If you are in any way interested in helping people (of any age) to learn in a way that engages and excites them, you should find this item fascinating.
Not just academic learning, but learning how to think things through and to discover or 'stumble upon' insights and connections, and to feel inspired abd delighted.
Enjoy and
go well.
The Socratic Method:
Teaching by Asking Instead
of by Telling
by Rick Garlikov
The following is a transcript
of a teaching experiment, using the Socratic method, with a regular third
grade class in a suburban elementary school. I present my perspective and
views on the session, and on the Socratic method as a teaching tool, following
the transcript. The class was conducted on a Friday afternoon beginning
at 1:30, late in May, with about two weeks left in the school year. This
time was purposely chosen as one of the most difficult times to entice
and hold these children's concentration about a somewhat complex intellectual
matter. The point was to demonstrate the power of the Socratic method for
both teaching and also for getting students involved and excited about
the material being taught. There were 22 students in the class. I was told
ahead of time by two different teachers (not the classroom teacher) that
only a couple of students would be able to understand and follow what I
would be presenting. When the class period ended, I and the classroom teacher
believed that at least 19 of the 22 students had fully and excitedly participated
and absorbed the entire material. The three other students' eyes were glazed
over from the very beginning, and they did not seem to be involved in the
class at all. The students' answers below are in capital letters.
was to see whether I could teach these students binary arithmetic (arithmetic
using only two numbers, 0 and 1) only by asking them questions.
None of them had been introduced to binary arithmetic before. Though the
ostensible subject matter was binary arithmetic, my primary interest was
to give a demonstration to the teacher of the power and benefit of the
Socratic method where it is applicable. That is my interest here as well.
I chose binary arithmetic as the vehicle for that because it is something
very difficult for children, or anyone, to understand when it is taught
normally; and I believe that a demonstration of a method that can teach
such a difficult subject easily to children and also capture their enthusiasm
about that subject is a very convincing demonstration of the value of the
method. (As you will see below, understanding binary arithmetic is also
about understanding "place-value" in general. For those who seek a much
more detailed explanation about place-value, visit the long paper on The
Concept and Teaching of Place-Value.) This was to be the Socratic method
in what I consider its purest form, where questions (and only questions)
are used to arouse curiosity and at the same time serve as a logical, incremental,
step-wise guide that enables students to figure out about a complex topic
or issue with their own thinking and insights. In a less pure form, which
is normally the way it occurs, students tend to get stuck at some point
and need a teacher's explanation of some aspect, or the teacher gets stuck
and cannot figure out a question that will get the kind of answer or point
desired, or it just becomes more efficient to "tell" what you want to get
across. If "telling" does occur, hopefully by that time, the students have
been aroused by the questions to a state of curious receptivity to absorb
an explanation that might otherwise have been meaningless to them. Many
of the questions are decided before the class; but depending on what answers
are given, some questions have to be thought up extemporaneously. Sometimes
this is very difficult to do, depending on how far from what is anticipated
or expected some of the students' answers are. This particular attempt
went better than my best possible expectation, and I had much higher expectations
than any of the teachers I discussed it with prior to doing it.
or lose concentration if they are actively participating. Almost all of
these children participated the whole time; often calling out in unison
or one after another. If necessary, I could have asked if anyone thought
some answer might be wrong, or if anyone agreed with a particular answer.
You get extra mileage out of a given question that way. I did not have
to do that here. Their answers were almost all immediate and very good.
If necessary, you can also call on particular students; if they don't know,
other students will bail them out. Calling on someone in a non-threatening
way tends to activate others who might otherwise remain silent. That was
not a problem with these kids. Remember, this was not a "gifted" class.
It was a normal suburban third grade of whom two teachers had said only
a few students would be able to understand the ideas.
Of course, you will notice
these questions are very specific, and as logically leading as possible.
That is part of the point of the method. Not just any question will do,
particularly not broad, very open ended questions, like "What is arithmetic?"
or "How would you design an arithmetic with only two numbers?" (or if you
are trying to teach them about why tall trees do not fall over when the
wind blows "what is a tree?"). Students have nothing in particular to focus
on when you ask such questions, and few come up with any sort of interesting
answer.
These are the four critical
points about the questions: 1) they must be interesting or intriguing to
the students; they must lead by 2) incremental and 3) logical steps (from
the students' prior knowledge or understanding) in order to be readily
answered and, at some point, seen to be evidence toward a conclusion, not
just individual, isolated points; and 4) they must be designed to get the
student to see particular points. You are essentially trying to get students
to use their own logic and therefore see, by their own reflections on your
questions, either the good new ideas or the obviously erroneous ideas that
are the consequences of their established ideas, knowledge, or beliefs.
Therefore you have to know or to be able to find out what the students'
ideas and beliefs are. You cannot ask just any question or start just anywhere.
It is crucial
to understand the difference between "logically" leading questions and
"psychologically" leading questions. Logically leading questions require
understanding of the concepts and principles involved in order to be answered
correctly; psychologically leading questions can be answered by students'
keying in on clues other than the logic of the content. Question 39 above
is psychologically leading, since I did not want to cover in this lesson
the concept of value-representation but just wanted to use "columnar-place"
value, so I psychologically led them into saying "Start another column"
rather than getting them to see the reasoning behind columnar-place as
merely one form of value representation. I wanted them to see how to use
columnar-place value logically without trying here to get them to
totally understand its logic. (A common form of value-representation
that is not "place" value is color value in poker chips, where colors determine
the value of the individual chips in ways similar to how columnar place
does it in writing. For example if white chips are worth "one" unit and
blue chips are worth "ten" units, 4 blue chips and 3 white chips is the
same value as a "4" written in the "tens" column and a "3" written in the
"ones" column for almost the same reasons.)
For the Socratic method
to work as a teaching tool and not just as a magic trick to get kids to
give right answers with no real understanding, it is crucial that the important
questions in the sequence must be logically leading rather than psychologically
leading. There is no magic formula for doing this, but one of the tests
for determining whether you have likely done it is to try to see whether
leaving out some key steps still allows people to give correct answers
to things they are not likely to really understand. 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 leads me to believe that answering
most of these questions correctly, requires understandingof the topic rather
than picking up some "external" sorts of clues in order to just guess correctly.
Plus, generally when one uses the Socratic method, it tends to become pretty
clear when people get lost and are either mistaken or just guessing. Their
demeanor tends to change when they are guessing, and they answer with a
questioning tone in their voice. Further, when they are logically understanding
as they go, they tend to say out loud insights they have or reasons they
have for their answers. When they are just guessing, they tend to just
give short answers with almost no comment or enthusiasm. They don't tend
to want to sustain the activity.
Finally, two of the interesting,
perhaps side, benefits of using the Socratic method are that it gives the
students a chance to experience the attendant joy and excitement of discovering
(often complex) ideas on their own. And it gives teachers a chance to learn
how much more inventive and bright a great many more students are than
usually appear to be when they are primarily passive.
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