The Harkness table, Harkness method, or Harkness discussion is a teaching and learning method involving students seated in a large, oval configuration to discuss ideas in an encouraging, open-minded environment with only occasional or minimal teacher intervention that was championed by Edward S. Harkness.
Edward Harkness described his vision as follows:
What I have in mind is [a classroom] where [students] could sit around a table with a teacher who would talk with them and instruct them by a sort of tutorial or conference method, where [each student] would feel encouraged to speak up. This would be a real revolution in methods.
Overview
The Harkness method is in use at many American boarding schools and colleges and encourages discussion in classes. The style is related to the Socratic method. Developed at Phillips Exeter Academy, the method's name comes from the oil magnate and philanthropist Edward Harkness, who presented the school with a monetary gift in 1930.
Harkness practices can vary, most notably between humanities subjects such as English and history and technical subjects such as math and physics.
Side note. I recently(2023) noticed a Reddit discussion about whether Harkess Tables work. I thought this was interesting:
"I've tried the Harkness Table method in many kinds of schools throughout my career. Worked great in prep school (10/10; would do it forever if I had stayed there); was a failed method no matter how much I worked to support it in urban public; was a half-half solution in suburban middle class school, which was more frustrating than anything.
In my experience, it ONLY works if the kids are smart, primed by their background to be engaged, etc. - in other words, you cannot use it to MAKE these things happen; you can only use it to nurture these skills if they already exist, and are supported by the community and infrastructure. If your principal and head teacher are eager to try this, I'd ask you to consider their motives and the environment - if they are trying to use this to engender discussion in an already bright and progressive population, then great; if not, then back away slowly, using data as much as possible to prove your case (formative evidence from experimenting).
There are several reasons for this. One is that there is NO room for behavioral management at a Harkness table - the assumption is that behavior will naturally emerge as peer-reinforced from the engagement, which is only true of kids who have a real reason to buy in, care about the learning environment and the opinion of their peers, and believe in the discursive model. It also disadvantages kids who need significant teacher support and scaffolding, or are merely shy and/or lazy - arguably, you have to break the model to support some IEP needs and learning types, which is so visible at the table, it breaks the efficacy for everyone there. And even those who created it know that there is a certain class size beyond which this model fails - and that maximum class size is relatively small (15 or so), in my experience."
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