Perspectives

TO HEAR IS OUT OF ONE'S CONTROL; to lis-ten is the intentional act of trying to hear. The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary illustrates the difference with two examples: She heard a noise outside. You haven't listened to a word I've said!

Authors in this issue of About Campus understand and describe this difference. Their collective message is that the intentional act of listening entails both trying to hear and then acting productively, and sometimes courageously, on what is heard.

Kathleen M. Goodman, Marcia Baxter Magolda, Tricia A. Seifert, and Patricia M. King begin with the suggestion that combining quantitative and qualitative data-collection methods is a powerful approach to listening to students. The Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, which they describe, has employed both methods to “reveal and understand the complexities associated with any social phenomena, including student learning.”

Dafma Lazarus Stewart, Michael M. Kocet, and Sharon Lobdell write that as institutions move through apathy, awareness, and acceptance to active engagement among individuals representing different belief (and nonbelief) systems, they sharpen their focus on listening and positively acting upon what is heard.

The difference between hearing and listening is further clarified in Eric W. Rosenberger's piece, “Are You Listening to Me?: Communication and Boundaries Between Students and Their Parents,” in which he offers advice to those who are in positions to help parents and students develop their listening abilities.

The College Student Inventory's use in a first-year seminar offered one institution a powerful tool for listening to, and acting upon, students' needs, as described by Brian Vander Schee in Assessment Matters. Carol Lundberg shares her rite of passage from hearer to listener in this issue's Campus Commons, and Ron Davidson and his Bottom Line coauthors suggest that listening to society's true needs means that higher education should hear past short-term strictly vocational messages.

Given the difference between hearing and listening, the Christian tune “Do You Hear What I Hear?” might more appropriately have been titled “Are You Listening?” Most of what we do as educators—of whatever belief or nonbelief tradition— requires an answer to this latter question.