Erick WilberdingRezensionen

Socratic Method is a book that explores the application of Socratic principles initially in the fields of Medicine, Science, and Law. It begins with an overview of the Socratic Method and what is commonly termed Critical Thinking. The author addressed this opening topic in more depth in an earlier book which I have not read, but reprises it the start of this second book before going off into concrete applications of the Socratic Method. Following the exploration in the professional fields the author then gives a general template via role-playing that might be helpful in a general classroom setting. Finally, there is a section on the possibility of writing a dialogue in the style of Socrates; as was done historically by a number of authors; the author gives the example of Voltaire, but one might also recall Newton's famous dialogue as well. The book ends the book with an overview of the current state of philosophy in the K-12 system as compared to our European counterparts.

Overall, I found this book an interesting take on the application of Socratic principles, but there is a likely hood that some people may be turned off by the author's political bent which is quite apparent throughout; there is a danger of 'leading' the student into a preconceived conclusion, rather than providing for open and honest inquiry. In summary, I found this book to be full of useful information, and thought-provoking at points, but one should certainly feel free to adapt the material in a less partisan way if possible.

This book might be of interest to people who enjoy philosophy, or work in the field of education; secondarily to those are work in the fields of medicine, science, or law.

This book might be helpful for teachers who don't know much about Socratic methods in terms of identifying it and understanding it. Quite often, when teachers pick up new ideas "on the fly" they don't really fully understand them, and intentions can get misconstrued. The problem with this book is that it would be hard to use in the Secondary classroom because most Secondary teachers are specialists, and there are very few applications mentioned. If a variety, that applies to different subject areas were mentioned, the work might be more useful.

Review of Socratic Methods in the Classroom: Encouraging Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Through Dialogue by Erick Wilberding, Ph.D.

Let me save others some time. Page 1 of Socratic Methods in the Classroom (“SMITC”) is where I discovered that this is not the book I thought it would be:

"Today the challenge is to recognize and extract the elements from the literary context, and plant them again within a creative and spontaneous pedagogical and oral context. Teach Like Socrates (Wilberding, 2014) explained how this can be done. Socratic Methods in the Classroom complements and extends this explanation by examining some of the most conspicuous adaptations that have taken root and prospered."

In other words, if you want to learn how to use the Socratic method (“SM”) in the classroom, this is not the book to start with. Get Wilberding’s first SM book. SMITC focuses more on the history of the use of SM.

However, if you are already using SM in the classroom or elsewhere and are interested in how to expand or more effectively apply it, this is a good resource by identifying how SM has been used in various contexts historically.

I personally was hoping to find persuasion tools that might transfer to a business/corporate setting. While I learned a bit and gleaned a couple of ideas, I think Teach Like Socrates might be a better resource for that.

Long on theory, short on practice -- Socratic Methods in the Classroom spends a lot of time waxing philosophical about the differences among the various ancient dialogs and makes something of a too-large point about there not being any one "socratic method.' I particularly loved learning the word 'maieutic' -- I'm sure I'll use it in Scrabble some day, but the introduction of a fancy vocabulary word didn't do much for my understanding of how to use the technique. Wilberding admits that the method(s!) may not be easily transferrable to a typical large-classroom setting; I have trouble imagining how it would work with kids of marginal verbal skills, or ELLs. I appreciated the many concrete examples -- but as a science teacher, I found his science examples lacking an understanding of how we really would do inquiry and critical thinking in the classroom. Mostly, the author settles on drawing out students' observations (maybe in elementary school, but by middle school we're collecting *data*) and concludes "teachers can maieutically question within a Socratic discussion on the nature of science..." Yeah -- we can afford to spend maybe a period on that, and then move on to actually doing science. Otherwise, the questions he suggests are just plain good teaching. Nothing particularly novel there.

A viable introduction to Socrates methods. I think this would be a good starting place for anyone wanting to bring these methods into their classroom or workplace meetings.

Teach Like Socrates aims to provide two things: first, an explanation of what Socratic dialogue is and why one might want to use it in the classroom; second, a practical guide for how to implement Socratic discussions in the classroom.

In the first goal, I feel the book succeeds. Wilberding gives a fair degree of detail about Socratic dialogue and how it has been used in education, historically, devoting about a quarter of the book solely to a discussion of Scorates's life and the definition (or, rather, definitions) of Socratic dialogue that will be used in the book.

In the second goal, I feel the book was less successful. Wilberding does provide what may be a useful framework for planning Socratic discussions, including 'worked examples' of lesson plans, but much of the advice and discussion boils down to "plan in advance".

I would have liked to see more discussion of how a Socratic discussion could be led in a real classroom. The dialogues of Plato, of course, are literary works, not transcriptions, and in a real classroom convenient examples won't always fall out of the discussion when needed. The book is adamant that the teacher not interject into the discussion with mini-lectures, or lead students too strictly, or, frankly, express any opinion at all. The question of how to guide the discussion in the face of actual student participation is simply dismissed: ". . . the dialogue in the classroom will make any necessary adaptation . . ."

The book offers examples of three lessons: "Induction and the Use of Examples: Lysis", "The Use of Counterexamples: Xenophon's Memorabilia", and "Slipery Slopes and Order Bias". All important topics relevant to the theme of critical thinking the book promotes, but also all very similar topics: they relate to argument, and so the use of a dialogue as example is natural.

Socrates's discussions were not about the business of arguing, they were about ethics or politics or a variety of other topics. If, as Wilberding says, Socratic discussions are such good teaching tools, why not show how to use them to teach algebra, biology, music, or any other topic which isn't intimately bound up with the idea of dialogue itself?

I do think that Socratic discussions can be useful in the classroom, if perhaps not for every classroom at all times, but Teach Like Socrates needs to do more to establish how to use Socratic discussions to aid in teaching the topics that students need to learn, rather than simply advising that amenable topics be chosen so that Socratic discussion may be used. The goal, after all, is the education of the students, not the promulgation of the method.