@Admin

I suppose ‘irritant’ could be understood in several ways. In the usage in wikipedia, I can see how intentional ‘irritation’ might be a good thing, maybe in the sense of combatting complacency. And it seems Socrates is comfortable being an irritant. But are you saying that this sense of ‘Gadfly-ing’ is something you would not tolerate as teacher?

How would you determine intent? Was Socrates’ intent to be irritating to Athenian society?
Is it possible you (as student) might consider your ‘novel questions’ well-intentioned, and valuable, but I (as teacher) might consider your questions irritating? How to deal with this?

It seems @Will thinks the students should be the Gadfly, @Admin thinks the facilitator should be the Gadfly. I can’t help but wonder if all are Gadflys, then who would play Meno?