How do you teach listening? - Incite at Columbia University

When thinking about the role of listening in education, we typically conceptualize teachers as speakers and students as listeners. However, scholars in several disciplines have demonstrated that listening can have a much more complicated (and beneficial) role in pedagogy.

Columbia University is home to a number of fields that have cultivated unique approaches to listening-focused pedagogy, such as oral history, narrative medicine, and social work. These centers, despite their proximity, have not been brought together for an interdisciplinary exploration of listening-based pedagogies—until now.

Directed by Liza Zapol, The Pedagogy of Listening: An Interdisciplinary Teaching Lab will bring together faculty, researchers, and students from different disciplines at Columbia University to advance understandings of pedagogies of listening.

In practice, this will include monthly meetings between faculty, fostering oral history exchanges with students and alumni, observing peer teaching, engaging in interdisciplinary discussions, and developing a pedagogical toolkit.

At the core of this lab is an understanding that teaching is an experiment in equality—not in the sense that teachers must forfeit their knowledge or authority, but that teachers can approach teaching from a place of mutuality and transparency. With this understanding, the lab will explore practices of listening that value the knowledge and experience of the learner and contribute to more inclusive teaching practices.

This lab was proposed by Liza Zapol (OHMA), Amy Starecheski (OHMA), Sayantani DasGupta (Narrative Medicine) and Ovita Williams (Social Work) and is supported by a 2023 Office of the Provost’s Teaching and Learning Grant.

"We teach students how to listen, and we model holistic listening in our classes," says Zapol. "This lab is an opportunity for us to interrogate how we teach these skills." In doing so, the lab hopes to transcend traditional modes of instruction by weaving listening into the fabric of teaching—recognizing that listening extends beyond aural and verbal modes of expression. Zapol says the team has begun this work by, "experimenting with how to create a space for listening, where we can exchange stories as educators and as people, and share how we are navigating these challenging times."

Ultimately, the program's goals are outward. "Through listening closely to each other's knowledge and experience, we're crafting new ways to bring these tools to others within the academic sphere," says Zapol. Coming out of the relationships and learnings from this year, the lab hopes to grow course cross-listings at Columbia and host ongoing programming for faculty across disciplines and schools.

To learn more about The Pedagogy of Listening and its inaugural cohort, visit the project’s page.