Active Listening In The Classroom Analysis

Interpersonal communication skills in the field of primary school teaching creates effective classrooms. Teachers interact daily with students within the classroom and in the playground through group work and individual activities. Developing effective questioning, active listening and constructive feedback skills assists in creating positive and successful learning outcomes. Using effective questioning gains knowledge of student learning, benefitting the student and teacher to assist in future lessons. The skill of active listening requires both student and teacher to engage in conversations by taking turns to speak, benefitting learning by paying complete attention to the conversation. The skill of constructive feedback enables teachers to

Active listening is defined as the process of receiving information from verbal and non-verbal communication (DeVito, 2011). Used together, they become a multistep process in active listening that develops clear understanding of a student’s comprehension of lessons (McNaughton & Hamlin, 2008). The use of informational listening skills focuses on gathering information, the observation of all verbal and non-verbal tones in speech, and the avoidance of opinion forming until the information is fully presented (Latham, 2013). Used in conjunction with informational listening in the classroom is critical listening which evaluates the information presented through critical thought, requiring the student to understand and process the ideas presented to create meaning (Jalango & Renck, 2012). When information has been presented and analysed the final step can be used. The skill of emotional content is classified by empathetic listening, which requires the use of informational and critical listening to understand the verbal tones in which people speak and the non-verbal cues in body language (Latham, 2013). When all three skills are combined the full ability to listen to peers and students increases the success of teaching lesson content. Focussed informational observations benefits teacher and students’ listening ability by requiring them to sort factual and fictional information, creating engagement in conversations and allowing the understanding of the intent of the message (McNaughton & Vostal, 2010). Students and teachers benefit from critical listening through self-evaluation and the application of their own learning to analyse information presented (Graham, 2007). The emotional content of information can be processed