Heather Coffey at the University of North Carolina writes:
“Developed from Plato’s Socratic Dialogues, the Socratic method of teaching is a student-centered approach that challenges learners to develop their critical thinking skills and engage in analytic discussion. The Socratic method can be used at any grade level and with all subject areas, and lessons can be adapted to fit a changing society.”
The History of the Socratic Method
“An ancient form of discourse, the Socratic method is over 2400 years old and is reportedly founded on Socrates’ belief that lecture was not an effective method of teaching all students. According to Matt Copeland, Socrates valued the knowledge and understanding already present within people and thought that using this knowledge could potentially be beneficial in advancing their understanding. Copeland explains, by helping students examine their premonitions and beliefs while at the same time accepting the limitations of human thought, Socrates believed students could improve their reasoning skills and ultimately move toward more rational thinking and ideas more easily supported with logic.”
The Socratic method of teaching is based on Socrates’ theory that it is more important to enable students to think for themselves than to merely fill their heads with “right” answers. Therefore, he regularly engaged his pupils in dialogues by responding to their questions with questions, instead of answers. This process encourages divergent thinking (i.e., questions that allow for a variety of possible answers and encourages students to think at a deeper level) rather than convergent thinking (i.e., questions that require students to narrow in or converge on one, and only one, correct answer).
Professor Rob Reich at Stanford University writes:
“Socratic inquiry is emphatically not “teaching” in the conventional sense of the word. The Leader of Socratic inquiry is not the purveyor of knowledge, filling empty minds of largely passive students with facts and truths acquired through years of study. As the people in the School of Education would say, the Socratic teacher is not “the sage on the stage.” In Socratic method, there are no lectures and no need of rote memorization.”