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Socratic Questioningand Critical Thinking - Coggle Diagram
Socratic Questioningand Critical Thinking
Thinking is driven by questions :
no questions
means
no understanding
Questions to guide our thinking:
What is Socratic questioning?
What is critical thinking?
What is the relationship between Socratic questioning and critical thinking?
How can understanding critical thinking help us improve our ability to question?
How can we help students develop Socratic questioning abilities?
Defining Socratic Questioning: Socratic questioning is disciplined questioning that can be used to explore thought in many directions and for many purposes,
to explore complex ideas
to get to the truth of things
to open up issues and problems
to uncover assumptions
to analyze concepts
to distinguish what we know from what we don’t know, and
to follow out logical implications of thought
The key to distinguishing Socratic questioning from questioning per se is that Socratic question is always systematic and deep, focusing on complex concepts, principles, theories, issues or problems.
It may or may not be self-directed. And it is usually done orally, rather than in written form.
Teachers, students, or indeed anyone can construct Socratic questions and engage in Socratic dialog.
When we use Socratic questioning in teaching, our purpose may be:
to probe student thinking
to determine the extent of students’ knowledge on a given topic, issue or subject
to model Socratic question for them, or
to help them analyze a concept or line of reasoning.
In the final analysis we want students to learn the discipline of Socratic questioning, so that they begin to use it in reasoning through complex issues, in understanding and assessing the thinking of others, in following-out the implications of what they, and others think.
Thus, in teaching, our approach should be two-fold:
To deeply probe student thinking, to help them begin to distinguish what they know or understand from what they do not know or understand.
To foster students’ abilities to question socratically. We want to model intellectual moves that we would want students to emulate and begin to use in everyday life.