What is Socratic Learning according to Wagenschein

Teachers often tend to give answers to questions their students have not asked yet due to curricular requirements. In reflecting this practice, an experiment is documented where adult students were faced with enormously difficult questions. Their previous careers and education provided them with little experience in answering these questions. The vocational school where they were trained showed little commitment in assisting them. The outcome of the experiment was astonishing: the extremely complex tasks were excellently solved by all students. The findings might be interpreted in the light of the teacher’s didactic gifts. Yet another explanation seems to be worth investigating. This chapter focuses on empathy and other impacts on learning success which have different effects in different contexts of relationship. Charisma, too, is not a phenomenon of monologues, but bound to a certain type of acting together. For these reasons, the chapter takes a closer look at confidence building between teacher and students.