Training the open mind: the emotional regulation of dissonance through the use of Socratic brachylogy

This paper analyzes a methodology that uses Socratic brachylogy, a type of dialogue made of short questions and short answers, to provoke and calibrate cognitive dissonance in the teaching of philosophy and its effectiveness in promoting conceptual change. This methodology privileges the interactions between teacher and student, and in particular, it is characterized as an exchange through which the teacher brings out the naive knowledge of the student and then shows its weaknesses. The refutation of the student's naive theories, what we can define as common sense, as opposed to a critical and problematic view of reality, aims to provoke cognitive dissonance, a prerequisite for conceptual change. The teacher's task is to calibrate the dissonance so that the student gradually becomes accustomed to emotions regulation. Therefore, the research questions are: How can Socratic dialogue effectively promote conceptual change on emotionally charged topics? How can it support the regulation of emotions related to cognitive dissonance? In order to answer these questions, I used a self-study (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2009), specifically a qualitative, participatory, and naturalistic research design type (Guba, 1978). I applied the strategy under study, in my role as a philosophy teacher, for three years, from 2016 to 2019, in a high school in the province of Varese, Italy, which saw the participation, on a voluntary basis, of about 150 students. Of these, 16 were selected according to the purposeful sampling criterion (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The data were analyzed using an inductive, bottom-up approach, following the criteria of reflective thematic analysis as codified by Braun and Clarke (2019). The results show the value of Socratic brachylogy in training students to regulate emotions related to cognitive dissonance to promote conceptual change, and identify the key elements of the instructional strategy.