Philosophy for Children arose in the 1970s in the US as an educational programme. This programme, initiated by Matthew Lipman, was devoted to exploring the relationship between the notions ‘philosophy’ and ‘childhood’, with the implicit practical goal of establishing philosophy as a full-fledged ‘content area’ in public schools. Over 40 years, the programme has spread worldwide, and the theory and practice of doing philosophy for or with children and young people appears to be of growing interest in the field of (...) education and, by implication, in society as a whole. This article focuses on this growing interest by offering a survey of the main arguments and ideas that have given shape to the idea of philosophy for children in recent decades. This aim is twofold: first, to make more familiar an actual educational practice that is not at all well known in the field of academic philosophy itself; and second, to invite a re-thinking of the relationship between philosophy and the child ‘after Lipman’. (shrink)

This inaugural handbook documents the distinctive research field that utilizes history and philosophy in investigation of theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in the teaching of science and mathematics. It is contributed to by 130 researchers from 30 countries; it provides a logically structured, fully referenced guide to the ways in which science and mathematics education is, informed by the history and philosophy of these disciplines, as well as by the philosophy of education more generally. The first handbook to cover the (...) field, it lays down a much-needed marker of progress to date and provides a platform for informed and coherent future analysis and research of the subject. -/- The publication comes at a time of heightened worldwide concern over the standard of science and mathematics education, attended by fierce debate over how best to reform curricula and enliven student engagement in the subjects There is a growing recognition among educators and policy makers that the learning of science must dovetail with learning about science; this handbook is uniquely positioned as a locus for the discussion. -/- The handbook features sections on pedagogical, theoretical, national, and biographical research, setting the literature of each tradition in its historical context. Each chapter engages in an assessment of the strengths and weakness of the research addressed, and suggests potentially fruitful avenues of future research. A key element of the handbook’s broader analytical framework is its identification and examination of unnoticed philosophical assumptions in science and mathematics research. It reminds readers at a crucial juncture that there has been a long and rich tradition of historical and philosophical engagements with science and mathematics teaching, and that lessons can be learnt from these engagements for the resolution of current theoretical, curricular and pedagogical questions that face teachers and administrators. (shrink)

Philosophy with children (P4C) 1 presents significant positive challenges for educators. Its 'community of enquiry' pedagogy assumes not only an epistemological shift in the role of the educator, but also a different ontology of 'child' and balance of power between educator and learner. After a brief historical sketch and an outline of the diversity among P4C practitioners, epistemological uncertainty in teaching P4C is crystallised in a succinct overview of theoretical and practical tensions that are a direct result of the implementation (...) of P4C in mainstream education. These recurring pedagogical tensions in my practice as P4C teacher, teacher educator and mentor of teacher educators cause disequilibrium that opens up rich opportunities for philosophy of education in supporting novice P4Cers. Disequilibrium is a positive force that opens up a space in which educators need to reflect upon their values, their beliefs about learning and teaching, and ultimately encourages educators to rethink their own role. Plato's metaphor of the stingray highlights the role of the P4C teacher educator as model of the P4C teacher in any setting: 'to numb and to be numbed'. The P4C community and its institutions need to address the questions arising from these pedagogical tensions; and this needs to be done with integrity, that is, in communities of enquiry that include children. If not, in the long term, a more instrumental version of P4C may prevail. (shrink)

Childhood looms large in our understanding of human life as it is a phase through which all adults have passed. Childhood is foundational to the development of selfhood, the formation of interests, values and skills and to the lifespan as a whole. Understanding what it is like to be a child, and what differences childhood makes, are essential for any broader understanding of the human condition. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children is an outstanding reference source (...) to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into five parts: ¿ Being a child ¿ Childhood and moral status ¿ Parents and children ¿ Children in society ¿ Children and the state. Questions covered include: What is a child? Is childhood a uniquely valuable state, and if so why? Can we generalize about the goods of childhood? What rights do children have, and are they different from adults¿ rights? What gives people a right to parent? What role, if any, ought biology to play in determining who has the right to parent a particular child? What kind of rights can parents legitimately exercise over their children? What roles do relationships with siblings and friends play in the shaping of childhoods? How should we think about sexuality and disabilility in childhood, and about racialised children? How should society manage the education of children, and what values should inform such practices? What is a good school? How are children¿s lives affected by being taken into social care? The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of childhood, political philosophy and ethics as well as those in related disciplines such as education, psychology, sociology, social policy, law, social work, youth work, neuroscience and anthropology. (shrink)

While some argue that the only way to make a place for Philosophy for Children in today's strict, standardised classroom is to measure its efficacy in promoting reasoning, we believe that this must be avoided in order to safeguard what is truly unique in P4C dialogue. When P4C acquiesces to the very same quantitative measures that define the rest of learning, then the philosophical dimension drops out and P4C becomes yet another progressive curriculum and pedagogy for enhancing argumentation skills that (...) can easily be appropriated by any content area. What we want to offer in this article is a reevaluation of P4C that remains faithful to a radical kernel that we find when we do philosophy with children and young adults. To theorise the potential for P4C, we draw heavily on Agamben's work, and in particular his reflections on speech and infancy. We propose that the redemption of P4C necessitates a shift from a community of inquiry to a community of infancy. Such a community is not a community that operates according to predefined rules or standardised assessment protocols but rather is an inoperative community that is defined by letting ends idle. On our account, a community of infancy is an example of dialogic studious play that is neither ritual nor just play, thus avoiding the extreme polarities of the ritualised classrooms of high-stakes testing and the ‘ludic’ postmodern classroom of free play. What is at stake here is to preserve the last vestige of freedom within the school. (shrink)

Child moral agency is dismissed in many historical and contemporary accounts based on children's supposed lack or marginal possession of agency-bearing capacities, including reason, deliberation, and judgment, amongst others. Given its prominence in the philosophical canon, I call this the traditional view of child agency. Recent advancements in moral developmental psychology challenge the traditional view, pointing toward the possession of relevant capacities and competencies for moral and responsible agency in early and middle childhood. I argue that both views—traditional and developmental—underdetermine (...) our practices of holding children responsible in our common interactions. For one, we face significant epistemic barriers in accurately assessing children’s agential status qua possession of responsibility-bearing capacities and competencies. Second, overreliance on assessments of individualistic capacities emphasizes an atomistic view of agency at the expense of relational views that are of particular relevance for children as uniquely developing persons. Our practices of holding children responsible and the values that guide these practices in the context of supportive relationships are central to both supporting current and drawing out future responsible agency in childhood and, importantly, provide us with a path to regard children as participants in our moral communities, as opposed to mere agents-in-waiting. (shrink)

The project of treating knowledge as an empirical object of study has gained popularity in recent naturalistic epistemology. It is argued here that the assumption that such an object of study exists is in tension with other central elements of naturalistic philosophy. Two hypotheses are considered. In the first, “knowledge” is hypothesized to refer to mental states causally responsible for the behaviour of cognitive agents. Here, the relational character of truth creates a problem. In the second hypothesis “knowledge” is hypothesized (...) to refer to mental states causally responsible for the evolutionarily successful behaviour of cognitive agents. Here, the problem lies in the fact that evolution by natural selection is not necessarily conducive to truth. The result does not necessarily amount to eliminativism, however, since the naturalist may consistently reject the condition of truth that lies behind these problems. (shrink)

Should philosophy be a compulsory subject in schools? I take it as read that philosophy has general educational value: like other academic disciplines, it cultivates a range of intellectual virtues in those who study it. But that may not be a good enough reason to add it to the roster of established school subjects. The claim I defend in this article is that philosophy also has distinctive educational value: there are philosophical problems that feature prominently and pressingly in ordinary human (...) lives and that all children should be equipped by their education to tackle. Among these are the problems of justifying subscription to moral, political and religious standards. The significance of these problems for everyone is sufficient to warrant the inclusion of philosophy in the school curriculum. (shrink)

In this article, I outline three critiques of analytic philosophy; that it is irrelevant to individuals and society; unconstructive; and excessively technical. These critiques are linked to skepticism about the educational value of analytic philosophy. In response, I suggest that if analytic philosophy provides constructive guidance about prominent and pressing questions, then it holds potential educational value. I identify a body of prominent and pressing questions that are addressed by analytic philosophy as a discipline. Because analytic philosophy is often concerned (...) with the analysis of ordinary concepts, there is at least some potential educational value to analytic philosophy insofar as it provides guidance about the meaning of ordinary concepts that ground ordinary questions. Taking P. F. Strawson's paradigmatically analytic account of philosophy, I show that analytic philosophy can directly address ordinary questions in a constructive manner. Analytic philosophy is neither irrelevant, unconstructive, nor excessively technical. (shrink)

The movement of Philosophy for Children starts with M. Lipman in the early ‘70s. University professor Matthew Lipman noticed that his students lacked critical thinking skills. He suggested that, when students reach university age, it is rather late and difficult to teach them how to think.1 It would be wiser to undertake such a task at a much earlier age. Thus, he proposed the introduction of philosophy in elementary schools.

I argue that religious elementary schools whose pedagogical methods satisfy the principle of rational authority have distinctive advantages over secular elementary schools for the purpose of laying the foundations for ethical autonomy in the children of religious parents. Insights from developmental psychology bolster the argument from conceptual analysis. Before children have the cognitive capacities to engage in authentically autonomous reflection, their long-run interest in developing autonomy is best served by developing their understanding of and provisional identity within their primary culture (...) and by encouraging a limited form of ethical reasoning within the framework provided by that secure cultural identity. (shrink)

This paper investigates critically the approaches to picturebooks as used in the history of philosophy for children movement. Our concern with picturebooks rests mainly on Morteza Khosronejad's broader criticism that children's literature has been treated instrumentally by early founders of P4C, the consequence of which is abolishing the independent voice of this literature. As such it demands that we scrutinize the position of children's literature in the history of this educational program, as well as other genres and forms, including picturebooks (...) as a highly valued artistic-literary form to educationalists. In our inquiry, we probe, therefore, the transition of approaches to picturebooks concomitantly with the investigation of the transition of approaches to children's literature. This research evinces that some later scholars and practitioners of P4C have departed significantly not only from Lipman's approach to children's literature and picturebooks, but also from his conceptualization of childhood and philosophy for children. Meanwhile, it demonstrates that in spite of P4C scholars' taking effective steps to address children's literature in general and picturebooks in particular, there are some steps for them to take in order to fully recognize this literature as an independent branch of knowledge and picturebooks as artistic-literary unique works. While revealing the limitations and paradoxes that P4C scholars continue to deal with, in this article, we see Khosronejad's earlier idea as a suggestion to overcome the instrumentalization of children's literature and picturebooks in P4C. Fundamental dialogue with children's literature theorists particularly those of picturebooks will open new horizons to the realization of our suggestion. (shrink)

The history of the relationship between philosophy and education has been a long and troubled one. In part, this stemmed from the problematic nature of philosophy itself, but this difficulty was compounded by controversy as to the age at which training in philosophy should begin. Although Socrates seemed indifferent to whether he conversed philosophically with young or old, his pupil, Plato, was inclined to restrict philosophy to mature students, on the grounds that it made the younger ones unduly contentious. Since (...) philosophers in those days had the reputation of being ‘friends of wisdom,’ and since being a friend of wisdom seemed to require extensive experience, it came to be taken for granted, generation after generation, that philosophy was not for the young. It has sometimes been made available, on a limited basis, at the secondary school level, but almost never to students in the lower grades. To the suggestion that this prevented children from having access to ideas, theories and abstract concepts, the stock response was that children were mired in the ‘concrete’ level of experience and had no interest in abstractions. To the report that very young children almost invariably greeted opportunities to discuss philosophy with joy and delight, the standard reply was that this proved that the children could not be doing philosophy, since the study of philosophy is a serious and difficult matter. The recent career of philosophy in elementary and secondary education has been a matter of overcoming precisely these objection and misconceptions. Unfortunately, a listing of the advantages to be derived by the young from the study of philosophy—its strengthening of reasoning and judgment, its fostering of concept-formation skills, its clarification of values and ideals—is likely to obscure the intrinsic satisfactions that children derive from their classroom communities of philosophical inquiry. But even here there are signs of change, and a new appreciation of the educational possibilities of philosophy is at last beginning to surface in the schools. (shrink)

This analysis focuses on a particular sedimented construction of the child found in child development theory. In traditional developmental theory the child is conceptualized as being qualitatively different from the adult; the child is conceived as "other" and as an incomplete version of the adult. The historical roots of this construction of meaning are explored through examination of two influential contributors in the child development field, G. S. Hall and Jean Piaget. The source of Hall's conception of the "child-as-primitive" in (...) evolutionary theory is demonstrated, and the consequences of his romanticized view of the "primitive" child are examined. Piaget's stage approach to cognitive development is similarly analyzed, with an emphasis on the way in which his method of inquiry reflects the fundamental assumption of the child's incompleteness, and the on the use of the "child-as-primitive" image in his theory. Anthropological and philosophical contributions in this area are reviewed, and ethical consequences of the "primitive" notion are explored. Implications for phenomenological approaches to child development research and theory are offered, with emphasis on Merleau-Ponty's contributions in this area. (shrink)

Pre-college philosophy has proliferated greatly over the last few decades, including in the form of ‘philosophy across the curriculum’. However, there has been very little sustained examination of the nature of philosophy as a subject relative to other standard pre-college subjects and the kinds of expertise an effective philosophy teacher at this level should possess. At face value, the minimal academic preparation expected for competence in secondary philosophy instruction, compared to the high standards for teaching other subjects, raises questions and (...) concerns. In this paper I make some provisional observations about the subject of philosophy and how it is taught from p4c through to the post-secondary level. I begin by examining the concept of ‘philosophy across the curriculum’ and offer a working analysis of the main features of philosophy's form and content that enable us to determine its relevance to, and difference from, other subjects. Next, I examine and critique what I term the ‘populist’ conception of philosophy, which correlates to lower expectations of teacher training, and use my own experience of teaching philosophy across the curriculum to shed doubt on the viability of this approach. In the third section I consider what I term the ‘autonomous’ conception of philosophy, which correlates to more stringent expectations of teacher capacity, and explain why it is preferable to the populist conception with some qualifications. I conclude by reflecting on how philosophy compares to other subjects that are advanced cross-curricularly and argue for more training of high school philosophy teachers. (shrink)

In this article, I explore a new reason in favor of precollegiate philosophy: It could help narrow the persistent gender disparity within the discipline. I catalog some of the most widely endorsed explanations for the underrepresentation of women in philosophy and argue that, on each hypothesized explanation, precollegiate philosophy instruction could help improve our discipline's gender balance. Explanations I consider include stereotype threat, gendered philosophical intuitions, inhospitable disciplinary environment, lack of same-sex role models for women students in philosophy, and conflicting (...) “schemas” for philosophy and femininity. I argue that, insofar as some combination of these hypothesized explanations accounts for some portion of the underrepresentation of women in philosophy, those of us concerned to make things better have reason to participate in and promote efforts to share philosophy with younger students. (shrink)

It is a matter of fact—and has been so for a considerable amount of time—that philosophy is taught at the pre—college level. However, to teach philosophy at that (or at any) level is one thing; to teach it well is quite another. Fortunately, it can be taught well, as a host of successful experiences and programs have shown. But in what ways can it be taught? Are there differences in the ways in which it can or should be taught at (...) the pre-college level from the ways in which it is taught in college? Are there differences in the ways in which it can or should be taught at the elementary-school level from ways in which it can or should be taught at the secondary-school level? There are other questions, of a similar nature, that the beginning college-level teacher of philosophy might ask: “I have never taught Introduction to Philosophy before; how should I go about it?” And there is a further question: Should it be taught at all? This question can, of course, be raised at any educational level, but it is especially acute at the elementary level. (shrink)

The study analyzes the theoretical basis of the Philosophy for Children (P4C) program elaborated by Matthew Lipman. The aim is, firstly, to identify the main philosophical and pedagogical principles of P4C based on American pragmatism, and to locate their pedagogization and possible problems in Lipman’s thinking. Here the discussion is especially targeted to the thinking of John Dewey and George H. Mead as well as Lev Vygotsky, whom Lipman himself names as the most pivotal sources for his own thinking. On (...) the other hand, the study aims at opening up new perspectives and thematizations on P4C from the viewpoint of the continental tradition of thought. The essential principles of P4C connected with reasonableness and judgment are ultimately interpreted as a neo-Aristotelian effort to contextualize philosophy by tracing it back to moderation, the man’s ability to consider and solve problems that he meets in practical life kata ton orthon logon — by doing right things in the right place at the right time in the right way. This phronetic idea of ‘humanizing modernity’ combined with the evolution of the adult-child concept is argued to be one of the conditions for the possibility of P4C, yet leaving unsolved the basic problems involving pedagogical action as such. John Dewey’s ideas arising from the critique of the modern philosophy of consciousness, focusing on the significance of philosophy in practical human life and linked to the basic nature of human knowing and intellectual growth and, further, to the ideal of a democratic community, are shown to form the main intellectual sources of P4C. Dewey’s philosophy as a general theory of education means a solid linking of the concepts of experience and inquiry to the practice of education. This is based on the naturalistic conception of man according to which man is built in dynamic transaction with his environment, experiencing the true meanings of his ideas in the consequences of his actions as he tries to solve problematic situations. So, inquiry as a method of reflective thinking forms the basis for education based on intellectual growth. A condition for it is a context meaningful for the child in which the paradigm of inquiry can be realized authentically. It is therefore important in education to provide circumstances that stimulate the child’s curiosity, initiating a process of inquiry that further enables, through the formation of reflective habits, the development of a democratic community. The purpose of the pedagogical interaction taking place in the process of inquiry is to produce educative experiences for the child, making the pedagogical relationship vanish at the same time. The idea is that in pedagogical action the child’s subjectivity, his desire and impulses are adapted to the tradition, yet generating at the same time a prospective, reflective habit, thus freeing the educatee to think intelligently for himself. The study shows the articulation of these principles in Lipman’s practical effort to convert the classroom into a community of inquiry, but it also argues that the above-mentioned Bildung theoretical core problem of pedagogical action, related to its paradoxical special characteristics to produce autonomous subjectivity, is not thematized. In connection with this issue, the educational thinking of Kant and Hegel is discussed especially from the viewpoint of philosophy teaching. To provide a new perspective for the discussion, the study outlines the community of inquiry as an ‘educative space’ from the viewpoints of the pedagogical relationship typical of hermeneutic pedagogy and of non-reflective functional structures and phenomena based on pedagogical intuition that are linked to it. (shrink)

The authors of this essay have been committed practitioners and teachers of Philosophy for Children in a variety of educational settings, from pre-schools through university doctoral programs and in adult community and religious education programs. The promotion of critical thinking has always been a primary goal of this movement. But communal practices of critical thinking need to include other kinds of democratic conversation that prompt us to see others as full-fledged persons and to be curious about how our being in (...) community with them makes growth and self-correction possible. As we continue to experiment and innovate in new contexts we see ourselves continuing the inquiry around expanding the inclusivity of conversations about basic human concerns. In this essay we describe an inclusive strategy called the story circle, that was first developed as a method of popular education in Denmark and was then adapted as a tool of social change among poor and dis-empowered American citizens in Appalachia. Story circles were later utilized in a philosophical living-learning community and most recently coupled with Lipman and Sharp’s dialogue method of the community of philosophical inquiry. The authors of this paper have combined story circles with the community of philosophical inquiry in a variety of contexts. In each iteration, telling one’s own story and listening carefully to the stories of others can be equally revelatory actions. (shrink)

Children ask existential questions, that is, questions about death, the meaning of existence, free will, God, the origin of everything, and kindred questions. P4/wC has the aspiration to give to children the occasion to discover and explore their questions in a safe environment, the community of inquiry. Thus, existential questioning should be possible in a community of inquiry. However, it is unclear whether the pedagogy of the community of inquiry can accommodate existential questioning. The chief trouble is that existential questioning (...) might be a cause of suffering: children might be unable to contain the emotional intensity that is experienced when we inquire about topics like death and the meaning of existence. In a community of inquiry, the emphasis over the community and the autonomy that children experience in choosing the questions for their inquiry might create occasions of suffering: some children might not be prepared to discuss existential issues or might be troubled by the candidate answers they explore and eventually end up to endorse. In this paper I highlight some of the main challenges that we need to face if we want to make room for existential questioning in the community of inquiry. (shrink)

External pressure on Higher Education Institutes in the United Kingdom has brought the question of the extrinsic value of academic philosophy into focus. One line of research into questions about the extrinsic value of philosophy comes from the Philosophy for Children (P4C) movement. There is a large body of literature about the benefits of P4C. This paper argues that the distinctive nature of the P4C pedagogy limits the claims made by the P4C literature about the extrinsic value of philosophy to (...) claims about the value of P4C. While this is not a problem within the P4C literature that recognises these limitations, the paper makes three claims about why it is sometimes inappropriate to extend claims from research into the value of P4C to claims about the value of non‐P4C philosophy. It argues that more research is needed to investigate the value of non‐P4C philosophy. (shrink)

Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen’s Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong (Oxford University Press, 2009) explores efforts to develop machines that, not only can be employed for good or bad ends, but which themselves can be held morally accountable for what they do— artificial moral agents (AMAs). This essay is a critical response to Wallach and Allen’s conjectures. Although Wallach and Allen do not suggest that we are close to being able to create full-fledged AMAs, they do talk seriously (...) about making incremental progress in the direction of creating them (even if we never fully succeed). However, there are important questions about the moral development of AMAs that Moral Machines does not address. Given the responsibilities entrusted to human moral agents, we take questions about their moral development very seriously. In the case of children, the hope is that eventually they will develop into full-fledged moral agents. How might we expect this to go with less than fully formed AMAs? Will there be a comparable story of moral development and moral education that we can tell? (shrink)

Children’s literature was first published in the eighteenth century at a time when the philosophical ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on education and childhood were being discussed. Ironically, however, the first generation of children’s literature (by Maria Edgeworth et al) was incongruous with Rousseau’s ideas since the works were didactic, constraining and demanded passive acceptance from their readers. This instigated a deficit or reductionist model to represent childhood and children’s literature as simple and uncomplicated and led to children’s literature being overlooked (...) and its contribution to philosophical discussions being undermined. Although Rousseau advocates freeing the child to develop, he does not feel that reading fiction promotes child development, which is a weakness in an otherwise strong argument for educational reform. Yet, rather ironically, the second generation of children’s writers, from Lewis Carroll onwards, more truly embraced Rousseau’s broader philosophical ideas on education and childhood than their predecessors, encouraging and freeing readers to imagine, reflect and actively engage in ontological enquiry. The emphasis had changed with the child being embraced in education and society as active participant rather than passive or disengaged recipient. Works deemed to be seminal to the canon of children’s literature such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan and The Chronicles of Narnia challenge readers to work through conflicts many of which can be identified retrospectively as exhibiting postmodern characteristics. By exploring moral and spiritual dilemmas in their writing, Carroll, Barrie and Lewis’s works can be regarded as contributing to discussions on theodical postmodernism. The successes of The Lord of the Rings and Narnia films suggest that there is an interest in exploring moral dilemmas, fulfilling a need (perhaps for tolerance and understanding) in society at large. Children’s literature has an almost divine power to restore, to repair and to heal, all characteristics of theodical postmodernism but differing from the more widely held conception of postmodernism which pulls apart, exacerbates and exposes. Children’s literature therefore offers a healthy and constructive approach to working through moral dilemmas. In their deconstruction of childhood, these authors have brought children’s literature closer to aspects of enquiry traditionally found in the domain of adult mainstream literature. As the boundaries between childhood and adulthood become more fluid, less certain, debate is centring around whether the canon of children’s literature itself has become redundant or meaningless since there are no longer any restrictions on which subjects can be treated in children’s literature. Despite the fact that children’s literature clearly engages with difficult issues, it continues to be left out of the critical equation, not given serious attention, disregarded as simplistic and ignored in contemporary philosophical discussions concerning morality, postmodernism and the future of childhood. With children’s literature coming closer to mainstream literature, and exhibiting prominent features of postmodernism, however, it is only a matter of time before philosophical discussions actively engage with children’s literature and recognise its contribution to the resolution and reconciliation of ontological dilemmas. When this occurs, philosophy and children’s literature will re-engage, enriching contemporary investigations of existence, ethics and knowledge and fruitfully developing thought in these areas. This paper aims to contribute to this process. (shrink)

The following paper was written in 1999, as the opening speech at the Hobart FAPCA National Conference. I was, at the time, Chair of FAPCA. The keynote speaker at the conference was Professor Gareth Matthews from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and author of, among other books, The Philosophy of Childhood. As the paper was written as a speech, and not as an academic article, I did not cite all the points made in full academic mode. Rather, for publication (...) in Critical and Creative Thinking, I added a list of further reading which gives details for all the articles and books mentioned in the speech. At the time, I had just completed my PhD, and taken up the position of International Baccalaureate Coordinator at The Friends’ School in Hobart. Subsequently in 2001, a revised and abridged version of the thesis was published by Routledge under the title Philosophical Discussion in Moral Education, and readers who are interested in following up some of my points made in the paper can find more detail there. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to offer a critical evaluation of the development of communities of inquiry in the UK, with particular reference to the teaching of philosophy in schools. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I examine some key aspects from an historical perspective. The second section focuses on the question: ‘should children be taught to think philosophically?’ Having discussed the teaching of philosophical thinking in the UK, I outline a typical example of a (...) dialogue undertaken with primary school pupils. Finally, I consider future prospects for developing communities of inquiry. (shrink)

This thesis is about an investigation of how children with philosophical experience use philosophical discussion as a way of doing research. A Lawrence Stenhouse description of 'research' as "systematic and sustained enquiry made public" served as my starting point for what to count as 'research'. As an interpretive case story of children participating in research as co-researchers, this research is about how I engaged in an after-school Discussion Research Group co-research project with seventeen volunteer students from my Philosophy for Children (...) classes. Our co-research was a methodological experiment in merging genres of research in which we adapted and combined Philosophy for Children and qualitative research techniques in a philosophical exploration of philosophical discussion. Bringing together the children's philosophical expertise and my interest in the use of qualitative research methodologies, I explored how and whether 'to do philosophy' is 'to do research'. (shrink)

This qualitative research study examines moral responsiveness and thinking in a mixed gender class of primary school children over a period o f four and a half years. It sets out to track development in children’s moral awareness, looking at gains and losses from middle to late childhood, and focusing on cognitive skills, notions of moral rectitude, and interpersonal relationships and friendship. The first part of the study is designed to offer a theoretical background to inform interpretation of the data (...) in the second part. It examines major issues in morality and moral education in the context of significant recent debates across several disciplines, including developmental psychology, philosophy, sociology and education; it also offers a theoretical perspective on children’s ability to think together about morality in a community of enquiry and on related issues of pedagogy. Through interpretation of transcripts, the second part o f the study analyses the children’s thinking, in response to a wide range of content, on issues of justice, freedom and responsibility, rights and duties, inclusiveness, and friendship. Gender differences, most notably the reticence of girls to express themselves in a mixed gender group after about age ten, are also examined. The study demonstrates how, through participation in a community of ethical enquiry such as Thinking Time - Philosophy with Children, children become more thoughtful and develop respect and responsiveness to others as well as other traits of character that are central to democratic citizenship. (shrink)