Educ 558-02-Bleakley Timothy-Ar-Sp18

Running head: IMPLEMENTING SOCRATIC SEMINAR IDEALS 1
Implementing Advanced Socratic Seminar Ideals in a 10th Grade English Class
Timothy D. Bleakley
EDUC 557
University of San Diego

IMPLEMENTING SOCRATIC IDEALS 2
Abstract
During my time as a student teacher, I conducted research with an aim towards
implementing socratic seminar ideals within a 10th grade advanced English Language Arts class.
My literature research brought me all the way back to the basics of the Socratic Method, through
contemporary understanding of the Socratic seminar, and into the possible combination of
innovative technology and dialectical discussion. Each of these stages of research affected my
interactions with the students, as I noted how their interpersonal behavior changed alongside
their small group and whole class discussions. I focused primarily on establishing and fostering a
classroom culture in which the sharing of information through a constructivist lens was
paramount, even if the information was “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure.” I implemented two
different forms of Socratic seminars, as well as numerous preparatory group discussion activities,
with increasingly specific scaffold and supportive structures implemented.
Keywords: Socratic seminar, Socratic Method, Metacognition, Aporia, Elunchus,
Constructivism
Implementing Socratic Seminar Ideals in a 10th Grade Classroom
“I want to know what you think, about the book, about yourself, and what it is and who
you are and why any of it even matters, if at all.”
This was the introduction that blindsided me and every other student who had the
pleasure of taking Irene Williams’ literature courses at the University of San Diego. She was
wholly, unflinchingly enamored with her students’ thought processes, and she ran her classes
specifically to investigate that matter. With an incredibly light touch and reserved instructional
disposition, Professor Williams was able to draw out the innate curiosity and intellectual
confidence that initially drives genuine academic rigor; the sensation that one has tapped into
some sort of heretofore unnoticed literary parallel or narrative technique, something wholly
unique, is an experience so invigorating that I now believe it to be the primary goal of the
educational process.
It would be years until I would encounter a term like “metacognition,” or attain anything
more than an undergraduate’s tangential understanding of “critical thinking,” but even back then
I knew, just as assuredly as I know now in the nascent stages of my career as an educator, that
whatever curiosity Irene Williams unearthed in me that day is precisely what I want to pass on to
each and every student I encounter. My research now is focused on the logistics of embolding
students in such a nuanced way. Simply providing open-ended prompts or questions, or asking
the students to investigate the very way they think, these I am now aware are the latter stages of
the process. The cultivation of genuine critical thought and academic rigor within a student must
begin with the teacher. They must model how to be curious, how to be open and how to be
confident; most importantly, though, the teacher must model how to be wrong, and how to
unflinchingly declare the most uncomfortable phrase in a scholastic setting, “I don’t know.”
Context
My class is situated in the bottom corner of the a three-story building at a public high
school, nearest to the edge of campus and the student parking lot. The room itself is somewhat
strange, as the first floor of the building is up against an embankment and thus, one large wall
direct across from the entryway, is almost entirely devoid of windows, save some tinted blue
slats near the ceiling that are opened closed by way of an almost comically long pole. This lack
of direct sunlight, coupled with the long stretches of concrete grey towering over the students,
casts a sort of cave-like pall over the class at times.
This does not seem to affect the students, however, who are more often than not energetic
and enthusiastic about the lesson at hand. The class I’ve chosen, 3A 10th grade English, has 34
students, 14 of which are boys alongside 20 girls. The racial demographics of the class are as
follows, 16 Hispanic, ten Caucasian, five African American, three Asian/Pacific Islander. There
are ten reclassified RFEPs and one ELL, as well as two students with diagnosed special needs
(anxiety and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). The students are organized into desk clumps of
six students each, and pointedly so, as I learned from my cooperating teacher (CT), who
informed me that each grouping was formulated to maximize the diversity of ability levels in
each group, with adequate room between groups to allow easy passage of both students and
teachers. The space itself is fairly well ventilated, although, as mentioned earlier, not particularly
well-lit . The drab concrete of the walls has been somewhat covered by decorations and student
work, so at the very least there is an assortment of color when looking about the room. At the
front of the room, the teacher’s desk sits perpendicular to the Promethean board, and at the
farthest back corner, a stationary desk is reserved for one on one work, student/teacher
conferences, and administrative observations.
The majority of students who were once classified as ELLs have since been reclassified
as RFEPs years before reaching the 10th grade, leaving only two students in the class as an ELL
(English Language Learner). The class is fairly compliant and respectful, although certain
students do succumb to age-appropriate outbursts of disobedience. These outbursts most often
take the form of over-enthusiastic, off-topic or simply unfocused participation, which has the
potential to derail a lesson if not handled with a subtle balance of firmness yet still playing along.
The age range is around 15 years old. ENG 4 ADV – 3A is an incredibly diverse group of young
students, mostly Hispanic and Caucasian, whose shared knowledge of their mutual cultures has
proven impressive time and time again.
Needs Assessment
According to my CT, the students spent the majority of 9th grade concentrating on formal
5-paragraph essay writing and short novella formats. The leap in expectations from 9th to 10th
grade has become very apparent, as the students are struggling to complete work with any real
consistency, or conceptualize the analytical essay at the end of the long novel unit. I found that in
reaching back into previous assignments in google classroom, the completion percentage
hovered around 71% for in class work, and below 60% for homework assignments, which even
before my arrival, were rare. Furthermore, my CT had expressed to me a desire to increase
student participation, both in whole class discussions as well as small group collaborative work. I
spent the first two weeks of my placement concentrating almost solely on this aspect of the
classroom, both engaging with the students to draw them out of their shells, and also taking notes
at every table I stopped at to see who was actively speaking, who was passively listening, and
who was completely disengaged. As previously mentioned, the room is physically set up with
students grouped at desk clumps of six students per group. I observed that during table group
work, one to two students were bearing the brunt of the workload, one was listening passively
while not offering any help, critique or insight, leaving three students per group completely
disengaged. Extrapolated out, this meant that, on average, sixteen to seventeen students were not
participating in any meaningful way during a given task, while six were passively listening and
around ten were engaged. Worse yet, these numbers plummeted when whole class discussions
occurred. Through my note taking, I found that the same four to five students raised their hands
with any regularity, while the number of wholly disengaged students jumped from sixteen to
around twenty seven. Now overall, while certain students are excelling due to genuine interest,
the majority of students are simply aiming for a passing grade, information that was born out
when I looked into the gradebook. The numbers line up with my observations of class
participation, with nineteen to twenty students in the high 70/low 80 percentile, nine in the
0-60% area, and remaining five with grades of 93% or above.
My initial thoughts on the instructional design of the class noted that it is somewhat rigid,
adhering almost entirely to the Springboard educational program. Little personalization is
employed by my CT beyond transposing the provided lessons from the textbook to the
Promethean Board for the students to complete. The question/answer sessions are fairly
straightforward, and discussions often times hover at a superficial level. Journal entries are my
CT’s main method of checking for her students’ understanding. Upon entering my focus
classroom for the first time, I was treated to a “fishbowl” style Socratic seminar, in which the
students were tasked with sharing/explaining the rationale for their upcoming argumentative
essay topics. I observed that the students were more than slightly uncomfortable during the entire
process, keeping their eyes trained on the space of desk directly in front of their downturned
faces, only looking up to contribute when prompted, notably by my CT and not their fellow
classmates. Even those that were confident enough to voice their opinions still seemed confused
as to the purpose of the open-ended questioning format. Some appeared to speak out of perceived
obligation, or possibly filling the silence that often accompanies the traditional Socratic seminar
setting. Others seemed to be speaking with one eye trained on either my CT or myself, ending
each sentence with an upward inflection as if asking us to corroborate or validate their
contributions. Whatever the cause, it became apparent to me that the implementation of the
Socratic seminar in this was not only necessary, but required a particularly deft hand that I was
not entirely sure I had at this point in my student teaching experience.
Action Research Question
With a novel unit focused primarily on Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart on the
horizon, as well as my cooperating teacher’s reassurance that learning the Socratic seminar
method was indeed a need in the class, I set out to design a series of lessons that would
simultaneously prompt those students who aren’t as comfortable speaking out as well as teaching
the more verbal students to direct their contributions towards their fellow classmates instead of
utilizing the platform to convey their knowledge solely to the teacher. I also ascribed a dual
focus to my approach, as I endeavored to ingratiate myself with the students via engaging and
dynamic lesson activities, as well as lay the foundation upon which all the group discussions and
Socratic seminars would stand; an open-minded, collaborative environment wherein the students
felt safe enough to be right or wrong or all manner in between. This meant a gradual elevation of
discourse, first in the question answer format (teacher to student), then in group discussion
(monitoring student to student), and finally, individual student elucidation (Socratic
seminars/cirlces). All of this is in service of my overall question:
- What happens to student textual analysis and participation when I implement Socratic
seminars?
- What was a Socratic seminar? What is one? And what might one be like in the
near future?
Literature Review
Theoretical Framework
As my aim is to implement the Socratic seminar and its subsequent ideals of critical
thinking and metacognition in my classroom, it is important to understand the theoretical basis
from which that aim is drawn. Piaget’s theory on constructivism in education aligns most
accurately with the practice of the Socratic seminar, that being, the gradual relinquishing of
authoritative control over the classroom by the teacher, and the eventual inversion of the
hierarchical structure itself of the learning process itself. Constructivism overtly stresses the
importance of each student’s individual knowledge they bring to the classroom, as well as the
unique opportunities that arise when that knowledge is shared with their fellow classmates in an
open and supportive environment. The notion of being correct or incorrect, or more accurately
knowing or not knowing, is redefined as merely a part of the learning process instead of its sole
aim. Furthermore, the constructivist learning process is an active one, placing both the students
and teacher in a position of having to assess and reassess their shared learning throughout. And
lastly, it affords the student’s the unique opportunity to create meaning, even incorrect meaning,
in a provisional space that only begets more inquiry and questioning.
Sophomore year of High School is a pivotal period in a student’s growth, both logically
and conceptually. The notion of the student becoming more autonomous is introduced, and as the
year progresses the onus of imbuing educational activities with their own unique perspectives
and knowledge becomes more and more apparent. Sophomore year is when students begin to
learn how new information can go beyond merely being stored and regurgitated, but internalized
and utilized in a public forum such as group discussions or Socratic seminars as a means to
create new knowledge. This inversion of the established learning process aligns precisely with
the Constructivist theory regarding childhood learning,
According to Piaget (1952), a child establishes an understanding of reality when he or she
interacts with the environment and tries to make sense of the new situation or learn new
ways of doing things. In reality, this creates disequilibrium, a gap between what a child
can do and what a child wants to do (Inuoue, 2012, p. 78).
This “gap” is precisely what drives the Constructivist theory, and consequently the sophomore
year of high school, by presenting the students opportunities to assimilate new experiences with
prior knowledge, i.e. assimilation, and develop new knowledge to apply to the aforementioned
new experiences, i.e. accommodation. The cognitive skills learned in the tension between
knowing and not knowing include adaptation and organization, as well as the application and
specialization of new knowledge (Inuoe 2012). Piaget viewed intelligence as a biological
adaptation to the environment characterized by these processes” (Inuoue, 2012, p. 78).

Critical Thinking and Metacognition
According to the Delphi Report, which was an exhaustive two year study into the
components of critical thinking from multiple international perspectives, critical thinking can be
defined via six core elements:
1. Interpretation: comprehend and express meaning or significance 2. Analysis: identify
the intended and actual inferential relationships 3. Evaluation: assess logical strength 4.
Inference: draw reasonable conclusions 5. Explanation: state the results and justify one's
reasoning 6. Self-regulation: monitor one's cognitive activities (Boghossian, 2006, p. 46).
These elements are the bedrock of any successful classroom, let alone successful Socratic
seminar. They are also the first steps of what will inevitably lead to metacognition, a term which
John H. Flavell first put forth in 1979 to describe the way in which a person is reflectively aware
of their thinking process, ascribing its benefits to “oral communication of information, oral
persuasion, oral comprehension, reading comprehension, writing, language acquisition, attention,
memory, problem solving, social cognition, and, various types of self-control and self-instruction
(Flavell, 1979). More crucially, however, is the clarity the concept of metacognition provides to
the difficult inversion of educational expectations that accompany a classroom based upon
constructivism and critical thought, that being, it gives educators and students structure to the
state of not knowing:
children might at first distinguish only between understanding and not understanding
things; they might know only that inputs sometimes lead them to feel puzzled, confused,
unable to act, uncertain about what is intended or meant, and that they sometimes lead to
the absence of these feelings, to a clear representation of something, to a definite sense of
what they should do next (Flavell, 1979, p. 911).
Metacognitive thought, in conjunction with critical thinking then, allows students to expand their
perception of learning beyond a purely binary model. This in turn permits them to both inhabit
new spaces of thought provided by the teacher, as well as creating their own. It is the
combination of these two modes of learning that will ultimately have the most effect on a
student’s learning, pushing them to experience the intellectual strain “between what the child
knows and understands and what he or she has yet to know and understand (21)” (Alexander, R.
(2008) Culture, dialogue and learning: Notes on an emerging pedagogy (p.93)).
The Socratic Seminar
Throughout my research, I found myself in a near constant state of recalibration. The
Socratic seminar, and thus the Socratic Method itself, had always been positioned as a pillar of
the learning pantheon; not just one of the most important and revered learning techniques at
teacher’s disposal, but perhaps the most important and effective for English teachers at the
highest levels. Why then, having now experienced the Socratic seminar as both a teacher and
student, had I never exercised the same level of critical questioning necessary for the Socratic
seminar, to the practice of Socratic seminar itself? Jordan Fullam, citing numerous other
researchers, urges precisely this critical eye, “use of the term ‘Socratic’ to describe contemporary
educational practice should not be taken to indicate a faithful reproduction of Socrates’
questioning tactics. (p. 70) to the foundational aspects of the method (Fullam, 2015). The main
goal of this project was, at least initially, to implement Socratic seminar ideals into a 10th grade
English classroom, stressing openness, incisive critical thought, and increased metacognitive
ability. During this process however, I’ve continually been lead back to three questions: What
was the Socratic seminar, what is it now in its current state, and what might it become after
finally relenting to the advent of technology in the classroom?
What It Was
Understanding the Socratic Method at its inception in the Platonic dialogues can prove
somewhat difficult, seeing as the only records available are the entirely fictional ones detailed in
the fictional conversations of Plato’s Republic. At its most basic, the Socratic method is said to
be born out of a genuine intellectual curiosity paired with an investigative rigor, which itself is
cultivated through a directly obstinate yet objective cross examination. Conversation and
discussion are cited as the main stalwarts of the practice, producing a open forum of free flowing
ideas and opinions which in turn work to serve all involved either speaking or listening. Even the
steps by which to address this central curiosity, when listed, strike a note akin to that of the
scientific method, “1) Wonder, 2) Hypothesis, 3) Elunchus (refutation and cross-examination), 4)
Acceptance/rejection of the hypothesis, and, 5) Action,” (p.711) although the end result, “a
consequence of sustained Socratic dialogue, one realizes that one did not know something that
one thought one knew” (p. 711) is slightly less familiar to the cut and dry scientific findings
produced in a laboratory study (Boghossian, 2012).
It’s also crucially important to note that in their beginnings, Socratic seminars were
strictly teacher oriented. This meant that at nearly every instance, the conversation was focused
primarily as a dialogue between one student and the teacher, with the stated aim of “apoira” or
“Socratic perplexity.” In fact, critique of this process is more than valid when considering,
Socratic seminars, for example, involve students posing and answering their own
questions in an atmosphere of mutual respect and collaboration; and as Rud points out,
nowhere in the dialogues does Socrates act as facilitator and encourage his interlocutors
to debate among themselves in the manner of Lipman and Adler. (Fullam, 2015, p. 70).
So, when one applies even a slightly critical eye to how the Socratic Method is currently
perceived, and how it was initially employed thousands of years ago, questions about
pedagogical intent and motivation begin to arise,
the elenchus [‘namely, that he knows that his interlocutors think they know something
when they in fact know nothing’] is a necessary first step in creating a desire to follow
Socrates to his conclusions. The elenchus, therefore, is part of perfected stultification
because, without it, the interlocutor would be less susceptible to Socrates’ strategy of
posing leading questions in the second step (Fullam 2015, p. 69)
and call into question what exactly is the Socratic seminar today?
Contemporary Application
This implicit contradiction, which educators and students alike rarely address, that
Socrates himself never held open and free-flowing discussions endeavoring to create new
knowledge through the collaborative efforts of the group, is Socrates discussions throughout the
Republic are instead rigidly defined by the instructor and his ability to, through negative
dialectical interrogation, herd the students toward a predetermined and hidden end, “Socrates, in
essence, teaches...to be like Socrates rather than to think independently…Socrates develops
intellectual dependence through a strategy of leading questions while obscuring his intentions”
Fullam 2010). It may very well be this inborn confusion which has caused the Socratic method,
and thus the Socratic seminar, to currently be considered a somewhat nebulous endeavor at its
most benign, or, in case of cross examinations in law school:
a traumatic experience because of the Socratic method, I assumed I risked one daily…I
felt a shock of recognition in my last year of law school when I happened upon an article
that spelled out the worst possible effects of the Socratic method...that law teaching may
silence women (Kalman, 1995, p. 772)
Teachers often apply the term to almost any classroom activity in which students are
discussing a topic amongst each other, and students inevitably view the conversation through a
purely transactional lens, often mistaking the seminar’s process as an obligation instead of an
aim. As a new educator, this realization can be disorienting. Boghossian goes on to correct the
spurious correlation between this disorientation and the actual aim of the Socratic seminar itself,
“There are two types of perplexity. One type of perplexity results from trying to figure out a
lecture, explanation, description, phenomenon, etc., that is confusing or unclear…The other type
of perplexity occurs as a consequence of engaging difficult, novel or unusual ideas in which one
crosses the boundary between intuition and reasoning.” While attaining a level of aporia in a
student is certainly a goal for a teacher or professor, or as Kalman asserts “If the Socratic method
has been diluted, whatever effectiveness it once possessed may have dwindled to the point at
which law professors should abandon it,” the overall aim must remain student generated, and
most certainly not at the cost of their emotional stability or social standing (Kalman 1995).
Innovation and Technology
I’ve found that in studying the application of the Socratic seminar into classrooms of
varying ages and levels, broad opinions and generalizations are in no short supply, while actual
experimentation and reflection are perpetually put off for the hypothetical “next researcher.”
Jennifer Dean, Christian Goering and Tara Nutt chose to actively buck this trend by crafting a
lesson which both utilizes the Socratic seminar as an activity and reflection tool for students and
teachers alike. Not only is the collective reasoning of Dean, Goering and Nutt’s lesson plan
sound, their pragmatic approach to anticipating the student’s reactions represents a level of
forethought I have yet to employ in my own lessons.
Dean, Goering and Nutt attempt to maximize the engagement of their students through
metacognitive reflection, or, as they put it, “to build on students’ critical thinking skills and
understanding of dialogue to facilitate higher level cognition and subsequent learning” (19).
Their set-up for assessing the Socratic seminar was very inventive: first, the class of 22 7th
graders was tasked with participating in an open ended discussion on the nonfiction work
Children of the Great Depression by Russell Freedman, Specifically…they were to address the
concept of how children during the Great Depression experienced the transition from childhood
to adulthood and how the transition was similar to/different from their experiences” (20). The
class was then arranged in a “fishbowl” style layout—a circle of desks inside a larger, but with
equal numbers, circle—with the outer ring tasked with taking notes on the inner. This may all
seem fairly routine, but the researchers’ unique twist was their integration of recording the
discussion and having the students analyze the videotape in a following lesson, concentrating on
who spoke, how often, and at what cognitive level the questions being posed were at.
Speaking of which, the researchers continue “We designed a Google Form that each set
of partners would complete…and perhaps [the] most important component of the activity was an
individual written reflection by each student,” detailing yet another method of engaged pedagogy
that I now know I have to include in my own classroom (21). The article pointedly includes the
student ‘’’Coding the Discussion” Form’ which literally shows the questions prompting the
students to keep tabs on how many times the teacher or students spoke, which students spoke and
how they spoke (questions or statement), how many times they responded to a question, and so
on (22). This is all in service of extending the practical application of the Socratic seminar
beyond the physical classroom.
How does one measure a student’s level of contemplation, or insight, or capacity for
dialectical conversation? As Robin Alexander notes in a study out of the University of
Cambridge, “Talk vitally mediates the cognitive and cultural spaces between adult and child,
between teacher and learner, between society and the individual” (Alexander, 2008, p. 21). Thus,
the practice of formulating one’s own thoughts into both palatable and compelling speech,
especially in the moment during civil discourse, is not only imperative to a student’s growth as a
learner, but paramount to their growth as a person. This is what makes Dean, Goering and Nutt’s
research so intriguing, as its taken pains to produce quantifiable data concerned with the act of
speaking. There is evidence of metacognition on multiple levels throughout Dean, Goering and
Nutt’s lesson plans and reflective activities.
It’s incredibly impressive how they’ve formalized the more contemplative parts of the
Socratic seminar by basing their observations in hard data (video recordings) and student
generated statistics (the “’Coding the Discussion’ Form”). I have taken both pedagogical and
applicable lesson ideas from this article that I can immediately institute at my practicum site.
Hard Data Studies for the Future
Rectifying what the Socratic Method was with what it is currently perceived as can
certainly aid in adapting the practice to modern classrooms. However, if it is to adapt to the
increasingly rapid proliferation and integration of content specific apps to the classroom, vast
amounts of hard data must be acquired immediately. A study was conducted at a German
University, “with students from over 90 nations, most of whom live in residential colleges on
campus, with Germans making up only about 25% of the student body” (Egmond, 2011, p. 61).
The study begins by expounding upon western education and its focus on cultivating critical
thinking from a very early age. While this is nothing new, the explicit statement, “In this study, a
significant correlation was found between critical thinking skills and college GPA,” as well as
the general breakdown of western education ideals, “(1) the tendency to question (even
recognizing one’s own ignorance), (2) the focus on error to evoke doubt, (3) the esteem for
self-generated knowledge and (4) the search for true knowledge, not just true belief,” were
welcome foundational elements for the oncoming statistical deluge in the latter half of the article
(Egmond, 2011, p. 61). These two points also provided an adequate foil for the equally broad
description of eastern education,
Authorities must be treated with a great deal of respect…Learning is see as an effortful
process which requires that learners develop the virtues of diligence and endurance of
hardship. The process by which one acquires new knowledge is primarily internal and
one can only engage in communication about, or potentially take a critical stand towards
the learning material after one has achieved mastery over it. (Egmond, 2011, p. 62)
The researchers were obviously careful not to pose the two perspectives in terms of competition,
but rather, to show how they might be subtly influencing students when placed in a classroom
setting which accommodates one style of learning over the other.
Due to its heavy scientific focus and willingness to both rationally and viciously criticize
the efficacy of the Socratic seminar, “we discovered a remarkable similarity of errors in the
reasoning of contemporary students with those committed some 2400 years ago by the young
slave of Meno,” I’ve found some comfort in distancing myself enough to investigate the practice
in abstraction (Battro, 2013, p. 178). These researchers make a point to attribute the success or
failure of a Socratic seminar to whether or not a student can “generalize, that is, to transfer the
knowledge to a virtually identical situation,” which they are then able to tie to empirical data
gathered by numerous cognitive collectors i.e. “a hyperscanning setup based on functional
near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)” (Battro, 2013, p. 178). The study was based on 17 pairs of
subjects inhabiting the teacher/students roles and enacting a Socratic dialogue, all while having
certain portions of their brains monitored for spikes or lulls in activity. Ultimately, the study
proved that a veritable pathway could potentially be constructed through the brain towards a
successful Socratic dialogue.
While overtly scientific, I found this article’s perspective incredibly illuminating
regarding how the scientific community views the oft times nebulous process of the Socratic
seminar. Most notably in its early practice, with an unfamiliar group possibly just learning the
structure of the conversation, a Socratic seminar can, and most likely will, feel like an abject
failure. The processes of building towards a successful Socratic seminar, of cultivating a
supportive and courageous group of students, is part and parcel with building a successful
classroom culture. Results such as these are incapable of being born out in even the most well
controlled experiments, unless the experiments themselves are allowed to span entire semesters
or years, “Moreover, we have discovered that a classical Socratic dialogue has also serious
limitations as a pedagogical method because it cannot ensure a stable cognitive acquisition at the
end of the ‘lesson.’ The student may fail to generalize the cognitive procedure in a different
setting” (Battro, 2013, p. 179). What these experiments did catch, however, were the cognitive
spikes in certain teacher/student interactions that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, most
notably, “a negative correlation indicating that whenever the teacher showed greater activity, this
was accompanied by a decrease in activity from the corresponding student in the Socratic
dialogue” (Battro, 2013, p. 179).
This was the most affecting observation that came out of the research for me. It’s a trend
I’ve noticed throughout my own research on the subject, which essentially boils down to
increased teacher participation directly correlates to decreased student retention. It’s pointedly
counterintuitive, especially in the early stages when students have yet to acclimate to a flipped
classroom structure in which they’re leading the discussion and the teacher is only directing in
slight, quick bursts. I find it genuinely astonishing though that the scientific data bears this out as
well. Obviously, for those students who are naturally inclined to speak or comfortable enough
with themselves to try and fail and try again in a public setting, the interaction of the teacher is
either inconsequential or augmentative. If, however, the student is disengaged or hesitant to
participate for some undisclosed reason, the intrusion of the teacher becomes just that, and
intrusion, directly barring the struggling student from engaging in the lesson or discussion at all,
“The most pressing of these challenges may be the tendency for educators to get in the way of
our students’ learning; we sometimes offer our students too many guidelines for how and what to
think and too little space to think for themselves…we often must remember that the most
important part of our work is to get out of the way” (Fullam 2015). While the science is not
completely confirmed in this article (the researchers point to more studies and cheaper, less
invasive data collection equipment needed to maximize the effectiveness of the results), this
small sample size is enough to drastically alter my perception of my role within the Socratic
seminars I’ve run and plan to hold.
Reflection towards Implementation
It was during this portion of my research that I recognized how lacking in nuance my
application of the Socratic seminar had been up to this point. My experience with the discussion
form is a long and tangled story of coming to terms first with voicing any opinion, then voicing
my own opinion, then finding the confidence to put forth a contrary point, and finally allowing
that confidence to lead me towards some unique and well-reasoned, albeit at times fruitless line
of intellectual intrigue. That highly compressed version of my own Socratic understanding took
well over a decade to play out, and is obviously still ongoing, and yet it’s precisely this amount
of progress that I’ve been erroneously expecting from my students from discussion to the next.
The process needs to be slowed down significantly by way of introducing a much more
pragmatic approach, “(1) the tendency to question (even recognizing one’s own ignorance), (2)
the focus on error to evoke doubt, (3) the esteem for self-generated knowledge and (4) the search
for true knowledge, not just true belief” (Egmond, 2011, p. 61). After researching and speaking
with numerous teachers on the subject, I’m now more than aware of the fact that the use of the
Socratic seminar is an ongoing process in the classroom; it is not an end but a means to reach
that end.
Furthermore, the added lens of the Constructivist theory, in conjunction with critical
thought and metacognition, only served to strengthen my intentions of implementing the Socratic
seminar in my practicum classroom. The recognition of uniquely individual thought, and the
subsequent sharing of that insight in an open and supportive environment is crucial for the
growth of a student, especially through the high school years. With a unit studying the novel
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe on the horizon, the timing was more than ideal to
implement various forms of the Socratic seminar, so as to investigate what iterations work best
for my particular class and school site.
Cycle 1
Action and Assessment
I began by asking myself, how can I best prepare my students for a Socratic seminar?
Having only observed a Socratic seminar on my very first day in class, I issued an exit slip at the
end of the next class which posed three simple questions to the students:
1) Is your opinion of Socratic seminars in this class positive or negative? Please Circle one.
2) Was the recent Socratic seminar successful? Yes/No
3) Would another Socratic seminar in this class aide in your studies? Yes/No
I collected the slips at the door and reviewed them immediately, confident that my enthusiasm
for the method would be shared by my new students. My initial excitement was swiftly blunted:
Figure 1: Observed results of initial Socratic seminar
Simply put, the graph depicted a curve inversely proportional to what I’d hoped would be a
starting point. The students even conveyed an audible distaste for the Socratic seminar as they
handed in their exit slips, not realizing that I was the one conducting the survey instead of the
current teacher and my CT.
While my ultimate goal was to apply my research of the Socratic Method and Socratic
seminars to my 10th grade ELA class, culminating in a whole-class Socratic seminar wherein I
could formally assess the students’ participation and engagement while informally observing
their conversation, I knew that I first had to lay the pedagogical expectations going forward. I set
about immediately attempting to shore up the engagement pitfalls of introducing a new novel in
a new unit, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. I formed reading groups so that I could track
the progress of the class’ engagement with the book by observing their discussions. I set up and
assigned dialectical journals with regular chapter checks to ensure the students were interacting
with the novel in such a way as to have them physically draw out their emotional connectivity
with the story, thus increasing their metacognitive abilities. The dialectical journals were visually
checked each class for completion, as well as weekly to assess the level at which the students
were engaging in critical thought and metacognition. The chapter checks allowed me to
formatively gauge the student’s understanding. I also sought to deepen the students’ perceptions
of abstraction and metacognition by overtly placing their own opinions and insights at the
forefront of every quick-write or small group/whole class discussion, as per Piaget’s
constructivist theory of childhood education. Furthermore, I increased the complexity of the
questions posed to group discussions so as to mimic the prompts one might encounter in the
more open-ended and freewheeling format of the Socratic seminar. I utilized each of these day to
day classroom activities as my formative assessments, making the focal point of summative
assessment the planned Socratic seminar at the midpoint of the novel.
Altering Question/Answer Expectations
This all began though, with my inversion of expectations in the question/answer format
between teacher and student. One need I had assessed almost immediately in my initial
observation of my practicum classroom, was my CT’s unwillingness to engage with the students
in any sort of metacognitive way. Questions were posed by the students, and answers were given
by my CT, and therein lay the breadth of the interaction. I set out to buck this trend immediately,
spending my very first class with students deliberately aiming to directly answer as few
questions as possible, without at least first prompting the students to engage in some sort of
higher level thinking. As we began the first four chapters of the novel Things Fall Apart on audio
book, I was able to pause the recording at pertinent spots and ask leading questions to the class
like, “What is literally going on in this scene?” as well as, “What do you think the author, Chinua
Achebe, is trying to set up for himself later in the novel?” This combination of grounded and
abstract questions led the students to stop and think more than they were used to, and often times
the class would descend into silence. Knowing how important metacognitive thought is to the
process, I allowed this specific type of silence to settle, so as to introduce the students to the
possibility of questions not having direct answers, or at the very least, answers that aren’t
directly procured from the teacher.
Implementing Dialectical Journals
Alongside disrupting the habit of the question/answer process between teacher and
student, I also spent multiple lessons introducing and reinforcing the dialectical journal that
would accompany their reading of Things Fall Apart. This required multiple steps, as I had to
first explain and model the dialectical journal format utilizing the short story collection The
Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien:

Figure 2: Exemplar dialectical journal issued to students
Once the form was properly established, I then set about establishing the importance of the
dialectical journal as a metacognitive tool. I informed the students that the line down the center
of their journals, separating textual evidence from their personal connections and analysis,
allowed for a literal representation of their conversation with the text itself. I stressed the
importance of building an awareness of connectivity in the text by way of their dialectical
journal entries, and tasked the students with recording any instance in which they were
emotionally affected by the novel. It is important to note that, much like nearly every other part
of my research in this class, my focus was on the students increasing their metacognitive
abilities.
Figure 3&4: Sample pages of student’s dialectical journal

My instructions for the dialectical journal entries allowed the students to reflect on connections
to the text regarding their excitement, their confusion, their annoyance or even their boredom
with Things Fall Apart. While basic engagement or interaction with the text was my primary
goal as seen in figures three and four, I noticed that the deeper level of connection I was
instructing my students to attempt was present almost exclusively in the in-class quickwrites.
Examples of this disparity can be see in figures three and four, wherein one student’s dialectical
journal entry is making the assigned emotional connection to the text, “Okonkwo is crazy, he
only beat his wife because she got some leaves for the food and the tree burned, the fact that he
did it in front of everybody gets me so upset and angry.” While I was pleased the student was
engaging with the text in a personal manner, the more incisive and substantial responses were
being written in response to prompts about Chinua Achebe’s authorial intent, “Obviously, in this
particular [Igbo] culture, they are very patriarchal and male-dominated, but this does not
necessarily [mean] these gender roles are good, he is just using them to add more flavor and
detail to ‘Things Fall Apart’.” This information would directly influence my structuring of my
initial Socratic seminar.
Introducing Complexity in Small Group Discussions
My next step in building towards the first Socratic seminar was to increase the
complexity of the questions posed to the class, both in small group discussion and in the
quick-writes for the students’ journals. Near the middle of the novel, I noticed an unfortunate
trend regarding the completion of journal entries. While the graph below depicts the entire
chapter-by-chapter run of entries, my data set upto the point right before the first Socratic
seminar was through chapter 10.

Figure 5: Chapter by chapter checks of student entries in dialectical journals
Clearly, I needed to reassert the importance of the dialectical journal in the context of the
entire novel unit. I did so over the next two weeks by increasing the complexity of the questions
posed to the class, both for journal entries and for small group discussion. Furthermore, I
maintained a position of almost entirely pushing the questions back on the students .This did not
mean that I expected more precision in their entries/discussion; I was not searching for
immediate recall of scenes and characters complete with page specific citation. Rather, I was
presenting the students an even greater challenge, that being, engaging with the novel in a far
more personal and intellectually experimental way.
The most direct and affecting example of this was when a female student, during a
discussion about narrative motifs, asked earnestly if yams played some sort of pivotal role
throughout the novel. I responded by asking her what she thinks, to which she replied “Well,
they’re referred to as the ‘king of crops,’ and also that rice was a feminine crop, so I was
thinking maybe there’s something to those things being important...or...I dunno.” This
unfortunately got a resounding laugh from the entire class. I let commotion run its course, but
kept my focus on the student who asked the question and made sure not to smile. I then turned
the question to the class, “Did anyone else notice that yams were referred to as the ‘king of
crops’?” There were some nervous glances around as a few hands went up alongside the student
who originally posed the question, and a few more were raised when I asked about rice/female
crop reference. I let the final question hang for a beat and looked around the room. This was by
no means a wholesale revelation; only eight students in total had raised their hand during this
small exchange. However, I found this moment incredibly pivotal in my relationship with the
class as a whole. No students were laughing. They weren’t fidgeting either, though. I could see
many of them thinking, or the very least considering this new piece of information, and, more
importantly, I could see the student who had originally posed the question--She had seen seven
other students who shared her insight but hadn’t had her courage to give it voice. One was even
at her table. I saw them joking about it later in the period.
Socratic Seminar 1
I held the class’ first Socratic seminar a little over a month after meeting the class,
witnessing their first Socratic seminar, and assessing their collective need to improve their
overall discourse. I had ascertained through my observations that increased structure and
scaffolding would greatly benefit the class as a whole, so I designed a lead up lesson to the
Socratic seminar that focused primarily on simultaneously increasing student connectivity and
decreasing social anxiety by constantly shuffling the groups and giving clear instructions as to
what will be discussed at each stage.

Figure 6: Introductory slide for first Socratic seminar
The learning activities chosen for this particular lesson were selected specifically to
ground each student in a supportive classroom culture which overtly permits answers such as “I
don’t know” and “I’m not sure.” By starting the entire class off individually filling out
worksheets (figure 7) which prompted the students to list their own personal confusions and
struggles with the novel, the initial discomfort with not knowing was confronted. Then, by
expanding to a think/pair/share, the students were given the opportunity to engage with a fellow
vulnerable classmate and share that discomfort, thus demystifying it. The groups then continued
to grow and reconfigure themselves until the entire class was participating in a large Socratic
Seminar. This incremental growth worked to fatigue the students’ inhibitions towards sharing
their thoughts in a free-wheeling public forum by constantly prompting them to interact with new
students in different groups.

The Worksheet
Figure 7: Front page of Socratic seminar 1 worksheet
The worksheet the students carried with them throughout the 90-minute lesson worked
first to bolster their confidence by prompting them to privately list parts of Things Fall Apart that
confuse them/interest them. I modeled this by showing the students a video I researched due to
my confusion regarding the inclusion of locusts in one chapter of “Things Fall Apart,” and the
characters’ overwhelmingly positive response to them. I played the video, stopping at numerous
points to ask what the class thought of the footage of an enormous locust swarm consuming
entire fields of crops, to which the continually replied “Gross!” and “Disgusting!” while others
began to question slightly deeper, “Wait, is this what really happened in the book? Why would
that be a good thing?” Once they’ve filled out the first two questions, the students were then
tasked with sharing their answers with a classmate next to them.
Expanding the Groups and Sharing Knowledge
Once a basic level of comfort was established with their desk partners sharing out their
mutual confusions, a quick share-out was held to alert the class to any whole-group shared
confusions. The students then got back to the worksheet, filling out the four-squared table at the
bottom of the page, “Which characters do you feel you know? Why? Which characters feel
unclear to you? Why? What do you know about the story so far? Why? Which parts feel unclear
to you so far? Why?” This information was then shared out again, although this time in slightly
larger group of three to four students. In these small discussions, I observed students finding
common ground in their confusions, but still working collaboratively, as well as unprompted, to
situate themselves more concretely in the novel’s plot. They did this by asking each other
questions to try and fill in the gaps of their knowledge, thus engaging their own confusions in a
productive manner according to Flavell’s definition of metacognition.
Forming the Suit Groups
Once the students had experienced sharing out their confusions and collective knowledge
on the subject, the groups were expanded once more via a random distribution of playing cards,
with groups assigned by card suit. This larger group discussion was more straightforward, with
groups of nine students working towards accumulating a predetermined amount of information
about one of four predetermined topics (Figure 8). The questions assigned to each group:
HEARTS - How does Okonkwo convey emotions to his family and friends? What does
Okonkwo love? Who does Okonkwo love?
CLUBS - How does violence factor into Okonkwo’s life and the Ibo culture? Have there
been any overt acts of violence carried out in the novel so far? Against whom?
DIAMONDS - What objects have value in the village of Umofia? How about traditions
or ceremonies? What is valued least?
SPADES - Why do you think Chinua Achebe spends so much time on festivals, cooking,
farming, yams and...locusts? WHAT is going on with all those locusts?

Figure 8: Back page of Socratic seminar 1 worksheet
These questions worked wonderfully to provoke the students’ individual knowledge of the book
by way of their opinions, which mimicked the process they had grown accustomed to in the
dialectical journals. The most robust discussion I observed was in the “Hearts” group, wherein
almost every one of the 9 students had their own opinion and textual evidence to support their
answer to what or who does Okonkwo love? Three students in particular displayed both
increased critical thinking and metacognition as they verbally traded examples,
Student A: I don’t think Okonkwo loves anybody. He never says it anywhere. Even with his
daughter [Ezinma], he just says he wishes she were a boy in front of his actual son,
Nwoye.
Student B: But what about when Okonkwo chases after his wife [stops, searches through novel]
Ekwefi in [stops and searches again] in chapter nine, I think, when Okonkwo follows
Ekwefi when she’s running after Ezinma and the Oracle? That kinda shows that he loves
like one of his wives, right [laughter]?
Student C: Wait, wait, I’ve got something crazy [students turn]. What if it’s not about who
Okonkwo loves, but if Okonkwo actually can love anybody at all [students ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ and
laugh]. Right?
This particular exchange displays a clear advancement of critical thought and
metacognition, as the discussion is focused primarily on presenting individual perspectives on
ideas and interacting with them in a public forum. Furthermore, the students are unconsciously
enacting Piaget’s constructivist learning process by both assimilating new information and
accommodating it to produce new knowledge.
Enacting the Socratic Seminar
During this discussion, the students were informed of the cards/suits secondary purpose,
that being a means of eliciting at least one response from each student, as well as prompting
those who have already participated to encourage their fellow classmates/suit-group members to
participate through leading questions or encouragement. The final three steps were to display a
video recording of the epigraph to the novel and review the expected Socratic norms. This slow
build towards the eventual reveal of the Socratic seminar prompt allowed students to recalibrate
their smaller “suit-group” research and begin grafting it on to the whole-class prompt.
Figure 9: Socratic seminar norms slide which stayed up during the discussion
The prompt was as follows, “The title of the novel is derived from the William Butler Yeats
poem entitled The Second Coming, concerned with the second coming of Christ. The completed
line reads: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." What layers of meaning are discernible
when this completed line is applied to the story?”
The Socratic seminar itself got off to a very quick start. Students reacted to the turning in
of the playing cards as a piece of extrinsic motivation. I was able to track who had and had not
spoken, but placing myself as the sole collector of the cards, I became the fulcrum of the
exchanges. I directed the students to respond to each other and ignore my presence. The
discussion then refocused on the prompt on the board. I observed the vast majority of students
looking through their worksheets to find relevant points to add to the discussion. I also observed
students growing slightly frustrated at their inability to voice the insights they had written on
their worksheets, because in a room of thirty-six students, the format of a Socratic seminar only
allows for one voice at a time. Whispered side conversations began to become audible during the
course of the Socratic seminar, but each time I addressed the two to three students talking, I was
informed they were discussing one of the points either recently put forth by a classmate in the
discussion, or one of their written points on their worksheets. The course of the Socratic seminar
was not going the way I had hoped, but the level of student engagement was still fairly high due
to the worksheets.
The level of discourse was higher than any other group discussion I had observed in the
class to this point, but I also noticed the flow of the discussion was choppy and sporadic.
Because I had instituted the card collection expectation, interesting questions or speculations
such as “Is Okonkwo’s behavior justified because he grew up in a male-dominated culture?” and
“What do you think the locusts represent? They’re obviously foreshadowing, but, like, of what?”
were consistently cut off and redirected so that another student could participate turn in their
card. Once the cards had all been turned in though, the discussion became much less rigid, and
ideas were able to be presented and investigated far more thoroughly.
In one particular exchange near the very end of the period, I was extremely excited to see
two students bounce their ideas off each other while the entire class paid very close attention:
Student A: Wait, so, I agree. If things are going to fall apart in Things Fall Apart [laughter],
then what’s going to happen?
Student B: Well there were the locusts, right?
Student A: Yeah.
Student B: And this is taking place during the colonial period?
Student A: Right, from the John Greene video.
Student B: So that means white people are coming, right?
Student A: Oh wait, that’s what that little part about albino people was all about?
Student B: Well, I think so. Maybe. But it would make sense, right?
In terms higher order thinking, the metacognitive aim of the lesson, as well as the
Socratic seminar in general, signaled students to examine their own reasoning which, in turn,
naturally led them to questioning the author’s. At each stage of the lesson’s group activities,
from pairs to table groups to suit groups and eventually the whole class seminar, the students
were reminded of their task to engage the reading and questions at hand both literally and
abstractly. This resulted in the review of the novel’s plot being something of a symptom of the
far more important, and difficult focus of the lesson; attempting to get the students to engage
with the text on an analytical, not superficial, level.
Findings
My inaugural Socratic seminar of my teaching career was simultaneously a success and
an outright disaster. I had provided so much scaffolding that it’s now obvious I choked off the
students creativity, which is one of the main components of critical thought and metacognition.
This scaffolding, meaning the worksheets and the small group work in preparation for the
Socratic seminar, did prove extremely useful once the whole class Socratic seminar was able to
settle, be done with the participation cards and get into a rhythm of discussion.
Increased scaffolding does not ensure increased engagement. The playing card
distribution technique, while somewhat stilted and clunky (most notably during the beginning of
the Socratic seminar itself) did in fact prove fruitful by the lesson’s end as everyone in the class
was compelled to speak at least once and, more importantly, those students that were already
comfortable speaking were prompted to reimagine their roles within the conversation beyond just
participants to something more like facilitators. Certain students, however, especially those in the
far corners of the room, figured out the logistics of the “game” and decided to contribute once
and then be done with it. I think I’d been too worried about running the Socratic seminar itself,
and I’d forgotten about the ideals I was endeavoring to impress upon the students: openness and
willingness to be incorrect, as well as increased critical thought and metacognition.
Group sizes have a maximum capacity. I’d taken into account the size of the groups at
each every step, paying particular attention to growing the groups to facilitate the highest level of
engagement...only to dump all the students out of their “Suit groups,” which were functioning
fantastically at nine students max and with a single, pointed prompt to respond to, and into an
enormous rabble of thirty-six.
The card system inadvertently focused the discussion on me. Even though I have
already cited earlier that the format of the Socratic seminar has evolved from the teacher-centric
to more student oriented, my card system inadvertently forced every part of the conversation to
flow through me by assigning myself the role of card collector. I also grouped the students
randomly by way of the playing cards, which, on one hand, would not entirely ensure an
equitable distribution of confident/vocal students to those who were more reserved, but on the
other hand, would possibly prompt those who weren’t aware of their public speaking abilities to
elicit responses from the suit-groupmates once they’d turned in their own participation playing
card. I’m interested in how I might influence the Socratic seminar while it is actually going on,
without my presence as an authorial figure becoming too imposing on the classroom culture. As
mentioned earlier in this paper, there’s a quantifiably “negative correlation indicating that
whenever the teacher showed greater activity, this was accompanied by a decrease in activity
from the corresponding student in the Socratic dialogue” (Battro, 2013, p. 179). While I may not
be able to fully realize this entire procedure for my Cycle-2 lesson and reflections, I can envision
bits and pieces of this practice well within my capacity to implement in the coming month or so.
Specifically, keeping written tabs on who speaks and when during conversations, as well as what
type of contributions are being made, and then halting the seminar for a brief 5 minute reflection
on the data as I read it aloud, could potentially (and, most importantly, with minimal overt
influence) nudge the seminar as it resumes after the 5-minute reflection in a more contemplative
and productive direction.
The cards did allow English language learners to gain experience. The language
demands of the lesson were particularly unique, in that the academic language required was
fairly small, but in hindsight I’m not entirely sure I addressed them with the appropriate level of
detail. One Powerpoint slide was dedicated to the literary term “Epigraph,” as well as one to
establishing which “Socratic seminar norms” were to be expected. Still, I was very cognizant of
the fact that one of the most intimidating impediments to an ELLs open verbal participation in a
class discussion is any discomfort with the language or anticipated judgment from fellow
classmates. Each of the steps of this lesson was designed to subtly chip away at these concerns
and immerse the students, ELL or otherwise, in the struggle of admitting a lack of knowledge
and then working towards filling that gap. Their verbal participation in the Socratic seminar was
noticeably positive, as most ELLs had rarely spoken at all in previous lessons. I observed them
joking with their friends about what they had contributed both during and after the Socratic
seminar.
The card system muddied the data collected. I graded the worksheets for completion
and analyzed the data after the lesson, marking deeper level insights or thoughts with a green
check mark and underlining more superficial thoughts in blue. I then separated out the green and
blue marked worksheets and compared them to the running tab of students who spoke I had
asked my CT to keep during the Socratic seminar. I expected to find the students with green
check marks were also the most frequent speakers, however, there was little to no curve in the
tally marks for how many times each student spoke. I attributed this to the fact that each student
was required to speak at least once, which took time away from those students who might have
wanted to speak more. Similarly, the participation requirement meant that until the majority of
the cards were turned in, discussion topics were introduced and moved on from at a very rapid
pace. Thus the data comparison between the worksheets and the student-speaker tally was very
misleading.
I vastly underestimated my students. Upon each and every one of my increases in
difficulty, my students rose to meet the challenge and exceeded it across the board. This is
something that stands in stark contrast to what my CT has been pushing, and what the
Springboard text by which my entire school lives and breathes with, that the class needs to be
slowed down or more generalized. This is not to say that I am in favor of leaving students who
can’t keep up in the dust, but with the proper amount of scaffolding and support provided by the
teacher, students can excel scholastically at a rate far beyond what they think they’re capable of.
I also distributed the very same exit slip as I did after witnessing the Socratic seminar on my first
day. The results were disheartening, fair, and very illuminating:
Figure 10: Comparison graph of exit slips distributed after the first observed Socratic seminar,
and the first Socratic seminar I held with the class
Next steps
In order to strengthen my students’ learning potentials going forward to Cycle 2, I am
going to concentrate most directly on loosening the scaffolds so as to promote creative/critical
thought, decreasing my role in the discussion, providing more time for student reflection during
and after the class activities to promote metacognition, connecting the students more directly to
the Socratic seminar prompt by having them generate it.

Cycle 2
Cycle 2 is centered around increased autonomy and cognitive complexity for the
students, and far less instructor influence by me. As previously mentioned, the exit slips bore out
a data set that was deeply troubling to me, both as a researcher and an educator, and so I set
about trying to engage the students in abstract literary analysis while still keeping them grounded
in the verifiable facts of the novel.
Altered Class Structure. I focused first on elevating the level difficulty in each of my
small group or whole class discussions. This was achieved by beginning each class with a small
discussion, which I would first model for the class by posing leading questions and then turning
to the group. I also sought to ground my students in the verifiable facts of the novel. As the unit
progressed, I was observing more and more vague language being used in group discussions in
terms of the plot. In order for literary analysis, critical thinking and metacognition to occur, the
students must have a firm grasp on the text, otherwise any sort of abstract thought is impossible.
Thus, I increased the amount of storyboarding activities done during class, so even those who
had fallen behind could still visualize and participate in the group discussions. I continued with
the dialectical journals, although I increased my ability to check on the level of critical thought
the students were exerting in their journals by establishing the routine of utilizing the questions
they raised in their journals as prompts for small group discussions. Lastly, in preparation for the
second Socratic seminar, I designed a “speed dating” lesson that would serve as a substitute for
the overbearing scaffolding of the previous Socratic seminar. It served all the same purposes of
the worksheet and card system, i.e. to prompt the students to admit confusion or say “I don’t
know,” to fatigue their resistance to voicing their thoughts or insights by constantly switching
discussion partners, and to give the students practical experience in sharing information and
collaboratively building new knowledge.
Altered Socratic Seminar. In terms of the second Socratic seminar, I jigsawed the
source material for the discussion by providing each table group (comprised of five to six
students) a poster board with a character-based excerpt from the novel: Okonkwo, Obierika,
Uchendu, Nwoye, Unoka or the narrator. The groups were then tasked with annotating the
excerpt and generating a “high-level” question, before passing the poster board on to the next
group. I detailed the lesson’s steps in a google slide I put up on the Promethean board:
● Step 1: annotate for language choices, meaning, figurative language/literary devices
- Ex. Simile, metaphor, foil...
● Step 2: Develop higher level questions

Questions that do not have a simple answer.
Questions that lead to a rich discussion
Questions that evoke a variety of interpretations
Step 3: Pass your paper clockwise and repeat steps 1 and 2 until your original excerpt
returns back to you.
Once each poster board had been worked on by every table group, the groups were then
combined by physically pushing two table groups’ tables together, forming three discussion
groups comprised of eleven to twelve students. By doing so, I had decreased the Socratic
seminar numbers from thirty-six to twelve, allowing for much more student participation.
Furthermore, each reduced-size Socratic seminar (heretofore referred to as Socratic Circles) had
with them two poster boards that were heavily annotated, and with six unique high level
questions generated by the their classmates. I instructed the students to use those higher level
questions as the prompts for their Socratic Circles, and issued a worksheet to each student so that
they could record the question discussed and new knowledge created. I also assigned roles within
each Socratic Circle, a Facilitator to keep the discussion on track and move the group on to the
next high level prompt when appropriate, and a Record Keeper to keep track of each time a
student spoke. Lastly, I posted the descriptions of the roles on the Promethean board, as well as
the sentence frames to aid in the students discussion. Every part of this Socratic Circle lesson
was designed to maximize student autonomy, intrinsic motivation and connection to the source
material.
Figure 10: Socratic Seminar slide left up during discussion

Description of Implementation
Increasing Complexity in Discussion Prompts. The class finished the novel fairly
shortly after the first Socratic seminar, leaving me with two weeks, or five 90-minute class
periods due to block scheduling, to implement my new standards. I still stressed the importance
of admitting one’s own informational shortcomings, especially in reference to specific parts of
the novel. I was attempting restructure the class’s perception of novel study from a purely
transactional lens, wherein students continually ask the teacher for specific answers to specific
questions, to a more collaborative and constructivist format. This meant first shaking the
students’ fixed mindsets by posing questions and then modeling how one might struggle through
that confusion/Socratic aporia:
Figure 11: Sample introductory slide prompting class discussion on abstract novel concepts
I would regularly begin classes with a slide such as this (see: figure 11), posing an overarching
question to the class about the novel in conjunction with some other form of media so as to
provide myself a daily opportunity to display the individual process of the Socratic Method. I
would first attempt to reason through the slide by asking questions to myself, “Why are the
clocks melting? Why is the clock nearest to the viewer a pocket watch? Why is it closed and not
melting?” After a few of these questions, I would turn to the class and pose a question to be
discussed at their smaller table groups, “What else do you notice about this piece?” Upon issuing
this prompt, I would circulate throughout the class to listen in on the conversations. I was overtly
hands off during this process, as my main goal was to replace my overbearing scaffolding from
Cycle 1 with this more student-oriented and student generated version of Socratic questioning.
Grounding Class in Basic Plot. I did not abandon all my practices from Cycle 1,
however. I continued with a storyboarding activity as both a means to gauge individual
comprehension of the novel, as well as to what degree they have internalized the information. In
both cycles, each table group was given a worksheet with randomized blank comic book cells,
and then tasked with conceptualizing a particular scene or chapter from the novel within the
given cells. These worksheets were then collected and redistributed to different groups, who
were then responsible for deciphering the storyboard they were given and writing the plot of the
scene or chapter on the back of the sheet. As an addition to this exercise from Cycle 1, I required
two boxes on the worksheet to contain the following: 1. An interpretation of a particular
“high-level” questions (in the case of figure 12, the lasting effect throughout the entire novel of
the character Ikemefuna after his execution), and 2. A quote directly from the text which the
student thinks best addresses the prompt.

Figure 12: Sample of student storyboard worksheet
These I implemented this activity three separate classes, receiving completed storyboard
worksheets from every group 100% of the time. Admittedly, the engagement level of this activity
is fairly low, however, each activity was always followed by a reflection in their dialectical
journals which asked two questions:
1) Has your perception of the plot changed during this period? Why or why not?
2) Did this activity aid in your understanding of the novel? Why or why not?
Fostering Deeper Analysis. I transferred the open-ended questions and and elevated
challenge of the initial group discussion into the class activities regarding literary analysis of the
novel. In one class in particular, I distributed a worksheet to be filled out with discussion
prompts that were almost provocatively vague essentially tasking the students to with
collaboratively crafting rudimentary character sketches of the four male characters who are
thematically central to Part II of Things Fall Apart:
Figure 13: Rudimentary character sketch worksheet asking Who, What, How and Why regarding
the four main male characters of Part II of Things Fall Apart.
As the worksheet was mostly white space and bereft of instruction, I was particularly interested
in the types of responses I would receive. Of the thirty-four worksheets that were distributed,
seventeen came back complete, twelve with only 1-2 empty boxes, with five worksheets left
either half or entirely blank. Regardless of completion, however, my main goal was to gauge
how the students would respond to these questions, question each other in their table groups, and
move one level deeper into each character’s motivations.
Of the twenty-nine that were completed or near-completed, I was pleased to find that in
the “Why” column, students were engaging far more thoughtfully with the questions than earlier
in the unit. Figure 13 is a prime example of this, as it shows the student’s progression from the
relatively simplistic interpretation of Obierika’s reason for visiting Okonkwo in exile, “They
have a great relationship,” to Nwoye’s reasoning for his actions, “He couldn’t reconcile with
tradition after Ikemfuna’s death.” Oddly enough, on one sheet that was nearly completely blank
aside form the “What” column, the entire row for the character Uchendu was filled out. I asked
the student why this was the case, to which he replied, “Me and [student] started to figure out a
bunch of stuff once we started really looking at what [Uchendu] said in the book, so we talked
more than we wrote.”
Speed Dating Lesson. This was my final preparatory lesson for the Socratic Circle
assessment. I split the class into four groups, lined them up so group one was facing group two
and group three was facing group four, and then posted the slide below on the Promethean board:
Figure 14: Speed dating slide
The students were then tasked with describing examples of the father/son motif they had found
throughout the novel, with citations to back up their examples listed in their dialectical journals.
As I walked around the class and observed the students discussing their examples over and over
again, I observed two common conversations, either
a) This exercise was silly and they did not understand the point
b) Admissions of having not read the novel
This prompted me to stop the lesson and announce, “If you and your partner have the same
examples, put a tally in your journal next to your example and work together to decide what
emotion is being expressed in your shared text-based example. If you haven’t read and thus
don’t have an example, now would be a great time to get one and record it in your journal!” I set
the class back to speed dating exercise and I noticed an immediate improvement in their
truncated thirty-second conversations.

Once the exercise was finished I issued an exit slip to gauge the students’ abilities to spot
any other motifs throughout the novel, not just the father/son (see figure 15). As the students
were filling out the exit slips, one student posed a half-joke, half-serious question to me, “What
was the point of that?” In keeping with my theoretical and research based aims to convey the
value of each student’s insights and opinions, I returned the question to the student, “What do
you think the point was?” At this point, all side chatter or packing up in the class had fallen
silent. What follows is a paraphrasing of our conversation:
Student: It was kinda pointless, I mean, all I did was say the same thing over and over to like
seven different kids.
Me: And what does that sound like?
Student: What?
Me: What you just said. What does that sound like?
Student: What are you talking about? [laughter]
Me: Consider this...even though sometimes it looks like chaos in here, I’m always trying to do
something. I’m always attempting to show you all something in a new light. So we did speed
dating today, yah? About motifs?
Student: ...yeah, sure.
Me: And what’s a motif?
Student: A repeating theme throughout a story.
Me: That’s right. A motif is something that comes up over and over and subtly starts to-
Student: Oooohhhh [laughter]. So you’re saying what we did today was sorta like a motif?
Me: Maybe just a little [laughter]. But how confident are you in your ability to spot another
motif in Things Fall Apart, and to use that literary term in your conversations, discussions, or in
the Socratic seminar we’re going to hold next class?
It was then that student smiled and repeated, “Alright, alright, alright,” and sat back down. As
the students filed out the door, I collected the exit slips. I was pleased to find that the exercise
had proven fruitful in that it had bolstered the students understanding of a literary term, with
twenty-one expressing confidence in their ability to spot a new motif, six being unsure and only
seven lacking in confidence. What’s more though, the students were prepared, both conceptually
and socially, to analyze the novel in the context of the upcoming Socratic seminar.
Figure 15: Results of exit slip regarding students’ understanding of literary term “motif”
Socratic Seminar 2
My second Socratic seminar with this class was integral to my research. It was my chance
to correct all my mistakes from Cycle 1, as well as build upon the Cycle 2 foundational activities
I had been implementing over the past few weeks. My goal was to manage the size of the class,
provide an adequate frame and appropriate structure for the mini-Socratic seminars (heretofore
referred to as Socratic Circles), while still maintaining an appropriate distance from the students
so as promote the generation of collaborative knowledge and genuine elunchus. I designed this
lesson to follow a similar structure as Cycle 1’s plan: quick individual work to small group work
to Socratic seminar discussions. However, an important distinction in Cycle 2 was that I released
control of the discussion prompts almost entirely to the students. On the day, the students came
in to see this slide on the Promethean board:
Figure 18: Introductory slide shown to students on Socratic seminar 2 day

clearly detailing the day’s activities and introducing them to prospect of developing their thesis
statement from the information gathered via the Socratic Circles (3 - a).
Seeing as I was pinning the generation of each Socratic Circle’s discussion prompts on
the student’s participation in the annotation phase of the lesson, I made sure that each student
was well aware of the expectations of “higher-level” questions. I utilized examples from the
Springboard textbook by providing a general description of a plot point from the book,
“‘Worthless men join the church,” or, “ Sacred python is killed by a convert,” and then
mimicked my modeling of my earlier routine Socrative Method questioning (see figure 11) by
using the docucam to display both the plot point and my reasoning on the Promethean board:
● Plot Point: Worthless men join the church
○ Modeling: “Why were the efulefu, or “worthless” men, attracted to the church?
What attributes might have made them “worthless” to the clan but might be
valued by another clan?”
● Plot Point: Sacred python is killed by a convert
○ “Why didn’t the clan immediately retaliate with violence as the egwugwu, as was
their custom? What would make a person or an entire group act contrary to their
traditions?”
Once the students displayed a general understanding of what was expected of them by offering
up their own questions to the two example plot points,
Student higher level question 1: “What makes a man worthless? What makes a man
worthwhile?
Student higher level question 2: “What would it take for you to go against your family or
friends?
I set them to annotating as a table group their own excerpts as per the instructions above.
By the time the posters had made their way around to each table group, they had been
heavily annotated. Because, after the first round of annotation, table groups were receiving
posters that were already annotated and with at least one higher-level question based upon those
annotations (as seen in figure 19), the level of complexity and abstract thought had markedly
risen in contrast to the first Socratic seminar. I circulated throughout the class during this
process, listening in on conversations but making a distinct effort to be as unobtrusive as
possible. I made note of some of the high level questions so as to track them throughout the
discussion:
“Why did everyone let the messengers go?”
“But why kill yourself when Okonkwo could have gone out ‘guns blazing’ instead?”
“Moment he decides to kill himself?”

Figure 19: Example of student annotations and generation of high level questions
The conversations I observed that resulted from the annotation poster board exercise were
markedly more incisive, contemplative and energetic than Socratic seminar 1. Students were
displaying critical thinking in real time, as well as reflective metacognitive reasoning as they
were pointing to the poster’s annotations or higher level questions and asking “Who underlined
this? Why?” These questions were not expressed in any accusatory or antagonistic end; rather,
the students appeared genuinely invested in finding the source of the higher level questions so
that they might
a) More accurately fill out their Socratic Circle worksheet
b) Gain deeper insight into their classmate’s thought process and the novel as a whole
Figure 19: Example of Socratic Circle “Idea and Evidence” Worksheet

The discussions were generating and replenishing themselves with little to no
involvement from me. Because the prompts were all student generated, the inversion of the
traditional class structure (teacher focused) had been achieved in accordance with Piaget’s theory
of learning and childhood development. Students were working collaboratively to assimilate
their shared knowledge with an aim towards constructing some sort of new, shared knowledge.
Just as with the first observed Socratic seminar and the first one I held, I distributed slips
of paper and posted an exit slip prompt up on the board, asking students to weight in on their
experience with the Socratic Circles, was it a successful learning experience, and would they do
it again? As an added question, I asked the students to write precisely why this particular lesson
was successful or unsuccessful on the back of the slip.
Figure 20: Socratic seminar exit slip 2

Findings
The changes I made from Cycle 1 to Cycle 2 were overwhelmingly positive, both in
content mastery and student experience. The students were visibly more engaged and energetic
throughout the lesson, and their responses collected in the exit slip bear this out quite clearly in
figure 20. More importantly, though, the responses I received on the backs of each exit slip,
asking the student to explain why or why not the Socratic Circles were successful, provided
valuable insight into my research. I broke the responses town into three basic categories.
Decreased group sizes immediately elevated discourse. Twenty nine, or 85% of the exit slips I
collected referenced group size in one way or another. I knew the response to the first Socratic
seminar was not favorable, but I see now that in order to maintain a healthy and evocative
dialectical discussion, students must feel simultaneously expected to speak as well as permitted
to be silent. In a group of thirty six students, it was too easy for the majority of them to lean back
and allow a small number of students to converse only with each other. In a group ten to twelve
students, there is less room to hide. More importantly, though, there’s more opportunity for the
more verbally confident students to elicit responses from their classmates, which is precisely
what I was attempting to accomplish with the rigid structure of the first Socratic seminar.
Loosening scaffolding requirements increased engagement. Twenty, or 58% of the exit slips
mentioned the simplicity of the lesson as a distinct positive. The focus of this lesson was
squarely placed on the student conversations, and the students responded incredibly well to this.
There was still scaffolding present in the form of the annotation poster boards and the
idea/evidence worksheets, but the they were designed more as accompaniments to the
discussions, instead of their sole purposes.

Student generated higher level questions transformed discussions. Fifteen, or 44% of the
students expressed a deeper connection to either the novel or the conversation that took place
during the class period specifically because they knew the source of the higher level questions
was either themselves or one of their classmates. Admittedly, I would have liked this number to
be slightly higher. However, seeing as this was the response I received from the general question,
“Why or why not was this Socratic seminar successful?” I was genuinely enthused by almost
half the class recognizing, in one way or another, that their insights into the novel were
important, and relevant, and worth further investigation.
Next Steps
Unfortunately, Spring Break and state mandated testing overtook the remainder of March
and the majority of April during my research. If I were allotted another month though, my next
steps in implementing both Socratic seminar ideals and the Socratic seminar itself are quite clear;
I would combine the positives of my annotation poster boards and higher level question
generating Socratic Circle lesson with the technological innovations described earlier in my
research, done by Jennifer Dean, Christian Goering and Tara Nutt. Their ability to infuse their
class discussions with recordings, google forms and coded reflective feedback is precisely what I
need to take my Socratic seminars/circles to the next level.
Conclusion
Significance
The ability to convey one’s thoughts in an coherent, incisive and genuine manner is a life
skill as integral to a successful adult life as basic math and literacy. A means to this end can be
found in the classroom that prompts students to engage with art of any medium and trace their
elicited emotions to specific aspects of the piece. In literary analysis, this means being able to
source confusion, anger, elation, boredom or excitement while reading a text, to actual
components of the text on the page. Since every student will engage with a text in their own
unique way, the importance of cultivating an open and supportive classroom culture, as well as
fostering the expectations of a conversation to be more than superficial and “an understanding of
how dialogic instruction...promotes a culture of learning that facilitates intrinsic motivation in
students (20).”
Limitations
It seems counterintuitive to find teaching “talking” difficult, so to speak, in a classroom,
but as evinced by my first attempt at Socratic seminar in my class proved to be just that. The
class size, for one, was something I thought I could negate if I could just find the appropriately
engaging discussion prompts. This only engaged the already participating students, however.
Also, as I was attempting to convey to my students a more abstract and unique way of thinking,
and subsequently expressing those thoughts, I admittedly did not pay nearly enough attention to
the ELL students in the classroom. I think, subconsciously, my over-scaffolding of the first
Socratic seminar was perhaps an attempt to meet this need.
Assessing a student’s ability to talk and to reason is also difficult, so I found myself
struggling to come up with adequate formative assessments. In both cycles, I feel as if I
constructed an appropriate worksheet to accompany the students during the class period, and
coding the data afterwards was not too difficult. It is just that in reflection, I am sure there’s a
more accurate means of assessing students comprehension and engagement during a discussion,
even beyond the technological applications of Jennifer Dean, Christian Goering and Tara Nutt.
Reflection
What was learned overall, lessons learned in teaching, from students, the entire journey
The most affecting and enduring thing I learned from this process was my own blind
spots in my previous life as a high school student. Even though I mention this in my literature
review it bears repeating; I did not fully grasp the ideals of the Socratic seminar, of constructivist
education or critical thought or metacognitive reflection until I was a twenty five year old
undergraduate junior at the University of San Diego. That is when I met Irene Williams and her
unique teaching style, and even then, it took me another semester and then some to really grasp
the idea of allowing myself to think, to reason, and to have confidence in my own opinions and
insights in a piece of literature. I was attempting to instill this within a group of young people at
the age of fifteen to sixteen, decade before I had even considered it, and I was trying to
implement those ideals within the space of a handful of weeks. For the students I reached, I
genuinely feel I had a lasting impact on them. One student in particular, after Cycle 2, asked me
if she could forgo the assigned Springboard essay prompt and write about a motif she felt was
integral to the novel Things Fall Apart. When I asked her what the motif was, she simply replied,
“yams,” and smiled. I kept as calm a demeanor as I could manage, but inside it was bursting. I
asked her, fairly solemnly, “Do you think you can?” She stopped and thought about it for a long
beat, then smiled at me, “Yeah, yeah I think I can.”
At the next staff meeting, I passed out copies of this students paper. I told the story just as
I did here, adding in pertinent details like her failing grades in English in the fall semester of this
year. I asked each English teacher to read the paper and give me their honest opinion, feigning
that I was confused as to how to grade it. Each teacher advised me to treat this student’s paper as
exemplary, an A+, one going so far as to even refer to it as “college-level.”
Countless factors could have influenced why that essay worked out in that student’s
favor, and I am by no means claiming to be the sole source of inspiration for this students
momentary success. Maybe she secretly read novels in her spare time, or even literary analysis
papers. Maybe she thought she was just goofing around with her yams thesis, and that flippancy
accessed some sort of heretofore unknown literary perspective in her mind. Maybe she is just
really good at writing and has yet to realize it. Maybe.
Or maybe she finally accepted her unique and individual take on literature as something
worth investigating, something worth expressing, something worthwhile at all.

Works Cited
Battro, Antonio M., Calero, Cecelia I., Goldin, Andrea P., Holper, Lisa, Pezzatti, Laura,
Shalom, Diego E., Sigman, Mariano (2013). The Cognitive Neuroscience of the
Teacher-Student Interaction. International Mind, Brain, and Education Society and
Blackwell Publishing, 7(3), 177-181.
Boghossian, Peter (2006). “Socratic Pedagogy, Critical Thinking, and Inmate Education.”
The Journal of Correctional Education, 57(1), 42-63.
Boghossian, Peter (2012). Socratic Pedagogy: Perplexity, humiliation, shame and a broken
egg. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(7), 710-720.
Dean, Jennifer S., Goering, Christian Z., Nutt, Tara (2016). Motivating Dialogue: When
Seventh Graders Own Their Learning through Discourse Analysis. Voices from the
Middle, 23(4), 19-24.
Egmond, Marieke C. van, Haber, Frank, Kuhnen, Ulrich, Kuschel, Stefanie, Ozelsel,
Amina, Rossi, Alexis L. 2011. “Challenge me! Communicating in multicultural
classrooms.” Springer Science+Business Media, Published online 27 July 2011.
Flavell, John H., (1979). “Metacognition and Cognitive Monitoring: A New Area of
Cognitive-Developmental Theory.” American Psychologist, 34(10), 906-911.
Fullam, Jordan. 2015. “Listen then, or, rather, Answer”: Contemporary Challenges to
Socratic Education. Educational Theory, 65(1), 53-71.
Hlinak, Matt (2014). The Socratic Method 2.0. Journal of Legal Studies Education, 31(1),
1-20.
Kalman, Laura. 1995. “To Hell with Langdell!.” Law and Social Inquiry, 20(3), 771-773.
Kipp-Newbold, Rebecca, 2010. “That’s Fierce! Collaboration in the English Classroom.”
The English Journal, 99(5), 74-78.
Schneider, Jack. 2012. “Socrates and the Madness of Method.” The Phi Delta Kappan,
94(1), 26-29.
Wesling, Donald. 1997. “Constructivist Theory and the Literary Canon.” Hungarian
Journal of English and American Studies, 3(1), 139-148.
Wittingham, Jeff. Huffman, Stephanie, 2006. “Socratic Dialogue and Order in Online Chat
Rooms.” Educational Technology, 46(5), 50-52.

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Running head: IMPLEMENTING SOCRATIC SEMINAR IDEALS 1

Implementing Advanced Socratic Seminar Ideals in a 10​th​ Grade English Class

University of San Diego

During my time as a student teacher, I conducted research with an aim towards

with increasingly specific scaffold and supportive structures implemented.

Keywords: Socratic seminar, Socratic Method, Metacognition, Aporia, Elunchus,

Implementing Socratic Seminar Ideals in a 10th Grade Classroom

you are and why any of it even matters, if at all.”

casts a sort of cave-like pall over the class at times.

conferences, and administrative observations.

students do succumb to age-appropriate outbursts of disobedience. These outbursts most often

proven impressive time and time again.

before my arrival, were rare. Furthermore, my CT had expressed to me a desire to increase

0-60% area, and remaining five with grades of 93% or above.

adhering almost entirely to the Springboard educational program. Little personalization is

each sentence with an upward inflection as if asking us to corroborate or validate their

not entirely sure I had at this point in my student teaching experience.

Action Research Question

(monitoring student to student), and finally, individual student elucidation (Socratic

seminars/cirlces). All of this is in service of my overall question:

thinking and metacognition in my classroom, it is important to understand the theoretical basis

in a provisional space that only begets more inquiry and questioning.

the Constructivist theory regarding childhood learning,

According to Piaget (1952), a child establishes an understanding of reality when he or she

can do and what a child wants to do (Inuoue, 2012, p. 78).

specialization of new knowledge (Inuoe 2012). Piaget viewed intelligence as a biological

adaptation to the environment characterized by these processes” (Inuoue, 2012, p. 78).

Critical Thinking and Metacognition

defined via six core elements:

1. Interpretation: comprehend and express meaning or significance 2. Analysis: identify

reasoning 6. Self-regulation: monitor one's cognitive activities (Boghossian, 2006, p. 46).

persuasion, oral comprehension, reading comprehension, writing, language acquisition, attention,

state of ​not knowing​:

the absence of these feelings, to a clear representation of something, to a definite sense of

what they should do next (Flavell, 1979, p. 911).

(2008) ​Culture, dialogue and learning: Notes on an emerging pedagogy​ (p.93)).

The Socratic Seminar

Throughout my research, I found myself in a near constant state of recalibration. The

educational practice should not be taken to indicate a faithful reproduction of Socrates’

finally relenting to the advent of technology in the classroom?

scientific method, “1) Wonder, 2) Hypothesis, 3) Elunchus (refutation and cross-examination), 4)

produced in a laboratory study (Boghossian, 2012).

pedagogical intent and motivation begin to arise,

Socrates to his conclusions. The ​elenchus​, therefore, is part of perfected stultification

posing leading questions in the second step (Fullam 2015, p. 69)

essence, teaches...to be like Socrates rather than to think independently…Socrates develops

most benign, or, in case of cross examinations in law school:

silence women (Kalman, 1995, p. 772)

Innovation and Technology

forethought I have yet to employ in my own lessons.

beyond the physical classroom.

dialectical conversation? As Robin Alexander notes in a study out of the University of

Nutt’s lesson plans and reflective activities.

Hard Data Studies for the Future

description of eastern education,

Authorities must be treated with a great deal of respect…Learning is see as an effortful

setting which accommodates one style of learning over the other.

gathered by numerous cognitive collectors i.e. “a hyperscanning setup based on functional

successful Socratic dialogue.

While overtly scientific, I found this article’s perspective incredibly illuminating

failure. The processes of building towards a successful Socratic seminar, of cultivating a

dialogue” (Battro, 2013, p. 179).

either inconsequential or augmentative. If, however, the student is disengaged or hesitant to

Implementing Advanced Socratic Seminar Ideals in a 10th Grade English Class

state of not knowing:

(2008) Culture, dialogue and learning: Notes on an emerging pedagogy (p.93)).

Socrates to his conclusions. The elenchus, therefore, is part of perfected stultification

Figure 1: Observed results of initial Socratic seminar

Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien:

Figure 2: Exemplar dialectical journal issued to students

Figure 3&4: Sample pages of student’s dialectical journal

Figure 5: Chapter by chapter checks of student entries in dialectical journals

Figure 6: Introductory slide for first Socratic seminar

Figure 7: Front page of Socratic seminar 1 worksheet

Okonkwo love? Who does Okonkwo love?

Figure 8: Back page of Socratic seminar 1 worksheet

I vastly underestimated my students. Upon each and every one of my increases in

Figure 10: Socratic Seminar slide left up during discussion

that confusion/Socratic aporia: