The Socratic Method in Career Education: The Secondary Education Teacher as a facilitator of career development inside and outside the classroom
by Alex Colombos, CRC, MA, MPS, MA Ed
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to integrate the Socratic Method or Socratic Dialogue with Career Education, with an emphasis in Secondary Education. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Socratic Method has been applied in European and American classrooms alike with much success, not only to the teaching of philosophy, but also to the teaching mathematics and other subjects. Like career education and guidance, the Socratic Method facilitates critical thinking and self-awareness. Besides mere preparation for the word of work, Socratic Career Education places the teacher in and outside the classroom as the facilitator and advisor of students and parents and a leader of whole-class and in-groups classroom discussions that aim to nurture the whole, moral, and self-conscious child through self-directed and critical thinking.
a. What is the Socratic Method?
“Know thyself”. “One thing I know that I know nothing”. These are the phrases that Socrates of Athens (470-399 BCE) is usually associated with. His mother was a midwife and it is not an accident he named his craft after his mother’s own, “midwifery”. In Plato’s Theaetitus, Socrates explained that as the midwife gives birth to children, he gave birth to ideas in young men’s minds. The true triumph of his art, Socrates said, is that “in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the young man is bringing to birth, is a false idol or a noble and true spirit”. Socrates insists and makes clear that his method is self-directed learning through and “leading men to knowledge by question and answer” (Hamilton & Cairns, 1989, p.xiv).
“And like midwives, I am barren, and the reproach which is often against me, that I ask questions of others and have not the wit to answer them myself, is very just; the reason is that the god compels me to be a midwife, but forbids me to bring forth. And therefore I am not myself at all wise, nor have I anything to show which is the invention or birth of my own soul, but those who converse with me profit” (Plato’s Theaetitus).
Socrates himself never wrote anything and it was Plato, his student, who recorded Socrates’ conversation with the youth in his Dialogues and thus a good part of it may reflect his own ideas and theories as well in art, psychology, law, logic, religion and metaphysics (Hamilton & Huntington Cairns, 1989). However, what Socrates saw as the Socratic Method may not be different from what Plato experienced himself as a student and by observing dialogues with other students and Socrates. As Huntington Cairns wrote, Plato started his career writing mimes, so with example of the Socratic Method, it would, perhaps, be natural for him to adopt the form he did (Hamilton, Huntington Cairns, 1989). However, in the modern application of the Socratic Method in the classroom, adaptations and different models of its role and application have been invented in the twentieth century educational movement of the Socratic Method and critical philosophy in the classroom.
b. How the Socratic Method has been applied in Education?
Philosophy in education? Can that happen? Well, this is old news. Attempts to apply not only the Socratic Method, but philosophy in general in the classroom, and not as merely a method for the instruction of other subjects, but literally teaching philosophy, has been done already. Despite Kohlberg’s theory of moral development that may consider abstract and philosophical thinking too early thinking for very young children, many educators believe that philosophy can be applied early in education, as this is professed by the Center or the Advancement of philosophy for Children (CAPFC) (Zevin, 2000). If it can happen in early education, why not in secondary education?
Leonard Nelson, the father of the Socratic Method’s application in the classroom, defined it as “the art, not of teaching about philosophers but making philosophers of the students…..instead of lecturing to you, (I would) take up a philosophical problem and deal with it according to the Socratic Method” (Nelson, 2004). It is a student-centered method of inquiry of morality and insightful knowledge that goes beyond merely knowing the facts or relying on somebody in order to obtain knowledge, wisdom or moral guidance. Nelson’s educational model fundamentally transforms the Socratic teacher, since the dialogue does not occur between two people, but a group (Birnbacher & Krohn, 2004). Nelson’s educational philosophy began in the 1920’s emphasizing learner’s autonomy and critical reason (Saran & Neisser, 2004), rationality, clarity, and authenticity (Birnbacher & Krohn, 2004). Those Neo-Kantian ideas governed the procedure of knowledge comprehension that should be along argumentative competence
(Birnbacher & Krohn, 2004). It involves a non-specialist’s way of philosophizing and it received Neo-Kantian influences from Nelson, Heckmann, and other philosophers (Saran & Neisser, 2004). Gustav Heckman experimented on implementing the Socratic Method in schools of Germany and Netherlands as well as he adopted this method to his adult education teaching at the Philosophical-Political Academy (PPA) in Germany. Nelson founded his own boarding school practicing the method, however banned as PPA was too, by the Nazis to have PPA only reestablished in 1949. Nelson’s ideas are more cooperative learning-oriented while Heckmann’s are more independent learning-oriented.
Nelson’s ideas were also influenced by Jacob Friedrich Fries’s concept of regressive abstraction or in a similar way to the inductive method, analysis of the particular excludes even the generalization of empirical cases, thus placing a grave importance on concrete inner and personal experience of the learner (Birnbacher & Krohn, 2004).
According to Saran & Neisser, 2004, Nelson’s model was based on the following aims: a) Reaching outcome: to answer philosophical question by seeking out the truth about the nature of concepts, such as freedom, tolerance, justice, responsibility, and to finally reach a consensus; b) Process: to engage in co-operative activity of seeking answers to questions and to understand each other through the exploration of concrete experiences. That requires volunteer participation and the experiences are chosen by the participants of the group for detailed analysis; c) Insights & Understanding: to deepen insights and understandings through the dialogic process; d) Approach to Life: to gain through dialogue a better approach to life that may benefit conduct and offer the student clarity in the picture of his/her own self. The above aims are important to the learning process and
Have profound meaning for one’s life. Saran & Neisser, 2004 feel that in the age of electronics, TV, and video games, it is important to ask for a more active intellectual and inner activity that can be reflective and combine independent self-directed learning with co-operative (collaborative) learning that may both offer skills in dialogue, social harmony, and morality as well as independent development of cognitive and emotional competences (Birnbacher & Krohn, 2004).
Heckmann’s educational model was based on the idea of the teacher as a facilitator in a group of students, pretty similar to today’s role of the teacher as a facilitator of collaborative learning in the American classroom. Heckmann’s model consists of the following six measures (Heckmann, 2004):
a) Content Impartiality: teacher is ahead of the students in the understanding of the topic to be introduced and therefore he/she should be facilitate insights and alertness as well as put weight at the most important topics of the topic
b) Working with the Concrete: Concepts introduced in the classroom should be linked with real life and students’ everyday experiences through examples.
c) Mutual Understanding: The facilitator has to watch to see whether the students have really understand. All participants should take efforts in two ways: to be understood by others and to grasp other’s understanding.
d) Focus on the Current Situation: It is natural that the dialogue may digress sometimes to different or even irrelevant questions, but the facilitator needs to make sure that he/she keeps the dialogue focused on the current question and work on it thoroughly. Reflection on experience is determined by the structure of reasoning, rather than what is erroneous and what true, step by step in dialogue. It is a task of trial and error. Nothing is free from error.
e) Striving for the Consensus: In the Socratic Dialogue we want to get beyond mere subjective opinion. That’s why we seek out what reasons our arguments have. Reaching a consensus is of provisional character in the Socratic Dialogue, but a point of view that we did not think of may arise in a sense of gaining insight.
This is achieved through a step-by-step inductive process of juxtaposing different or conflicting ideas and trying to see the other side of the argument.
f) Facilitator Interventions: Use of organizers, manipulatives, flipcharts, and other audiovisual materials and tools may help the dialogic and learning process by
recording arguments and models of thinking. Nelson mentioned that by writing down conflicting arguments, showed erroneous patterns of propositions, thus leading to the collapse of the argument and steering the participant’s attention to the discussion.
In the 1970’s, there was another technique or concept introduced to the Socratic Dialogue in the classroom or Content Dialogue, the Meta-dialogue. After the Content Dialogue, the Meta-dialogue focused on the behavior of the participants and not on the content or subject of the dialogue. It supports the Content Dialogue and going further to the participants’ self-awareness inside the group, thus making the Content Dialogue more transparent, asking for the ponderous, unproductive and confusing elements or patterns pinpointed in the Content Dialogue and how those could be minimized (Krohn, 2004).
Gisela Raupach-Strey (2004), experienced in the use of the Socratic Method in German schools, came up with four models:
a) One-off dialogues: taking placing within the framework of the school either in theme weeks or for a limited period or during normal class time.
b) Elements of the Socratic Method: where considered fruitful, they are singly integrated into a usual lesson.
c) Teaching a Subject on Socratic Lines Overall: balancing Socratic requirements
with practical institutional requirements (e.g. award of grades) and educational and theoretical nature (e.g. the acquisition of certain areas of knowledge) can be struck by incompleteness and various dilemmas. So, there is a combination of both Socratic and non-Socratic approaches. The model is not equally suitable for all subjects and it works better with teaching philosophy and ethics.
d) The Socratic Dialogue as a Supplementary Tool: it is a critical supplementary tool
for improving and deepening the teaching of subjects by reflecting on basic philosophical foundations.
Saran (2004a) has written about her experiences in teaching in secondary schools of Britain and Germany. In her First Experience, she believes that, by raising a challenging question and aiming to arrive at agreement, students’ reasoning is improved. She gives the example of a dialogue in a British secondary school where the following questions were asked: “are all rules necessary”, “when rules are necessary”, “In what circumstances are rules necessary?”, “Why are rules necessary”, the most popular and stressed question. Students wrote down their experiences, complains and judgments from their everyday school experiences giving examples of what they thought to be just or unjust rules in the school and debating those in the classroom seeking for rights and obligations and judging upon punishment or reward on certain behaviors and attitudes toward school rules. Saran (2004b) also gave more examples, such as a discussion in a London secondary school on bullying in schools. The procedure consisted of: collecting and choosing examples, working with a chosen example, reaching a consensus, and, finally, evaluation both by the students and the facilitator. Some girls chose to speak about a teacher who, in an infraction, was sure that the boys did it, thus talking about gender and bullying in the classroom and pinpointing teacher’s stereotypes as well as facts about boys aggressive pattern of behavior and boys tendency not to show emotion, as factors that may put them on the target of suspicion for infraction.
Besides the teaching of philosophy and ethics or advisory in the secondary classroom or in adult education, the Socratic Method has been applied also in the elementary classroom as well as in the teaching of mathematics. Goldstein (2004) has used the Socratic Method in teaching a geometrical problem to fourteen and fifteen year old students for inquiring logical thinking. Throughout Plato’s dialogues, we may see references to science and mathematics, such as arithmetic, geometry, and logic,
with examples of easy mathematical operations, such as addition in order to foster reasoning in an argument. Simple and concrete moral questions can be raised in the elementary classroom and integration of this method in teaching subjects can occur both in math and some metacognitive questions that ask for self-awareness of what the student has learn may be used in other subjects, too. Delgehausen (2004) has applied the Socratic Method in elementary schools t students aged seven to nine raising philosophical questions. However, our focus here is rather on secondary education. Next subject remaining to discuss is…what else? Career education.
c. How can the Socratic Method be applied in Career Education?
We do not really need to find mention subjects in Plato’s Dialogues in order to consider those subjects qualified for the application of the Socratic Method, because the Socratic Method is a works alongside the content and deals with information processing, rational and critical thinking and self-awareness or metacognition, that is knowledge about our own thinking (Woolfolk, 1995). However, in career education, we are lucky enough to find innumerous examples of professions and occupations discussed in Plato’s Dialogues, sometimes used as a metaphor or an analogy to covey a totally a totally irrelevant concept, such as using the midwife to show how he uses the Socratic Method while in other instances, he directly speaks about the role of the politician or the medical doctor and their ethical responsibilities or the doctor’s education or the politician’s
education. Professions discussed in the Dialogues range from the shoemaker to the politician and from the craftsman to the artist. Distribution of Labor discussed gives insights on social policy, unemployment, government, and political philosophy. That’s a combination of discussion on morality, rules & authority as well as his students’ guidance on vocational values, such as altruism, creativity, working with others, and so on. But what is the most important to keep as the main message is that virtue and goodness of the person is what matters, not merely skill. So, a musician who deals with music must have a harmonic and beautiful soul and character, as the music he/she plays. Likewise, the athlete should have not only an exercised, healthy and beautiful body, but and sharp, healthy, and beautiful mind, as well, intact from any substance abuse, or, as one modern would say, a whole person clean from steroids or drugs.
Here are some examples:
In the Republic, Socrates argues with Glaucon that music and gymnastics (gym/physical education) should be taken very seriously as subjects taught in schools (Socrates narrates his discussion with Glaucon):
“And is it not for this reason, Glaucon, said I, that education in music is most sovereign, because more than nothing else rhythm and harmony find their way to inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained, and otherwise the contrary? And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in things badly made or grown would be most quickly preserved by one who has been properly educated in music, and so, feeling distaste rightly he would praise beautiful things and take delight in them and receive them into his soul to foster its growth and become himself beautiful and good. The ugly he would rightly
disprove and hate while still young and yet unable to apprehend the reason, but when reason came the man thus nurtured would be the first to give her welcome, for by this affinity he would know her. --I certainly think, he said, that such is the cause of education in music…..” (Republic, III, 402).
“…..After music our youth are to be educated by gymnastics?
--Certainly.
In this too they must be carefully trained from boyhood through life, and the way of it is this, I believe, but consider it yourself too. For I, for my part, do not believe that a sound body by its excellence makes the soul good, but on the contrary that a good soul by its true virtue renders the body the best that is possible. What is your opinion? ---I think so too. Then if we sufficiently train the mind and turn over to it the minutiae of the care of the body, and content ourselves with merely indicating the norms or patterns, not to make a long story of it, we should be acting rightly? --By all means (he said). From intoxication we said that they must abstain. For a guardian is surely the last person in the world to whom it is allowable to get drunk and not know
where on earth he is. –Yes, he said, it would be absurd that the guardian should need a guard....”
(Republic, III, 403d-e)
The above dialogue gives us insights especially when we engage students and parents in a dialogue, especially when parents do not want their children to become musicians or athletes or when children want to be athletes for vanity, to be stars and other swallow reasons. Also, quite often administrators and politicians underestimate music and physical education and misrepresent those subjects in curricula, so that music teachers and gym teachers need sometimes to remove students for rehearsals during other subjects and the teachers of those subjects get usually upset about it. But the most important is to the use of the Socratic Method for their aesthetic and moral development and the appreciation of the contribution of music and athletics in personal growth and humanity, in general. Math, science, and language arts have become the only important subjects today, because modern vocational values focus on standardized tests, getting into college, and getting a job, rather than developing a whole and moral child with hobbies that could also become career goals. Socrates disproves that materialism and positivism (too much science and mathematical reasoning) by saying that math and science are not enough to be secure methods of inquiry if there is not a sense of morality and sound vocational values that go beyond personal interest. Thus, scientific data may be manipulated as well. In our modern society, everybody is preoccupied with becoming “good” at something, competent, but the thing is how good we are as people in order to use those skills for the good of everybody and society, which is wiser than being wise merely in our subject or career skills.
Speaking in Lesser Hippias on voluntary and involuntary wrongdoing and the nature of falsehood as well as when falsehood is due to lack of skill or not, Socrates examines skill
and error in the mathematician and the astronomer:
“SOCRATES: And tell me, Hippias, are you not a skillful calculator and arithmetician?
HIPPIAS: Yes, Socrates, assuredly, I am.
SOCRATES: And if someone were to ask you what is the sum of 3 multiplied by 700, would you tell him the true answer in a moment if you pleased?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
(……………………………………………………….)
SOCRATES: And could you speak falsehoods about them equally well? I must beg you, Hippias, that you will answer me with the same frankness and magnanimity which has hitherto characterized you. If a person were to ask you what is the sum of 3 multiplied by 700, would not you be the best and most consistent teller of falsehood (…………). Would the ignorant man be better able to tell a falsehood in matters of calculation than you would be (………..)? Might he not sometimes stumble upon the truth, when he may wanted to tell a lie , because he did not know, whereas you who are the wise man, if you wanted to tell a lie would always and consistently lie?
HIPPIAS: Yes, there you are quite right.
SOCRATES: Does the false man tell lies about other things, but not number, or when he is making a calculation?
HIPPIAS: To be sure, he would tell as many lies about the number as about other things.
(…………………………………………………………………………….)
SOCRATES: Who can they be (those who speak falsely about numbers)? For you have admitted
That he who is false must have the ability to be false. You said, as I remember, that he who is unable to be false.
HIPPIAS: Yes, I remember, it was so said.
SOCRATES: And were you not yourself just shown to be best able to speak falsely about calculation?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Then the same person is able to speak both falsely and truly about calculation?
And that person is he who is good at calculation-the arithmetician?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Who, then, Hippias, is discovered to be false at calculation? Is he not the good man? For the good man is the able man, and he is the true man.
HIPPIAS: That is evident.
SOCRATES: Do you see, then that the same man is false and true about the same matters?
And the true man is not better than the false, for indeed he is the same with him and not very opposite, as you were just now imagining.
HIPPIAS: In that instance, clearly.
(…………………………………………………………………..)
SOCRATES: And in astronomy, too, if any man be able to speak falsely it will be the good astronomer, but he who is not able will not speak falsely, for he has no knowledge.
HIPPIAS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Then in astronomy also, the same man will be true and false?
HIPPIAS: It would seem so.
(LESSER HIPPIAS, 366c-368a)
We can find innumerous professions and occupations discussed in Plato. However, what would be interesting to look at is when Socrates examines the concept of labor division and when he refers not to academic professions only or those of the rich people or even the middle class, but of the working class. In his search for the ideal city in Plato’s Republic II, Socrates embarks in a painstaking examination of the labor ecology of a city and explores the forces that make it sustainable. (When we say city we need to understand that in those times it was rather a small town or settlement with a rural periphery). Socrates discuses with Adimantus the contribution of all the occupations, starting from those of the working class. That would give us ideas for creating such discussions with students in the classroom from career education to economics, history, and government. Students may understand how important all occupations are for the “homeostasis” of a city. That requires specialization of labor and only the most suitable and well trained can do a specific job. Thus, every job from the bottom to the top is important and must be done not only with skill, but also with conscience and responsibility, otherwise the whole city is in disharmony:
“Again, would a man do better working at many tasks or one at one? ---One at one, he said.
And, furthermore, this, I fancy, is obvious-that is if one lets slip the right season, the favorable moment in any task, the work is spoiled. ---Obvious (Adimantus said). That, I take it, is because the business will not wait upon the leisure of the workman must attend to it as his main affair, and not as a bywork. ---He must indeed (Adimantus said). The result, then, is that more things are produced, and better and more easily when one man performs one task according to his nature, at the right moment, and at leisure from other occupations. ---By all means (Adimantus said). Then, Adimantus, we need more than four citizens (four have been examined so far) for the provision of the things we have mentioned. For the farmer, it appears, will not make his own plow if it is to be
a good one, nor his hoe, nor his other agricultural implements, nor will the builder, who also needs
many, and similarly the weaver and cobbler. ---True (Adimantus said). Carpenters, then, and smiths and many similar craftsmen, associating themselves with our hamlet, will enlarge it considerably. ---Certainly (Adimantus said). Yet it still wouldn’t be a very large even if we should add to them neatherds and shepherds and other herders, so that the farmers might have cattle for plowing, and the builders oxen to use with the farmers for transportation, and the weavers and cobblers hides and fleeces to use.
(Republic II, 370a-e)
One may notice that Socrates has the lead in the discussion and that his students or participants are rather either condescending or objecting with a few additional brief statements here and there. However it might seem teacher-centered to some, there are some instances where more than two people participate in the dialogue, when the participant speaks in long paragraphs. But one thing is for sure, that this is not a lecture and it essential to go through a systematic step-by-step guided dialogue with the teacher as the leader who in the beginning of a lesson in the modern classroom offers a form of a 10 minute mini-lesson presenting a demonstration dialogue with volunteer(s) for modeling in-groups discussions, as in the Workshop Model, which “intends for the students to learn reading and writing skills through much participation amongst themselves and their peers” (www.tqnyc.org/NYC052376/whatisworkshop_new.html). In whole-class discussions, the teacher aims to sparkle a whole class or in-groups (of four, let’s say) discussion with the teacher as the “referee”, “traffic controller” or facilitator of the discussion flow. We could use the Heckmann’s six measures for the class discussion and Nelson’s four aims for a one-to-one discussion or dialogue outside the classroom, since teachers, besides their teaching role, quite often are seen by their students or students’ parents and engage into a discussion on students’ academic, career, behavioral (conduct) or even personal issues and concerns. Meta-dialogue could follow after a class discussion for metacognitive strategies, self-awareness and evaluation/self-evaluation. Curriculum does not have to be restricted to the Socratic Method and it shouldn’t. As in Saran’s own experience, classroom teaching should encompass both the didactic and the Socratic Method alongside. Remember, Socrates himself said he did not really teach any kind of knowledge. He was rather a facilitator and a midwife of reasonable thoughts and ideas.
Maria Malikozi-Loizou (2001), a Greek professor of counseling psychology, in her book Counseling Psychology in Education, highlights the importance of the teacher as an advisor or counselor in and outside the classroom, since recent research, she says, has shown the importance of the teacher in the development of students’ personality and she particularly refers to Hunter, 1985, Ryan, Jackson & Levinson, 1986 and Wood, 1987. She points that there is not the right training of teachers for this purpose and she insists on the involvement of teacher’s classroom guidance on raising discussion on concepts that we saw already discussed in the German and British classrooms on the concepts of freedom, individuality, honesty and moral responsibility. She connects this teacher’s role to Socrates and his method, since it focuses on self-awareness and she shows Socratic influences on Kierkegaard’s dialectics who influenced Rollo May and Carl Rogers as well as Descartes, and Rousseau.
Of course, we must say here that the guidance role is, no doubt, irreplaceable and different than the teacher’s and includes individual and group interview, assessment, information about the world of work, intervention in academic, personal and family problems that interfere with career development and helping the student applying to college, internship or job. Besides, the counselor is the one who may train the teacher in communication & counseling/guidance skills in order to be effective and professional in and outside the classroom.
In her own empirical research with Greek secondary and college students, Malikozi-Loizou (2001) noted that some of the topics that students are really interested in and for which they turn to teachers and professors during and after class or in the educators’ offices, are related to career choice, vocational interests, skills, and values, familial influence and parental pressure on students’ future plans and on their career choice, pressure on academic achievement, and so on. Parents also have conferences with teachers, especially when report cards are awarded and students’ academic and career issues are discussed. Malikozi-Loizou, in an attempt to help teachers deal with those challenges, came up with three aims of education in counseling: self-awareness, training on interpersonal relationships, and knowledge of principles and conditions of learning facilitation. She also came up with a model of teachers’ training on counseling and guidance in and out of the classroom that consists of: a) training on communication skills; b) developing groups of sensitization and empathy that trains teachers on understanding and perceiving others as well as accepting differences, and finally, c) guidance & counseling skills. Malikozi-Loizou (2001) offers a plethora of examples of how a teacher may use counseling skills when dealing with students and parents, such as paraphrasing, recapitulation, clarification and so on. She also gives a number of examples on how to objectively inform students without transferring his/her own biases or fragments of information or inaccurate pieces of information. For instance, she gives the following example (de jure transl. from Greek):
“Male Student speaks to his female High School teacher:
---I would like you to tell me what I should do in order to study medicine?
Teacher’s answer/reaction:
---First of all, you need to graduate from High School with a very high grade point average, that is excellent in fact, and then you fill out the application form according to your preferences for medical school programs (NOTE: in Greece, medical schools offer undergraduate programs alongside with graduate). Evaluation: here the teacher offers career information in order to help the student in his decision-making for his future” (Malikozi-Loizou, 2001, p.143).
d) Conclusion
We may conclude that the most important contribution of the Socratic Method in Career Education is not just to provide a sound method often used with success in other subjects, so why not to career education, too. THE SOCRATIC METHOD IS A METHOD OF GUIDANCE and Plato’s Dialogues have Socrates offering not a mere discussion on careers, but a deeper concept that students have to learn in career education: what takes to have a professional who is not just skilled or “good” in his/her job, but good, conscientious and responsible as a whole person. Thus, in education, which Socrates and Plato thought to be so essential, the whole child is taken under consideration, not just a student that we need to test his/her career interests, skills, aptitudes, and values or merely inform about the world of work. Socratic career education goes beyond producing well-informed students. It aims to an education that starts inwards, as Socrates and Plato always believed and the teacher is but the facilitator and the mentor. Since the teacher plays such a profound role in the student’s life, he/she must receive some training in counseling & guidance skills, as Malikozi-Loizou pointed out, without of course replacing the guidance counselor, whose job is quite different and equally important and who is the one to train the teacher in talking with students and parents and in the use of counseling & guidance skills inside and outside the classroom. For the use and application of the Socratic Method in Career Education, Heckman’s six measures could be used in a discussion that stimulates in-groups career issues discussion and Nelson’s four models for whole-class career issues discussion. This career issues discussion goes deeper to the ethical responsibilities and the underlying social parameters of each profession, the interaction of people and jobs, the meaning of work, and the vocational values as those are discovered from the “midwifery” of ideas, which is a work with one’s self and a work on intra-personal and inter-personal relationships rather than collecting information about job titles and college/training programs or the mere nature of jobs, their pros and cons and how well they pay. Also, students can model from the teacher and do the dialogue with each other in groups. Meta-dialogue can follow for metacognitive strategies and evaluation reminding us what Socrates said:
ΓΝΩΘΙ Σ΄ ΑΥΤΟΝ (Know thyself).
References
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--Delgehausen, I. (2004). Experiences with Socratic Dialogue in primary Schools. In Enquiring Minds: Socratic Dialogues in Education (ed. Saran, R. & Neisser, B.). Virginia: Trentham Books.
--Goldstein, M. (2004). “We had to think for ourseves”-using the Socratic Dialogue in mathematics lessons in a secondary school. In Enquiring Minds: Socratic Dialogues in Education (ed. Saran, R. & Neisser, B.). Virginia: Trentham Books.
--Hamilton, E. & Cairns, H. (ed.). (1989). The Collected Dialogues of Plato. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series LXXI.
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--Krohn, D. (2004). Theory and Practice of Socratic Dialogue. In Enquiring Minds: Socratic Dialogues in Education (ed. Saran, R. & Neisser, B.). Virginia: Trentham Books.
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--Raupach-Strey, G. (2004). The Socratic Approach at School Level: Four Models. In Enquiring Minds: Socratic Dialogues in Education (ed. Saran, R. & Neisser, B.). Virginia: Trentham Books.--Saran, R. (2004 a). Socratic Dialogue-My First Experience. In Enquiring Minds: Socratic Dialogues in Education (ed. Saran, R. & Neisser, B.). Virginia: Trentham Books.
--Saran, R. (2004 b). Experiences with Socratic Dialogue in Secondary Schools. In Enquiring Minds: Socratic Dialogues in Education (ed. Saran, R. & Neisser, B.). Virginia: Trentham Books.
--Saran, R. & Neisser, B. (2004). Introduction. In Enquiring Minds: Socratic Dialogues in Education (ed. Saran, R. & Neisser, B.). Virginia: Trentham Books.
--Woolfolk, A. (1995). Educational Psychology. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
--Workshop Model (http://www.tqnyc.org/NYC052376/main_new.html).
--Zevin, J. (2000). Social Studies for the Twenty-First Century. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
