Socio-Cognitive Analysis of Socratic Dialogue

Our work involves close analysis of socratic dialogue in sokratiska and paideia seminars (billings andfitzgerald, 2002; pihlgren, 2008), grounded in socio-cognitive theory. similar to socratic dialogue, thesokratiska and paideia seminars are defined as “a collaborative, intellectual dialogue about ideas and values,based on a text, facilitated by open-ended questions, resulting in enhanced conceptual understanding” (roberts and billings, 2008). by examining both quantitative and qualitative aspects of thinking in dialogue, we have found important socio-cognitive patterns. in developing systems for analysis we have identified the following important features:•• ratio of teacher to student talk (turns and time)•• content of talk (textual ideas, personal connections)•• use of gestures and various means of non-verbal communication•• levels of cognition (recall to synthesis)in addition, we have found a curious interpersonal cognitive processing which frequently occurs in seminar dialogue, prompting new individual and collective thinking. this, we believe, poses an important challenge to existing theory on thinking.