144 Difference
In sum, we do not have enough information to reach a definitive conclusion
about the purported decline of Socratic teaching. There is very little empirical in-
formation about the actual distribution or shape of Socratic teaching in its reputed
heyday to provide a baseline. Furthermore, there is a great deal of variability in the
details of how Socratic teaching is defined in the literature, with some writers fo-
cusing more on discourse structure and others on a tough or exacting emotional
atmosphere. Studies purporting to show the end or decline of Socratic teaching
frequently yield substantial evidence of its continuing influence. For example, of
the faculty surveyed for an article entitled “The Decline of the Socratic Method at
Harvard,” the largest group (41.6%) reported using traditional Socratic teaching,
and another 25% reported employing a mix of Socratic and other methods.^10 There
may indeed be an ongoing influx of alternative teaching methods (and a correla-
tive decline in use of traditional Socratic teaching), but we do not have the evi-
dence at this point to conclude that any of the core features of Socratic teaching
have ceased to exert considerable influence in law school training.^11 As we will see,
there is considerable methodological difficulty in studying some of the often men-
tioned features of the Socratic classroom. For example, internal dialogue within a
professorial lecture can replicate aspects of the discourse or argument structure,
and a professor who calls on multiple students to answer questions (rather than
focusing on one or two) can still create an intimidating atmosphere. We turn now
to an examination of the more complex, mixed picture of teaching method that
emerges from the classrooms of this study.
The Modified Socratic Teacher
If we rank the classrooms included in our full study in terms of the amount of
extended, Socratic-style dialogue (in terms of either amount of time or number
of turns), we find that there is a clustering of three classrooms (#1, #4, #5) at the
top.^12 The teachers in these classrooms spent between 45% and 60% of the time
in extended dialogue, whereas the remaining classes (except for #7, the lecture-
dominated class) clustered between 21% and 29%. Similarly, the teachers in
classes #1, #4, and #5 spent between 74% and 86% of the turns in extended dia-
logue with students, whereas teachers in “short-exchange” classes spent 60%,
54%, 40%, and 34%. Note that all of the more Socratic classes in the study had
some shorter dialogues, in which multiple students participated for shorter pe-
riods of time, as well as some lectures by the professors. For this reason, I char-
acterize them as “modified Socratic” classrooms. This terminology is supported
by other deviations from stereotypical Socratic teaching found in these classes,
as we will see. We now turn to examine the characteristics of these three modi-
fied Socratic classrooms.
Because extended dialogue dominates in these classrooms, we frequently find
the class period divided among a small number of students, each of whom partici-
pates in a lengthy exchange with the professor. All three professors diverge from
dialogue at times, using lecture formats to explicate particular points. In this re-
gard, the teaching varies from standard Socratic format in that some answers are
in fact explained and laid out for students, rather than left to emerge in dialogue.