Methodology of Project SEED
Mission From its beginning, Project SEED has always focused on reaching children who may not be well-served by traditional education, showing them that they can succeed in academics and in life. In the early 1960's, Project SEED founder William Johntz, a Berkeley mathematician and psychologist, developed an innovative teaching methodology, based on Socratic questioning, which changed his entire career and has since had a profound impact on thousands of students and teachers across the nation.
If someone will keep asking him these questions often
and in various forms, you can be sure that in the end
he will know about them as accurately as anybody ...
And no one having taught him, only asked questions,
yet he will know, having got the knowledge out of himself.
- Socrates in Meno
Method Over the following decades, using the teaching approach Johntz had initially developed for working with secondary and elementary students, he and other professional mathematicians collectively formulated what has become the Project SEED Socratic group discovery method. This non-lecture approach combines a pure questioning teaching method and abstract mathematics curricula with techniques to encourage constant verbal and non-verbal feedback, promote all students' participation, and improve students' focus in the classroom.
In Project SEED classes, the students create, through discussion and feedback to one another, an environment that supports exploration and promotes academic self-confidence through success in high-level conceptual mathematics. Students of 
all levels of ability 
are drawn into the Socratic process of discovering mathematical concepts. Project SEED specialists encourage even shy or unsure students to take academic risks through carefully crafted questions. SEED specialists plan opportunities for every student to participate individually and as a group. The students become able to voice their opinions and understanding of complex mathematical ideas, both verbally and through non-verbal signals such as agreement and disagreement. In classes where the Project SEED Socratic group discovery teaching methodology is used, all students participate in exploring conjectures, reaching conclusions, and creating generalizations about advanced mathematics topics.
The Project SEED Socratic group discovery method, in which students play an integral role in educating themselves, is the hallmark of Project SEED today.
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