The Socratic Method: Empirical Assessment of a Psychology Capstone Course

Although students make some epistemological progress during college, most graduate without developing meaning-making strategies that reflect an understanding that knowledge is socially constructed. Using a pre-test–post-test design and a within-subjects 2 × 2 mixed-design ANOVA, this study reports on empirical findings which support the Socratic method of teaching as effective in challenging and changing psychology capstone students’ levels of epistemological maturity as measured by the Learning Environment Preferences survey and Perry’s model of intellectual maturity.