Meeting in IDRIJA, Slovenia

Exchanging good practice - Socratic seminar

On the second day of our conference the teaching staff attempted to present to us the new, more innovative and engaging methods of teaching that have the potential to increase the participation of students during the classes themselves as this specific method of teaching involved a debate.

Listening to the instructions

However, there is a slight twist in the “plot” of this debate, while the usual debates have a narrator who asks question and leads the conversation towards the conclusion this debate didn’t have a “leader” of the conversation. In the beginning the teacher first lied down some ground rules for the debate which were quite basic such as: “no insulting” and “no talking when others speak” but on the other hand there was one rule which got my attention the most: the students cannot raise their hands to get their right to speak and without any leadership that had the potential to cause some trouble in the conversation.

Afterwards we were all given a short poem and were asked to read it. Although I felt quite confident that I understood the poem myself, I wanted to make sure that others did as well and asked if anyone of my fellow students would mind if we read the poem out loud. That turned out into a good idea and with every participant in the conversation aware of the topic we are discussing, we started the debate.

Naturally, there was some confusion at the beginning and the conversation jumped between different points, none of which were properly discussed. But towards the end each one of us got the feeling of our own strengths and weaknesses in this debate and the analyze of the poem went quite well.

In the end the teacher gave each one of us feedbacks on how we could improve ourselves and in my opinion that is the best part of this exercise as the students in the end get the feedback they need to improve themselves in the future.

To conclude, I believe that in the opinion of most participants the exercise turned out quite successful but without proper guidance any debate might stray off its original purpose and needs at least a bit of control from the side of the teacher.

Aljaž Seljak