Jieni LIM (301167464)

Educ 471- Summer 2014

Prof. Rebecca Cox (Becky) Journal Entry Week 8 July 08, 2014

In Week 8 class on June 24, 2014, we participated in one of the educational method,
Silent Socratic Dialogue, every student was asked to choose a prompt out of the three options,
and write about our thoughts on the selected prompt/ topic without discussing with anyone. For
example, I chose the first prompt, it was about the idea of some sort of dissatisfaction may be a
sign of the real education emerged. I wrote down my disagreement with this standpoint on a
sheet of paper, and provide some reason why. Other students were doing the same procedure too.
The entire process was designed to be non-verbal form of discussions, thus, no one was
allowed to talk with one another. In the following steps, we were asked to exchange our written
paper to our partner or someone sitting next to you. Your partner will read through what you
have written and provide comments or questions on your argument within a given time limit,
approx. 3-4 minutes, and you do likewise. After that, you will take back your piece, and tried to
answer the questions/comments that posed by your partners. You were also given a time limit to
respond to the comments.
With this process, it requires to a quick reflect and rapid respond about the issue. Up to
this point, the entire process still remains in a non-verbal form. Everything was conducted in a
written form. After responding to those comments, you were asked to exchange your paper with
your partner again, and based on the responses, both of you will provide comments and pose
questions again. The same procedure would be repeated.
Through this activity, students were required to have a quick reflection and rapid
response to the questions/comments due to the time limit. Students were not able to take longer
time to think and response to their comments. Taking long time to think about the issues or
response to them will cause one unable to complete the tasks efficiently, such as student might
Jieni LIM (301167464)
Educ 471- Summer 2014
Prof. Rebecca Cox (Becky) Journal Entry Week 8 July 08, 2014

not be able to complete their comments or questions on their partners argument, and causing
their partner does not understand their comments fully. This leads may lead to certain degree of
non-verbal communication breakdown. I usually took longer time to think and reflect on ideas,
concepts, and issues. However, during this activity, I learnt to think and reflect more rapidly due
to the time limit, so that I could finish writing my questions/ comments on others work, as well
as able to respond to others comments on my argument in a completed form. Basically, once I
got the comments/ questions from my partner, I quickly wrote it down and responded according
to the instant ideas I had in my mind.
This is a new learning experience for me, and I thought that this method might not be not
effective as I expected, because I used to always think that by spending more or longer time to
reflect on certain things over and over again, tend to have better, more holistic, thorough analysis
or results. However, I was not right at all. To me, this activity and experience convey a message
that Less is more. In other words, it is not always the case that longer or more is better.
Sometimes, by having limited or shorter time may end up with some unexpected results!
Another aspect of this activity was the non-verbal form of setting. I realize that if this
discussion requires rapid responses or reflections within a given time limit, I responded and work
better in the silent setting because it has insignificant form of detraction. I would imagine if the
entire process was conducted in a conversational form, at the same time, it requires rapid
responses; I might not be able to respond as effective as it was, in the verbal form of discussions.
However, one of the downsides of the Silent Socratic dialogue is having a higher
tendency of lacking the smooth and clear flows of discussions. My view of an ideal discussion
setting not only consists of responses, but a back-and-forth sort of discussion flows. For
Jieni LIM (301167464)
Educ 471- Summer 2014
Prof. Rebecca Cox (Becky) Journal Entry Week 8 July 08, 2014

example, in a verbal form of discussion, if my partner mentions a term that I do not understand, I
am able to ask him/her to clarify or explain the term right away (in appropriate time), so that I
could follow along with his/her following conversation without having any ambiguous or
confusing ideas. And this will allows the conversation flows better and clearer. But Silent
Socratic dialogue does not provide space to ask for clarification right away. Therefore, students
have to keep their ambiguous ideas hanging till the next round of responses. For example, if
someone responded to my argument by posing a question, but I do not understand few terms that
he/she applies in the question. I will need to wait till the next around of paper exchanging in
order to respond to the issue, or I might need to make guesses of what this person is trying to say
and respond to it based on my uncertain assumptions. In this case, the flows of the discussions in
the silent form might not be as smooth and clear as the verbal discussions.
In the second section of the class, we had our very first presentation group of the course,
THE PLAN team. The group started off by assigning each group a task of expanding the
development of Stanley Park. Students were assigned into different groups (4 -5 person each
group), and that each group were given different roles, ideologies and areas of specialties.
Students were asked to role play in the specific roles and expertise. We had group of Vancouver
historian academic, city zoning managers, commercial developers, economists,
environmentalists, artists etc. Each group was supposed to take on the perspectives of their
fictional roles to address the posted issue.
During this presentation, I observed and learnt that it is important to think and reconsider
things from different form of perspectives. We often heard or were encouraged to do so, but it is
Jieni LIM (301167464)
Educ 471- Summer 2014
Prof. Rebecca Cox (Becky) Journal Entry Week 8 July 08, 2014

always easy to say than to do. However, in this presentation, it has once again reminded me the
importance of this notion, especially if I am planning to be a teacher in the future.
In this activity, we were forced to make decisions from other perspectives on an issue
that most of us were unfamiliar with, the expansion of Stanley Park. I was assigned in the
Vancouver historian academic group, I was uncertain of how and what exactly historian would
do on this particular issue. After discussing with my group, we managed to come out with some
ideas. And I was presenting my views about the issues so naturally and fluently based on my
assigned role without even thinking much about it. Through this, I realize that many people,
regardless their disciplines, areas of interest, social level, backgrounds etc, their actions or
decisions were strongly derived by the ideologies, position or values that they were set in or were
given to them.
With this realization, it stimulated my thoughts about the decisions that made in our
educational system. If this is the case, I am pretty certain that our educational system contains
certain level of biases, because each educator or decision makers carry some sort of values,
beliefs and traditions. Is it considered as positive or negative situation? And Why or why not?
There is a possibility that educators made certain decisions based on the assigned roles or
positions that given by the institutions or any form of body, which sometimes, it may even
conflict with their real own ideas. It is similar to my role play case; I made certain decisions
because of my assigned role, not because I hold those beliefs and ideas. And how can educators
deal with this conflicting situation? Is there any better approach to deal with this?