In this paper I explore attentiveness within a hermeneutic phenomenological framework and within the continental tradition of pedagogical philosophy concerned with existential and relational aspects of teaching. On the basis of focus group dialogues with teacher students and my own phenomenological writing on attentiveness (Fossland, 2019), I discuss the meaning of this phenomenon as well as its significance in teaching. In the article on attentiveness (Fossland, 2019) I try to get closer to the phenomenon by writing (on) the lived experience of it. This is a kind of writing from the phenomenon itself to see how it shows itself (Sævi, 2010). I describe experiences in concrete pedagogical situations in a subjective and detailed way (Fossland, 2019; Mollenhauer, 2014; Van Manen, 2014). As for this paper, I discuss my phenomenological descriptions in the light of other works dealing with attentiveness, arguing that being attentive - on a deep level - must be regarded as a kind of suspension or “emptying” of thought. One may speak of attentiveness without an object, a state radically different from a state in which we are seeking or searching for something (Weil, 2009; Waks, 2010). Being genuinely attentive we are not expecting anything. We are free from the calculating mind, ready to receive something new. It follows from this that attentiveness is an opening up to the unpredictable and unknown in pedagogical dialogue, preparing the ground for new meaning to arise and for students to come forward as subjects. Here I am leaning on the works of Derrida, Levinas and Biesta, in which the other is regarded as unforeseeable and resistant to all categories (Biesta, 2001; Derrida, 1997; Levinas, 2011). This implies that the teacher cannot create or conceptualize encounters with students. It is not possible to make the other come, one can only prepare for the other to come. Hence education must prepare for the incalculable, as Biesta (2001, 2008) pinpoints. I claim that when teachers develop their attentiveness to a deep level, they are preparing for the incalculable. That is: they are preparing for the other, as well as for new and even inexpressible meaning, to come onto the pedagogical scene.

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