A Learning and Teaching Method for the Online Environment that Delivers: Coupling a Soft Socratic Method with a Humanistic, Nurturing Approach

Abstract

There is limited literature on soft Socratic methods of teaching in Law and limited literature on effective teaching methods for the online environment. With the movement of learning and teaching online by universities in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and attendant lockdowns, one question became important – what is a successful pedagogical method for the online environment? While universities initially saw this as a temporary, emergency measure, learning and teaching online now looks to be more of a permanent change in tertiary education. This article evaluates the effectiveness of a student-focused teaching method, which couples a soft version of the Socratic Method with a Humanistic, nurturing approach, that I observed in Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Noah Feldman and Ropes & Gray Professor Alvin C Warren Jnr’s classes at Harvard Law School in 2013, and then adapted for the online environment and refined between 2016 and 2018. The evaluation is made using the four lenses from Stephen Brookfield’s book Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. Those lenses are: contextualisation in theory; students’ eyes; colleagues’ perception, and self-reflection. For the theoretical lens, the article analyses the traditional Socratic Method and the wide-ranging criticisms of it. The article then presents data collected from student surveys, peer reviews and self-reflection as a preliminary study. It is hoped that this article will assist other academics who are navigating online learning and teaching, and are curious about techniques and methodologies that have grown out of institutions in the United States of America. While this method was developed to teach Tax Law at a postgraduate level in groups of between 18 and 50 students, the technique could easily be applied in teaching: undergraduate students; students in other courses in Law, and in other disciplines.