Teaching Psychology and the Socratic Method: Real Knowledge in a Virtual Age

202 Pages·2016·2.65 MB·English

by  James J. Dillon (auth.)

Teaching
Psychology and the
Socratic Method
Real Knowledge in
a Virtual Age
James J. Dillon
Teaching Psychology and the Socratic Method
James   J.   Dillon
Teaching Psychology
and the Socratic
Method
Real Knowledge in a Virtual Age
James   J.   Dillon
University of West Georgia
Carrollton, Georgia, USA
ISBN 978-1-349-95049-2 ISBN 978-1-349-95050-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958141
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 016
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C
ONTENTS
1 Why We Teach 1
2 Who Is Socrates and Why Should We Read Him? 1 3
3 The Socratic Method 1 9
4 Socrates Structures the Course 2 7
5 Teaching Neuroscience with P haedo 3 5
6 Teaching the Psychology of Memory with P haedo 45
7 Teaching the Psychology of Learning with M eno 5 3
8 Teaching Sensation–Perception Psychology with D e Anima 6 5
9 Teaching Cognitive Psychology with D e Anima 7 5
10 First Academic Conference on Psychology and the Body 8 1
v
vi CONTENTS
11 Teaching Developmental Psychology with R epublic 93
12 Teaching Moral Development with T heaetetus 105
13 Teaching Abnormal Psychology with N icomachean Ethics 117
14 Teaching Psychotherapy with P haedrus 1 29
15 Conference 2: Good, Better, and Best in Psychology 139
16 Teaching Personality Psychology with A pology 1 47
17 Teaching Social Psychology with C rito 159
18 Teaching Motivation and Emotion Psychology
with E uthyphro 1 69
19 Academic Conference 3: What Is the Self? 1 81
20 Omnibus Academic Conference: The Socratic Method 1 91
Appendix A: Interlocutrix Worksheet 201
Appendix B: Conference Feedback Form 203
Index 205
CHAPTER 1
Why We Teach
During a class discussion a few years ago, a student struggled out loud with
the many demands of college life: classes, work, parents, romance, friends,
clubs, sports, and other obligations. “I just can’t make it all work,” she
said with exasperation and the beginning of a few tears in her eyes. This
was a capstone seminar for senior undergraduate psychology majors. The
topic on the fl oor was time management, and this student expressed how
hard it was for her to balance getting schoolwork done along with all the
other things she wanted and needed to do. Another student piped up to
counsel her, “Look, don’t let school interfere with your education.” These
words from Mark Twain seemed to elicit near universal agreement from
the class. “Of course,” they agreed, “the really important learning in col-
lege takes place outside the classroom. Don’t ever forget that.”
Lest we think this scenario is an anecdotal blip, 70 % of college students
say that “social” learning outside the classroom is more important than
academic learning (Grigsby, 2 009 ). It is not only students who think this
way. The famous psychologist Carl Rogers said of his career in teaching,
“It seems to me that anything that can be taught to another is relatively
inconsequential and has little or no signifi cant infl uence on behavior”
(1 969 , p. 302). These sentiments remind me of what my uncle used to
say over the Thanksgiving table to needle me: “Those who can, do; those
who can’t, teach.”
In this day of online classes and “distant learning” platforms, is the liv-
ing, breathing teacher necessary at all? What can college students learn in
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1
J.J. Dillon, Teaching Psychology and the Socratic Method,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95050-8_1
2 J.J. DILLON
a classroom, face-to-face with a skilled teacher they cannot learn a nywhere
else? Some have argued the answer is “skills and information” (see Craig,
2015 ; Hettich, 1 998 ). Indeed, there has been great pressure from leg-
islators, administrators, students, and other stakeholders to have higher
education be “relevant,” to show that learning really produces concrete
results in the world in terms of obtaining employment, earning higher
incomes, and acquiring “real world” job competencies. As a result, the
past 25 years have witnessed a wholesale transformation of the teaching
profession into an activity focused primarily on the transfer of relevant
skills and information to students.
What is ironic is that this lurch toward relevance and applicability actu-
ally puts the professor on the path of the Dodo Bird. A colleague of mine
has a picture on his offi ce door of a professor standing before a classroom.
Below it the caption reads, “Dead Man Talking.” The scenario is not that
far from being a reality. Once teaching becomes about skills and informa-
tion, it can just as easily be “put online.” It strikes many as absurd that we
haven’t already put college completely online (e.g., Carey, 2 015 ; Crow &
Dabars, 2015 ; Selingo, 2 015 ). I actually agree with these critics: if higher
education is really about skills and information, then it s hould all be put
online. Students should not be asked to waste their time driving to campus
and sitting through face-to-face classes if they can just as easily acquire
them by a cheaper and more effi cient means. But what I will try to show
in this book is that h igher education is not at all about acquiring skills and
information .
I return to the Twain quote, “Don’t let school interfere with your edu-
cation.” I tend to think that any popular idea like this must have at least a
kernel of truth in it. This view of education appreciates that for learning to
matter, it needs to be useful to the learner. It needs to pertain to and even
be derived from “the real world” rather than be a set of abstract principles
that apply to nothing. It needs to be something we achieve through our
own efforts rather than be “given” to us by a teacher in a classroom. But
this view misses other vitally important facets of learning, what we might
think of as the deeper aspects of education. Deep learning aims to develop
higher order and critical thinking in the learner, to help the student see
the underlying assumptions behind claims to knowledge, to be able to
evaluate those assumptions, and consider better ones. Deep learning seeks
to enable students to logically reason from premises to valid conclusions
or to induce others’ premises from listening and careful observation.
Deep learning teaches students to engage in thoughtful, persuasive speech
WHY WE TEACH 3
and writing, to go out into the world and be able to really know and
understand it to its core. Deep learning seeks to develop the young human
being’s mind to be able to live a meaningful life and productively engage
the franchise of democratic citizenship. The important point is that for
deep learning to happen, i t requires an intimate and interpersonal learn-
ing community . These things cannot be taught or learned online. And one
does not just pick these things up from one’s family, friends, and social
life. One does not acquire them from working in or running a business.
One can only learn these things in a classroom from a teacher who already
has these abilities himself or herself and who knows how to construct sce-
narios for students to learn and rehearse them.
My practice in this book is to pose questions about the role of the
teacher to the ancient fi gure Socrates. Socrates devoted his entire life to
teaching and was even willing to die for what he saw as the noblest of
all vocations, one which he thought required more strength and courage
than the soldier and more practical intelligence than the businessman. In
the dialogue I on , Socrates speaks with the famous rhapsode Ion. A rhap-
sode is a minstrel of sorts who gives oral recitals of the great poet Homer.
These fi gures were quite esteemed in ancient Greece. Given the adulation
he has enjoyed, Ion is quite convinced he is the greatest rhapsode who
ever lived. Always taken aback by displays of self-confi dence, Socrates is
determined to fi nd out what this young man knows which leads him to
his bluster.
In conducting this investigation through dialogue with Ion, Socrates
introduces a distinction between an art (t echne ) and its purpose (e rgon ).
The purpose of the art of medicine, he says, is health. The purpose of the
art of farming is food. The purpose of the art of carpentry is furniture.
The skilled practitioner of any art, Socrates maintains, has not only techni-
cal skill, but also an intimate knowledge of the overall purpose of the art,
where the art is supposed to lead. The practitioner uses this knowledge
of the end point to guide his or her specifi c actions while practicing the
art. Socrates tells Ion, since you are such a good practitioner of the art of
rhapsody, I assume you must also be conversant with its ergon . So what,
Socrates asks him, is the purpose of the art of rhapsody?
Ion mumbles, fumbles, and has an overall great deal of diffi culty
articulating what the purpose of his art is. He answers, does it even
need to have a purpose? Can’t my art just be for art’s sake? Socrates
is perplexed. Practitioners of any art should at least be able to provide
an account (l ogos ) of the goal of their craft. Otherwise, they are just
4 J.J. DILLON
blindly doing things, uncritically applying skills they have learned from
their own teachers. Socrates tries to engage Ion further. He asks Ion
to consider his own profession: teaching. He asks Ion, what is the pur-
pose of Dialectical teaching, the philosopher’s art? Is it fame? Esteem?
Is it accomplished students who have productive careers? No, Socrates
answers before Ion even has a chance to reply. It is none of these things.
As the carpenter’s art produces furniture, Socrates argues, the teacher’s
art produces k nowledge . The good teacher knows he or she is practiced
in the art of teaching if their instruction facilitates knowledge in the
student. Socrates here introduces two very important concepts for this
book: knowledge and Dialectic. My book is based entirely on these two
concepts. I believe that if we can understand these two ideas, we can
grasp the whole Socratic enterprise and will better understand what
teaching is all about. I will try to thoroughly explain both in the pages
that follow. I look fi rst at knowledge.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: THE MODERN EQUIVALENT
OF WISDOM
Socrates defi nes “knowledge” as the condition in which a mind appre-
hends the truth about a subject. He puts it more poetically in the
Republic : knowledge is the condition in which a soul has been “turned
toward the light” (518c). Socrates calls this state of knowledge “wisdom”
( Phaedo , 79c). In this book, I refer to wisdom as “real knowledge.” In
modern parlance, we often prefer to speak of “learning outcomes” rather
than “wisdom” or “knowledge,” but the meaning is basically the same.
Today’s schools and academic programs are often required to give an
account of the “knowledge” they seek to develop in their students. This
is a good thing. Imagine if teachers did not do this. We would be like
Ion, practitioners of an art whose purpose we did not really understand.
These learning outcomes are posted on school websites and printed in
brochures and syllabi.
Even in our virtual age of online degrees and Massive Online Open
Courses (MOOCs), when you review these posted outcomes, most aca-
demic programs still aspire to humane, liberal arts goals: self-knowledge
and moral awareness in students, critical thinking, analytical reasoning,
creative problem solving, and coherent writing. These are goals Socrates
would embrace. Not even at the most rapacious, for-profi t, or vocationally