Susannah Pollvogt expresses that law schools rarely teach students how to actually participate in Socratic dialogue, even though professors expect this skill thus leaving many 1Ls anxious and inadequately prepared. She advocates for “scaffolding” this skill using a “me-we-you” framework: the professor first models how to answer a Socratic-style question, then a collaborative approach is attempted, and finally has the whole class prepare answers individually before traditional cold-calling begins. While this approach takes more class time, Pollvogt contends that building students’ metacognitive skills matters more than covering every possible topic, and that gradually building up to cold-calling, rather than starting with it, ultimately benefits both students’ learning and the quality of classroom dialogue. You can read her entire blog post here: Scaffolding the Skill of Participating in Socratic Dialogue by Susannah W. Pollvogt
(Goldie Pritchard)
