Socratic Method of teaching...

What is the Socratic Method of teaching?

Socratic inquiry is emphatically not “teaching” in the conventional sense of the word. The leader of Socratic inquiry is not the purveyor of knowledge, filling the empty minds of largely passive students with facts and truths acquired through years of study. As the people in the School of Education would say, the Socratic teacher is not “the sage on the stage.”

In the Socratic method, there are no lectures and no need of rote memorization. But neither, as you might. In the Socratic method, the classroom experience is a shared dialogue between teacher and students in which both are responsible for pushing the dialogue forward through questioning. The “teacher,” or leader of the dialogue, asks probing questions in an effort to expose the values and beliefs which frame and support the thoughts and statements of the participants in the inquiry. The students ask questions as well, both of the teacher and each other.

The inquiry progresses interactively, and the teacher is as much a participant as a guide of the discussion. Furthermore, the inquiry is open-ended. There is no pre-determined argument or terminus to which the teacher attempts to lead the students. Those who practice the Socratic method do not use PowerPoint slides. Without a lesson plan, the group follows the dialogue where it goes.

If anyone interested to get yourself equipped with this method of teaching especially teachers please browse the site given.

 

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/CTL/cgi-bin/docs/newsletter/socratic_method.pdf