The Socratic Method or also known as Socratic Dialogue or Maieutics, is a procedure used to identify thoughts and help thinking people to determine how accurate, useful or useless certain thoughts may be.

This is a very old method and widely used by educators and psychotherapists around the world, whose main objective is the development of critical and self-reflective thinking .



Where does the Socratic method come from and what does it consist of?

This method is due to Socrates who lived between 470 and 399 BC. C., who was a philosopher from Ancient Greece and who used this technique to encourage critical thinking among his students.

Although this is a very old technique, the Socratic method is currently implemented in various educational centers worldwide. It is even a technique widely used by psychologists in their therapeutic strategies.

This method involves constant questioning, which helps people remove pretensions to certainty and gain a deeper understanding of a particular topic.

The main characteristic of the Socratic method or debate is to eliminate any pretense of certainty and to question everything without leaving anything to investigate, with the aim of encouraging a deeper understanding of any topic.

The Socratic method in education

According to many educators, the methods for transmitting learning cannot be reduced to lessons in which the student is exposed to a certain topic; since the teaching process should be more dynamic and incorporate new technological tools in the classroom, with the intention of encouraging and inducing learning.

In this case, the Socratic method in education seeks to expand the teaching work, making the student doubt the concepts or issues that are raised and teach him to argue to find the truth through dialogue.

The stages of the Socratic method

The Socratic method is a very practical technique, which is based on dialogue and consists of two phases that are irony and maieutics, and that through inductive reasoning, it is intended to achieve the universal definition of the terms in the objects of the investigation.

What are the phases of the Socratic method ?

Maieutics is the first phase of purification of prejudiced thinking, which is necessarily integrated into Socratic irony.

The basic elements of the Socratic dialogue are:

  • The question
  • The answer
  • The debate
  • The conclusion

On the other hand, the irony described in the Socratic method or dialogue comes from a Greek expression that means "to ask and pretend not to know." This moment of the Socratic dialogue denies preconceptions or prejudices.

Irony is made up of questions that are asked of the interlocutor, with the intention of making it clear that the knowledge that he believes he has is nothing more than an opinion or a partial interpretation of reality; since for Socrates, ignorance or not having knowledge about something is preferable to knowledge based on prejudices or what is equal to bad knowledge.

In this way, Socratic questions serve to make an interlocutor realize how wrong he thinks he knows and what he thinks is true, when in reality it is false.

Socratic dialogues that end without completion are called aporetic dialogues, which means aporia: "dead end" or "inconclusion".

Socratic or Maieutic method

The Socratic method is also known as Mayeutics , which in Greek has the meaning of "bringing forth the truth", it is with which Socrates suggested that the teacher discover knowledge through questions and teach by discussing problems, skilfully questioning the student.

Maieutics is a dialectical process that seeks to elucidate the opinions or knowledge of its interlocutors, through a succession of meticulously formulated questions.

The maieutics or Socratic method makes sense in education, from the point of view that learning methods are generally vertical and dependent on memory. On the other hand, it is argued that education should be taught to think, instead of teaching factual thoughts.

In this way, Maieutics consists of questioning to try to find a contradiction and in this way reach real knowledge.

How does the Socratic method arise in education?

These methods of Socratic thought seek that both students and teachers master the theory through the questioning of their peers and self-reflection, to strengthen or be able to notice the absence of knowledge, to avoid believing that they know that something is known.

The Socratic method in the educational programs achieves more active classes and avoids boredom in the students, since they must be busy in the reflective work of their topics.

This method initiates the teaching-learning process, conveniently from a doubt and proposes dialogue as the fundamental instrument to listen to others, to question in a constructive way and where all participants can contribute ideas to reach the truth.