Socratic Method as an Approach to Teaching

These last years have witnessed the emergence and blossoming of practices inspired by philosophy on the didactic and pedagogical scene. In this context, Socrates's Philosophy represents one main point of reference. Socratic dialogue is now a model for a maieutic conception of teaching as well as for the constitution of dialogical communities and for an interrogative enquiry into reality. However, at times this recovery of the Socratic model is not exempt from misunderstandings and anachronisms. The aim of this article is to underline the main differences between the ancient and contemporary method.

European Journal of Education Studies

16 centuries ago, Socrates implemented a pedagogy of critical thinking where he helped others move from premise to premise to a discovery. In the current context, the 21st century’s stakeholders are bombarded with a great amount of information and should still engage in critical thinking to discern what is important, reliable, and valid or not, to apply, analyze, and evaluate information, as well as to create and collaborate for new knowledge. In this sense, Socratic pedagogy can be an effective tool for such competencies and thereby, it is important for teachers to develop knowledge and skills to practice Socratic methodologies in mainstream classrooms. As published materials may offer teachers support with their professionalism, Teach Like Socrates: Guiding Socratic Dialogues and Discussions in the Classroom was reviewed for its efficiency and practicality for classroom instruction. Article visualizations:

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the ongoing use of dialogue as a modern pedagogical and andragogical method. The author reviewed 18 scholarly sources from three education databases in this literature review. The use of dialogue as mode of instruction dates from the Socratic Method of 399 B.C.E. to present uses. The literature reveals current studies of successful use in math, ESL, business, law, and teacher preparation instruction. Also, the dialogue as avenue into reflective self-learning appears prominently in modern practice. Multimedia, computer, and online dialogue methods also show good results in several well designed models. The author concludes that dialogue in different forms remains an effective method of instruction in wide applications. The research revealed several improvements and new applications for dialogue as method of education from Socrates in ancient Greece to public elementary, secondary, and postsecondary institutions in 2009. KEYWORDS: Dialogue, Socrates, Socratic Method, Andragogy

The basic author’s assumption is that the common characteristic of the corpus of So-cratic literature is its therapeutic function. Accepting this assumption means that in the interpretation of Socratic dialogues the dramatic structure of the text and the analysis of the ethical problems would be equally important. The paper elucidates Socratesʼ own explaining his role in selected dialogues of Socratic literature. Socra-tes repeatedly and in various situations declares himself as one who has no know-ledge, and is not a teacher. Despite his disavowal of knowledge he is able to help young men to find a better way of life thanks to love he feels toward them. Socrates’ role in dialogues is a therapeutic one: He does not offer any universal solutions to the problems but rather encourages young men to take a permanent care of the self. Keywords: Socratic dialogues – Role of Socrates in dialogues – Therapeutic func-tion of Socratic dialogues – Care of the self

When contemplating the origins of philosophical paideia one is tempted to think of Socrates, perhaps because we feel that Socrates has been a philosophical educator to us all. But it is Plato and his literary genius that we have to thank as his dialogues preserve not just Socratic philosophy, but also the Socratic educational experience. Educators would do well to better understand Plato's pedagogical objectives in the Socratic dialogues so that we may appreciate and utilize them in our own educational endeavors, and so that we may adapt the Socratic experience to new interactive educational technologies. Plato designed his Socratic dialogues to arm students for real world challenges and temptations. First, in both form and function the dialogues attempt to replicate the Socratic experience for their audience. They demand from their readers what Socrates demanded from his students: active learning, self-examination, and an appreciation for the complexity and importance of wisdom. Second, the dialogues challenge the conflation of professional and personal excellence, best exemplified by sophists such as Hippias, and exhort their reader to pursue personal aretê separately from and alongside practical and professional skills or technai. Third, they aim not to transmit some prepackaged formula for success, but to teach students to learn for themselves; that is to love and pursue wisdom. The Socratic dialogues, and philosophic dialogue itself, are educationally important in that they teach us to be philosophers in the literal sense.

This paper is to review the elements of a disciplined way of thinking and self-evaluate, and logical relationships resulting from disciplined thinking, the review provides for the interrogation of Socrates. History is an argument about the past. Build historical narrative involves a number of tasks; Analyzing Primary Resources, Checking Information Resources, Reading Multiple Perspectives and Accounts, Using Evidence to Support Claims, Understanding the Context of History. Socrates began to engage in discussions with fellow Athens after a friend of youth, Chaerephon, visit the Oracle of Delphi, which confirmed that there was no man in Greece was wiser than Socrates. Socrates saw this as a paradox, and began using the Socratic method to answer the riddle. Diogenes Laertius, however, wrote that Protagoras invented the "Socratic" method. The first thing to realize about interactive teaching is that it is not something new or mysterious. If a teacher and ask a question in class, assigning and correcting homework, or hold a class or group discussion, then he or she has to teach interactively. Basically then interactive teaching is just giving students the opportunity to do something, to get back what they had done, and then apply their own, so teachers can decide what would be best to do next. The oldest, and still most powerful, teaching tactic for fostering critical thinking is Socratic teaching. Socratic teaching focus on giving students questions, not answers. Researchers asked a model, solve a mind to continue probing into the subject with questions.

Humanizing Language Teaching, 2007

This collection offers the revised versions of the papers presented at ‚Socratica III – a conference on Socrates, the Socratics, and the ancient Socratic literature‘ (Trento, Italy, 2012). The volume approaches the Socratic question from a viewpoint that radically departs from mainstream lines of interpretation. It focuses on the issues the Socratics were able to develop in the fierce struggle among themselves, i. e. on the dynamic context in which these issues were posed, discussed, and eventually fixed in dogmatic theories within the philosophical and non-philosophical Greek literature of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. The following topics are examined: 1. the ‘intellectual movement’ around Socrates; 2. the literary context in which the texts of the Socratics are framed; 3. major topics discussed within this movement, their development within and outside the Socratic circle, and their reception in Late Antiquity; 4. the state of the art of the ‘Socratic question.’

Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia XIV 1, 2019

The present paper attempts to explain Socrates’ remark in "Symposium" 212b, where the expression “diapherontos askein” is used to describe Socrates’ attitude towards erotic matters [ta erotika]. The analysis of the dialogue shows that a human being with a reliable power of Eros and knowledge about the proper way of life should strengthen their character virtues through self-restraint and justice. This power is a natural component of every person, and the knowledge about life can be obtained both from the Symposium itself and from the speech of Diotima. Furthermore, in the apology delivered by Alcibiades (as well as in the "Apology" and "Phaedo"), Socrates is presented to the reader as the perfect moral ideal that serves as a criterion for leading a proper life. While the two aforementioned elements provide a sufficient condition for being a philosopher, they do not guarantee access to transcendent reality. If this access is to be attained at all, it is only through hard work on the moral and intellectual aspect of being human.