Coaching
Adler believed that, in conjunction with and perhaps more importantly than didactic instruction, was coaching of skills. According to Adler, "The skills to be acquired are the skills of reading, writing, speaking, listening, observing, measuring, estimating, and calculating." Adler further argued that, "'Know-how consists in skilled performance. It differs from 'knowledge about,' which consists in knowing that something is thus-and-so, and not otherwise." Adler clarified this by saying;
"Since what is learned here is skill in performance, not knowledge of facts and formulas, the mode of teaching cannot be didactic. It cannot consist in the teacher telling, demonstrating, or lecturing. Instead, it must be akin to the coaching that is done to impart athletic skills. A coach does not teach simply by telling or giving a learner a rule book to follow. A coach trains by helping the learner to do, to go through the right motions, and to organize a sequence of acts in a correct fashion. He corrects faulty performance again and again and insists on repetition of the performance until it achieves a measure of perfection. Only in this way can skill in reading, writing, speaking, and listening be acquired."
Mortimer Adler, The Paideia Proposal, (1982, pgs. 26 & 27)
If we go back to the 3 columns of instruction, we'll see that coaching students in reading, writing, speaking and listening should take up the preponderance of our instructional time and should be aimed at providing opportunities for supervised practice. Formative assessments may be prevalent in coaching and we must be prepared to employ the tools of various disciplines in these instructional activities. By coaching students how to read, write, speak, and listen, we are preparing them to be communicators - a skill set and an attribute that is necessary for the final column of instruction, Socratic (or dialectic) teaching.
"Since what is learned here is skill in performance, not knowledge of facts and formulas, the mode of teaching cannot be didactic. It cannot consist in the teacher telling, demonstrating, or lecturing. Instead, it must be akin to the coaching that is done to impart athletic skills. A coach does not teach simply by telling or giving a learner a rule book to follow. A coach trains by helping the learner to do, to go through the right motions, and to organize a sequence of acts in a correct fashion. He corrects faulty performance again and again and insists on repetition of the performance until it achieves a measure of perfection. Only in this way can skill in reading, writing, speaking, and listening be acquired."
Mortimer Adler, The Paideia Proposal, (1982, pgs. 26 & 27)
If we go back to the 3 columns of instruction, we'll see that coaching students in reading, writing, speaking and listening should take up the preponderance of our instructional time and should be aimed at providing opportunities for supervised practice. Formative assessments may be prevalent in coaching and we must be prepared to employ the tools of various disciplines in these instructional activities. By coaching students how to read, write, speak, and listen, we are preparing them to be communicators - a skill set and an attribute that is necessary for the final column of instruction, Socratic (or dialectic) teaching.
Coaching resources
Below are just a very few resources that demonstrate the types of coaching strategies you might teach students in this column of instruction. You might teach and practice with them how to read like a historian by sourcing and conducting source corroboration; you might teach and practice with them how to approach a primary source like a historian; you might teach and practice with them strategies for spotting "fake news" sources; or you might teach and have them practice how to disagree respectfully with someone in a conversation. These are all vital coaching events/strategies that help build to the Socratic seminar.
The Paideia Project
At the heart of COACHING in the Paideia model is the Paideia Project. This project typically represents the culmination of the unit of study and requires the student to employ the content and skills learned during the unit to complete the project.