Listening: A Framework for Teaching Across Differences

How can new and experienced teachers rethink their teaching and learn to embrace and grow from the diversity they encounter among their students? Rather than preparing teachers to follow prescriptions or blueprints, Katherine Schultz suggests that they be given the tools and the opportunity to attend and respond to the students they teach. In this book, she offers a conceptual framework for “deep listening,” illustrating how successful teachers listen for the particularities of each student, listen for the rhythm and balance of the whole class, listen for the broader contexts of their students’ lives, and listen for silence and acts of silencing. Listening in this manner brings together knowledge of individual students, an understanding of a student’s place within the classroom and community, and mastery of subject matter and pedagogy. Featuring the perspectives of students and teachers, this volume proposes new ways of thinking about teaching across all grade levels and subject areas, addressing many of the challenges posed by the current climate of high-stakes testing and standardization.

Katherine Schultz is Associate Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She coedited with Glynda Hull the volume School’s Out!: Bridging Out-of-School Literacies with Classroom Practice.