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Maybe I'm not clever enough, but I found that the Socratic method never worked for me. If you ask most people a question that makes them aware of a contradiction they don't generally say "that was such a clever way to have me see the flaws in my argument, thank you!" Instead, motivated cognition kicks in and they double down. A much better way is to ask how much money people would be willing to bet on their argument.…
I was a graduate student advised by a dedicated practitioner of the Socratic method. My experience showed me that this method is incredibly powerful, both to teach students to think, and later as an educator in our research lab, as a method for honing my own understanding. However... there is a lot of effort that must be put into the style of its application. My mentor didn't know when to turn it off, and never seeme…
how would one go about learning this effectively?
One could argue that kids know the method quite well when they're around 4 years old and subsequently unlearn it:
- Why?
- [Explanation]
- Why?
- [Explanation]
- Why?
- [Explanation]
- Why?
[Starts ripping hair out.]
- [Explanation]
- Why?
[Rips more hair out.]
- [Explanation]
[More of the same until adult loses patience or kid runs out of questions. If kid never gives in...]
- Why?
- Just because!
^^^ This is how you unlearned it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What sorts of questions do you ask that lead you to come off as superior? How have you changed your approach to avoid putting off your students?
I think that the issue isn't the questions themselves, it's the interaction that results. Student: "why is my Java application crashing", "That's a stack trace. Does it say anything useful?", Student: "No I don't see anything.", It looks like we aren't seeing the whole trace. Have you scrolled up?" etc... the more this goes on, the more it feels quite awkward even if the result is positive. Maybe I'm bias having been…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that the issue isn't the questions themselves, it's the interaction that results. Student: "why is my Java application crashing", "That's a stack trace. Does it say anything useful?", Student: "No I don't see anything.", It looks like we aren't seeing the whole trace. Have you scrolled up?" etc... the more this goes on, the more it feels quite awkward even if the result is positive. Maybe I'm bias having been…
There's a hidden benefit to taking it too far. If you annoy someone with your constant simple questions, they will finally determine that asking you to solve their problems for them will take too long, and they'll try to solve it themselves. Or they'll ask someone else. Either way it's one less annoying student :)
Slightly off topic, but when a page with minimal styling like this comes by, how do you typically view it? I usually do something like this in the inspector: body{ width: 601px; margin: auto; font-size: 1.3em; color: #483f3f; line-height: 1.5em; } But that's a pain to write out each time. I'm not against un-styled websites at all, but I wish they were more readable by default.
Dan Friedman books The little lisper/schemer, The reasoned schemer etc all follow this kind of questioning dialog. It's a bit annoying at times, but it really drives the point at the end. The method should be used more often.
When I looked into them, I did not find these books were Socratic/Inquiry-based. My perception is that a typical question-answer would not be of the kind I see in such a classroom. In a classroom I might ask "What should be the precedence among these arithmetic operators?" Then there would be some discussion, leading eventually to a sensible answer. But in the little books (I don't have one to hand so I'm making this…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
how would one go about learning this effectively?
Basically never take any explanation as a given (and acknowledge and embrace not knowing). One could argue that kids know the method quite well when they're around 4 years old and subsequently unlearn it: - Why? - [Explanation] - Why? - [Explanation] - Why? - [Explanation] - Why? [Starts ripping hair out.] - [Explanation] - Why? [Rips more hair out.] - [Explanation] [More of the same until adult loses patience or kid…
I teach for living, and I want to do this all the time. But too often, we cover a tenth of the material in the same time because it takes much longer. Things sink in better, and this teaches the students how to think, but still…
Watch a David Attenborough documentary where there's little hinting and foreshadowing, he just knows that he's got 50 minutes to tell you all about the way, e.g., different creatures raise their young. It jumps to just sharing the most valuable core insights. It's superb, much less waste of time than most other approaches (all that crap about here's some researcher, let's watch them walk the hall to their office while we hint about the cool insight they are going to tell us…)
Sometimes, just telling students some insight gives them the understanding and you jump to Socratic stuff later based on that foundation. Just like the example of binary numbers is built on the kids learning all this other stuff. Try to use Socratic method to get the kids to count at all in the first place, and you're up for quite a long process. One that is worthwhile but where you might just need the kid counting sooner so they can participate in the soccer game and keep score or whatever and not have to Socratically understand everything.
There's this idea of competitive vs enhancing technologies. Teach kids Socratically and then take the teacher away and you're left with kids who are better learners. Teach kids by rote and take the teacher away, they are more helpless. But refuse rote and do everything Socratically and you get students who have better mental processes but don't have enough lifetimes to go through understanding the world. Sometimes, they just need to be given the facts so they can move on. A good teacher makes these judgment calls based on their particular circumstances.
I was a graduate student advised by a dedicated practitioner of the Socratic method. My experience showed me that this method is incredibly powerful, both to teach students to think, and later as an educator in our research lab, as a method for honing my own understanding. However... there is a lot of effort that must be put into the style of its application. My mentor didn't know when to turn it off, and never seeme…
I get pretty annoyed at it when someone asks me questions they clearly know the answer to. It's patronizing and manipulative.