142 Difference
Socratic classrooms, professors loosened the ongoing questioning, provided some
answers, and did some lecturing. There were also a number of classrooms in which
an almost conversational give-and-take was at times permitted, although question-
answer sequences controlled by the professor nonetheless provided a strong struc-
tural backbone even in these settings. Finally, one professor relied primarily on a
lecture format.
The Traditional Socratic Teacher: On the Wane?
We have already encountered the most stereotypic Socratic teacher in this research,
a professor who taught in one of the classes used for the pilot study. This is the
class in which uptake structure mirrored the pragmatic lesson the professor sought
to inculcate; for example, in one exchange, he repeated the question “How did this
case get to the appellate court?” until he received the desired response (“It was
appealed”; Transcript 4.2). It was a class taught in an elite/prestige law school by a
white male professor, who himself had been educated in an elite law school. It is
interesting that this class was the only one we encountered that maintained the level
of strictly stylized questioning typically associated with “pure” Socratic teaching.^1
There have been some indications that the Socratic method is on the wane, at least
in certain law schools.^2 Indeed, a recent article describes “The Decline of the Socratic
Method at Harvard.”^3 The professors included in my actual study used methods
ranging from modified Socratic teaching, through use of shorter exchanges and at
times almost conversational styles, to a heavy lecture format. This might appear to
give some support to those who see a decline in use of strict Socratic teaching.
However, there are some difficulties in assessing either the current general state
of Socratic teaching in law schools or the degree to which the current situation
represents a marked change from earlier teaching norms. First, most studies have
relied on professors’ self-reports as to what they are doing, which may not be en-
tirely accurate.^4 For example, one of the professors in my study described his teach-
ing method as a mixture: “I try... purposely to get a mix. I don’t want to do the
same format every day. I want days where I really push them a lot, I want days where
I maybe lecture it, there’s no sense in falling into a pattern. Patterns create stale-
ness” (Interview 97–I13). This professor spent 91% of class time in monologue or
lecture. This does not mean that his assessment was entirely inaccurate, because
he did use the remaining 9% of the time to vary the format. However, one would
not want to use his self-report as the primary or only source of information about
the actual pattern in his classroom. And, indeed, this is not unusual; it is difficult
for speakers to keep detailed track of what they are doing.
A second difficulty is that we have no thorough linguistic study of classic Socratic
teaching during its heyday. As a result, when discussing the linguistic structure of
Socratic teaching, the literature relies on stereotypes and anecdotal descriptions of
this teaching method promulgated by either fans or opponents of Socratic teaching.
Although there is some agreement on a general definition of the genre—it involves
extended questioning of individual students regarding cases assigned for class—from
there the details become increasingly difficult to define. For some, it is necessary that
the questioning occupy almost all of class time, that it be antagonistic, that no an-