Elt- 738

1. Socratic Questioning

2. Socratic Questioning
‘The unexamined life is not
worth living.’
Socrates

3. Socratic Questioning
is disciplined questioning that can be used to pursue
thought in many directions and for many purposes;
• to explore complex ideas, to get to the truth of things
• to open up issues and problems,
• to uncover assumptions,
• to analyze concepts,
• to distinguish what we know from what we don't know,
• to follow out logical implications of thought or to control
the discussion.

4. Socratic Questioning
• to probe student thinking
• to determine the extent of
student knowledge on a
given topic, issue or
subject
• to help students analyze a
concept or line of
reasoning

5. Socratic Questioning
• to engage students by
arousing their curiosity
• to make learning a
participatory--not
passive--experience.
• to encourage critical (i.e.,
higher-order) thinking
and problem-solving
skills.

6. Socratic Questioning

7. Socratic questioning is one of the most popular and
powerful teaching approaches that can be used to
guide students in generating thoughtful questions, thus
fostering their CT skills.
(Maiorana 1990–91;Paul 1993)

8. Instead of providing direct answers, the Socratic
questioning approach stimulates students’ minds by
continually probing into the subject with thought-
stimulating questions.
(Paul 1993)

9. Through the use of penetrating (thought-provoking)
questions, Socrates helped his pupils gain deeper
insight and understanding and develop coherent lines
of reasoning on which to base their thoughts and
beliefs.
(Koshi, 1996 p. 408)

10. Socratic questioning is systematic, disciplined, deep and
usually focuses on foundational concepts, principles,
theories, issues, or problems.ʺ
(Paul and Elder, 2007 p. 36)

12. According to Socrates;
• The best way to teach is through dialectic reasoning, or
a question-and-answer process. This process should be
the primary teaching method, so that students practice,
for many years, pursuing answers to questions in a
disciplined, methodical way.

13. According to Socrates;
• A primary goal is to formulate principles by
which to live, principles that emerge out of deep
conceptual understandings.
• Socratic dialogs are usually focused on a
specific complex concept or question, and
exemplify a disciplined form of conceptual
analysis.

16. What is the relationship between Socratic
Questioning and Critical Thinking?

18. • Critical thinking gives one a comprehensive
view of how the mind functions (in it’s pursuit of
meaning and truth) and Socratic questioning
takes advantage of that overview to frame
questions essential to the quality of that
pursuit.

19. • The goal of critical thinking is to establish an
additional level of thinking to our thinking, a
powerful inner voice of reason, to monitor and
to assess our thinking, feeling, and action.
• Socratic discussion cultivates that inner voice
through an explicit focus on systematic, deep,
disciplined questioning.

20. Make the implicit explicit

21. Go beyond Dull Questions
• “Is this going to be on the test?”
• “Where can I use this in real life?’’

22. Break the habit
H A B I T
If you remove H, you still have A BIT.
If you remove A, you still have BIT.
If you remove B, you still have IT.