Paolo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed changed my teaching style a number of years ago. I could no longer conceive of the "banking method" of teaching, in which a teacher deposits knowledge into the presumably empty "account" of a student's brain. Since then I have been experimenting with a variety of styles and techniques designed to motivate students to think, to participate and to act.
I recently came across the term "maieutic," the latest way to describe the Socratic method. I first read it in My Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. I realized that maieutic described my own method. I was questioning students, trying to help them realize and understand what they already knew. But I was not quite a Platonist: the truth that they "recognized" was not actually truth but was frequently a re-hash of opinions drawn from talk radio, MTV, their peers, and from "mother culture" (another expression from Quinn).
It has therefore been an on-going and continuing challenge to get students to listen and hear voices outside their cultural paradigm. I ask them to "listen, listen, listen to the voices of your classmates, listen to the voices from the past who speak to you from the pages of the text, and listen most especially to the people with whom you disagree."
One of the ways in which I help students to "listen" is to have them read primary source texts. I find that discussions of these texts can be quite lively if I give students "quiz" questions which they must work on in groups. This encourages them to do the readings (via peer pressure) and forces them to talk. I also give students "quizzes" on questions which have no right or wrong answer, but rather elicit value judgments, e.g. True or False, "People are born basically good." This can lead into a discussion of original sin, Augustine, morality, or American Deists. An interesting discussion resulted from the statement, True or False, "The truth is out there," from "The X Files." These quizzes are good discussion starters because they instantly reveal opposing viewpoints and opinions.
If the readings are difficult, or the issues interesting, I will have the class divide into two teams to debate the issue. I had a Religion in America class debate enthusiastic religion versus rational religion; they had done readings in Edwards and Chauncy. Another class debated the merits of Calvin versus Arminius. I give the two teams the opportunity to plan their attack and their arguments, and suggest that they look at the opposition so they will know how to defend themselves.
Students also show that they are listening in their papers, which frequently are exegetical; that is, students must state and report the thinking from a particular primary source. And so I have received papers explaining the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, Karl Rahner, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Jr., Annie Besant, and many others. The students find it difficult to "listen" to another, to present views from the "other" fairly, accurately, and sympathetically. I feel it is nevertheless my task to teach them how to listen, how to engage one another in discussion, and how to analyze what texts, and people are saying -- including themselves! Toward this end I attempt to model the very skills I am trying to teach.