ChatGPT as a tool for honing teachers' Socratic dialogue skills

TL;DR

This paper explores using ChatGPT as a training tool for teachers to improve their Socratic dialogue skills, demonstrating recent advancements in chatbot's dialogue capabilities through examples and pilot activities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel pedagogical application of ChatGPT for teacher training in Socratic dialogue, showing significant progress since earlier assessments.

Findings

ChatGPT now effectively engages in Socratic dialogue with teachers.

Pilot activities indicate potential for ChatGPT in teacher skill development.

Examples demonstrate improved chatbot responses in pedagogical contexts.

Abstract

In this proof-of-concept paper, we propose a specific kind of pedagogical use of ChatGPT - to help teachers practice their Socratic dialogue skills. We follow up on the previously published paper "ChatGPT and the frustrated Socrates" by re-examining ChatGPT's ability to engage in Socratic dialogue in the role of a physics student. While in late 2022 its ability to engage in such dialogue was poor, we see significant advancements in the chatbot's ability to respond to leading questions asked by a human teacher. We suggest that ChatGPT now has the potential to be used in teacher training to help pre- or in-service physics teachers hone their Socratic dialogue skills. In the paper and its supplemental material, we provide illustrative examples of Socratic dialogues with ChatGPT and present a report on a pilot activity involving pre-service physics and mathematics teachers conversing with it in a Socratic fashion.