a way to exercising the adoption of the ‘other’s perspective.’ We describe the materials developed for teacher workshops, their implementation and what participants, and we, learned from the experience.