My favourite quote regarding learning and teaching comes from Albert Einstein:
“Learning is experience. Everything else is just information and information is not knowledge.”
Merely filling the empty minds of passive students without letting them engage “actively” will not create a beneficial learning progression. Incorporating student engagement and promoting independent thinking at relevant time-points throughout the teaching session is vital and probably many teachers are aware of this. But how do we actually do this effectively?
Socratic questioning could assist here. This teaching style was developed by Socrates, who used this technique to probe the thinking of his disciples at a more profound level – work that was known mainly from the writings of his student Plato. It focuses on posing questions rather than providing the material and thus promotes active learning.
This powerful questioning technique has not only been used in education but also in psychotherapy, to encourage the patient to dispute his own (erroneous) thoughts and beliefs, which cause distress, and to be open to and explore alternative ones, and thus reduce the negative effect these beliefs have on him.
Why is Socratic questioning so effective?
Students are generally fed in specific information and are required to regurgitate that information when asked, such as in class, in assessments and in exams. We generally use and are taught declarative statements in the form of information from textbooks or other materials.
However, the same material could be rephrased into an interrogative mode, posed as a question and thus eliciting a response, bound to critical thinking processes in the student’s mind. Challenging, engaging students and eliciting responses makes them put in cognitive effort; it creates connections between past and new information and thus enhances retention of the material.
Specifically, by seeking meaning and deeper reasoning, the information receives a higher cognitive load and thus a higher possibility of being memorised as it is connected to previous knowledge, a so-called network of information. Students are stimulated to analyse a concept more deeply, to come up with the answer themselves. By asking them further questions about their line of reasoning, students need to identify underlying reasoning and argumentation to back up their statements in an attempt to clarify their answer.
Generally, traditional education in the form of this declarative mode of teaching generates an interest in studying and the learnt material for the sake of the minimum requirements and for the sake of “passing the exams”. What this traditional approach fails to do is to inspire students to be a more enthusiastic pupil, be more creative and take an active, independent role and desire in studying and gaining wisdom, above and beyond school – kind of like becoming a student for life. Socratic questioning, with its emphasis on examining all assumptions, perspectives and sources of evidence, was shown to generate these processes if used appropriately. It demonstrates to students the need to employ this strategy to question themselves and others and thus fosters motivation and interest.
There are several types of questioning approaches we can use to elicit more elaborate reasoning:
- Questions for clarification, such as “Why do you think/ say that?“
- Questions to challenge assumptions, such as “Is this always the case?”
- Questions that asks for evidence, such as “How do you know this?” or “…such as….?” or “What would be an example?”
- Questions about perspectives and alternatives, such as “Why is it better than …?” or “How does it differ from…?”
- Questions about consequences, such as “…and that would lead to…?” or “How does it affect…?”
- Questions about the question: “Why do you think I asked you this?“
What else do we want more than becoming independent and having a curiosity in everything?
Life becomes more interesting and fascinating.