More on the Socratic Method

Given a bit more thought, one observation that occured to me was a kind of inverse of a rule I stated yesterday. This inverse would be stated something like, "no matter who good a teaching method is, it can be screwed up by poor execution." One of the complaints about Socratic Teaching is that professors "hide the ball". My own parlance for this is "I'm thinking of a number". Good questioning, Socratic or otherwise, does not fall into this pattern. The question has a clear answer to anyone who is familiar with the material, or if the question is open ended, is stated clearly to be so. Just because I as the instructor can envision the answer I am already looking for does not mean its an obvious question. I was thinking of eight, by the way.

"What was Columbus looking for when he sailed west from Spain?" is a good question.
"Why did Columbus sail west from Spain" is a bad lead off question, but can be a good follow up question once particulars have been entered into the dialogue.

Good questions take baby steps. They ask one thing at a time. They don't have a large number of possible answers that are factually true but not accepted as correct.