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In a post on The Faculty Lounge, Jacqueline Lipton recounts her experience at the AALS meat market, with candidates invariably indicating that their teaching style is "soft socratic." Professor Lipton then notes that she would probably describe her own teaching style as soft socratic, and I think that most professors would do the same (Personally, I describe my teaching style as soft socratic method combined with the problem method [more on this in a later post]). As Paul Bateman noted in Toward Diversity in Teaching Methods in Law School: Five Suggestions from the Back Row, 17 QLR 397, 404 (1997), a study by Steven Friedland "indicated that the most widely used teaching technique was the Socratic method: a staggering ninety-seven percent of those teaching first year classes reported using the Socratic method, with the use of alternative teaching techniques decreasing as a teacher became more experienced or tenured!" Is this because, as one of the commenters on Professor's Lipton's post noted, most law professors only saw the socratic method in law school? Is the problem method the RC Cola of teaching methodologies? And what do professors mean by soft socratic method? These are some of the questions that I will try to answer and have professors answer in a series of posts this month.

My first post on this topic addresses the question of what professors mean by soft socratic. And my first question is to what extent law professors allow students to "opt or or "take a pass" for a given class session or class sessions and whether those professors that do view this as an aspect of the soft socratic method. You can answer this question by responding to the following poll and/or leaving a comment.

 

Personally, I allow students to opt out as long as they let me know that they are opting out before the start of class. I don't have any set policy on the number of times that a student can opt out, but I don't think that I have ever had a student who opted out more than twice in a given course, with most students opting out only once if at all. Usually, students will simply e-mail me before class and let me know that they are opting out because they have been a bit under the weather or got caught up in law review or moot court and have fallen behind in the reading. Often times the student will volunteer to answer questions the following class, so the student ends up not taking a hit on class participation.

So, why do I allow students to opt out? Well, first of all, before I allowed students to opt out, students who were clearly unprepared for class feebly attempted to answer questions, and I don't think that worked out especially well for the student, me, or the class. Second, I remember in law school students skipping classes because they were unprepared and feared being called upon. I would much rather have such students let me know that they need to opt out and attend class rather then skip the class session.

This second reason stems not only from concerns about learning but also concerns about the stress faced by students. In Perceptions of Stress and Control in the First Semester of Law School, 32 Willamette L. Rev. 593, 603, 604 (1996), Suzanne C. Segerstrom notes the feelings of helpfulness and lack of control suffered by law students in law school in general and with the socratic method in particular. Segerstrom goes on to conclude:

This is a large part of the reason why I allow students to opt out. And readers, if you allow students to opt out, do you do so for similar or different reasons? And if you don't allow students to opt out, why not?

Finally, if you are a soft socratic professor, what makes you soft socratic? Are you soft socratic because you (a) allow students to opt out, (b) try to assist students in answering questions under your socratic approach and not act like Kingsfield, (c) don't dock students for insufficient class participation, or (d) mix socratic method with other teaching method? All of the above? None of the above?

-Colin Miller