How do people perceive listeners?

Social-based learning and leadership (SBL) is an innovative pedagogical approach that centers on enhancing relationships within the educational system to address 21st-century challenges. At its core, SBL aims to help teachers transform into social architects who nurture positive social processes among pupils. Emphasizing prosocial education, SBL lays the foundation for cultivating pro-environmentalism and sustainable behavior by fostering a sense of care and responsibility toward others. SBL’s prosocial education program encompasses social and emotional skills, knowledge, and dispositions to empower pupils to actively engage in and contribute to a more democratic, reciprocal, just, and sustainable society. This approach underscores the importance of education in shaping students’ mindsets and life orientations. By nurturing a sense of interconnectedness and responsibility for the well-being of others, SBL provides a promising avenue to transform education by building more sustainable educational systems, thus contributing to creating a more sustainable future. A qualitative case study, which consisted of 18 in-depth interviews and nine observations, examined the impact of an SBL-based teacher training program at an elementary school from 2020 to 2023. The results point to changes in teachers’ perceptions of their roles as social architects and, more specifically, as facilitators of social, emotional, and cognitive processes. The teachers gained recognition as meaningful adults from their students and transitioned to hold integral positions as part of a supportive and connected school community, associating with colleagues and parents. This study thus showcases patterns of socio-organizational communication that can unfold in a school influenced by the SBL approach. SBL’s emphasis on positive social relationships and empowering teachers as facilitators of holistic student development thus further reinforces its potential to transform education for a sustainable and thriving future.

Training teachers to listen may enable them to experience increasingly attentive and open peer relationships at work. In the present research, we examined the outcomes of a year-long listening training on school teachers' listening abilities and its downstream consequences on their relational climate, autonomy, and psychological safety. Teachers in two elementary schools engaged in a similar listening training program throughout the entire school year. The measures included indicators of a supportive relational climate that are known to be important to teacher well-being, namely, autonomy, psychological safety, and relational energy. Results of growth curve modeling showed linear increases in all three outcomes, such that more listening training corresponded to a more positive relational climate. Specifically, the teachers reported increasingly higher quality listening from their group member teachers, felt more autonomy satisfied, psychologically safe, and relationally energetic. Furthermore, latent growth curve modeling indicated that the teachers' listening perception was positively and significantly associated with all three outcomes. We concluded that listening training is associated with teachers perceiving higher quality listening from their peers and, therefore, feeling more autonomy-satisfied, psychologically safe, and relationally energetic and discussing theoretical and practical implications.