Developing a New Teaching Paradigm for the 21st Century Learners in the Context of Socratic Methodologies

Abstract

Issue: The ever-growing plethora of teaching methodologies in the past decade has only confused and scattered the focus of the learners and teaching curricula. Though education’s progress claimed offering ways to educate more equally, weak students are still far apart and neglected. Aim: Shifting landscape technology has provided a unique opportunity for various proven pedagogic methodologies to be combined in such a way as to enhance and improve student learning, and closing the achievement gap. We developed and implemented a teaching paradigm that allows educators to connect with learners through an inquiry-based learning framework where the practitioner flexibly bridges and moves between enhanced Socratic and Didactive teaching methodologies throughout instruction, and uses simple methods to assess weaknesses, group students and improve their academic outcome. Method: Our method was implemented in college science classes over the course of 5 years. Students were tracked on their progress and gaps between the weakest and the strongest students were assessed before and after implementation of the method. Results: The use of the Pseudo-Socratic teaching (PST) methodology demonstrated improvement in students’ learning and more importantly a decrease of the gap between the weakest and strongest students in the classroom. Conclusion: Our PST method is accessible and adaptable to the various disciplines. We demonstrated that the majority of the success in a classroom does not depend on who are the students, their background, or their performance levels, but relies on flexible, approachable, and organized practitioners who excite the critical thinking skills and curiosity of their learners, connect with them, become their friendly guide, and keeps high hopes and expectations in the context of Inquiry-based and socratic learning.