S3.7.5 Socratic Inquiry: A Pedagogy to Address the Social-Emotional Needs of the Gifted in the Classroom

Socratic inquiry is an historical pedagogy that is as relevant to today’s classrooms as ever. Socratic seminars can be used not only to enhance critical thinking skills, but also may be adapted to address the social/emotional issues and problems faced by gifted/talented students. Participants in this session will gain knowledge about the background of Socratic inquiry as one of three ways of teaching prescribed by Mortimer Adler in his Paideia Proposal: didactic, to transmit knowledge/information; coaching, to guide students in the development of skills, and Socratic/maieutic questioning to deepen the student’s understanding of concepts, principles, themes and issues to be discovered in any and every academic discipline. Focusing on classroom/program application, the presenters will share strategies for conducting Socratic seminars as well as criteria for selecting literary and source materials for students, with an emphasis on characters who are, themselves, gifted. The session will provide specific examples of literature and biographical works used successfully in classes. Guidelines and recommendations will be illustrated based on the presenters’ actual experiences with gifted students in the classroom. Although research has shown that gifted/talented students in general have fewer and/or less severe problems than typically-developing youngsters, there are vulnerabilities that these students have and difficulties that they encounter for which they may require support from teachers (and parents). Vulnerabilities such as asynchrony, isolation, lack of role models, lack of peers, perfectionism, fear of failure, overexcitabilities, anxiety, disapproval, etc., may be potentially damaging to a youngster. Socratic discussions centering on the characters/persons being studied in literature or biographies can permit students to openly share their concerns, fears and issues without identifying these within themselves. The discussion will also address the development of the practice of civil discourse. As students engage each other in debate and discussion, the learned skills of listening and speaking are required, and for some gifted students, these are skills not yet mastered. Being able to debate by criticizing the idea and not the speaker, to learn to be respectful of the ideas of others even as one disagrees, are life skills that gifted individuals will require throughout their academic careers and beyond. It cannot be assumed that they will automatically learn these skills. Educators must make provisions for addressing the listening and speaking learning objectives every bit as much as those related to reading and writing - the inquiry approach in a Socratic seminar is the ideal place to do so.

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