General Introduction

This blog is part of my Differentiation and Adaptive Teaching Knowledge Base.

I use the terms differentiation and adaptive teaching synonymously. To me, they are the same, as genuine differentiation has always involved adapting your planning and your teaching to meet the needs of the learners in front of you.

For me, differentiation is all the practical strategies, activities and techniques teachers use to personalise learning.

For ease, we can break that down into my five categories of differentiation: Activities, Questioning, Words and Writing, Things the Teacher Can Do and Things You Can Ask Learners to Do or Use.

This blog falls into the category of activities.

Using Socratic Dialogue

A Socratic dialogue is a conversation between the teacher and one or two learners.

It involves the teacher using a combination of questions, arguments, counterarguments, examples and counter examples to challenge learners’ thinking.

The method stems from the character of Socrates in Plato’s dialogues.

In those texts, Socrates, a philosopher who lived in Athens in Ancient Greece, is presented as someone who challenges others to think about their own thinking.

He does this by demonstrating inconsistencies in their thought and by showing how the assumptions by which they live and reason are not necessarily sound.

In doing this, Socrates’ intention was to get closer to truth, to cultivate wisdom and to encourage others to think critically about their own ideas, as well as about the society in which they lived.

Two uses of Socratic dialogue are as follows.

First, while the class are engaged in a task, the teacher chooses a learner and asks them to explain their thinking about the topic.

A dialogue ensues in which the teacher challenges the learner’s ideas using thoughtful questioning, by offering alternative arguments and by suggesting counter examples.

The point is not to prove the learner is wrong and the teacher right.

It is to encourage the learner to think more carefully, critically and clearly about their own ideas.

Second, the teacher engages in a dialogue as described, except it is now treated as the main activity.

The whole class listens as the teacher discusses whatever is at issue with one or two learners, in a Socratic manner.

Other learners can join in as the dialogue progresses.

This creates a model dialogue the whole class can observe.

It tends to be most effective when done with one or two more-able learners, for the simple fact that they are more likely to be able to sustain a dialogue of this nature for longer.

Socratic Questioning Styles

Subsequent philosophers have suggested Socrates asks roughly four types of question during his dialogues:

• Gadfly
• Midwife
• Stingray
• Ignoramus

Gadfly questions nip away at learner thinking:

• What do you mean?
• Why?
• Why is that?
• How do you know that’s true?

Midwife questions help give birth to ideas, drawing them out of learners:

• So, are you saying …?
• I see, so do you mean …?
• That’s an interesting idea; can you help me understand it better?

(Midwife questions are as much about a nurturing, friendly tone as anything else.)

Stingray questions pack a jolt and are designed to upend learner thinking:

• What if World War Two had never happened?
• Imagine gravity varied depending on the weather, what then?
• Can you really prove that kangaroos only live in Australia?

Ignoramus questions are where we play dumb, pushing the explanation back onto the learner and demanding more from them:

• I don’t understand, can you explain it again?
• What do you mean? That doesn’t make sense to me.
• I can’t quite get what you’re saying, can you start over?

When running a Socratic dialogue, either with an individual learner or with a pair of learners in front of the whole class, an easy shortcut is to flit between the four questioning styles, using this to animate your discussion.

Remember also that the point of a Socratic dialogue is not to reach a final ‘right’ answer.

Instead, it is to problematise thinking, to create nuance, and to help learners see shade of grey where they previously saw black and white.

How does Socratic dialogue differentiate?

In the first case, it provides a way the teacher can provide personalised learning for one or two learners at a time.

The level of challenge the teacher puts into the dialogue can be tailored, based on who’s in front of them.

Through this, Socratic dialogue becomes a form of highly tailored, responsive questioning.

In the second case, it provides a way the whole class can access a high-level discussion about the current topic (and the conceptual thinking that underlies it).

The teacher and the learners create a model discussion everyone can access and learn from.

In both cases, it causes learners to reflect on their own thinking.

This helps them to make progress, wherever they are at, because it involves reviewing and refining the position in which they currently find themselves.

In this sense, the learning is both personalised and metacognitive in nature.

Using Discussion in General to Differentiate

Discussion involves learners talking and listening to one another.

It is usually underpinned by a purpose, for example:

• An attempt to answer a question
• The exploration of a statement
• The search for a solution to a problem

For a wide range of discussion activities you can use in your planning, see my Talk, Discussion and Oracy Knowledge Base.

Broadly speaking, we can divide discussion activities into three categories:

• Whole-class discussion
• Paired discussion
• Group discussion

It is worth thinking briefly about each of these in turn.

Whole-class discussion involves everyone working together to share thoughts on a certain topic.

It is normally led by the teacher and involves most of the class being silent and listening for most of the time.

This is so that the person who is speaking can get their point across.

Paired discussion sees the class divided into groupings of two.

Each grouping (pair) discusses whatever it is that the teacher has indicated.

The teacher starts off the activity.

Everyone in the classroom then has the opportunity to talk and to listen.

It creates a noisy, positive atmosphere coupled with a strong sense of participation.

The teacher can easily observe the class and identify if anyone isn’t engaging, or if anyone needs help.

Group discussion sees the class divided into groupings of more than two.

Each group discusses whatever the teacher has indicated

The teacher starts the activity off and then monitors proceedings.

It is likely that some learners will talk more than others, though each member of each group should have ample opportunity to share their thoughts.

This is more likely to be the case if groups are kept to three or four in size.

Anything above that, and we run an increased risk of passengers or social loafing.

How does discussion differentiate?

Nearly all learners find speaking easier than writing.

This is because speech is a natural function of the human body whereas writing is a cultural technology that must be learned and mastered through formal means.

Therefore, discussion activities are likely to engage all members of the class (or, at the least, make the lesson content more accessible).

Speech is an excellent precursor to writing.

It helps learners get their thoughts in order, making it easier to then transfer these into the written word.

Discussion activities therefore help make writing more accessible to all learners.

Talking means sharing that which is in your mind.

Whatever type of discussion is used, it is likely that learners will be exposed to ideas other than their own.

There is therefore a high chance that learners involved in discussion will see their understanding develop, regardless of the point from which they start.

This effect can be intensified through the pairings and groupings you set up.

For example, putting a group of more-able learners together may allow them to push beyond the boundaries of the lesson content during a group discussion.

Or you might pair a more-able learner with a less-able learner, so the former can act as a model for the latter, giving them access to high-quality speech and the thinking that underpins it.