lacks the subtlety or precision that more fine-grained qualitative work on race would
permit.
Class #4 was another of the larger and more Socratic classrooms in the study. This
class of 106 students was taught by a European American man in his early thirties, in a law
school that was toward the top of the regional tier of law schools. Trained at an elite law
school, this teacher was the least experienced in the study, with fewer than five years in
law teaching. Using formal address and a seating chart, he regularly called on students to
discuss the day’s cases for extended periods. With 12.3% students of color, this class came
right after the classes in elite/prestige schools (which were the three most diverse classes
in the study) in terms of diversity; however, unlike those classes, this class was consider-
ably less diverse than the national average. This can be seen in every category: 5.7% Afri-
can American students, 3.8% Asian American students, and 2.8% Latino/a students. The
class was third-highest in the study in its percentage of women (44.3).
Class #5 was one of the five large (90+) classes in the study. It had 98 students and
was taught by a European American male in an elite/prestige law school. It was one of the
most traditional Socratic classrooms in the study in terms of tone and style. The teacher,
a man in his midforties who was trained at an elite law school, was one of the most expe-
rienced in the study (with more than fifteen years’ experience). The class was the third most
diverse in the study, with 21.4% students of color: 10.2% African American, 6.1% Asian
American, but only 2.0% Latino/a. There was also one Native American student in this
class. With 40.8% women, the class fell into the lower-middle range of classes in this study
in terms of gender diversity.
- At oral argument, judges on an appeals court question the attorneys about the
case, pointing out deficiencies and pushing them to clarify their arguments. Notice that
professors in a classroom of first-year students face a more daunting task, in that they have
to keep some kind of discussion going in order to do their job, and they are working with
novices not yet fully trained to keep up their part of a difficult exchange. One has to won-
der, then, if even the toughest Socratic teachers haven’t always employed some of the de-
vices found in our modified Socratic classrooms, just as a matter of pedagogical (and
discursive) necessity. - Matoesian, Law and the Language of Identity, 54–55; see also Atkinson, Our Mas-
ters’ Voices; Tannen, “Repetition in Conversation.” - There are 14 examples of this in a set of 48 pair-parts (thus constituting more
than a quarter of the total pair-parts in the extended dialogue). - Atkinson and Drew, Order in Court; Tannen, “Repetition in Conversation.”
- The professor begins his turn with positive affirmations of the student’s previ-
ous turn, such as “right,” “yeah,” or “okay” in 19 of his 48 turns. He also backchannels the
student’s ongoing turns using “right” and “okay” at several points. - In one of the other modified Socratic classrooms, we find a similar pattern, with
the professor talking 79% of the time and clearly giving the students significant breaks.
The third modified Socratic classroom has a somewhat less marked distribution in favor
of the professor, but he nonetheless occupies almost 70% of class time (67%), leaving the
students to hold the floor for only 31% (the remaining percentage is attributed to the whole
class, as when the entire class responds to a question). - This is one reason that uptake analysis proves to be less fruitful in the modi-
fied Socratic classroom; the impact of a student response on the subsequent professor
question is significantly attenuated by these intervening discursive segues. A better
measure of how the student response is received is frequently found at the beginning of
the professor turns in these classes, rather than in the question with which the professor
turn ends.
Notes to Pages 145–149 255