Stories Need Listeners: Constructivist Listening for Transformative Storytelling

 

I haven’t been writing here lately.  Instead, this past winter I committed to listening more.  So, I have been listening, and reading, and reading about listening.  Much of the reading and listening have been anchored in a desire to better understand how groups can address conflict, mistrust, and open hostility in sectors tasked with improving conditions for children and families.  

The graphic above is a proposed model of constructivist listening built from a review of scholarly evidence in the fields of communication studies, linguistics, psychology, and education.  I am not the first person to use the term constructivist listening.  In fact, education scholars have used the term to describe intentional listening strategies that acknowledge the role of emotion in understanding group members’ experiences [1].  Communication scholars have used the term to acknowledge the conscious and unconscious cognitive processes listeners use to make sense of and respond appropriately to what they hear [2]. The emphasis on constructivism in communication studies appears to lean toward explaining differences in communication skill across individuals [3].   

The model of constructivist listening proposed here builds from the science of listening in the field of linguistics and uses a constructivist lens to open the door for facilitating effective listening and understanding in the context of challenging human dialogue.  Below I provide definitions and connections to the terms in the model.  It is important to note that this proposed model of constructivist listening applies to all people who engage in dialogue whether they rely on speaking/hearing in dialogue settings or other communication practices such as sign language, written texts, or visual representations.

The linguist Rost [4] identifies and describes five human processes that underlie listening.

1. Nuerologic: employing aspects of consciousness beyond hearing that comprise the act of listening
2. Linguistic: recognizing the building blocks of language (sounds, rules) that allow for higher meaning making
3. Perceiving: recognizing words and gestures to allow for higher meaning making
4. Semantic: creating a mental representation of what was meant by what was communicated
5. Pragmatic: interconnecting an understanding of what was communicated with a larger set of information and social knowledge, including affective knowledge, so that one can respond appropriately

The five processes enumerated above are conveyed in the external triangles in the proposed model and indicate that perceiving, attending, comprehending, relating, empathizing, valuing, analyzing, narrating, and constructing are occurring and being managed by a competent listener.  

What distinguishes the proposed model is the manipulation of constructivist assumptions to enhance meaningful dialogue contexts characterized by polarization or high conflict.  

1. Constructivism implies that humans learn by actively constructing understanding from what they experience rather than by possessing an innate understanding or by passively receiving understanding from another.  And human learners are not blank slates – they bring accumulated knowledge, assumptions, and habitual strategies to the construction of new knowledge [5].
2. Dialogue is a conversation between two or more people where a listener arrives at understanding by suspending reactions and judgement to understand what is being said by another [6].  Note that our reactions and judgements are often based on accumulated knowledge, assumptions, and habitual strategies.
3. Listening strategies can support the suspension of reactions and judgement by a listener and facilitate meaning making in polarized and high conflict settings [7, 8].

Emma Kainz and I are working on a storytelling activity with three roles described in the table below.  The activity is intended for use in groups that experience differences in backgrounds and/or ideologies or groups that experience hostility and mistrust.  The different roles and practices are designed for use in storytelling contexts to (a) foster suspension of judgement and reaction among listeners, (b) facilitate understanding, and (c) not require ideological agreement as the only productive result of sharing stories.

References

1. Weissglass, Julian. "Constructivist listening for empowerment and change." The Educational Forum. Vol. 54. No. 4. Taylor & Francis Group, 1990.

2. Burleson, B. R. (2011). A constructivist approach to listening. The International Journal of Listening, 25(1-2), 27-46.

3. Delia, J. O’Keefe, B., & O’Keefe, D. (1982). The constructivist approach to communication. Human Communication Theory. New York: Harper and Row, 147-91.

4. Rost, M. (2013). Teaching and Researching: Listening. Routledge.

5. Sjøberg, S. (2010). Constructivism and learning. International Encyclopedia of Education, 5, 485-490.

6. Honeycutt, J. M. (2010). Dialogue theory and imagined interactions. Imagine that: Studies in imagined interaction, 195-206.

7. Itzchakov, G., Weinstein, N., Leary, M., Saluk, D., & Amar, M. (2023). Listening to understand: The role of high-quality listening on speakers’ attitude depolarization during disagreements. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi: https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000366

8. Dashew, B., Grossman, K. D., & Lawrence, R. (2020). Listening to the voices of dissent: Bridging political polarization through imagined dialogue. Reflective Practice, 21(6), 773-785.