Art of Questioning

“Teaching is the art of asking questions” – Socrates

The Socratic Method of Questioning is an approach to teaching based on disciplined, rigorously thoughtful dialogue. The instructor uses this method to encourage students to engage in deeper thought and questioning of their beliefs. The following video provides a useful interaction of Socratic Questioning in action.

The instructor professes ignorance of the topic in question in order to guide student thinking and promote engaged dialogue. It is a method used to compel students to examine ideas logically and question the validity of ideas. It is also known as dialectical approach, a discourse holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments. Moreover, it is used to correct misconceptions and contradictions in the hopes of arriving at reliable knowledge construction. This method can guide thought in many directions; explore ideas, get to the truth, open up issues, uncover assumptions, analyze concepts and distinguish what we know vs. what we do not know.

This theoretical framework is systematic and deeply disciplined and focuses on fundamental concepts and issues. It has gained popularity in education, particularly in the last 2 decades and is extensively used in psychotherapy and medicine.

The pedagogical approach to this strategy is to:

• probe student thinking
• determine the extent of student knowledge
• model socratic questioning for students
• encourage students to use socratic questioning to reason through complex issues

There are different types of questions in this model:

Questions of Clarification: “Why do you say that?” “Can you explain…?”

Probing Assumptions: “Is this always the case?”

Probing Reasons and Evidence: “Is there reason to doubt this evidence?”

Probing Viewpoint and Perspective: “Did anyone see this another way?”

Probing Implications and Consequences: “If events followed a different order, what would happen?”

Questions about the Question: “Why do you think I asked this particular question?”