How Does Gershon Use Socratic Question In The Classroom
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Socratic questioning dates back to the 5th century BC, when an Athenian named Socrates questioned his fellow people to deliver their knowledge of good or evil (Knezic et al., 2010). This essay will compare two ways Socratic methods of questioning are used in a modern classroom based on Gershon (2013) writing on tried and tested method on how to challenge and stretch your students.
Teachers use Socratic Methods of questioning in the modern classroom to challenge the thinking of their students as mentioned by the author, Gershon. The questioning does not necessarily increase the knowledge of the student, but it deepens their knowledge (Knezic et al. 2010) provided the right questions are used to channel the thinking of the pupil (Al-Darwish 2012).…show more content… First, when it is used by the tutor to create discussion in groups amongst pupils (Socratic seminar) and second, when it is used by the tutor to question an individual for an answer (one-on-one). The following case studies describe each of these methods. Al-Darwish (2012) conducted a case study in Kuwait based on comparing teaching English Language as a second language using both Socratic and traditional questioning. 15 female teachers were asked to carry out the teaching, 7 were newly graduate with experience of how Socratic questioning works and the remaining 8 were teachers with less than 10 years’ experience. The newly graduated teachers aimed at using Socratic questioning to evaluate individual student on what they know and to communicate with them in the target language. The result showed that there was a little difference in the improvement of the vocabulary and grammar between the two groups. Some of the issues associated with this experiment are the lack of understanding of the target language between pupils and tutors as it makes it really hard for the tutor to generate another question to further challenge the pupils’ thinking. Most of the newly graduated teachers were concerned about the time it takes to use the Socratic Method in this kind of classroom. Even though the…show more content… Socratic questioning remained the main teaching process used in American law schools (Peterson 2009), Decket and Wood (2013) claimed it makes students, especially law students, feel uncomfortable, creates fear in the classroom and hampers their learning. Garner (2000) claim Socratic Method can be fresh and create active classroom but the over use of the method can become boring. Socratic Method can also be abused by the tutor or display biases based on gender or race and can have negative impact on women and minorities (Peterson, 2009). It is noted that most of the criticisms on Socratic Methods are based on using one-on-one Socratic