Does Socratic teaching foster learning?

In Socratic teaching, the teacher does not simply “communicate” content to the learners, but the learners have to infer the learning content while being guided by the teacher’s questions. Although this approach is quite common among teachers at least in some countries, apparently its effectiveness has not been investigated intensively in empirical studies. The present experimental study investigated the effects of Socratic teaching compared to a teacher presentation on knowledge acquisition as well as motivational and affective variables. A sample of 125 university students participated in a pretest-posttest-follow-up control group design with the two conditions Socratic teaching and teacher presentation. In addition to explanatory knowledge and knowledge application, subjective knowledge, interest and several affective variables were measured in an immediate posttest and a follow-up test. No effects of Socratic teaching on knowledge application were found. Small positive effects of Socratic teaching on subjective knowledge and interest (in one of the tests) as well as rather large positive effects on several affective variables were found. The findings do not provide strong evidence for a superiority of Socratic teaching compared to a teacher presentation. Nevertheless, Socratic teaching may be advantageous with respect to motivational and affective variables and constitute a reasonable instructional option.