The Listening Guide Method of Psychological Inquiry

This course is designed to introduce students to The Listening Guide method of narrative analysis and is the first in a two-semester sequence. It isintended for students unfamiliar with the method and those who wish to develop their understanding and skills. It is a relational and interpretivemethod. The LG offers an alternative to thematic analysis and other methods, listening for and attending to different voices, including voices held in silence and of those who speak from the margins. This method is used in research that requires understanding participants’ interior worlds and thusfacilitates psychological discovery. The course will include in the epistemologies and history of the method and the importance of and challenges to“radical listening”; introducing the LG as a methodology; then to the method of the LG, which includes how to conduct and transcribe a LGinterview. The course is organized around learning the five steps of the method: mapping the landscape, recognizing, and “following” the voice ofthe self, identifying contrapuntal voices, tracing, or coding these voices, and analyzing them to then compose an interpretation grounded in theevidence produced by using the five steps. The method is taught in a workshop format to create a learning community that facilitates the LGmethod. In learning how to do a Listening Guide analysis, students may work with the materials from their own research or use the interview(s) youconduct for this class.

Offer as needed