Socratic questioning

A key educator skill is to be able to elicit evidence from the course participants that they understand the content and can apply it where appropriate; e.g. insulin adjustment or CP counting. You are familiar with using Socratic questioning and open questions from Remote DAFNE facilitation and this skill is equally important in face-to-face DAFNE courses.

As a reminder, Socratic questioning uses (mainly) open questions in a systematic and logical way to encourage critical thinking. These questions are used to explore ideas in depth, promote independent thinking, give participants ownership of what they are learning and move them towards their goals.

There are six Socratic question types:

• questions for clarification
• questions that probe assumptions
• questions that probe reasons and evidence
• questions about viewpoints and perspectives
• questions that probe implications and consequences
• questions about the question.

We have also provided more information on examples of all the question types [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]   and when to use them.

Even if there isn’t a logical order to the questions, asking open questions is one of the best ways to stimulate group interaction.

Sometimes it can be difficult to maintain a line of questioning when group members are contributing to a lively discussion. This often happens, you may have experienced this during Remote DAFNE facilitation.

You can help the group to stay on track by:

• referring to your group agreement: ‘I’m conscious of the time…’
• banking or parking questions: ‘That’s a good point, add it to the question bank and we will come back to it …’
• interjecting with a summary of the discussion and refocusing the group on the task at hand.