Philosophy in the classroom

If we are considering information literacy as a liberal art, perhaps it is also possible to consider inquiry learning as a form of philosophy.

Since the move to involve children in philosophy began in the 1970s, several schools of thought have emerged (Vansieleghem, 2011, p.171).

Matthew Lipman, from an educator’s point of view, based his argument for philosophy with children upon the constructivist work of John Dewey and the need to promote critical thinking. The aim of Lipman’s P4C was “not to turn children into philosophers or decision makers, but to help them become more thoughtful, more reflective, more considerate, and more reasonable individuals” (Vansieleghem, 2011, p.174). Lipman saw critical thinking as a way to hypothesise about solutions to problems by first identifying facts or issues that cause the problem (Vansieleghem, 2011, p.173).

Philosophy was not seen as a theoretical pursuit, but as a way for students to understand their interactions with their environment, and to empower them to influence change (Vansieleghem, 2011, p.175). Gareth Matthews took a philosopher’s point of view, and proposed capitalising on children’s natural curiosity to introduce them to philosophical dialogue with children (Vansieleghem, 2011, p.172). Instead of seeing the child as ignorant, he saw the child as a rationale being, capable of reasoning philosophically (Vansieleghem, 2011,172). This approach emphasised opportunities for children to explore and articulate their thoughts through discussion, rather than emphaising logical thinking skills or problem solving (Vansieleghem, 2011,176).

Another view of philosophy for children, saw it as a way to empower children to find, express and act upon their own sets of values, by shifting “power and agency in the classroom” and providing opportunties for children to reflect on and communicate their understandings (Vansieleghem, 2011, p.173). Philosophy can’t be pigeonholed to two half hour lessons per week. philosophy is seen as a “site in which students can determine what the important questions for our time are, and where they can seek their own answers through the practice of thinking for themselves and with others in communal deliberation” (Vansieleghem, 2011, p.178).

Philosophy can be linked to almost any area of learning. It has strong connections to cricital literacy in English, but philosophical discussions can also be used to explore concepts and topics in health, geography, history, mathematics, science and technology (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.9).

Inspired by John Dewey and Matthew Lipman, the ‘philosophy with kids’ approach “aims to stimulate curiosity about who we are, how the world is, what our relationship within it and with each other are, and what is fair, good and right” (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.5). The intention “is to teach children how to be effective, independent and creative thinkers” (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.5).

“Philosophical classroom discussion is conducted in a community of inquiry.”  (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.6) Envisage classrooms where children, “motivated by their own curiosity and interests” work as a “classroom community of inquiry” to “co-operatively engage in learning” to be “responsible, active, creative participants of society” (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.5). Developing a ‘community of inquiry’ is largely dependent on the teacher’s willingness and ability to a model of participation, whilst guiding and facilitating children to answer their own questions and follow their own interests. Critical to the success of philosophical discussion is the teacher’s role in asking the right questions at the right time to stimulate and focus discussion by encouraging reasoning and deeper thinking (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.8).

The model described by De Hann, et al (1995, pp.13–16) provides advice to teachers on how to facilitate what is intended to be a largely child-directed inquiry. It involves the teacher presenting a stimulus to elicit questions from children, clarifying children’s questions, helping them to make connections amongst the questions and then asking the chidren to set the discussion agenda. There are several other steps to the process, but it should finish with an evaluation (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.14). The desired outcome is for children to become self-directed and self-correcting (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.6).

A sense of community is important. Working in a circle is important to ensure that everyone, including the teacher is considered to be on the same level (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.6). With young children it is possible to work on the floor (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.5). Setting basic expectations or ‘ground rules’ is also important. Children need to understand the need to listen to each other, to take turns, and to respect each other’s contributions so that their community of inquiry is a ‘safe place’ (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.7).

Philosophy is primarily as search for meaning. (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.8) Share the view that “philosophy is talking together about their ideas, thinking, asking questions and finding reasons” (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.7). There are no ‘experts’ in a philosophy community of inquiry, and children need to understand that answers are not always right or wrong (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.8).


In the consideration of philosophy for children two questions emerge that are both inevitable but impossible to answer. ‘What is philosophy?’ and ‘What might it achieve?’ (Biesta, 2011, p.306) However, because of the very nature of philosophy, both of these questions are very difficult to answer (Biesta, 2011, p.306).

The belief that engaging young children in philosophical discussions and activities will help them to think critically, reflectively and reasonably is the main attraction (Biesta, 2011, p.306). It is also claimed that this engagement can promote the development of moral reflection, sensitivity and social skills and democratic processes (Biesta, 2011, p.306).

Philosophy with young children needs to be concrete and directly related to their experiences. Carefully selected stories provide excellent stimuli for philosophical discussions (De Haan, et al, 1995. p.4). De Haan et al (1995) recommend four main themes for the first year of formal education: Being Somebody; Making Connections; What's Fair; and Using Our Brains.

Philosphy with children, like inquiry-based learning, begins with a question and views children as capable learners. However inquiry-based learning can also begin with a problem to be solved or hypothesis to be tested. I think that using philosophical discussion with young children could be a useful tool to explore and reflect critically on questions that are important to them, particularly in the areas of critical literacy, SOSE and HPE. However is it relevant to all forms of inquiry, e.g. scientific research that begin with a hypothesis to be tested or finding proofs for mathematical equations?

Biesta (2011) raises a number of philosophical questions of her own about the assumptions underlying the philosophy for children approach, including:

What level of teacher and student expertise is required for students to engage fruitfully in philosophy?

REFERENCES

Biesta, Gert (01/05/2011). "Philosophy, Exposure, and Children: How to Resist the Instrumentalisation of Philosophy in Education". Journal of philosophy of education , 45 (2), p. 305. Retrieved September 27, 2011, from Wiley Online Library.

De Haan, C., MacColl, S. and Mcutcheon, L. (1995). Philosophy with Kids Book 1, Melourne, Longman Australia.

LONG  F. (2005). Thomas Reid and Philosophy with Children

Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 39, No. 4. Retrieved September 27, 2011, from EBSCO Host.

Vansieleghem, N. (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. Retrieved September 27, 2011, from Wiley Online Library.

Useful Links

Greek Philosophy for Kids, Kidipede

http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/philosophy/

Philosophy for Children, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/children/

Philosophy for Kids

http://philosophyforkids.com/

Philosophy in Schools

http://www.philosophyinschoolsnsw.com.au/

Philosophy with Children, Federation of Australasian Philosophy in Schools Association

http://fapsa.org.au/philosophy-with-kids/

Sapere Communities of Enquiry

http://sapere.org.uk/Default.aspx?tabid=162

Teaching Children Philosophy

http://www.teachingchildrenphilosophy.org/wiki/Main_Page

Think About It: Philosophy for Kids

http://www.kidsthinkaboutit.com/

Searching for “Philosophy with Children”

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

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.

The age of wisdom

The difference between “literacy” and “information literacy” and the need for so many forms of literacy still seem problematic to me.

Perhaps I can appeal to the learning theorists for guidance in exploring the problem. It is generally accepted that learning is a process that begins at birth and continues throughout a person’s life. Dewey believed in ‘learning by doing’ — a process of constructing meaning through experience and action (Kuhlthau et al, 2007). Dewey’s constructivism is also a political process that encourages students to make up their own minds about what is ‘right’ and what should be valued, and what action should be taken.

According to Dewey, ‘learning is a process of construction’. He believed that, of the two main approaches to learning (transmission in which the teacher or text imparts knowledge to students; and constructivist in which the student is active in building on what they already know to construct deep understandings by engaging with information and ideas), constructivist is the more intuitive.

But Dewey also saw learning is an emotional process. In How We Think (1933), Dewey described phases of reflective thinking: suggestion, intellectualism, guiding idea, reasoning and action.

Dewey proposed that construction of meaning begins with a suggestion. At this stage the learner is perplexed and confused because they have an incomplete understanding of the topic. I am currently at this stage in my understanding of “information literacy”.

Dewey advocates that through intellectualisation, the learner begins to define the problem or question and envisage possible solutions.

So let’s first of all look at the rudimentary definition of “literacy” by examining its etymological roots. (Etymology is the study of the history of words.) The word “literacy” is a combination of the Latin root “liter” meaning “letter” and the Latin noun forming “acy” refering to a state of being, quality, condition or level of adequacy. It’s amazing how much information seven letters can convey. When applied to people, “literacy” would be a person with an adequate level of understanding of letters, or perhaps an adequate level of ability to use letters — basic reading and writing.

Perhaps “literacy” is no more than what we need to be adequate.

When this word was pieced together from its Latin roots, it was probably an adequate term for its purpose. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy), the word “literacy” was first used for the ability to write ones own name; then was used to describe “the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material”; and evolved into a term to represent “the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print”. Over time the term “literacy” has shouldered an ever-increasing burden as people muscle their way through the information explosion.

What represents adequacy today?

In this age, educated citizens need more than a mere understanding of letters and the ability use them to read and write. Now it seems we need a term that encompasses gaining meaning from more than print materials (written and spoken texts, music, dance, visual arts, still and moving images and digital multimedia). Educated people must know how to find or create sources of information or data; organise information and data meaningful ways to construct further meanings; view data and information critically and creatively; and set about effectively communicating new ideas in politically active ways to effect social, economic and cultural change.

Ah! Now we need to be more than adequate, we probably need more than seven letters to describe such an accomplishment. So let’s continue to appropriate the word “literacy” and stick “information” in front. But does "information literacy" embody all we want to describe. Is there a better term for describing what we have come to call “information literacy”.

The Latin root “liter” is probably no longer sufficient to encompass the variety of sources of information available. An using ‘acy’ to describe the state of being is equally problematic — being ‘adequate’ is probably not enough for effective citizenship.

We need to cast a little broader and aim a little higher. Instead of Latin, let’s appeal to the Greeks. We not only need to study (ology) what is visible (phanero-) but also seek what is hidden (crypt-) and strive to change (morph-) it into something that we can put to work (erg-) in new ways. That might look something like the field of “phanercryptmorphergology” with “phanercryptmorphergacy” as the state of being an adequate “phanercryptmorphergist”. Quite a mouthful!

If we are going to appropriate terms from the past why not "philo-" meaning "love of" and "sophia" meaning "wisdom" — "philosophy"?

My point is that why take a term and tack on extra baggage when there already exists a word for fostering a love of learning through exploration, reflection and discussion. Philosophy says it all. Philosophy can be seen in action in most ancient and modern cultures of world. Contemporary Western philosophy, in common with many philosophies across the world and through the ages seeks to find wisdom through logical thought, discussion and action. Are we not seeking to ensure that students make wise use of what they learn?

Perhaps what the curriculum needs is a resurgance of philosophy rather than a redefinition of literacy. This is just a tentative notion of course - a proposition for further exploration. According to Dewey, once a tentative guiding idea is formed, it helps to focus the gathering of data and information to clarify the problem.

Learners then use reasoning to make the guiding idea more precise in light of the wider range of information. The next logical step is to compare information literacy learning with contemporary philosophy classroom practices.

What does philosophy look like in a Preparatory Year classroom?

I'm certainly looking forward to Dewey's final stage, where learners use their new understandings to adopt a point of view and take action to resolve their initial doubt. Whatever I gleen from this learning process, I'm sure it will impact on how I conduct library lessons in the future. 

References

Kuhlthau, C.C. , Maniotes, L.K. & Caspari, A.K. (2007). Chapter 2: The Theory and Research Basis for Guided Inquiry in Kuhlthau, C.C., Maniotes, L.K. & Caspari, A.K. (2007). Guided inquiry : learning in the 21^st century, Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited, pp.13--‐28.

Ramek. A. (2006). 'List of Greek and Latin roots in English'. on Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greek_and_Latin_roots_in_English#L