This reminds me of the style of The Little Schemer[1] which a lot of people love but which I found to be plodding and insufferably condescending.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Little-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/0...
Socratic method to teaching by asking
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Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking
#22I 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…
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 on the receiving end in the past.
I've changed my approach by not letting things get out of hand. If I notice that the process is taking a long time or someone gets frustrated, I either let them know about the process or just take a different approach, like just answering the question. The challenge is that, at least in the research setting, I often don't know the answer either. So if the student thinks I know the answer, and I'm just asking them questions, it comes off poorly. So I'll let them know I don't know the answer either, and that we are working through it.
Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking
#23Slightly 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.
You could make a bookmarklet that injects that CSS when you click on it and then leave it in the bookmarks bar. There used to be a couple of these that were good, Clear Read and Readable were the two I remember, but they all seem to have stopped working over time.
Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking
#24I 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?
How have you tried learning about the Socratic Method so far?
Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking
#25I 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?
oh very funny.
Edit: Have you ever seen the question game on Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking
#26Dan 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…
I think a benefit to asking a question a student can't answer yet ("What is an atom?") is that it gets students accustomed to saying "I don't know". Which every student (whether young or old) needs to be able to say. By admitting a lack of knowledge, and not feeling self-conscious about it, the next step is to fill in the gap. In the Schemer books that's what the next series of questions (almost?) always seem to do, with a final question ("What is an atom?"). And now the student can answer it.
A secondary benefit is that, should you already have some basics, you can often figure out which portions you can skip over by how well your answer matches the one in the book.
Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking
#27To 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…
That's true regardless of the teaching technique though, isn't it? Having someone lecture at you because they assume your knowledge is lacking is the part that makes it condescending, IMO.
Well, yes - but being speculatively questioned is more infuriating because it's pretending to be the exact opposite of what it really is, as long as the questioner is happily taking a position of authority on the issue - which they are, as they're the one who's set the question in the first place. It's like a fly looking at a quivering piece of silk and imagining the worst, even if the spider's miles off.
What you want, instead of questions, are themes - and the willingness to make yourself ridiculous through positive speculations.
Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking
#28Maybe 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. That immediately aligns their motivations with getting a correct prediction-- a much better way to get people to see the flaws in their argument (including your own).
Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking
#29> Further, in the case of binary numbers, I found that when you used this sequence of questions with impatient or math-phobic adults who didn't want to have to think but just wanted you to "get to the point", they could not correctly answer very far into even the above sequence
That could be because the effectiveness of the Socratic method depends on the students' ignorance of the Socratic method. The more familiar one becomes with the technique, the less patience one has for being relegated to receiving end of a Socratic lesson.
Also, adults must contend with the added work of differentiating a good faith Socratic method from a bad faith Socratic bomb. If I want to hide my ignorance, spread my ideological, or even merely troll you, I'll just keep repeating the low-effort pattern of deconstructing your position with more incisive questions, none of which I have answers for myself.
Re: Socratic method to teaching by asking
#30[deleted]