Something to give. Socratic Seminar in the English Classroom

Abstract

Although many educators aspire to dialogic classrooms – that is to say spaces where students are engaged in sustained talk leading to co-construction of knowledge (Alexander, 2006) – in fact, for many students, for much of the time, student-sanctioned classroom talk often appears to be utilised to expose students’ lack of knowledge – and scripted questions, controlling discussions, ignoring off-topic comments, and evaluating students are more frequently used (Cazden 2001; Mehan 1979; Nystrand 1997). With this context in mind, I wish in this article to explore ways in which Socratic seminar – a specific way of promoting student dialogue – might be an antidote to these monolingual spaces.