The Listening Project
Join us
We offer pop-up listening sessions throughout the year as spaces for Tufts faculty and graduate students across various departments to work together to try to understand students’ thinking. Do you see a session that fits your schedule? Please join us!
Try listening on your own
In our sessions, we listen to students' disciplinary thinking — attending closely to what students have to say and trying to understand them:
What's he trying to say here?
What's her thinking on this?
Where are they coming from?
Want to see some excerpts of student thinking and try this out on your own?
Why we listen
All students can exhibit productive beginnings of meaningful disciplinary thinking, and it is our responsibility as instructors to create an environment in which students are equitably supported in developing as disciplinary thinkers.
About us
The Listening Project was formed in 2017 through a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to "substantially and sustainably" increase Tufts' capacity for inclusion, especially of students who belong to groups historically underrepresented in science. We work to support each other in welcoming students to the learning process, by eliciting and engaging with their students' disciplinary thinking.
Many Tufts graduate students and faculty members have participated in the Listening Project, becoming Listening Project alums.
Quotes from Listening Project participants
"It is easy to read into a student's comments what you're expecting to hear…It's very difficult to reflect carefully on what is being said when you're at the front of the room, outnumbered, and trying to get through a certain amount of the curriculum. It was nice to have practice in listening while the pressure is off."
"...sometimes what [students] do is they would go off the beaten path and they would write the solution in a slightly different way, and… now... if I see something a little different, that's like “I gotta be more careful here, not less careful here…”
“You don't want to miss someone's brilliance, because you don't quite understand their language.”