Socratic method to teaching by asking • Hacker News Board

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#81

Post by rtpg » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 3:00 AM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #78

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 would argue that is it far, far more important to teach kids how to think critically and equip with them with the tools to explore the world and learn on their own than saturate them with a bunch of facts and figures that they lack the capacity to intelligently comprehend and likely won't retain.

But if you present them with a small, easy-to-understand example before going into pondering mode, maybe you just saved yourself an hour.

It's the difference between having API documentation and having a quick start + API documentation.

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#82

Post by noahdesu » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 3:38 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #40

noahdesu wrote: post #9

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'm fine with the method when being tutored and I've asked for help. I get pretty annoyed at it when someone asks me questions they clearly know the answer to. It's patronizing and manipulative.

That seems like a pretty good rule of thumb.

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#83

Post by Razengan » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 4:24 AM UTC

ddebernardy wrote: post #32

ismail wrote: post #17

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…

Some honesty here would help: "I/We don't know." "This is what works." "Enough people just decided on it."

I think it would make a big difference to the child's worldview, that we as a species are still pretty much new to figuring everything out, and that adults aren't infallible know-it-alls, not to be questioned.

Cultivating "doubt without helplessness" may actually turn out to be beneficial to overall society.

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#84

Post by deepnet » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 4:57 AM UTC

keithnz wrote: post #59

noahdesu wrote: post #22

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…

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.

I second, @charlieflowers endorsement below.

This is a brilliant idea and it would like to see it.

If the Socratic method get stuck, ask a different question.

Can questions so implicitly contain the answer that one can practically make a statement with a question ?

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#85

Post by quadrangle » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 6:22 AM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #78

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 would argue that is it far, far more important to teach kids how to think critically and equip with them with the tools to explore the world and learn on their own than saturate them with a bunch of facts and figures that they lack the capacity to intelligently comprehend and likely won't retain.

I happen to agree. My post and my whole perspective comes as a teacher who has believed primarily for years that rote-learning stinks and critical-thinking and creativity should be the focus etc. And after years of pushing against the trends, I came to realize that the optimal balance is somewhere in the middle.

So, most of my students need me to be totally focused on critical thinking because so many other influences neglect it. But I still find there are times where it's just not the right approach.

Consider statistical learning and exemplar theory. Instead of learning principles, there's a strong argument that we learn by large quantities of examples until we naturally pick up the general patterns…

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#86

Post by quadrangle » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 6:27 AM UTC

Dalex0 wrote: post #56

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?

Well, all of his are that way when compared to the typical documentary. Anything he wrote (not just narrated) is superb, and if you compare the percentage of minutes that provide real value, you'll see it much higher than most documentaries. Note: I haven't actually done measurements, but I've watched nearly all of Sir David's originals and many others by other presenters/filmmakers.

The prototypical (actually extreme) example is in the original Life on Earth where he is at the bottom of the grand canyon and says something close to "these rocks are too old to have any fossils" and almost immediately cuts to a new scene where he says "Here in Lake Superior, we have rocks slightly newer, and these show the first fossils!". All the other documentary folks would have bullshit where they say, "so, we need to go to a different place…" and images of travel crap before they get to the point.

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#87

Post by quadrangle » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 6:33 AM UTC

ouid wrote: post #51

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

Contrived anecdote: imagine a doctor going through med school being taught to socratically think about how and why various drugs have various effects. It will end up sidetracking you into the depths of microbiology to the extent that you'll never get out of that rabbit hole. At some point, a doctor needs to learn things like "X drug is recommended for Y condition" and just use that rote knowledge, trusting the appropriate authorities. Sure, they can and should be skeptical and critical-thinkers and learning to think socratically is super valuable, but you just can't do it all the time. No doctor can possibly understand all the actual medical details of everything they prescribe, and if they do, there's near-zero chance they still have time to practice all the social skills needed to be an effective practitioner and so on.

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#88

Post by easytiger » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 7:35 AM UTC

I'm a collector of antique Natural History and science books.

One of my favorite volumes, of which i have multiple editions, are some books called "Joyce's Scientific Dialogues". They cover a large variety of areas and originate in the very early 19thC but were kept updated. In the form of a teacher in confrontational and productive discussion with the student.

In the 19th C this became a very common mode for educational publications. It was an ancient form of educational dialogue, modeled and illustrated in the Ithaca interaction in Ulysses (different Joyce!). It is narrated in the third person through a set of 309 questions and their detailed answers, in the style of a catechism (impersonal) or Socratic dialogue.

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#89

Post by Chris2048 » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 1:56 PM UTC

quadrangle wrote: post #85

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that is it far, far more important to teach kids how to think critically and equip with them with the tools to explore the world and learn on their own than saturate them with a bunch of facts and figures that they lack the capacity to intelligently comprehend and likely won't retain.

I happen to agree. My post and my whole perspective comes as a teacher who has believed primarily for years that rote-learning stinks and critical-thinking and creativity should be the focus etc. And after years of pushing against the trends, I came to realize that the optimal balance is somewhere in the middle. So, most of my students need me to be totally focused on critical thinking because so many other influence…

Also, dividing by ability levels. No one likes being constantly outdone, and will soon turn away from a subject they can't progress as fast on their own..

Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking

#90

Post by kaycebasques » Wed, Oct 04, 2017, 2:04 PM UTC

jventura wrote: post #48

kaycebasques wrote: post #44

Does anybody have examples of the Socratic method applied to technical writing? I write the Chrome DevTools docs, and my big focus is to make the docs as interactive as possible. For example, in my JS debugging tutorial, I give you a demo with a bug, and then you actually follow along and use DevTools to debug the demo. One problem with this, though, is that I'm still just telling my readers what to do. I'd like to c…

> One problem with this, though, is that I'm still just telling my readers what to do. I would advise you to not write tutorials based in questions. But I've read on the diagonal your JS debugging tutorial, and it seems quite "dry" because you are really telling the users to "do this, do that, etc.". I'm a CS teacher, and my approach for my lab classes is to write what I call "guided tutorials", i.e., I guide my stud…

> my approach for my lab classes is to write what I call "guided tutorials"

I think I'm familiar with the approach. One of my favorites is The Elements Of Computing Systems (nand2tetris.org) which gives you the foundational knowledge you need for each chapter, and a spec on what you need to build, and gives you freedom to create it as you see fit.

Presumably, though, since you work in lab classes, you also have the "luxury" of being able to talk to your students, and detect if they're stuck... just by watching them. With docs, I don't have that.

When it comes to my docs, my current stance is that it's worse to create something that's too open-ended than too closed / dry. If it's too open-ended, readers may get stuck and leave and learn nothing, whereas if it's too closed / dry, my readers may be bored, but at least they'll learn something, or at least have something that they can use when they really need it.

Ultimately it really just boils down to a broken feedback loop. I think open-ended approaches are the best way to learn, but I need to know when and where my readers fail, and I need a channel of communication to be able to get them unstuck. So maybe I just need to build a MOOC community around the open-ended docs.