Socratic Seminars in High School

Moeller, Victor; Moeller, Marc

doi:10.4324/9781315776620

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Secondly, at the pedagogical level, dialogic forms of instructional strategies in the ethically oriented Literature classroom through exploratory talk and inquiry-driven questions are prominent (Borsheim-Black & Sarigianides, 2019;Choo, 2021;Ginsberg & Glenn, 2019b;Juzwik et al, 2014;. Often, teachers enact dialogic forms of socially engaged talk, be it in small-group or whole-class levels of discussion, with some using instructional strategies such as Literature Circles (Chisholm & Cook, 2021;Thein et al, 2011 and Socratic Circles (Chappel, 2019;Moeller & Moeller, 2014).…”

Section: Pedagogical Gap: Ethically Oriented Debates In English (Lite...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a Dialogic Ethical Criticism:

Nah

2023

L1-ESLL

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Since the late 20th century, Literature educators have adopted dialogic pedagogies that connect aesthetic appreciation and other-centred approaches to literary texts. However, classroom research on students’ ethical meaning-making has rarely been connected with theoretical developments of ethical criticism or conducted in non-western contexts and classroom debate settings. To map how Literature classroom interactions open or close possibilities for ethical meaning-making, I propose a dialogic ethical criticism that synthesises an other-centred ethical criticism influenced by Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical philosophy and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s notion of hermeneutic conversation. Using deductive and inductive analysis, I develop and apply a coding framework to examine classroom discourse in a high-ability Singapore Secondary Four (Grade 10) class in an Asian poetry unit. I focus on a series of classroom debates comparing poems with ethical invitations on the representations of asylum seekers, the process of embracing diversity, and reasserting identity amidst discrimination. While some students keenly consider others’ perspectives and develop the strength of their interpretive possibilities with close textual evidence, other students simulate an ethical openness by selectively using textual evidence. Although antagonistic forms of literary debates can inhibit students’ ethical meaning-making, student adjudicators providing constructive feedback with close textual support can facilitate responsible interpretive possibilities.

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