Critical thinking : 4
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Critical thinking
for
higher Education
Critical thinking
Socratic questioning
The art of Socratic questioning is intimately
connected with critical thinking
because the art
of questioning is important to excellence of
thought. Socrates argued for the necessity of
probing individual knowledge, and
acknowledging what one may not know or
understand.
Critical thinking has the goal of
reflective thinking that focuses on what
should be believed or done about a topic.
Socratic questioning adds another level of
thought to critical
thinking, by focusing on
extracting depth, interest and assessing the
truth or plausibility of thought. Socrates
argued that a lack of
knowledge is not bad,
but students must strive to make known what
they don't know through the means of a form
of critical thinking.
Critical thinking and Socratic questioning
both seek meaning and truth. Critical thinking
provides the rational tools to monitor, assess,
and perhaps reconstitute or re-direct our
thinking and action.
This is
what educational reformer
described as reflective inquiry: "in which the
thinker turns a subject over in the mind,
giving it serious and consecutive
consideration." Socratic questioning is an
explicit focus on framing self-directed,
disciplined questions to achieve that goal.
The technique of questioning or leading
discussion is spontaneous, exploratory, and
issue-specific. The Socratic educator listens
to the viewpoints of the student and
considers the alternative points of view.
It is
necessary to teach students to sift through
all information,
form a connection to prior
knowledge, and transform the data to new
knowledge in a thoughtful way.
It has been proposed in different studies that
the "level of
thinking that occurs is influenced
by the level of questions asked".
Thus,
utilizing the knowledge that students don't
know stimulates their
ability to ask more
complex questions. This requires educators
to
create active learning environments that
promote and value the role of critical thinking,
mobilizing their ability to form complex
thoughts and questions.
Pedagogy
When
teachers use Socratic questioning in
teaching, their purpose may be to
probe student
thinking, to determine the extent of student
knowledge on a given topic, issue or subject,
to model Socratic questioning for students or
to help students analyze a concept or line of
reasoning.
It
is suggested that students should 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 and in
following-out the
implications of what they and others think.
In fact, Socrates himself thought that questioning
was the only defensible form
of teaching.
In teaching, teachers can use
Socratic questioning for at least
two purposes:
1-To deeply probe student thinking, to help
students begin to distinguish what they know
or understand from what they do not know or
understand (and to help them develop
intellectual humility in the process).
2-To foster students' abilities to ask Socratic
questions, to help
students acquire the powerful
tools of Socratic dialogue, so that they
can use
these tools in everyday life (in questioning
themselves and others). To this end, teachers
can model the questioning strategies they
want
students to emulate and employ. Moreover,
teachers need to
directly teach students how to
construct and ask deep questions. Beyond
that,
students need practice to improve their
questioning abilities.
Socratic questioning illuminates the importance
of questioning in
learning. This includes
differentiating between systematic and
fragmented thinking, while forcing individuals
to understand the root of their knowledge and
ideas. Educators who support the use of Socratic
questioning in educational settings argue that it
helps students become active and independent
learners.
Examples of Socratic questions that
are
used for students in educational
settings:
1-Getting students to clarify their thinking and
explore the origin of their thinking
e.g., 'Why do you say that?', 'Could you explain
further?'
- e.g., 'Is this always the case?',
- Why do you think that this assumption
- holds here?'
- e.g., 'Why do you say that?',
- 'Is there reason to doubt this evidence?'
- e.g., 'What is the counter-argument?',
- 'Can/did anyone see this another way?'
- e.g., 'But if...happened, what else would result?',
- 'How does...affect...?'
- e.g., 'Why do you think that I asked that
- question?',
'Why was that question important?',
- 'Which of your questions turned out to be the
- most useful?'
1
Socratic Questioning and
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?
4 Defining Socratic Questioning:
Socratic questioning is disciplined questioning
that can be used to explore thought in many
directions and for many purposes,
5 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
6 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.
7 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.
8 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.
9 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.