Producing or reproducing reasoning? Socratic dialog is very effective, but only for a few

Abstract

Successful communication between a teacher and a student is at the core of pedagogy. A well known example of a pedagogical dialog is ‘Meno’, a socratic lesson of geometry in which a student learns (or ‘discovers’) how to double the area of a given square ‘in essence, a demonstration of Pythagoras’ theorem. In previous studies we found that after engaging in the dialog participants can be divided in two kinds: those who can only apply a rule to solve the problem presented in the dialog and those who can go beyond and generalize that knowledge to solve any square problems. Here we study the effectiveness of this socratic dialog in an experimental and a control high-school classrooms, and we explore the boundaries of what is learnt by testing subjects with a set of 9 problems of varying degrees of difficulty. We found that half of the adolescents did not learn anything from the dialog. The other half not only learned to solve the problem, but could abstract something more: the geometric notion that the diagonal can be used to solve diverse area problems. Conceptual knowledge is critical for achievement in geometry, and it is not clear whether geometric concepts emerge spontaneously on the basis of universal experience with space, or reflect intrinsic properties of the human mind. We show that, for half of the learners, an exampled-based Socratic dialog in lecture form can give rise to formal geometric knowledge that can be applied to new, different problems.

Logistic Regression of Czech Luxury Fashion Purchasing Habits During the Covid-19 Pandemic – Old for Loyalty and Young for Sustainability?

“…Since the times of crises should be the milestones magnifying pre-existing opportunities and threats, then the COVID-19 pandemic should accelerate and emphasize the significance (or lack of significance) of the concept of sustainability for the luxury fashion industry from the perspective of customers. A holistic approach to these questions and expectations leads to a heuristic direct investigation with the logistic processing of data (Alzen, Langdon, Otero, 2018) and critical Meta-Analysis (Forero, Lopez Leon, González Giraldo, Bagos, 2019), refreshed with a field observation and investigative comments and Socratic questioning (Goldin, Pedroncini, Sigman, 2017).…”

The search for excellence in the profession of anesthesiology

“…The tool exists [2], because the human being has the need to answer many questions and participate in them [4]. Hence, the importance of taking advantage of every opportunity that appears, because the change is daily, and must be able to think and participate in that change and must be able to understand every concept [4].…”

“…Learning and transfer of knowledge are cornerstones of the formation of each person; since the first, itself, allows the knowledge to be increased or modified, and the second allows to apply them to different situations daily [4]. But different factors must be considered, such as the personality of this knowledge recipient, the environment and the way in which this transmission and reception of knowledge is carried out, and the need of each individual 3; which means that learning is the walk into the path of knowledge, because an idea is presented to him, which he must assimilate and apply, in order to build and forge his own according to his interest, if he allows an effective process [3].…”