What is the Socratic Method, what are some of its most important features, and how can it be used to conduct everyday dialogues?

Abstract

The Socratic Method, very commonly used as a tool in teaching, is where there is an interactive dialogue between the teacher and the student in which a series of questions are asked to reach further understanding on a certain topic. In this text it is shown how the Socratic Method helps to the development and improvement of learning and reasoning techniques through dialogue and argumentation in teaching and learning. The types of questions usually used in this method would be clarification questions, questions about an initial question or issue, assumption questions, reason and evidence questions, origin or source questions, implication and consequence questions and viewpoint questions. Socrates would ask these questions to his students to force them into opening their minds and extending their ability to develop new knowledge.