Listening, listening and listening

Oftentimes, parents whose children are accused of misconduct at school are

dissatisfied with the quality of education provided for the apple of their eyes, and

thereby accuse in return the school of inequality and segregation among students for

different reasons. Unbeknownst to them, this exchange of accusations is even

exacerbated by both parties, parents and school staff, with their trials to recollect the

events leading to the conflict and with their use of pure logic to talk it through. Such

reactions prevail in the discussions of educational stakeholders due to the discourse

of logic which gives little attention to the emotions underlying these issues.

Ipso facto, the task of emotional understanding is encumbent on all educational

stakeholders and it is a prerequisite before any clarity around the issue could start to

form. Unfortunately, school staff usually approach educational problems including

students misbehaviour from a school vantage point only i.e. parents voices are

muffled amidst those of educators. This does not imply that parents are deprived of

opportunities to talk about their childrens problem, but rather, that in spite of having

the privilege to give their opinion, their voices go unheard.

As a matter of fact, emotional understanding and empathising figure as one of the

eminent skills of emotional intelligence that educational stakeholders need to have to

be able to understand oneself first and the thereof the things that make us react in a

particular way and not another, and hence to understand others with less bias.

I have once mediated between a newly appointed Math teacher and a reportedly

misbehaved student to understand the nature of the problem away from the logical

discourse that uses mainly an event-based approach. Once I listened to teacher and

her student, I could see how each was recollecting the experience by sieving it

through a filter of self-defence mechanisms to save ones face. Now, of course even

if they were honest and accurate about the events that took place, their memory

would not retrieve this experience adequately due to submerged part of the iceberg;

a metaphor that stands here for our unconsciousness. Therefore, whereas the

teacher was accusing the students of being rude, inattentive and disturbing the flow

of her lessons, the student was accusing the teacher of picking on him and treating

him unfairly for no obvious reason.

What I have discovered later was that the newly appointed teacher had

expectations of her school context which were not met. These include support from

her school subject supervisor to develop her teaching and support from other

teachers and administrators to puzzle out educational issues. In the absence of

pedagogical scaffolding, the novice teacher felt thrown in at the deep. As a corollary,

she started feeling a lack of self-efficacy. As a result, she became intolerant of

educational problems as they seemed to aggravate her feelings of inefficiency and

guilt. In fact, she started thinking about applying for a transfer to another school

context. As far as the student is concerned, the teacher was a young female, and

according to cultural norms of his milieu, he shouldnt take orders from such a person

comes hell or high water.

Obviously, all quick attempts to solve similar issues, attempts that are mostly

heedless of the impact of emotional variables on the relationships between

educational stakeholders will be like beating a dead horse.

What I have learned from this experience and the like is that in order to

communicate effectively with educational stakeholders, one needs first to understand

himself or herself i.e. his or her motivations and his or her expectations of the social

context, and the same thing holds true for understanding those of others. I have

learned also that issues of communication cannot be taken at face value, and

resorting solely to logic for their resolution, as it were, people's thinking is governed

by a binary system in their conversations, will be futile. Rather, effective

communication requires listening, listening and listening without filtering categories

be they cultural norms or theoretical notions in order to understand how people give

substance to their experiences and cater for their learning needs.