Socratic teaching is not teaching, but direct transmission is: Notes from 13 to 15-year olds' conceptions of teaching

Abstract We studied what 13–15-year-olds believe teaching's components are. Thirty-six children viewed two films: direct transmission (DT) and Socratic teaching (ST) and a third film of a non-teaching conversation (C). We investigated the participants' understanding of teaching's components and the role of intentionality in teaching. All children judged that DT was teaching and that ST and the C were not. After revealing the teacher's intention to teach or its lack, nobody changed their judgments. Two explanations for these are the extent of exposure to teaching and that very young children in early childhood already hold a DT view of teaching.

[1]  Robin Wooffitt,et al.  Conversation Analysis: Principles, Practices and Applications , 1998 .

[2]  J. Bruner,et al.  Cultural learning. Author's reply , 1993 .

[3]  D. Tirosh,et al.  Teacher knowledge and understanding of students’ mathematical learning and thinking , 2008 .

[4]  S. M. Carlson,et al.  Development of Teaching Skills and Relations to Theory of Mind in Preschoolers , 2008 .

[5]  Robert S. Siegler,et al.  U-Shaped Interest in U-Shaped Development-and What It Means , 2004 .

[6]  K. Seeskin,et al.  Dialogue and Discovery: A Study in Socratic Method@@@Plato's Socratic Conversations: Drama and Dialectic in Three Dialogues , 1989 .

[7]  Michael Tomasello,et al.  Cooperative Problem‐Solving and Teaching in Preschoolers , 2001 .

[8]  R. Stavy,et al.  U-shaped behavioral growth , 1982 .

[9]  D. Frye,et al.  Children's understanding of teaching: the role of knowledge and belief , 2004 .

[10]  Lyn D. English,et al.  Handbook of International Research in Mathematics Education , 2002 .

[11]  K. Seeskin.  VIastos on Elenchus and Mathematics , 1993 .

[12]  Thomas G. Bever,et al.  Regressions in mental development : basic phenomena and theories , 1982 .

[13]  G. Leinhardt.  Math Lessons: A Contrast of Novice and Expert Competence. , 1989 .

[14]  L. Resnick,et al.  Knowing, Learning, and Instruction , 2018 .

[15]  Hilda Borko,et al.  Expert-Novice Differences in Teaching: A Cognitive Analysis and Implications for Teacher Education , 1989 .

[16]  David R. Olson,et al.  The Handbook of Education and Human Development , 1998 .

[17]  D. Frye,et al.  Young children's recognition of the intentionality of teaching. , 2008, Child development.

[18]  R. Glaser.  Advances in Instructional Psychology , 1978 .

[19]  B. P. Komisar.  Teaching: Act and enterprise , 1968 .

[20]  Ashley E. Maynard,et al.  Cultural teaching: the development of teaching skills in Maya sibling interactions. , 2002, Child development.

[21]  Bertram C. Bruce,et al.  Theory and Research on Teaching as Dialogue , 2001 .

[22]  H. Freeman.  The Concept of Teaching , 1973 .

[23]  G. Vlastos.  The Socratic Elenchus , 1982 .

[24]  Susan E. Newman,et al.  Cognitive Apprenticeship: Teaching the Craft of Reading, Writing, and Mathematics. Technical Report No. 403. , 1987 .

[25]  David T. Hansen.  Was Socrates a “Socratic Teacher”? , 1988 .

[26]  S. Strauss,et al.  Teaching as a natural cognition and its relations to preschoolers’ developing theory of mind , 2002 .

[27]  D. Wood.  On Becoming a Tutor: Toward an Ontogenetic Model , 1995 .

[28]  M. Wittrock.  Handbook of research on teaching , 1986 .

[29]  D. Berliner.  In Pursuit of the Expert Pedagogue , 1986 .

[30]  E. Schegloff,et al.  A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation , 1974 .

[31]  Harvey Sacks,et al.  Lectures on Conversation , 1995 .

[32]  S. Gelman,et al.  Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity In Cognition And Culture , 1994 .

[33]  B. Schneuwly.  Cultural learning is cultural. [A commentary on Tomasello, Krugner and Ratner's "Cultural learning" Peer commentary by B. Schneuwly] , 1993 .

[34]  A. Sfard.  There is more to discourse than meets the ears: Looking at thinking as communicating to learn more about mathematical learning , 2001 .

[35]  Sidney Strauss,et al.  Mapping the mind: Teachers' models of children's minds and learning , 1994 .

[36]  Folk psychology, folk pedagogy, and their relations to subject-matter knowledge. , 2001 .

[37]  Thomas W. Nelson,et al.  Concepts of teaching : philosophical essays , 1968 .

[38]  Norman H. Freeman,et al.  Understanding and teaching the intuitive mind , 2001 .

[39]  P. Cobb.  The Tension Between Theories of Learning and Instruction in Mathematics Education , 1988 .