Creating spaces for ethical and critical reflection: conversational styles in Socratic conversations

Digitalization has profoundly changed how individuals relate to one another. While ensuring global connectivity, digitalization fosters an increasing sense of isolation and a passive attitude towards events, thus decreasing shared responsibility for others and the surrounding environment. Consequently, it is essential to create spaces for reflection and genuine dialogue that promote critical thinking and a sense of community. In this context, the Melete – Center of Ethics for Care, at the University of Verona (Italy), introduces educative research for schools – named the MelArete Project – aimed at promoting ethical and critical thinking through specific educational instruments, in which Socratic conversations play a central role. Socratic conversations are dialogues grounded in the Socratic maieutic method and initiated through the formulation of an eidetic question. This question, posed by the researcher, who serves as the conversation’s facilitator, invites children to reflect on the essence of a phenomenon. Specifically, questions such as “What is good?” or “What is care?” aim to investigate the essence of ethical issues through group dialogue. In this way, this educational instrument not only fosters children’s ability to examine ethical questions critically but also creates a space for experiencing human connection through dialogue, encouraging a responsible attitude towards the world’s challenges, grounded in the ethics of friendship. This claim is supported by numerous empirical studies showing that, across different Socratic approaches – that is, educational approaches grounded in the Socratic maieutic method, such as Socratic questioning, Socratic seminar, and Socratic dialogue – it is possible to create spaces for critical and collective thinking. However, there is still insufficient evidence to determine which conversational styles adopted by facilitators are most effective in fostering the development of ethical and critical thinking in primary school children. Building on this, this contribution aims to highlight the conversational styles that foster ethical and critical reflection in primary school children, based on the analysis of Socratic conversations conducted by three researchers acting as facilitators, within the MelArete Project. Specifically, after presenting the theoretical framework of the MelArete Project on education to the ethics of virtues according to the principle of care, the educational instrument of Socratic conversations will be introduced and its structure outlined. Subsequently, the results of the qualitative analysis of Socratic conversations, conducted according to the Empirical Phenomenological Method, will be presented, highlighting the conversational styles adopted by facilitators that promote critical thinking among primary school children. Therefore, based on these results, the aim is to provide the educational community with not only a practical instrument for creating spaces for reflection and fostering shared responsibility for ethical issues but also research-validated directions to support teachers in designing and conducting Socratic conversations.