Questioning and reflective discourse seem to be recurring themes in discussions of inquiry-based learning and information literacy. The emphasis on reflection and asking questions in Bruce's (2008) description of informed learning remind me strongly of philosophy as a discipline and of Shapiro & Hughes' (1996) suggestion that information literacy should be considered an emerging liberal art.
So I decided to investigate how philosophy might be included within early childhood education. Earlier attempts revealed that searching for philosophy as a subject can be problematic. The search terms "teaching philosophy" and "learning philosophy" can be interpretted in different ways.
My initial basic search for “philosophy with preschool children” found no results.
When I removed the quotation marks and ran the basic search again it returned 16246 results and a messsage that although my initial search had returned no results, SmartText searching had found results based on my keywords.
After scanning the results I realised that the combined returns for “philosophy” and “preschool” were responsible for such a large number of items. Many of the items related to "teaching philosophy" and "philosophy of teaching" rather than the teaching of philosophy. So I used the Advanced Search facility to search the abstracts for "philosophy with children", and restricted the search by adding ‘NOT “teaching philosophy” to the search parameters. This returned a manageable 23 results.
There were two items that interested me, for which the full text version was not available through Eric.
Vansieleghem, Nancy (01/05/2011). "What Is Philosophy "for" Children, What Is
Philosophy "with" Children - After Matthew Lipman?". Journal of philosophy of education
(0309-8249), 45 (2), p. 171.
Biesta, Gert (01/05/2011). "Philosophy, Exposure, and Children: How to Resist the
Instrumentalisation of Philosophy in Education". Journal of philosophy of education
(0309-8249), 45 (2), p. 305.
So I used the QUT Full Text Finder to locate an alternate source of the items - Wiley-Blackwell Full Collection (CAUL) Wiley Online Library.
I found the first article using a basic search of all content. Using the author’s name sufficed to retrieve this article.
For the second article, a basic search of all content using the author’s name retrieved a long list of titles.
So I used an advanced search that restricted the date to the past 12 months and included the author’s name, publication title and the first part of the article title. I learned that this database does not like additional punctuation like the colon included in search terms such as the title names.
I then restricted the search results to publications between 1995 and 2011 for which full text was available.
I scanned the titles, descriptions and subject lists to select items for downloading.
I avoided items that were program-specific like Reggio Emilia, and parents as first teachers as being less relevant to my area of interest. I chose items that had related terms like ‘inquiry’, ‘critical thinking’ and ‘reflection’ in the subject lists.
The scanning process also helped me to identify additional terms for further refining Boolean searches, e.g. AND “teaching philosophical thought”; AND “P4C”.
REFERENCES
So I decided to investigate how philosophy might be included within early childhood education. Earlier attempts revealed that searching for philosophy as a subject can be problematic. The search terms "teaching philosophy" and "learning philosophy" can be interpretted in different ways.
My initial basic search for “philosophy with preschool children” found no results.
When I removed the quotation marks and ran the basic search again it returned 16246 results and a messsage that although my initial search had returned no results, SmartText searching had found results based on my keywords.
After scanning the results I realised that the combined returns for “philosophy” and “preschool” were responsible for such a large number of items. Many of the items related to "teaching philosophy" and "philosophy of teaching" rather than the teaching of philosophy. So I used the Advanced Search facility to search the abstracts for "philosophy with children", and restricted the search by adding ‘NOT “teaching philosophy” to the search parameters. This returned a manageable 23 results.
There were two items that interested me, for which the full text version was not available through Eric.
Vansieleghem, Nancy (01/05/2011). "What Is Philosophy "for" Children, What Is
Philosophy "with" Children - After Matthew Lipman?". Journal of philosophy of education
(0309-8249), 45 (2), p. 171.
Biesta, Gert (01/05/2011). "Philosophy, Exposure, and Children: How to Resist the
Instrumentalisation of Philosophy in Education". Journal of philosophy of education
(0309-8249), 45 (2), p. 305.
So I used the QUT Full Text Finder to locate an alternate source of the items - Wiley-Blackwell Full Collection (CAUL) Wiley Online Library.
I found the first article using a basic search of all content. Using the author’s name sufficed to retrieve this article.
For the second article, a basic search of all content using the author’s name retrieved a long list of titles.
So I used an advanced search that restricted the date to the past 12 months and included the author’s name, publication title and the first part of the article title. I learned that this database does not like additional punctuation like the colon included in search terms such as the title names.
I then restricted the search results to publications between 1995 and 2011 for which full text was available.
I scanned the titles, descriptions and subject lists to select items for downloading.
I avoided items that were program-specific like Reggio Emilia, and parents as first teachers as being less relevant to my area of interest. I chose items that had related terms like ‘inquiry’, ‘critical thinking’ and ‘reflection’ in the subject lists.
The scanning process also helped me to identify additional terms for further refining Boolean searches, e.g. AND “teaching philosophical thought”; AND “P4C”.
REFERENCES
Bruce, C.S. (2008). Informed learning. Association of College and Research Libraries / American Library Association, Chicago.
Shapiro, J.J. and Hughes, S.K. (1996). Information Literacy as a Liberal Art: Enlightenment proposals for a new curriculum. EdCom Review. 31 (2), March/April 1996. Retrieved August 9, 2011, from http://net.educause.edu/apps/er/review/reviewarticles/31231.html.
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