0195182863.pdf

Epistemology and Teaching Styles 85

Transcript 5.2 [3/3/5]

Prof.: By the breach of contract. Okay. The plaintiff rented this land to the uh

defendants in exchange for money, all right? And, in addition to getting

one hundred thousand dollars or whatever it was he got, re-leasing the

land, he also asked for the land to be returned to the uniform grade, okay?

So the first argument- and that the um plaintiff, or the court really relies

on behalf of the plaintiff um, is- it’s not the first one, it’s actually the

second one on page eleven, um- and this is the one I assume you’re

referring to, paragraph number two, second full paragraph on page eleven,

um, the law aims to give the disappointed promisee what he was promised,

and then the court wanders into a discussion of a- of a case, but that

argument is an argument that we saw in Hawkins and Sullivan v.

O’Connor, namely a claim that the purpose of contract damages is what?

All together now?

Class: Com // pensation //

Prof.: // Compensation, comp // ensation. The purpose of contract

damages is compensation. Now, that statement is going to turn out to be

the most problematic issue of the evening. The purpose of contract

damages is compensation. And so the plaintiff says, “I want my expecta-

tion compensated. I thought I was gonna get a uniform grade for my land,

how can I get that if you don’t give me the money I need? So if you’re

really going to compensate me for breaching the contract, you didn’t do

the grading; I can’t get the grading done unless you give me the money for

it.” The purpose of contract damages is compensation, so he again relies

on the purpose of contract damages, which is to compensate, right? But

there’s another additional argument that is made a part of the general

claim of compensation [... ]

As these excerpts indicate, a tightly controlled Socratic style of turn-taking

is by no means the only form of discourse found in the classrooms of this study.
In Transcript 5.1, we hear a professor apologizing to a student for interrupting
him; in Transcript 5.2 the professor invites the class as a whole to chime in mid-
way through a lengthy monologue about the purpose of contract damages. Even
in more Socratic classrooms, it is not uncommon for the professor to break into
this kind of mini-lecture, taking off from a particular point to explain an issue at
some length to the class. There was a wide range of variation among the eight
classes in the degree to which professors used lecture, focused Socratic dialogue,
and more diffuse styles of discursive interaction with the class. In this section we
explore these differences in terms of an underlying similarity: despite stylistic
differences, we can find across all of these classrooms the same fundamental
approach to text, reading, and authority that is so clearly delineated in Socratic
teaching. In Chapter 7, we will focus more on dissimilarity, exploring these di-
vergent teaching styles in terms of the differing patterns of student engagement
and participation that appear across the classrooms of the study. But here we focus
on a shared message to students found across all of these otherwise differing
classes.