Written by: Keith Stenning, Alexander Schmoelz, Heather Wren, Elias Stouraitis, Theodore Scaltsas, Konstantine Alexopoulos & Amelie Aichhorn
Abstract: We sketch a theory of creativity which centres on the framing of activity by repetitive thinking and action, and sees creativity as divergences from these routines which is thereby framed against them. Without a repetitive frame creativity is impossible. Mere repetition is not creative, even if new. Creativity disrupts a frame, purposefully. Socratic Dialogue is an ancient technique of engaging a student in a dialogue by asking non-leading questions, aimed at revealing to the student how much knowledge he or she already has on some topic: Socrates' demonstration to the slave-boy (and the audience) that the boy already knows geometry (without any schooling) is the founding example. We aim to illustrate that internalising the Socratic kind of reflective self-questioning and co-questioning is intimately related to the view of creativity as the reframing of routine. Therefore, we have qualitatively analysed primary and secondary school pilots in Greece, Austria and the United Kingdom. The illustrations of facilitated Socratic Dialogues with children and young people have been derived from the analysis of 14 Socratic Dialogues involving a total number of 97 students. This paper outlines the Socratic Dialogue as a method of both researching and teaching creative thinking, and it reveals that the Socratic method dovetails with this conception of co-creativity. As a research method, Socratic Dialogue aims to elicit information concerning reasoning processes and shared experiences. As a teaching method, Socratic Dialogue aims to get students to internalise the public methodology of Socratic Dialogue, and to adopt it across the range of domains they meet. The students’ use of the internalised method towards enabling creative thinking is illustrated by the experiences of the teaching intervention teams in the C2Learn project, using games to provide occasions for co-creativity.
Keywords: Co-creativity, Socratic Dialogue, creative thinking, teaching method, research method