Socratic Dialogue
Faculty called on students to answer a series of pointed questions.
About
Socratic Dialogue is highly valued and practiced at Bucknell. Faculty feel that it meets several of their goals, such as modeling critical thinking, teaching students how to think for themselves, building community, and engaging them in active learning. There are also justified concerns that it is just teacher-centered lecture masking as student-centered discussion, and that the group’s conclusion can be easily discarded by the professors’ authoritarian opinion. As with many teaching activities, student’s may need to be trained in what is expected of them, and they must come prepared for the discussion, or they will have little to add, consider, or conclude.
The original study's data and analysis for "Socratic Dialogue" can be found on this link.
What Faculty Have To Say
Strengths (8)
- Student-centered
- Models critical and dialogical thinking
- Helps gauge student understanding
- Makes lecture more active, engaging, and responsive
- Inspires reflection and independent constructivist learning
- Models open-ended problems solving (and teaches risk taking)
- Develops communication skills
- Allows for explication and exploration of complex or subtle ideas
Weaknesses (7)
- Masks teacher-centered lecture with rhetorical questions
- Needs student preparation (or consensus is meaningless)
- Generates different levels of engagement
- Frustrates students who want definitive answers
- Intimidating for students: extroverts like it, introverts not as much
- May seem like an academic “game;”
- Can waste time on unproductive lines of discussion
Pedagogy Usage
Bucknell faculty was asked their best estimate for how often in the semester they used Socratic Dialogue and the average class time it took.
Average Duration: 16 min (mode=10)
Remote Suggestions
The heart of this pedagogy is live questioning, which is only possible face-to-face. However, if the class is in hybrid mode, perhaps with half the students in class on one day and the other half on another, the live sessions can be streamed and recorded, which will allow remote students to hear the give and take of the dialogue. Instructors might also be able to anticipate the kinds of Q&A that might occur, and create a text-based FAQ for remote learners. Another strategy is to assign discussants in advance, say 5-6 for a particular class, so that they know who is expected to be ready to be called upon. This pre-arrangement could help keep the dialogue moving.
Resources for Additional Learning
Articles & Books
- The Structure and Function of a Socratic Dialogue, Lou Marinoff.
- When Socratic Dialogue is Flagging: Questions and Strategies for Engaging Students, Michael Gose.
- The Socratic Method: What is it and How to Use It in the Classroom. Robert Reich (2003).