“Good sitting, good looking, lips closed…”

I heard myself say it again.

Some children shuffled in chairs and sat up straighter, hoping for house points if they proved they were listening the best. Most of their eyes followed me, but not all.

“Are you listening?” I asked the others, who had their gazes fixed on the ceiling or on the classroom walls. “Eyes on me - otherwise you won’t know what you’re doing.”

In classrooms across the UK, “good listening” is often associated with very specific behaviours: still bodies, eyes on the teacher, hands folded. These expectations are often described as whole-body listening.

But what happens when listening doesn’t look like that?

What is ‘good listening’?

For many neurodivergent learners, these expectations can create barriers before learning has begun. When we define listening through a narrow set of visible behaviours, we risk prioritising compliance over engagement.

Some children concentrate better when they are moving. Some process language more effectively when they are not making eye contact. Others need sensory input before they can process what is being said.

In my own classroom, I began to notice a pattern. The pupil who appeared to be ignoring me was often able to recall instructions or apply learning independently. The pupil staring at the ceiling could repeat the task almost perfectly. The child pacing quietly at the back of the room could produce thoughtful responses.

It occurred to me that what I had interpreted as disengagement might simply be a different way of processing information.

I decided to find out more. There were two frameworks drawn from autism research that I found particularly helpful.

The first is what researcher Damian Milton calls the ”double empathy problem”. This theory challenges the long-standing assumption that autistic people struggle to understand others, and instead suggests that misunderstandings arise because autistic and non-autistic people interpret the world differently.

“The problem lies not simply in the autistic person, but in the interaction between differently disposed social actors,” Milton explains.

In other words, what we sometimes interpret as a lack of listening may only be a mismatch between expectations and processing styles.

Differences in pupil processing

Another helpful theory is ”monotropism”, which was developed by Dinah Murray, Wenn Lawson and Mike Lesser in the late 1990s. This suggests that autistic people often focus their attention intensely on fewer areas of interest at a time, meaning that competing stimuli - such as noise, instructions and social cues - can create significant cognitive demand for them.

This means that in the busy sensory environment of a classroom, behaviours we interpret as distraction, such as looking away from the teacher, may actually be attempts to manage cognitive load.

I’ve come to realise that when we define listening through visible compliance alone, we overlook the many ways children demonstrate understanding. In the process, we risk dividing our classrooms and alienating learners who process the world differently.

How many of us have said something like: “Fred, are you listening? If I have to tell you again, you’re moving into red.”

Of course, the child who is in the red today is often the same child who will be there tomorrow.

So how can teachers adapt their practice to better accommodate pupils’ varied listening styles?

Perhaps the most powerful shift we can make is a subtle one: moving from asking “Do they look like they are listening?” to asking “How might this child be processing what they hear?”

This point does not relate to behaviour considerations; those might be addressed separately.

Rethinking eye contact

Of course, we should not lower our standards for behaviour, but we can make small adjustments to our expectations that help us to consider how individual learners engage with information, rather than relying on traditional classroom signals. It’s a strengths-based approach that can make a significant difference.

For example, we might begin by rethinking eye contact as a measure of attention. It is still common to see eye contact written into support targets, but for many children, this can make concentration more difficult. Removing this expectation can often reduce pressure and support focus.

In addition, we need to recognise that many pupils regulate through movement - swinging their legs, shifting position or appearing fidgety in their chair. Through this lens, movement can actually be a demonstration of attention and engagement, rather than distraction.

On top of this, reducing cognitive demand through clear modelling, breaking instructions into smaller steps, or demonstrating tasks physically should allow pupils to prioritise each element more effectively.

Just as we need to expand our definition of listening, it’s equally important that we widen the ways pupils can demonstrate understanding, too. Not all learners will show their thinking through immediate verbal responses or written work. Alternatives such as physical demonstrations, closed questioning, or multiple-choice responses can provide insight into what a pupil has understood.

The key point is this: when we broaden our understanding of what listening looks like, we begin to see engagement in places we have overlooked.

It might turn out that the child we thought wasn’t listening may have been paying close attention all along.

Rebekah Boylan is a SEND teacher and head of primary English