Why Active Listening is Key for Evaluation Meaning-Making
By Carol Martincic
Originally Published on LinkedIn
If you’re an educator, you’re most likely well acquainted with the 21st Century skillset. But for most others? No idea what it is.
For those of us who aren’t as familiar, “21st Century Skills'' came into focus in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a response to increasing globalization/digitization as well as (what was then) emergent workforce trends (specifically that workers nowadays are significantly more likely to change career fields/jobs and do so multiple times throughout their lives). Due to society’s accelerating pace of change in economy and technology, demands on educators for preparing the future workforce has resulted in the development, application, and pedagogy of “21st Century Skills.”
The multitude of competencies that are generally considered "21st Century Skills" are varied, but ultimately share a common through-line. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll outline and define a few that you’ll readily recognize. Twelve specific abilities comprise what are considered “21st Century Skills” in the Information Age. These abilities are categorized into three broad themes - life skills, literacy skills, and learning skills.
Life skills include abilities such as flexibility & adaptability, leadership & responsibility, initiative & self-direction/management, productivity & accountability, and social/people skills
Literacy skills (as primarily concerned with digitization) include abilities such as information literacy, media literacy, and technological literacy
Although both life and literacy skills are important (especially during COVID-19 in which both skill sets have become required overnight), learning skills are critical.
Learning skills are commonly referred to as “the four Cs” and include abilities such as:
communication,
collaboration,
critical thinking, and
creativity
All four are used tenaciously throughout the process of evaluation. Evaluators use communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity when engaging in and doing the practice of evaluation. Simultaneously, we might evaluate these aspects themselves (individually or in conjunction) within the program itself.
For the purposes of this discussion, we’re going to focus on one, and only one, ability that is heavily valued in the doing of. Specifically, communication.
Generally speaking, there are four types of communication - 1. Verbal; 2. Nonverbal; 3. Visual; and 4. Written. Regarding the various communication modalities, listening is simultaneously the least understood, but the most important. For example, reading, writing, and even speaking, are all skills traditionally taught. But listening is not.
Comprised of the many types of communication, active listening is the top skill. Overlooked and underrated, active listening is a technique that can be utilized in just about any situation. While it’s not novel, exciting, or new, it is fundamental. Active listening, in its broadest form, includes maintaining eye contact, indicating attentiveness via nodding, body language, and mirroring, as well as other feedback cues. Active listening, when used as a tool, is taken one step further to include questioning and inquiry (à la critical thinking) in trying to uncover information and gain a deeper understanding.
More specifically, evaluators in the role of conversation-facilitator/question-asker leverage active listening as a means and method to tease out information, collect it, and help folks make meaning of it.
I recently read a blog piece about “The Power of Listening in Evaluation” by Hildie Cohen. In it, Cohen writes, “Listening and pausing is a skill that I am constantly practicing in my work managing research and evaluation projects.” Cohen outlines the numerous parties who need to be heard in the course of evaluation and planning efforts - including clients, staff, and other traditionally thought of stakeholders, but also the subject matter experts, too. And listening to these stakeholders is no easy task.
Cohen acknowledges that conducting and engaging with such thorough planning and evaluation practices has the practical/logistical effect of becoming a more time intensive and laborious process when the appropriate workflow is built in order to accommodate and include the perspectives of “all constituents involved.”
But (and perhaps most importantly), Cohen denotes that these are necessary steps to take in order to reduce bias as well as to ensure the most accurate information is collected and analyzed. Additionally, I’d argue that Cohen’s work is an example of real-world application of active listening/inquiry as a technique and skill. Cohen’s piece as a whole serves as a gentle reminder that not only should evaluators be honing and practicing such techniques, but that you and I should also be strengthening communication skills like active listening and questioning, too.
Evaluation doesn’t just involve active listening - in many ways, evaluation itself is a form of active listening as heavily complemented and supported by questioning and inquiry. At the very least, they’re more alike than different. If you haven’t already, read my first piece about common tools and evaluation here. The point being that evaluation is continuous and cyclical; it isn’t the last to-do on the list, it’s the first to-do. Evaluation is something you address at the beginning, throughout, at the end, and then at the beginning again. Otherwise said, it’s an ongoing and dynamic source of information that is referenced in relation to/throughout multiple processes (just like active listening). Evaluation starts at the beginning and runs through the end, sometimes even further than that (hello, longitudinal studies). It involves cross-organizational elements and pulls in aspects from other sorts of planning efforts. Likewise, active listening is a continuous process with multiple types of communication at play and enumerable inputs. Active listening isn’t just one conversation and evaluation isn’t just one step.
Taken altogether, it’s no surprise that an array of working professionals (not just evaluators, but also educators and researchers to name a few) find resonance within Zora Neale Hurtson’s words, “Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” In evaluation, active listening is much more than a simple technique. It may very well be the foundation on which evaluation is built upon. As evaluators, we’re meaning-makers, truth-uncovers, and question-askers for not only the organization itself, but for all the stakeholders involved as well. It’s only through active listening that we’re able to gain meaning and provide the necessary insights.
Carol Martincic is an Evaluation Intern at Improved Insights LLC, an educational evaluation firm focused on STEM and youth-based programming. She is a Master of Nonprofit Organizations (MNO) candidate at CWRU. She is based in Cleveland, Ohio.