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Socratic method to teaching by asking

garlikov.com

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Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#51

Post by ouid »

quadrangle wrote: post #39

It's complicated. 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…

I don't believe that there's any way you can have any evidence for the statement

> 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.

I would even accept anecdotal evidence

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#52

Post by monk_e_boy »

quadrangle wrote: post #39

It's complicated. 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…

OPs essay is one of the reasons I got into education.

I teach computer science, but boy, asking these questions to a class.... I'm just left with them shouting out random answers, wrong answers, dabbing, checking phones...

Maybe this method works occasionally, but for a big class of students - not so much.

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#53

Post by kwhitefoot »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #49
quadrangle wrote: post #39

It's complicated. 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…

Yes, and I suspect the main complication is the learner. I instinctively teach socratically, even when I don't mean to. But when I was a post-doc, I had a student who usually couldn't answer my questions or make any progress no matter how much I tried to break a problem into bite sized pieces. Then along came the proffessor, who would just calmly and simply tell the guy the thing that I had been trying to explain soc…

> And the student had no trouble understanding.

But did he still understand it a week later?

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#54

Post by songzme »

I run my coding camp to teach adults how to code. Although not entirely similar to the Socratic method, we focus on asking questions to teach because it is the most effective and it scales incredibly well (so far).

Here's a glimpse of how our teaching system works, hope it helps someone: 1. Each lesson starts with a maximum of 5 definitions and concepts: (What is a function, how to pass parameters into a function, how to add, etc.) It takes about 10 minutes to go over these. 2. The rest of the lesson would be going one example after another (recursion, callbacks, etc.) 3. When the lesson is done (having worked through some examples together), the student will get more practice problems as well as notes for the lesson (the definition and concepts and examples we went over) 4. The student is now responsible for teaching that lesson for all incoming students.

In our lessons, all interactions are 1-1. Teaching by asking questions scales really well in 1-1 interactions. This quickly disintegrates in a group setting though, because everyone draws different analogies and has a different pace of understanding.

On weekends, our students pair up with engineers to teach engineers what they learned and also get insight on how engineers ask questions: http://bootcamp.garagescript.com/

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#55

Post by sigstoat »

songzme wrote: post #54

I run my coding camp to teach adults how to code. Although not entirely similar to the Socratic method, we focus on asking questions to teach because it is the most effective and it scales incredibly well (so far). Here's a glimpse of how our teaching system works, hope it helps someone: 1. Each lesson starts with a maximum of 5 definitions and concepts: (What is a function, how to pass parameters into a function, ho…

> Teaching by asking questions scales really well in 1-1 interactions. This quickly disintegrates in a group setting though...

in what sense does something that only works 1-1 "scale"?

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#56

Post by Dalex0 »

quadrangle wrote: post #39

It's complicated. 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…

Which David Attenborough documentary you are referring to?

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#58

Post by abecedarius »

viraj_shah wrote: post #42

Can you use the Socratic method on yourself to develop better ways of thinking?

Yes. When you're reading, don't rush ahead to the author's answer; stop and think whether you can say what it should be. Maybe close the book and go for a walk. (This didn't come naturally to me, at least for well-written works.)

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#59

Post by keithnz »

noahdesu wrote: post #22
CGamesPlay wrote: post #18

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…

I'd love to see an alt site called SocraticOverflow, where people answer everyones programming questions like this :)

I know a lot of the time people on stackoverflow only have a problem because they haven't asked themselves the right question.

Of course, there's still a lot where it's just a gap in knowledge that needs filling in.

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#60

Post by keithnz »

ihaveajob wrote: post #7

To counter the positive feedback about this technique, I'd like to point that when the person on the learning side (answering the questions) has not asked to be taught anything, the teacher (asking questions) can come across as a condescending prick. This is especially true if the content is a matter of opinion, not statements of fact. I have become sensitized to this and it makes my blood boil when I notice it happe…

well, to be fair, the people of Athens god a tad annoyed with Socrates resulting in him being put to death.
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