Teacher perceptions of pedagogical listening and communicative relationships in secondary education

Abstract

This study examines the type of communicative relations that exist between teachers and students in secondary education. Using a qualitative life story approach, we analysed 20 narratives obtained from teachers working in four state schools, in which they described and signified their communicative relations with students, highlighting relevant dimensions and difficulties, how they managed these and the training required.

The results revealed that participants persistently projected a communicative model based on a one-way model of instrumental rationality, which although it may transform conventional teaching and learning practices can also reduce teachers’ communicative relations to an abstract interaction, rendering students passive and demotivated since this model does not foster participatory education based on egalitarian, democratic and ethical learning.