Cultivating Reasonableness in Education: Community of Philosophical Inquiry (Integrated Science, 17) 9819941970, 9789819941971

Table of contents :
Preface
References
Contents
About the Editors
Part IPhilosophy, Dialogic Inquiry, and Democracy in Education
1 The Role of Philosophy in Democratic Education
1 Introduction
1.1 Philosophy and Education
2 Philosophy in Democratic Education
2.1 Liberal Democratic Education
2.2 Deliberative Democratic Education
2.3 Participatory Democratic Education
2.4 Critical Democratic Education
2.5 Agonistic Democratic Education
3 Democratic Education Reframed
4 Conclusion
References
2 Learning to Navigate Disagreement in Democratic Education: The Potential of the Agonistic Community of Philosophical Inquiry
1 Introduction
2 Agonism
2.1 The Agonistic Theory of Democracy
2.2 The Agonistic Approach to Democratic Education
3 Philosophy for/with Children
3.1 Philosophy for/with Children and the Community of Philosophical Inquiry
3.2 Philosophy for/with Children as Democratic Education
4 The Alignment Between Agonism and Philosophy for/with Children
4.1 Disagreement
4.2 Political Issues
4.3 Political Emotions
5 The Agonistic Community of Philosophical Inquiry
5.1 Celebrating Dissensus
5.2 Becoming Comfortable with Conflict and Negative Emotions
5.3 Foregrounding Relations of Power
6 Conclusion
References
3 Why Vote? A Reflection on the Democratic Nature of Dialogical Inquiries
1 Introduction
1.1 Collaborative Thoughts on the Practice of Voting
1.2 Practical Suggestions and Tips
2 Deliberation on Four Key-Issues
2.1 Voting and Ownership
2.2 Voting and Democracy
2.3 The Meaning and Function of “I Agree”
2.4 The Power of Dissent
3 Reflection
References
4 A Unique Contribution to Democratic Life: Emotions, Meta-ethics, and Meta-cognition in P4wC
1 Introduction
2 The Impact of Meta-ethical Considerations
3 The Centrality of Emotions and Caring Thinking for Thinking Well
References
Part IICommunity of Philosophical Inquiry in the Classroom
5 P4wC’s Outcomes Are Both Skills and Dispositions: Expanding the Whole Notion of “Outcomes” in Applying the OBE Framework in P4wC
1 Introduction
2 The Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) Framework
2.1 Traditional OBE
2.2 Transitional OBE
2.3 Transformational OBE
3 P4wC and OBE
4 Applying the OBE Framework in P4wC
4.1 Going Beyond an Aggregative Conceptualization of Thinking
4.2 Identifying the Cognitive Status of Emotions
4.3 The Coordination of Skills and Dispositions
5 Conclusion
References
6 A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children
1 Introduction
2 The First Application
2.1 The Conceptual Framework
2.2 The First Applications, Soft-Pluralism
2.3 Shortcomings in VE
3 The Prototype
3.1 The Natural Outset
3.2 The Formal Instruction
3.3 The Collective Assessment
4 Conclusion
References
7 The Practice of Reasonableness in the Secondary Classroom
1 Reasonableness as a Key Aim of Schooling
2 The Practice of Being Reasonable in the Classroom
3 Being Reasonable in a Discipline
4 Being Reasonable in Assessment
5 Conclusion
References
8 Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching
1 Introduction
2 The Locus of Care in the Reason-Emotion Dichotomy
3 Care and the Philosophy for/with Children Program
4 Caring Thinking
5 Reasonableness
6 Implications for Education: Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching
7 Conclusion
References
9 Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans: A Proposal
1 Introduction
2 Philosophy as a Pedagogical Tool in Philippine Basic Education
3 Integrating the Philosophy for Children Pedagogy in Philippine Schools
3.1 Philosophical Lesson Planning Model
3.2 Philosophical Textbook Writing Model
3.3 Final Note
4 Conclusion
References
10 Developing Reasonableness in Teaching: Rethinking Teacher Education Through the Lens of Philosophy for Children
1 Introduction
2 Teaching, Schooling, and the Goal of Public Education
3 The Tragedy of Teaching Teachers
4 Teacher-Centeredness in Education and the Socratic Deception in Teacher Training
5 Philosophy for/with Children and Thinking in Teaching
6 Rethinking Teacher Education
7 Conclusion
References
Part IIICultivating Reasonableness for Peace and Democracy
11 Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education
1 Introduction
2 Philosophy for Children
2.1 Reasonableness
2.2 Dialogue
2.3 Philosophy for Children for Adults
3 Violence and Monologue
4 Community of Inquiry and the Violence Problem
4.1 Applying Lipman to the Violence Problem
5 Trauma, Classifying Communities at Risk, and Peace Education
5.1 Identifying Communities at Risk
5.2 Peace Education
6 Conclusion
References
12 Applying Philosophical Inquiry Method to Cultivate Reasonable Religious Understanding and Prevent Extremism
1 Introduction
2 Community of Philosophical Inquiry
3 COPI and Islamic Education
4 COPI with the Quran
4.1 Stimulus Materials
4.2 Philosophical Questions
4.3 Dialogue
5 Samples of Inquiry Plan
6 Discussion Plan
7 Activities and Games
7.1 Exercise
7.2 Philosophical Mind Map
7.3 Truth-O-Meter
8 Conclusion
References
13 The Principle of Relationality in a Culture-Enabling Approach to Philosophy for/with Children
1 Introduction
2 A Culture-Enabling P4wC Approach
3 Relationality of Knowledge
4 Relationality as a Value Principle in P4wC
4.1 Interdependence
4.2 Reflexivity
4.3 Reciprocity
4.4 Empathy
5 Relationality in the Community of Inquiry
6 Challenging Dominant Assumptions in P4wC
6.1 Childhood
6.2 Rationality
6.3 Language
7 Conclusion
References
14 Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful Co-existence in a Multicultural Society
1 Introduction
2 Social and Cultural Intelligence
3 P4C and Democratic Education
4 Rationale for the Use of CPI to Develop Cultural Intelligence
5 The CPI Session
5.1 Stimulus Materials
5.2 Philosophical Questions
5.3 Dialogue
5.4 Role of the Facilitator
5.5 Samples of Inquiry Plan
6 Conclusion
References
Part IVReasonableness in Education Toward Nation-Building
15 P4wC Camps for National Identity and Value-Building Among Students: The Ukrainian Experience
1 Introduction
2 Extracurricular Education: Case Studies
3 P4wC as Personal Experience
3.1 Absence of Evaluative Judgements
3.2 Lack of Barriers Between Children
4 Designing the Camp Programs
4.1 Camp’s Topic
5 Alternation of Cooperation Formats
6 Reflection
7 Local Projects
8 Conclusion
References
16 Cultivating Reasonableness Among Filipino Children
1 Introduction
2 Community of Inquiry
3 Online Community of Inquiry: The Process and Notable Observations
3.1 Community of Philosophical Inquiry on Si Hinlalaki
3.2 Community of Philosophical Inquiry on Si Pagong at Si Matsing
4 Reflections
5 Conclusion
References
17 A Philosophy for Children Inquiry with Prospective Teachers in South Africa
1 Introduction
2 Education for Democracy
3 Philosophy for Children
4 Context of the Inquiry
5 Getting Started
5.1 Getting Started
5.2 Inquiring Together
5.3 Inquiring About a Controversial Issue
6 Discussion
7 Conclusion
References
Part VPhilosophical Inquiry and Reasonableness for Global Citizenship
18 The Subversive Potential of the P4C-COI Pedagogy
1 Introduction
2 Philosophy of Childhood
3 The Community of Inquiry as Pedagogy
4 The Kind of Thinking in COI
4.1 Creative Thinking
4.2 Caring Thinking
5 The Dialogical Spirit of COI
6 Emancipatory Elements in COI
6.1 An Interruption in the Empire
7 Conclusion
References
19 Wising up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges”: Using Complex Collaborative Projects from Philocreation to Support Youth Agency
1 Introduction
2 A Call for Philocreation
3 Owl Challenges, Deconstructed
4 In the Service of Philosophical Quality
5 Convincing the Cynics
6 Valuing Creativity in Philosophical Inquiry
References
20 Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal for Philosophical Pedagogy for the Sake of Inclusivity
1 Introduction
2 The Problem of Inclusivity in Religious, Moral, and Values Education
2.1 Teaching Religion, Morals, and Values: Education or Indoctrination?
2.2 Out-of-Field Teaching
2.3 No One Must Be Left Behind
3 Teaching Religion, Morals, and Values Through Philosophical Pedagogy
3.1 Philosophical Pedagogy as an Inclusive Pedagogy
3.2 Philosophy for/with Children in Values, Moral, and Religious Education
4 Conclusion
References
21 Philosophical Practice as a Way of Employee Education and Business Consulting
1 Introduction: From P4wC as a Pedagogy in Schools to a Method in the Business Field
2 The Expansion of Philosophical Consulting in Business Settings
3 Philosophical Consulting and Employee Education in Japan
4 Building or Reconstructing Codes of Ethics and/or Mission Statements
5 P4wC as a Means of Employee Education
6 Combining P4wC with Lectures and the Teaching of Knowledge
7 Conclusion: Achievements and Challenges
References
22 Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research
1 Introduction
2 Bioethics and Bioethics Research
3 On Traditional Teaching and Philosophy for/with Children
4 Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research Through Philosophy for/with Children
4.1 Bioethics Education Through the Lipman-Sharp Approach to Community of Inquiry
4.2 Illustrating How to Start Building a Community of Philosophical Inquiry in Bioethics
5 Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

Integrated Science 17

Marella Ada V. Mancenido-Bolaños Cathlyne Joy P. Alvarez-Abarejo Leander Penaso Marquez   Editors

Cultivating Reasonableness in Education Community of Philosophical Inquiry

Integrated Science Volume 17 Editor-in-Chief Nima Rezaei, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

The Integrated Science Series aims to publish the most relevant and novel research in all areas of Formal Sciences, Physical and Chemical Sciences, Biological Sciences, Medical Sciences, and Social Sciences. We are especially focused on the research involving the integration of two of more academic fields offering an innovative view, which is one of the main focuses of Universal Scientific Education and Research Network (USERN), science without borders. Integrated Science is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record and will follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct and correcting the literature.

Marella Ada V. Mancenido-Bolaños · Cathlyne Joy P. Alvarez-Abarejo · Leander Penaso Marquez Editors

Cultivating Reasonableness in Education Community of Philosophical Inquiry

Editors Marella Ada V. Mancenido-Bolaños Faculty of Arts and Letters University of Santo Tomas Manila, Philippines

Cathlyne Joy P. Alvarez-Abarejo Faculty of Arts and Letters University of Santo Tomas Manila, Philippines

Leander Penaso Marquez College of Social Sciences and Philosophy University of the Philippines Diliman Quezon City, Philippines

ISSN 2662-9461 ISSN 2662-947X (electronic) Integrated Science ISBN 978-981-99-4197-1 ISBN 978-981-99-4198-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

For the children. For the nation. For the world.

Preface

In 1968, it occurred to Matthew Lipman that “we might do a better job of teaching children to reason than we were already doing [1, p. 35].” With this realization, he recalled writing to Monroe Beardsley and discussing with Justus Buchler about a research that he wanted to work on and both were very encouraging. He thought that he would not want to teach children logic the way it was being taught to college students, and there was then a suggestion to teach logic through children’s stories. These ideas prompted him to apply for a pilot project grant from the National Endowment for Humanities in 1969. He proposed to write a children’s book and teach it in a field experiment. The pilot project was done at the Rand School, Montclair, NJ. The design of the experiment was done by Milton Bierman, Director of Pupil Services of the Montclair school system [1, p. 41]. Lipman personally handled the pilot project, assisted by Jerry Jaffe and Jim Harte. They met the students twice a week for nine weeks. He started reading the stories to children; later on, he found out that the students preferred to read. Eventually, he introduced the idea of acting out a scene from the novel, and the children were thrilled to play roles. In his article, he cited his notes about the first week of the project: What we didn’t expect was that the very first answer was lucid and absolutely complete: that Harry had discovered that if you take a sentence beginning with “all,” and turn it around then if it was true at first, it will be false when you turn it around. But if you take the sentence beginning with “no,” and turn it around, it’ll still be true. We were astonished! The remainder of the class did well. We went down the rows and asked them to illustrate the rule, and they had no difficulty at all. This is all the more interesting when we recall that these kids are from levels C and D-average and below average [1, p. 41].

The pilot study group and control group were tested on their knowledge on logic and logical reasoning using California Test for Mental Maturity. The results stated that no significant difference occurred between the two groups at the beginning of the program. At the end of the program, they were tested again. “The pilot study group showed significant gains over the control group in the area of logic and logical reasoning [1, p. 42].” The narrative of the study done by Milton Bierman concluded: vii

viii

Preface

1. That the students in the experimental group learned something that was very useful to them 2. That this was accomplished in a relatively short period of time 3. That the effects probably still distinguish these students from their control counterparts 4. That the teaching of logic affected their ability to read which is subject of vital concern in education 5. That the experiment is worthy of replication to confirm internal validity to build external validity [1, p. 44]. From these results, Lipman became strongly convinced that philosophy can then be a part of children’s education. During the early stages, Lipman addressed the most pressing question: Why cannot students reason? According to him, American education has often been indicted; although some of the criticisms were correct, others were not. Critics often complain about “children who reason badly because reading and mathematics are taught badly [1, p. 35].” He argued that “the fact that Johnny adds, subtracts, multiplies, divides, and can race through a Danny Dunn book doesn’t mean he can reason [1, p. 36].” Something more is needed in the development of thinking. Lipman noticed that no one ever seems to bother to teach children how to think, and that very little attention is given to the development of reasoning as evidenced in the curriculum. He did not want the program to delve into structured logic and profundities; he wanted the project to “allow the child to discover how thought can play upon its subject-matter, how reasoning about issues of importance can be satisfying even if it does no more than formulate the basic question [1, p. 36].” He also wanted to show the children the interrelatedness of the subjects they are learning—that Mathematics and Literature teach them reasoning as well. Lipman, through this pilot project, pointed out that the current curriculum allows the children to think about other subjects, but it does not teach them how to think about thinking. With this, he proposed that logic must be taught much earlier; if it is to be carried down to the elementary school curriculum, it should then be placed at the fifth grade. For him, “logic will have value for the fifth-grade child only if it is embedded in a context of ideas, against which it can constantly be applied [1, p. 39].” The Philosophy for Children (P4C) program of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) started in 1969 and has expanded steadily since 1974. In David Kennedy’s interview with Matthew Lipman, Lipman recounts the invaluable contribution of Ann Margaret Sharp to the development of Philosophy for Children. It was in 1970 when Sharp volunteered to work with Lipman in the IAPC [2, p. 13]. It was Sharp’s first year in Montclair State when she decided to work with Lipman; from then on, her research has been focused on P4C. Lipman was very pleased to work with Sharp because she had the same dedication to the program. Lipman recalls that Sharp has brought “an unlimited range of things to contribute, and a capacity to work,” not to mention a “wealth of knowledge in the field of education [and] a rich philosophical understanding as well [2, p. 14].”

Preface

ix

For Lipman, Sharp complimented his line of thinking; she was able to fill in the gaps that were lacking in his thoughts. Sharp was also responsible for organizing and recruiting people for the program. In terms of writing novels and manuals, Lipman has this to say: “[S]he would write a paragraph on an aspect of human experience and point it out to me, and I would write a chapter and point it out to her, and we would bat the work back and forth [2, p. 17].” Over the years, Lipman and Sharp were able to develop models in using the community of inquiry in teaching various subjects such as civic values, science, math, reading and writing, and social studies, to name a few. In teaching values, Lipman suggests that we must “let value education be the teaching of elementary and secondary schools to reason about values [2, p. 70].” We can thereby teach students to use their reasoning skills to determine objects of value. As discussed earlier, the students must realize at this point that they are supposed to learn from one another, and that no student or teacher-facilitator must monopolize the discussion of a particular issue at hand. Lipman [2, p. 49] suggests that values education “must be conducted in such a cooperative and communal context” that it will be seen not as a form of indoctrination but a form of cultivation. At this point, we are using the community of inquiry to focus on value inquiry where children are once again involved and immersed in the understanding of values. This cannot be limited to personal conduct and behavior; rather, it must lead to the understanding and acquisition of better judgment. Lipman takes education for civic values as a tool to strengthen a child’s character where the adults play an important role as models to children. In the process, children must learn that “civilization is something prize worthy on its own account and is infinitely preferred over barbarism [2, p. 58].” The more children are immersed in inquiry, the more capable they become of realizing values, the more capable they become of reasoning for themselves. For science education, there is a challenge for teachers to think of incorporating philosophy into their classes. In most cases, the pedagogy employed by science teachers, namely experimentation and observation, is left wanting because of their assumption that science is built on facts, thus leaving the students with little room for exploration and their curiosity unsatisfied. According to Lipman [3, p. 88], “science education should not be a matter of providing answers”; rather, it must help students in formulating questions. Science is a good venue for students to practice their thinking skills; as an example, given that water is liquid composed of hydrogen and oxygen, the students can ask why water is so composed, how from being liquid it can be turned into other states, or why it is tasteless, colorless, and so on. Lipman argues that if children have already been trained to philosophize by adequately using their thinking skills, then they will probably no longer be satisfied with sheer facts; they will most likely want to probe for reasons. Lipman reminds us that the initial inquiry before we arrive at a scientific fact is philosophical in nature; he also adds that each discipline has a specific philosophical tradition [3, p. 91]. Philosophical inquiry in science begins with a combination of “reading, speaking, listening that sets the stage for the dialogue to follow and at the same time presents the children with a model for discussion [3, p. 96].” Once

x

Preface

more, Lipman points out the inherent responsibility of the teacher to create an environment that is susceptible to inquiry, noting that there must be a continuity in the process. He notes that the early elementary phase must develop the children’s cognitive skills through practice; the middle school must introduce them to the underlying principles of the practice; and the secondary schools must already encourage them to apply the principles in and outside school life [3, p. 98]. As mentioned earlier, the community of inquiry can also be used in developing the children’s reasoning and use of language. At a certain age, children become fascinated with words—what words mean and how they relate to other words. Children are also fascinated with stories—and the more often adults expose them to stories, the more words they are to encounter; they will eventually be drawn to reading and writing using the interplay of words that they have learned. The trouble, however, is that at times children are taught to read and write mechanically without assessing the readiness of the children, or without being able to show to them the importance of such acts. If children are to be forced into these mechanical actions, then children might lose interest and may learn to read and write later than the others. Lipman [3, p. 103] notes that at the early childhood stage where “children acquire language in an incredibly rapid rate,” teaching them language is not a problem; what must be sustained though is their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic awareness as these will drive them to learn vocabulary. The greater the range of their vocabulary, the more they are able to understand contexts and express themselves [3, p. 103]. The more important thing that children must learn is the use of logic in language; children must learn to raise questions of appropriateness, proportion, and analogical fitness [3, p. 108]. Eventually, through constant practice, students learn to properly use reason in such a way as to enable them to detect invalid reasoning when committed in a conversation or a text that they are reading [3, p. 108]. It has previously been discussed and emphasized that philosophical inquiry can be used as a tool for nation-building. If schools can hone students’ social awareness, teach them about the basic facts of social life, and prepare them for citizenship, then children could become better citizens and contribute more to national development. Lipman quotes Locke’s statement that the society should not just be informed but reflective that the society must not just be aware of social issues but be reasonable about them [3, p. 110]. From this, we can draw that Lipman intends to create a classroom environment that caters to this goal. Teachers must not only teach students the facts but must also usher them into reflecting about these facts. It is one way to teach children history, it is another to make them think historically—and it is through the latter that we can make students mindful of their society [3, p. 110]. Social inquiry would not be possible without P4C. Several questions can be asked regarding its implementation, questions such as: Who will teach this pedagogy to the teachers? What are the criteria for rationality? Is this pedagogy the same as the present pedagogy employed by teachers [3, p. 110]? Lipman notes that the criteria for rationality are what enable the students to distinguish effective from ineffective, reliable from unreliable reasoning; these are to be equated with

Preface

xi

the rules of logic. Students are supposed to think about and discuss topics and issues on friendship, fairness, truth, and being. The process of inquiry will be as attractive to students as it fosters their curiosity and puzzlement. The pedagogy being discussed here is not the same as the traditional method since it converts the classroom into one of cooperative inquiry “where all are democratically entitled to be heard, where each learns from the other [3, p. 111].” All these are useful in producing reflective citizens who are capable of rationally evaluating the performance of the institutions which govern them. Citizens cannot evaluate their institutions rationally unless “they have a working knowledge of and are conversant with the ideals of the society that these institutions are supposed to implement” [3, p. 112]. Once more, this boils down to the idea of having to equip students with thinking and reflective skills. Lipman holds that teaching students to think about their society is not in question; the question is whether we are or we are not teaching the students to be reflective about their society and their citizenship. He emphasizes that “education for responsible citizenship is reflective education [3, p. 113].” Lee [4, p. 14] notes that the “goal of political education or civic education would be to equip its citizens with the capacity to question and critically evaluate the actions of their government.” More than to question and evaluate the ability to reason further and deeper on issues that affect the whole body politic [4, p. 14], this could be one of the reasons why social inquiry is seldom intensified, and why governments focus on the advancement of science and technology instead of the social sciences and the humanities. Is it the case that governments would not want to equip its citizens with proper thinking skills because it would enable its citizens to question the ruling class? Throughout the years, the practice of Community of Philosophical Inquiry has evolved. It is no longer limited to classroom use. Practitioners and researchers have found a way to devise certain methods that would answer to the needs of the community and circumstances they are in. It is for this compelling reason that we have endeavored to produce a collection of works that present how diverse the practice of Community of Philosophical Inquiry has become. In this light, the “Community of Philosophical Inquiry: Cultivating Reasonableness in Education” is a work that focuses on the real-world application of the Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) pedagogy in developing reasonableness in individuals through communities of inquiry. This book is a collection not only of theories but, more importantly, of experiences, discoveries, and innovations employed by P4wC scholars, trainers, and practitioners to transform the concepts and principles developed by Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp and enriched by its advocates for the past half a century into an effective pedagogical practice. This collection draws from the practices of various individuals around the world, making it a comprehensive text available to anyone who wishes to bring the P4wC pedagogy into their communities, schools, and classrooms. Since it is often mistaken, largely due to its name, that P4wC is only applicable to children, this book also looks into how the approach is practiced with adults and how it can be applied in numerous settings such as textbook writing, peace

xii

Preface

education, and business consulting, among others. Thus, one important feature of this collection is the discussions on how this democratic pedagogy can be integrated into the teaching and application of various subject areas such as bioethics, citizenship education, and teacher education, to name a few. This book is divided into five parts. Part I discusses integrating philosophy, dialogic inquiry, and democracy in education. Part II is about Community of Philosophical Inquiry in the classroom. Part III highlights how reasonableness can be cultivated to foster peace and democracy. Part IV presents contextualized perspectives on reasonableness in education aimed toward nation-building. And lastly, Part V showcases how philosophical inquiry and reasonableness can be used to promote global citizenship. Part I of this book deals with the notion of democracy and the role of integrating philosophy and dialogic inquiry in fostering democracy in education. Here, the contributors discuss how P4wC can play an integral role in the cultivation of democratic thinking. Chapter 1 titled, “The Role of Philosophy in Democratic Education”, by Michael Arthus Muega and Maricris B. Acido-Muega focuses on the need for philosophy, through P4wC, to be included across all levels of education, especially in early education. The authors first dissected the concept of philosophy and then discussed its intersection with the concept of democratic education. The discussion of the two main concepts—philosophy and democratic education—includes defining, clarifying, illustrating, and analyzing these concepts; at the end, a reframed version of democratic education was reached. As such, philosophy’s role was highlighted in bringing about substantial developments that are directed toward nation-building and social transformation. Baptiste Roucau’s Chap. 2 entitled, “Learning to Navigate Disagreement in Democratic Education: The Potential of the Agonistic Community of Philosophical Inquiry”, investigates the compatibility of the agonistic approach with democratic education and P4wC. Agonism offers an innovative framework for democratic education founded on the recognition that, in a pluralistic democracy, political disagreement is ineradicable, inherently passionate and enmeshed in relations of power. Based on the framework, the author presents what the agonistic CPI might look like and explores the potential benefits of the agonistic framework to P4wC theory and practice. The author emphasizes that an agonistic lens can offer valuable pedagogical and theoretical insights particularly around the place of conflict, political issues, political emotions, and historical knowledge in P4wC. In Chap. 3 titled “Why Vote? A Reflection on the Democratic Nature of Dialogical Inquiries”, Joana Rita Sousa and Pieter Mostert examine the democratic nature of dialogical inquiries. The chapter discusses the difference between polling and voting, stating that polling gives us a general impression of the “current view of the group”; however, this activity lacks commitment. Voting may result in competition as a vote for a question may be a vote for the person who raised the question; however, when done in a community, it may result in collaboration. For them, voting does not make the inquiry democratic. There has to be ownership of

Preface

xiii

the inquiry process and dialogue. They also stressed on the importance of dissent because it empowers the dialogue. Chapter 4 written by Dina Mendonça and Susana Cadilha titled, “A Unique Contribution to Democratic Life: Emotions, Meta-ethics, and Meta-cognition in P4wC,” suggests how P4wC sessions can provide an environment where participants can develop moral sensitivity and imagination. They show how emotions play a significant role in ethical development. They are able to show how reflexivity is seen in P4wC sessions by focusing on Lipman’s caring thinking. For them, caring for something is an active desire of one’s will; hence when participants bring an idea into the dialogue, it really matters to them. By immersing in philosophical discussion, participants are able to realize the variety of perspectives, and by this, they understand the complexities of theories and ideas. Mastery of theories and ideas, however, is not enough for one to say that we have developed reasonableness. It is only through the development of multidimensional thinking, with emphasis on caring thinking can we say that we have ushered in the cultivation of one’s reasonableness. Part II of this book focuses on fostering Communities of philosophical inquiry in the classroom. In this part, the authors talk about how various classroom practices and teaching methods affect the learning of the students. They also criticized certain methods which they believe do not help in developing thinking. Chapter 5 entitled, “P4wC’s Outcomes are Both Skills and Dispositions: Expanding the Whole Notion of “Outcomes” in Applying the OBE Framework in P4wC” by Abigail Thea Canuto critically examines how P4wC fits in the OBE framework. Although both frameworks agree that identifying thinking skills is vital, the incompatibility stems from OBE’s exclusion of certain learning results, such as values, beliefs, attitudes, and other psychological states, which form part of P4wC’s outcomes. To achieve this goal, the author argued that in applying OBE in P4wC it should: (1) go beyond an aggregative conceptualization of thinking; (2) identify the cognitive status of emotions; and (3) find appropriate ways of assessing the quality of how all such skills and dispositions are coordinated. Ultimately, the author concludes that the OBE framework proves to be useful in P4wC but only insofar as serving as a descriptive guide for assessing students’ capabilities without necessarily compromising the natural conduct of the community of inquiry. In Chap. 6 titled, “A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children”, Celso Vieira, Débora Mariz, and Ligea Hoki present the prototyping of a thinking routine (inspired by Ritchhart and colleagues’ thinking routines) designed to foster good inference habits in children ages 6–11 developed at Ninho, an educational project for children from underprivileged households in Brazil. After six months of application, the results were considered partially successful. On the one hand, the authors were able to discover that repeated exposition to the magic question “What makes you say that?” made children more aware of the evidence supporting their assumptions. The interactions between peers made children recognize different perspectives as well. Some difficulties that arose in the facilitation include cognitive and groupthink biases in children and social contagion. To address the identified problems, the authors who served as facilitators

xiv

Preface

in the project introduced structured instruction featuring one specific reasoning technique known as “inference to the best explanation.” In Chap. 7 titled, “The Practice of Reasonableness in Secondary Classroom,” Raymond Driehuis and Alan Tapper discuss how the practice of P4wC can also be used in humanities and social science classes. They stressed that the cultivation of reasonableness should be one of the aims of education. The chapter is divided into three parts which is as follows: what counts as reasonable in the classroom, how can reasonableness be practiced in other disciplinary areas, and how can reasonableness be measured. For Driehus and Tapper, there has to be clear criteria on what the teacher intends to measure. Chapter 8 entitled, “Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching” by Cathlyne Joy P. Alvarez-Abarejo explores how caring thinking cultivates reasonableness in teaching. Caring thinking is the cognitive, affective, and socio-ethical dimension of thinking. When applied to teaching, it fosters reasonableness among teachers as it promotes a more caring and humanistic approach to education relevant to addressing the critical issues in education. The chapter also highlighted the centrality of the concept of care in the P4wC program and the importance of caring thinking in the P4wC approach. Chapter 9 entitled, “Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans: A Proposal” by Leander Penaso Marquez, Michael Arthus G. Muega, and Maricris B. Acido-Muega lays out a proposal on how the dialogic inquiry approach of the Philosophy for/with Children pedagogy can be integrated in Philippine basic education through two models. The first model is the Philosophical Lesson Planning model wherein teachers will craft a STAR Lesson Plan, which is a kind of a philosophical/reflective lesson plan, while the second model is the Philosophical Textbook Writing model wherein textbook authors will design textbooks that are inspired by the dynamics of the community of inquiry. Both models are patterned after the Lipman-Sharp five-point approach. The authors made this proposal to “squeeze in” dialogic inquiry into the already crammed curriculum of Philippine basic education. Lastly, in Chap. 10 “Developing Reasonableness in Teaching: Rethinking Teacher Education Through the Lens of Philosophy for Children”, Prince Airick Gapo problematizes how teacher education is the root cause of the current problems in education such as egoism and teaching for testing, among others. The author claims that since teachers are trained in the traditional (banking) approach wherein students are perceived as passive learners, the classrooms where these educators teach are teacher-centered and homogenous rather than being learnercentered that celebrates otherness. To address this, the author proposes a rethinking of teacher education wherein Philosophy for/with Children will be included in the teacher-training curriculum. Successfully doing this will result in producing reasonable educators who teach for thinking—true to the essence of the pedagogue that serves as a guide. Part III of this book presents cultivating reasonableness for peace and democracy. Here, the contributors present how P4wC can aid in making students realize

Preface

xv

the value of peace in a democratic society. They argue that through the development of reasonable thinking, students will be able to properly gauge the arguments and avoid violence, religious extremism, and racism. Jason B. Castleberry in his Chap. 11 titled, “Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education”, discusses how P4wC can be beneficial to communities that are facing threats of group violence, such as terrorism, vigilantism, bullying, and gang violence, among others, that are brought about by different beliefs. As P4wC has been effective in teaching children to be reasonable, putting it together with successful peace education projects will promote peace education and violence prevention in communities that are considered high risk in terms of problems related to violence and unreasonableness. Simply put, the author tried to utilize P4wC in coming up with strategies to be incorporated in peace education projects. He achieves this by focusing on meaning-making in the community of inquiry. It is through such rethinking of definitions and values that biases are removed, perspectives are changed, concepts are redefined, judgments are improved, and reasonableness is developed. As a result, violence may be reduced and prevented, and monologue can turn into dialogue. Wan Mazwati Wan Yusoff and Nadzrah Ahmad’s Chap. 12 titled, “Applying Philosophical Inquiry Method to Cultivate Reasonable Religious Understanding and Prevent Extremism” utilizes the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI) as a dialogic pedagogical method that can be used to foster reasonableness in extremist religious groups, focusing on Islamic Education. In particular, the argument was for primary and secondary students to use the Quran as a stimulus inside the CPI and reach a reasonable and enriching understanding of the verses. To show this, the author created a sample discussion plan, a detailed step-by-step process that shows how a CPI session is conducted. The discussion plan serves as a general guide for facilitators who wish to use P4C in teaching Islamic Studies. The main objective is to empower students and give them the autonomy to understand Quranic concepts and verses in a reasonable way, and consequently, prevent religious extremism. Peter Paul E. Elicor’s Chap. 13 titled, “The Principle of Relationality in a Culture-Enabling Approach to Philosophy for/with Children”, responds to the general observation that P4wC’s emphasis on Western philosophical traditions and culture is too limiting. The author argued that the P4wC approach must be culture enabling. Elicor discussed relationality as a value principle that can be used to cultivate culture-enabling philosophical dialogues. When the criteria of interdependence, reflexivity, reciprocity, and empathy are incorporated into P4wC dialogues, it will expand the way children articulate, acquire, and validate knowledge and make dialogues more inclusive to children from diverse cultural backgrounds. Finally, Wan Mazwati Wan Yusoff, Lina Mursyidah Hamzah, and Mahinur Gulca Abudukerum’s Chap. 14 titled, “Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful Co-existence in a Multicultural Society”, discusses how in a culturally diverse society, cultural intelligence is highlighted as a crucial factor in successfully integrating and living harmoniously with others. Without it, problems such as racism and unrest proliferate. Hence, it is essential for a society to develop cultural intelligence. The author argues that cultural intelligence can be

xvi

Preface

developed using a dialogic pedagogy in democratic education, Philosophy for/with Children. Using education as the starting point, it was explained how secondary and tertiary students can make use of the Community of Philosophical Inquiry to enhance their cultural intelligence. Furthermore, the structure and procedures of a CPI session were included to facilitate teachers’ implementation of the method. In doing so, an effective CPI session in various subjects is ensured. Part IV of this book focuses on the role of reasonableness in education to nation-building. The authors share how P4wC sessions were organized in their respective countries and how these sessions have impacted the participants’ way of thinking. These sessions are all organized outside the usual classroom setting. Chapter 15 entitled, “P4wC Camps for National Identity and Value-Building Among Students: The Ukrainian Experience”, a chapter written by Yuliia Kravchenko, narrates how P4wC camps were organized in Ukraine. The camps included thematic lectures and other diverse activities such as museum visits, excursions, and workshops. All these activities are geared toward the realization of national identity and value building. Kravchenko emphasizes the need for creating safe spaces for the participants—a space where they are not to be judged and barriers between children are eliminated. This allows the children to participate without being uncomfortable about sharing their thoughts and emotions. Chapter 16 entitled, “Cultivating Reasonableness Among Filipino Children” written by Marella Ada Bolaños, Venus Ae Kaiel Basa, Prince Airick Gapo, and Raphaella Elaine Miranda narrates their experience in initiating an online Community of Philosophical Inquiry with children ages 5–10. Through this initiative, they are able to illustrate the children’s innate ability to reason and how this ability is not being addressed in traditional educational settings, as evidenced by the kind of questions raised by older children. The authors highlight the idea of creating more spaces where children can experience CPI as it has been difficult for practitioners to convince the school systems to integrate it in their teaching methods. The authors believe that as long as programs like this are being organized, there will be children who are willing to participate. Through programs like this, practitioners can help in cultivating reasonableness among Filipino children. Chapter 17 entitled, “A Philosophy for Children Inquiry with Prospective Teachers in South Africa”, by Lena Green and Janet Condy outlines the key features of Philosophy for/with Children that contribute to developing future citizens of a democratic society. It presented one CPI session with education students in South Africa facilitated by the authors. In the facilitation, it was revealed that using the CPI approach to understand and make sense of the social concerns of the students and engaging them in dialogues are effective ways of improving their reasoning skills and fostering trust and respect among them, which are required for democratic citizenship. Finally, the last part of this book focuses on promoting global citizenship through applications of philosophical inquiry and reasonableness in various settings such as the philosophy camps and in business consulting, among others. Contributors herein also present how reasonableness can be cultivated through

Preface

xvii

philosophical inquiry sessions embedded within teacher education programs, values moral education, and bioethics teaching, to name a few. Venus Ae Kaiel Basa, in Chap. 18 titled, “The Subversive Potential of the P4C-COI Pedagogy”, highlights the subversive potential of the P4wC pedagogy. Drawing from the literature on Philosophy of Childhood and the practice of the Community of Philosophical Inquiry approach, the author discusses the emancipatory potential of the P4wC pedagogy, which she dubbed as a master education program, to produce multidimensional thinkers who are open to dialogue and selfcorrection as well as agents who are conscious of the human other. Basa argues that applying the P4wC pedagogy in the classrooms would help achieve the vision of building a society of autonomous thinkers. Natalie Fletcher, in Chap. 19 titled, “Wising Up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges” Using Complex Collaborative Projects from Philocreation to Support Youth Agency”, introduces the owl challenges as it is used by Brila. In utilizing the owl challenge, participants are introduced to a philosophical dialogue where they become familiar with the concept in question. From there, they are divided into groups, and they are introduced to the owl challenge. In smaller groups, they are supposed to create something that symbolizes the ideas they have just encountered. This in turn fosters collaboration and co-construction of ideas. Philosophical dialogue remains present in this activity because participants should explain the rationale behind their creation. Through this process of Philocreation, participants are given the opportunity to further develop their thinking and reflective skills as well as their imaginative creativity. Leander Penaso Marquez and Kimberly Panganiban Florendo’s Chap. 20 titled, “Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal for Philosophical Pedagogy for the Sake of Inclusivity”, presents religion, moral, and values education as a problem of inclusivity. The authors argue that in the current approach, there are teachers and students who are being left behind, if not left out. With respect to the student, there is the problem of indoctrination; while regarding the teacher, there is the problem of out-of-field teaching. As a solution, the authors advocate for philosophical pedagogy as a means toward an inclusive religion, moral, and values education, while proposing Philosophy for/with Children as an example. They argue that the emphasis of philosophical pedagogy on thinking and exploring ideas rather than drilling doctrines helps to make the classroom more inclusive. Further, the Philosophy for/with Children approach’s focus on building communities of inquirers encourages egalitarian cooperation between teacher and students and helps develop open-mindedness to reflective consideration of diverse values, religious views, and moral beliefs. Yosuke Horikoshi, in Chap. 21 titled, “Philosophical Practice as a Way of Employee Education and Business Consulting”, discusses how the practice of P4wC is employed in business consulting. In this chapter, the author discusses how there has been an increasing demand for philosophers in companies. These inhouse philosophers are tasked to craft the vision and mission of the company, give workshops on ethics to employees, and give lectures on how to write from a philosophical perspective. The introduction of P4wC in the workplace has improved

xviii

Preface

employee relations and the employees’ ability to clarify and express. It has also helped the employees in discerning which department they are more likely to perform better. This, in turn, has helped the human resource division in the proper placement of their employees. Lastly, Leander Penaso Marquez and Rola Palalon Ombao, in Chap. 22 titled, “Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research”, propose using dialogic inquiry as pedagogy for bioethics and bioethics research education. Given the importance of the discipline of bioethics in the world today, it is vital that bioethics education must be done effectively. This must be done in a way that transforms the normal practice inside the classroom into a critical and reflective practice—one that supports building a community of bioethical inquiry. Accordingly, the authors illustrate how bioethical concepts, issues, and cases can be used as stimuli for dialogic inquiry and begin the cultivation of critical and reflective practice in bioethics classrooms. They emphasized that this chapter shows that P4wC also caters to interdisciplinary subjects, not only to specific subjects, and more importantly, can be a very valuable resource for bioethics educators who are looking for other alternative ways to teach bioethics. In the humble pages of this book, the editors hope that readers will find invaluable insights about how reasonableness that is cultivated through building communities of philosophical inquiry in education can be a powerful tool for nation-building and social transformation. Metro Manila, Philippines 2023

Marella Ada V. Mancenido-Bolaños Cathlyne Joy P. Alvarez-Abarejo Leander Penaso Marquez

References 1. Lipman M (1982) Philosophy for children. Thinking: J Philos Child 3(3–4) 2. Kennedy D (2010) Ann sharp’s contribution: a conversation with Matthew Lipman. childhood and philosophy 6(11) 3. Lipman M (1988) Philosophy goes to school. Temple University Press 4. Lee Z (2009) Philosophy for children in the philippines. In: Marshal E, Dobashi T, Weber B (eds) Children philosophize worldwide: theoretical and practical concepts. Peter Lang, Frankfurt

Contents

Part I Philosophy, Dialogic Inquiry, and Democracy in Education 1

The Role of Philosophy in Democratic Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Arthus G. Muega and Maricris B. Acido-Muega

2

Learning to Navigate Disagreement in Democratic Education: The Potential of the Agonistic Community of Philosophical Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Baptiste Roucau

3

4

3

21

Why Vote? A Reflection on the Democratic Nature of Dialogical Inquiries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joana Rita Sousa and Pieter Mostert

39

A Unique Contribution to Democratic Life: Emotions, Meta-ethics, and Meta-cognition in P4wC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dina Mendonça and Susana Cadilha

57

Part II Community of Philosophical Inquiry in the Classroom 5

6

P4wC’s Outcomes Are Both Skills and Dispositions: Expanding the Whole Notion of “Outcomes” in Applying the OBE Framework in P4wC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Abigail Thea O. Canuto A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Celso Vieira, Débora Mariz, and Ligea Hoki

77

95

7

The Practice of Reasonableness in the Secondary Classroom . . . . . . . 119 Raymond Driehuis and Alan Tapper

8

Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Cathlyne Joy P. Alvarez-Abarejo

9

Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans: A Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Leander Penaso Marquez, Michael Arthus G. Muega, and Maricris B. Acido-Muega

xix

xx

Contents

10 Developing Reasonableness in Teaching: Rethinking Teacher Education Through the Lens of Philosophy for Children . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Prince Airick Gapo Part III Cultivating Reasonableness for Peace and Democracy 11 Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Jacob B. Castleberry 12 Applying Philosophical Inquiry Method to Cultivate Reasonable Religious Understanding and Prevent Extremism . . . . . . 213 Wan Mazwati Wan Yusoff and Nadzrah Ahmad 13 The Principle of Relationality in a Culture-Enabling Approach to Philosophy for/with Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Peter Paul E. Elicor 14 Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful Co-existence in a Multicultural Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Wan Mazwati Wan Yusoff, Lina Mursyidah Hamzah, and Mahinur Gulca Abudukerumu Part IV Reasonableness in Education Toward Nation-Building 15 P4wC Camps for National Identity and Value-Building Among Students: The Ukrainian Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 Yuliia Kravchenko 16 Cultivating Reasonableness Among Filipino Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 Venus Ae Kaiel Basa, Marella Ada V. Mancenido-Bolaños, Prince Airick S. Gapo, and Raphaella Elaine Miranda 17 A Philosophy for Children Inquiry with Prospective Teachers in South Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 Lena Green and Janet Condy Part V Philosophical Inquiry and Reasonableness for Global Citizenship 18 The Subversive Potential of the P4C-COI Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 Venus Ae Kaiel Basa 19 Wising up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges”: Using Complex Collaborative Projects from Philocreation to Support Youth Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Natalie M. Fletcher 20 Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal for Philosophical Pedagogy for the Sake of Inclusivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Leander Penaso Marquez and Kimberly Panganiban Florendo

Contents

xxi

21 Philosophical Practice as a Way of Employee Education and Business Consulting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 Yosuke Horikoshi 22 Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 Leander Penaso Marquez and Rola Palalon Ombao Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411

About the Editors

Marella Ada V. Mancenido-Bolaños teaches Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and the Graduate School of the University of Santo Tomas (UST), Manila, Philippines, and obtained her MA and PhD in Philosophy from UST. She is currently the Chair of the UST Department of Philosophy. Marella has presented and published papers on Feminism (particularly about the works of Simone de Beauvoir and Iris Marion Young), Philosophy of Education, Philosophy for Children, and Philosophy of Childhood. She has conducted Philosophy for Children and Community of Inquiry training workshops for elementary and secondary school teachers, and also spearheaded an online community of philosophical inquiry with children ages 5–10. Cathlyne Joy P. Alvarez-Abarejo teaches at the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Letters, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines. She obtained her BA in Philosophy (magna cum laude) and MA in Philosophy degrees from the Department of Philosophy, University of the Philippines Diliman. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Educational History and Philosophy at the College of Education, University of the Philippines Diliman. She specializes in Philosophy for Children, Epistemology, Philosophy of Education, Ethics, Logic, and Filipino Philosophy. Cathlyne is also a licensed professional teacher (LPT) in Values Education. Her strong interest in the philosophy of education and passion in teaching drew her to the Philosophy for/with Children program. Over the years, she has attended, participated in, and conducted training in Philosophy for Children, and has also presented papers locally and internationally on the xxiii

xxiv

About the Editors

subject. Her research and teaching efforts are geared towards the introduction of Philosophy to young minds and the cultivation of thinking skills and intellectual virtues among the youth—all for her love of wisdom and the next generation. Leander Penaso Marquez teaches philosophy, educational foundations, and values education courses at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He holds an MA in Philosophy degree and an MA in Education degree from the University of the Philippines Diliman. He also has a Master of Health Research Ethics (MOHRE) degree from the Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Leander sits as Co-chair of the Working Group on Bioethics of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) Global Health Program, and serves as Junior Ambassador to the Philippines for the Universal Scientific Education and Research Network (USERN). He is also a member of the International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children (ICPIC). He was first introduced to P4wC in 2014 and received training from the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) in 2017. Since then, he has facilitated various training and workshops on teaching philosophy and P4wC. His research interests include Ethics, Epistemology, Bioethics, Research Ethics, Education Policy, Philosophy for Children, Philosophy of Education, and Philosophy and Popular Culture. Leander has published several articles in books and journals in addition to having presented some of his research in various conferences. He has also published a textbook for Filipino students that is based on the P4wC framework titled, ‘Trends, Networks, and Critical Thinking in the 21st Century Culture’ (2018).

Part I Philosophy, Dialogic Inquiry, and Democracy in Education

1

The Role of Philosophy in Democratic Education Michael Arthus G. Muega and Maricris B. Acido-Muega

A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity. These more numerous and more varied points of contact denote a greater diversity of stimuli to which an individual has to respond; they consequently put a premium on variation in his action. They secure a liberation of powers which remain suppressed as long as the incitations to action are partial, as they must be in a group which in its exclusiveness shuts out many interests. [1, p. 101]

Abstract

This chapter is a discussion of the place and value of philosophy in democratic education. Philosophy directs the attainment and development of knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions that lead people to go beyond themselves and engage in higher pursuits. This philosophical position is considered to be foundational to democratic education. Such education, taking the forms of liberal, deliberative, participative, critical, and agonistic democratic education, is

M. A. G. Muega (B) · M. B. Acido-Muega College of Education University, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines e-mail: [email protected] M. B. Acido-Muega e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_1

3

4

M. A. G. Muega and M. B. Acido-Muega

grounded in fundamental philosophical elements such as rational thinking, dialogue and engagement, cooperation and collaboration, and problem-solving and social transformation. Because of the role that philosophy plays in the pursuit of a strong, harmonious, and progressive democracy, it should be held and sustained across all levels of education, from basic to tertiary education. It definitely needs to be pursued starting in the early education of young children, in what is called philosophy for and with children. Graphic Abstract

Philosophy in democratic education

Keywords

Philosophy • Democratic education Philosophy for children

1

•

Critical education

•

Critical thinking

•

Introduction

The human position in philosophical discourse has been seen as a turning point of important movements in society and has similarly been seen to have directed many other aspects of human life. In a fundamental sense, human positioning is highlighted in philosophy of education, in its insistence on a view of the human as both a rational and social being. In this chapter, the need to cultivate the rationality and social nature of the human being is emphasized in the discussion of philosophy and democratic education. Philosophy and democratic education acknowledge the

1 The Role of Philosophy in Democratic Education

5

significance of human positioning, especially in how it impacts society and its structures, mechanisms, and purposes of social life. It is necessary to begin this chapter with an analysis of the central concepts that will aid in the understanding of the role of philosophy in democratic education. The expressions “philosophy” and “democratic education” need to be explicated. The expressions, albeit familiar to us, would reveal various implications and associations with different ideas, values, principles, priorities, and goals that are intertwined with educational praxis. Untangling such confusing connections, demands an understanding, first, of philosophy, then, of its intersection with democratic education. Whether philosophy has a place or is of value in democratic education is no longer an issue. It definitely has an important role to play in democratic education, as it trains the students to find not only the strengths but also the weaknesses of various objects of evaluation or interrogation, such as concepts, claims, doctrines, theories, principles, policies, theories, fundamental beliefs, arguments, discourses, and their applications. From this general view of philosophy, it may easily be added that philosophy could effectively train the students to open their minds to various possibilities and alternatives when addressing a problem (i.e., controversy, issue), which could be philosophical, theoretical, practical, personal, social, or political in nature. Therefore, the real matter is, what specifically are the potential and actual contributions of philosophy in a democratic education?

1.1

Philosophy and Education

The word “philosophy” could be used and understood in different ways. In its traditional sense, it is used to refer to a set of fundamental questions that stubbornly defy widely acceptable answers since time immemorial. Traditional philosophy is typically described as a field of study that is subdivided into metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and logic [2–5]. These are areas of study in which recurring questions, for instance, about the nature of reality, truth, moral goodness, beauty, and so on are raised and addressed, respectively. These and other similar matters hitherto are all educational concerns, hence, it may be said that common traditional philosophical questions are firmly connected to the business of education. The philosophical foundations for the answers to the questions (1) “What must students learn (or know)?”, (2) “What must students use in order to learn what they should learn?”, (3) “What must be taught in order to make the students morally better people?” and (4) “What must be taught in the arts?” could be found in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, respectively. It must be pointed out, however, that no single school of thought has dominated the continuing debates in any of these areas of traditional philosophy. The standoff here between competing theories or systems of beliefs should not be viewed as some kind of problem to be avoided. The very tension, in fact, that exists between competing schools of thought keeps traditional philosophy relevant and alive both in the spheres of basic and higher education.

6

M. A. G. Muega and M. B. Acido-Muega

The aplomb and sagacity with which leading scholars and system builders in traditional philosophy articulate their reasoned, yet competing, beliefs actually carry a wealth of lessons for educators and students alike. From those lessons, comes an insistence on the importance of critical, imaginative, and creative thinking as values to cultivate in formal education. The diverse positions and arguments manifest the myriad possibilities about different timeless matters. Definitive answers, if any, to such recurring matters are slippery, yet this difficulty makes traditional philosophy what it is, an arena of competing views and wisdom about reality, truth, moral goodness, beauty, existence, and so on. And here, it is generally the study of the perpetual debates that habituates the students to open-minded thinking. The simulation of such kind of learning situation at various grade levels in basic education should be considered a boon, making it a moral obligation for students to approach matters with an open mind and to examine objectively the merits of various answers or possibilities, in order to come up with a well-informed stand, belief, or opinion. The philosophical imperative in education directs educative processes, as well as teaching and learning engagements, toward the development of an intellectual disposition. Open-mindedness and openness are the first values that philosophy brings into the educative realm. There is no reason why this should not be introduced with equal intensity in basic education. There is also the analytic formulation of philosophy, where philosophy is defined in terms of what it does. In this context, philosophy, known here as analytic philosophy, is popularly viewed as an activity—where its method, commonly referred to as “conceptual analysis” or “linguistic analysis,”—is brought to the task of clarifying the object in question [5, 6]. Such object could be a concept, claim, theory, principle, policy, argument, or discourse. This analytic notion of philosophy issues from the shared observation of its practitioners that many discursive problems are traceable to lack of linguistic clarity. The analytic philosophers, therefore, think that philosophy should be used, instead, to clarify thoughts and language to finally get rid of the many discursive problems that originate from linguistic unclarity. For instance, the linguistic use of an unclear expression that signifies a certain concept should be clearly articulated by its user, so that those who hear the term, as used in a particular linguistic context, will not mistake it for something other than its exact intended use. A closer inspection of analytic philosophy will reveal that aside from conceptual or linguistic analysis, it may also be mainly interested in reasoning or providing justifications [7] for various forms of claims (e.g., philosophical, theoretical, and normative beliefs). This observation finds strong support in Føllesdal [8] when he argued that: …analytic philosophy is very strongly concerned with argument and justification. An analytic philosopher who presents and assesses a philosophical position asks: what reasons are there for accepting or rejecting this position? This question necessitates an investigation of what follows from the position at issue, and from what other positions it can be derived.

1 The Role of Philosophy in Democratic Education

7

How can one strengthen or invalidate this position? One then discovers that minute differences in the way a position is formulated determine whether it is acceptable or not. [8, pp. 7–8]

Justifications and counter-justifications are a necessary part of an ethical social life, where competing ideas and moral dilemmas are presented and evaluated in order to inform future decisions. It may be said that analytic philosophy pervades the entire landscape of society. Conceptual or linguistic analysis and argumentation, as methods of analytic philosophy, have a vital role to play in society and in politics. The suggestion of the important role that the analytic element in philosophy plays in politics and in social life is timely since its emphasis on the ability to sift through competing positions in an issue or moral dilemma would, in turn, become essential to democratic life in society. It may be observed, however, that there is a radical sense to philosophy that directs its departure from its traditional and analytic themes and situates it on social grounds, contexts, and applications. Here, philosophy goes beyond the academic realm and insists on a human positioning and more humane goals and purposes, when it highlights the human being’s social nature—the one that helps us act, react, and interact with others in a social context. This philosophical configuration implicates the moral and ethical dimensions of human life, which also brings to fore the moral imperative of education. This moral imperative now situates philosophy in the dynamicity of social life, as it endeavors to contribute to the goals and aspirations of such society and as it directs the purposes of education. Philosophy, when it is brought to bear on applications and praxis, concerns itself with how we direct our own thinking and actions, as well as our interactions with others, into what can be good for us and others. In this formulation of philosophy, relevance is placed on the actual social engagement that brings about positive changes in society. This is where the three philosophical formulations find cohesion in such a way that they work together toward the attainment of concrete outcomes in human and social lives. It is in this confluence where philosophy now directs education toward certain ends and goals, and in our case where democratic education would help concretize favorable outcomes in the efforts to build a better society or nation. As a study of comprehensive bodies of fundamental and reasoned views about reality, truth and knowledge, morality, beauty, and other timeless subject matters that kept one generation of philosophers after another preoccupied for centuries, philosophy is of great value to educators and students, regardless of their respective areas of specialization or interests. For philosophy, in such a form, affords them the opportunity to broaden their intellectual horizon and sharpen their ability to detect and rectify errors in thinking. Any serious study of the merits of varying views, for instance, of reality, truth and knowledge, morality, and beauty could give the students a good glimpse of what may count as a desirable case of learning, including one that is oriented toward nation-building. Teachers who demonstrate and apply philosophical competencies in their teaching must, however, expand the limiting view that philosophy is or should be concerned with things abstract (e.g.,

8

M. A. G. Muega and M. B. Acido-Muega

reality, good, justice, beauty) alone, if nation-building, which is a practical enterprise, is to be considered as an essential aim of democratic education. Generally, nation-building here is construed as an act of fortifying, building, re-constructing, or re-engineering the system that shapes or influences the future of a nation. More will be said about these broadly related conceptions about nation-building. For now, let it suffice to say that in this chapter nation-building is considered as a goal, but it is by no means suggested that it is the ultimate end of education. For it could, at the same time, be just a means to secure higher ends, ones, apparently, that lie outside the boundaries and beyond the path of schooling or the so-called formal education.

2

Philosophy in Democratic Education

Democratic education had been an integral part of many nations’ education agenda and had become an indispensable element of their education programs and curricula. Dewey [1] has contributed to the discourse with the publication of his book, “Democracy and Education.” His work gave us important ideas and advice on how children should be educated, so that they will become effective citizens. Dewey’s views are further reinforced in the work of Kira [9], which highlighted the need for democratic education in society. …it is very important to ask how a democratic society can educate its children to become effective citizens who not only understand democracy but also have the will to take responsible actions for it because democracy needs to be continuously recreated and reinvented by its members. Democratic schooling was designed to nurture such citizens. [9, p. 56]

This type of education is one in which children are taught to become effective citizens, i.e., able to contribute to the betterment of society. Such education is also taken as one that would enable them to live together with others in harmony. This kind of education is envisioned as democratic education—one that is viewed to be the most effective means by which to build a nation. It is toward this goal that nations have highlighted democratic education as an integral part of their endeavors. The question of how children should be educated in democratic contexts fundamentally concerns philosophy. Philosophy, as it looks at principles and systems, analysis and justifications, and applications and praxis, rightly situates itself at the forefront of democratic education. For one, it brings forth the idea that democratic education should teach about the fundamental concepts that would lead toward an understanding of freedom and responsibility, of change and social transformation, and of progress and a good society. Suffice it to say that the curriculum should be one that highlights content, processes, and mechanisms that would help the citizen acquire knowledge, skills, and values needed to live and actively participate in a democratic life.

1 The Role of Philosophy in Democratic Education

9

Philosophy also highlights the idea of intelligent thinking as an integral facet of democratic education. Being so, it definitely has an indispensable role to play in the development of the citizens and nation-building. Because intelligent thinking is inextricably linked to philosophical thinking, be it in the traditional or analytic form or the confluence of both in praxis, it directs democratic education to the apparent goal of developing reasonable citizens. A well-educated citizenry is obviously very much needed in nation-building and in sustaining a progressive society [10]. This is due to the fact that unity and harmonious coexistence between citizens are difficult goals to achieve and sustain. Even in view of the citizens’ common interests, unity is difficult to attain, as people have different ways of securing their agreed goals. Political divides, which at times result in uneasy, if not dangerous, tensions, are almost always inevitable, regardless of the form of government that pursues a secured and happy life for its people. Nation-building is a Herculean task, one that cannot be carried out satisfactorily without the committed cooperation of a significant number of citizens who had been adequately educated about it. In this chapter, nation-building is defined as a social initiative that begins with an education for turning out citizens who are equipped with intellectual competencies and who actively participate in and productively contribute to the pursuit and protection of their shared social, political, economic, judicial, cultural, and educational interests. A well-educated citizenry should be had, as such would allow a cooperative engagement between and among peoples. Citizens who are in possession of democratic values and the ability to reason are able to engage in dialogue and act with diplomacy. It is through such kind of exercise that nation-building happens and is sustained. Democratic education is a mechanism that is anchored on various goals whose attainment is a signal that a better state has been achieved. But what exactly is democratic education? How should it operate? These questions bring to our attention the various ways by which democratic education is construed and how it may be administered, with philosophy as one of its indispensable pedagogical tools. The versions of democratic education that have been examined separately are labeled as follows: (1) liberal; (2) deliberative; (3) participatory; (4) critical; and (5) agonistic [11]. Each of these versions offers activities and ideas that are associated with nation-building. The study thus reveals philosophy’s role and position in various types of democratic education.

2.1

Liberal Democratic Education

Liberalism, as applied in democratic education, is guided by the principles of rationality, freedom, and individualism [12–14]. It highlights individuality and the autonomy of the individual citizen. On this, Callan observed that For those inclined to stress the primacy of liberalism in liberal democracy, the liberty of free citizens is the necessary social space for individuals to create meaningful lives for themselves in ways that are often idiosyncratic and sometimes even antisocial. [12, p. 10]

10

M. A. G. Muega and M. B. Acido-Muega

Liberalism places a premium on the autonomy of the individual, but when it is applied to democratic education, the cultivation of the individual’s rationality is of paramount importance, as the unreasoned or uncritical exercise of liberty among individuals could imperil various facets of social life, which, needless to say, could ultimately spoil the individuals’ pursuit of their respective pleasures. Russell [15] has actually expressly warned about the dangers that rashly or recklessly adventurous individuals may pose to society. Rightly thus, to serve the interests or pursuits (e.g., peace and order, secured national border, national food security, public health security, effective transportation of goods, social justice) of a democratic society, liberal democratic education does not necessarily lose sight of the necessity of placing a premium on the training of reason to enable the citizens to make informed or wise choices. Owing to the premium it places on reasoning and critical thinking, philosophy, whether it is traditional or analytic in form, has definitely an important role to play in liberal democratic education. Such a role, however, ought to be played across the curriculum and all grade levels in order to ensure the development of intellectual habits and dispositions necessary to make and express well-thought decisions or choices, for instance, during elections, in a plebiscite, and in discourses on social issues. Bartels et al. [16] expressed a similar view when they said, Philosophy with Children seeks to develop children’s critical thinking, their ability to judge, enhance their dialogical skills and attitudes and to contribute to their dealing with differences. These are important competencies for a citizen in a democratic society. [16, p. 23]

The training of the rational faculty does not necessarily mean that schoolteachers and students should become philosophers. As a study of competing systems of beliefs that offer different answers to enduring issues about reality, truth, moral goodness, and beauty, philosophy makes an excellent educational ground to develop liberal virtues like open- or broad-mindedness, rationality, imaginativeness, and creativity among schoolchildren. These intellectual virtues are all important habits every citizen must possess in order for them to become able to make informed judgments. The citizens’ attainment of liberal virtues enables and empowers them to contribute intelligently to society’s attempts of removing and facilitating barriers to societal development. Intellectual dispositions and habits developed from sustained philosophical education, and one that is fortified with training in philosophical analysis, discourse, and dialogue will also prove useful when the citizen has already learned to approach politics with an open and critical mind. A disciplined administration of philosophically-informed education and training across all curricula and grade levels, from basic to tertiary education, could certainly develop citizens who are equipped to generate or propose alternative ways of solving a problem. Similarly, this will also help them express reasonable doubts over other citizens’ or an institution’s views or proposed remedies to societal issues concerning, for example, public health and safety, transportation system, public education, social justice, economy, energy supply and resources, food security, and peace and order.

1 The Role of Philosophy in Democratic Education

2.2

11

Deliberative Democratic Education

Just like liberal democratic education, deliberative democratic education also values rationality and freedom. But, in addition, it stresses the need for students to develop required competencies that would enable them to actively participate in debate, discussion, deliberation, or consultation initiatives or activities whose design is to elicit well-informed views about and proposed solutions to community issues. Gutmann [13] said: Deliberative decision making and accountability presuppose a citizenry whose education prepares them to deliberate, and to evaluate the results of the deliberations of their representatives. A primary aim of publicly mandated schooling is therefore to cultivate the skills and virtues of deliberation. [13, p. xiii]

Apparently, deliberative democracy here is a joint search for the best collective resolutions to issues [17] like adoption of a new form of government, abortion, divorce, death penalty, basic education curriculum, nuclear energy, same-sex marriage, cloning, and euthanasia. It cannot do away with politics, as it inevitably creates a stage in which clashing or competing views have to be examined and squeezed out for their potential contributions to the development of the best possible answer to a collective or social issue. For this reason, deliberative democratic education will always have a secured room for philosophy, especially the one that is tailored fit for children. As Bartels et al. [16] pointed out, Philosophy with Children (henceforth PwC) can be linked with the concept of active citizenship as well as with critical-democratic citizenship. Active citizenship refers to citizens who can formulate their own opinions, enter into dialogues with others, and get involved in public debates and actions. [16]

Philosophy will always be highly relevant to deliberative democratic education. This is because various types of thinking deployed in philosophy, regardless of its form, have similarly important roles to play in deliberative exercises in democratic education. Philosophy and deliberative democratic education, as described, above are inextricably linked to analysis, justification, argument evaluation, conclusiondrawing, explaining, and other forms of higher order thinking. It is quite a challenge, though it is already being practiced in many basic education systems, to introduce the higher order thinking skills used in philosophy as early as the initial stage of basic education. However, it is something that school teachers must be able to display consistently and teach with regularity across the curriculum within the deliberative democratic education setting. This means that an intensive education in and about philosophy ought to be regarded as an essential component of teacher training and education for primary and secondary school teaching.

12

2.3

M. A. G. Muega and M. B. Acido-Muega

Participatory Democratic Education

There is a manifest conceptual overlap between deliberative and participatory democratic education. Both versions of democratic education include civil and rational dialogue among their defining features. Neither of these two will deny that the exchange of ideas between citizens or stakeholders is aimed at finding the best possible resolution to an issue. Participatory democratic education, however, is known for going beyond the process of taking part in the search for a democratically agreed response to an issue. Participatory democratic education requires involvement in a community activity or participation in the enactment of the resolution of those who took part in deciding a collective issue. In the words of Sant, “…whereas deliberative democrats privilege communication and consensus, participatory democrats privilege action and praxis” [11, p. 672]. An interesting issue that should be raised here is whether philosophy has an important role to play in participatory democratic education. One might argue that philosophy ceases to be relevant in participatory democratic education as soon as it begins to carry out the practical function of including the citizens or stakeholders in the application of a resolution to an issue. One might also think that philosophy does not have any manifest interest in the area of applied resolutions of issues and problems. These, however, are just superficial observations. The higher order thinking skills that philosophy uses are needed to be able to make informed judgments on various issues.

2.4

Critical Democratic Education

Driven by the emancipatory spirit of critical pedagogy, critical democratic education is aimed at equipping the teachers and students with aptly framed (or reframed) and higher sense of social consciousness. The purpose of such a project is liberation from problematic ways of construing social reality. Critical democratic education evolved into what it is—a radical form of teaching-learning experience. This radical stance aims to enable the teachers and their students to spot the hidden curricular variables that would explain the existence and reproduction, for instance, of oppressive social and power relations between power wielders and disadvantaged groups (e.g., factory workers, rank-and-file employees, indigenous peoples, urban poor, people of color, women, farmers in developing countries, aging population, children with special needs). Where the dominant constituent members of the society would see order, critical democrats in education would see conflict, tension, struggle, discontent, diminishing tolerance or patience, and even mounting anger among the members of the underprivileged with the power-wielders in society. A nation, however, that constantly feels the tremors of class conflicts will have its future hanging in a precarious balance. Saddled with social malaise engendered by various forms of oppression or injustice, the nation could eventually find itself continuously sinking into a volatile political situation that may have been fatefully

1 The Role of Philosophy in Democratic Education

13

birthed by a poorly regulated system. It is most difficult to build a stronger nation if it is situated in a political environment that is dangerously burdened with growing discontent among the masses. It is, therefore, the system’s moral duty to diagnose itself by hearing and examining the legitimacy of the issues of disadvantaged peoples. This is a prerequisite to a peaceful, orderly, and minimally impeded, if at all, pursuit of higher national goals via democratic education that deploys philosophy as a pedagogical tool. Philosophy has definitely an important role to play in critical democratic education. Note that participatory and deliberative democratic education significantly overlap with critical democratic education. These three versions of democratic education share the belief that democratic education values the development of the teachers’ and students’ ability to think critically. And because critical thinking is an essential feature of philosophical activity, it is easy to see why philosophy is also relevant in critical democratic education. The words of History and Philosophy of Education Professor Freire [18] reveal his approval of philosophical thinking when he said: When people lack a critical understanding of their reality, apprehending it in fragments which they do not perceive as interacting constituent elements of the whole, they cannot truly know that reality. To truly know it, they would have to reverse their starting point: they would need to have a total vision of the context in order subsequently to separate and isolate its constituent elements and by means of this analysis achieve a clearer perception of the whole. [18, p. 104].

It is possible for a critical democrat in education to be a deliberative and participatory democrat at the same time. This is because critical democracy in education, just like deliberative democratic education, enables or empowers the citizens, especially the marginalized ones, to actively engage in deliberation, dialogue, discussion, or debate on issues about justice in their social context. Moreover, just like participatory democratic education, critical democratic education could also launch into action based on a resolution to an issue. In this practical situation, as was shown in the discussion of participatory democratic education, higher order thinking in philosophy, regardless of its form, will always prove to be an indispensable tool of evaluation up to the point where a critical democrat in education, just like the participatory democrat, will test whether the application of a resolution will suffice to secure its goals. Arguably, a critical democrat is necessarily a deliberative and participatory democrat, but the reverse is not always true, as the latter may or may not assume the naturally subversive stance of the critical democrat.

2.5

Agonistic Democratic Education

The Greek root of “agonism” is “agon,” which was used in various contexts to mean any of the following: conflict, strife, dispute, quarrel, competition or competition at festival, struggle, fight, encounter, clash, etc. [19–22]. Agonism, as applied

14

M. A. G. Muega and M. B. Acido-Muega

in democratic education, generally sees education as a political venue in which the clash of interests and beliefs of stakeholders regarding various matters in education (e.g., what to and who will teach, goals or how to secure an agreed set of goals of education, medium of instruction) should be canalized toward the attainment of valuable ends. Agonism in democratic education is not aimed at terminating the conflict of beliefs and interests by destroying the system of beliefs of an adversary. Constructive conflict, for agonism, is a necessary ingredient of a healthy democracy. Agonism welcomes the presentation of conflicting views, including political emotions (e.g., frustration or disappointment over continued discreet exclusionary practices) in education as an important part of democratic process. Such includes a dialogue between stakeholders at the negotiating table. Agreements, plans, policies, or decisions from the results of negotiations are by no means viewed as final resolutions that put an end to the disagreement of clashing parties in agonistic democratic education. Since dissatisfaction or new concerns over an enforced resolution or agreement may arise in the future, a new round of dialogue and negotiation is necessary to be able to arrive at a better response to an issue. Consensus in agonistic democratic education is not etched in stone. Agonistic democrats see reality as a changing landscape that may pose new demands in which the status quo or the resolution in past negotiations may no longer be acceptable. Conflict, negotiation, changing reality, new demands, and re-negotiation are the themes that closely surround the notion of agonistic democratic education. In view of the vital role that negotiation plays in agonistic democracy, it is without a doubt that philosophy has also a major place in agonistic democratic education. When there is a conflict, for instance, between the curricular plans of the faculty and the visions, philosophy, ideas, reasons, and wants of the students, both parties should hear each other at the negotiating table before attempting to craft a mutually agreeable resolution. Such remedy is by no means final, as a new batch of students or faculty, or both, might later find the existing resolution barely responsive to the needs of the stakeholders. This is owing, too, to the everchanging context of which a curriculum is a part. The adversaries should consider the merits of each other’s views, including their political sentiments [23], with an open mind. This, again, is an intellectual virtue that has been shown to be an essential component of an education in philosophy. Objective thinking is of vital importance to holistic citizenship education, and the disciplined use of which lessens the possibility of a democratic society committing costly mistakes that are otherwise avoidable if only the adversaries in agonistic democracy would diligently evaluate each other’s reasons, wants, terms, and aspirations. As was pointed out, conflicting parties may, down the line, need again to hear and negotiate with each other and plan for a better response to the issues they are trying to dialogue on and resolve. Evidently, the pursuit of living a good life in a well-built nation could be facilitated substantially by a reasonable amount of education in philosophy, owing to the generic nature of the higher-order thinking and intellectual habits and dispositions that it cultivates among the students. Suffice it to say that an education system

1 The Role of Philosophy in Democratic Education

15

should include philosophy—its concepts, methods, processes, and purposes at all levels of education, from basic education to tertiary education. Here, it is important and a must that such education should start as early as basic education, and more particularly, in early childhood education. This education is further deepened and made meaningful with the child’s development into higher education levels, and in engagements with the social context. As Dewey [24] himself said in “Experience and Education”: A primary responsibility of educators is that they not only be aware of the general principle of shaping of actual experience by environing conditions, but that they also recognize in the concrete what surroundings are conducive to having experiences that lead to growth. [24, p. 40]

This is to further explicate that democratic education also takes into consideration the importance of engagement with people and in social contexts. Such education emphasizes the relevance of experiential learning—one that seriously directs the children’s and the citizens’ social engagement and participation, as the bedrock of democratic education. This also has philosophical underpinning on the very nature of humans as social beings. Our social nature allows us to act, react, and interact with others in society. This philosophical element figures in democratic education, as human engagements in social settings, are very much a part of nation-building. Without this engagement, social life can never be sustained. The goal, therefore, is for democratic education to be grounded in philosophy. We pursue this as an imperative for nation-building, where citizens are the main catalyst for its fortification and sustainability. The task then is developing citizens who will be reasonable enough to dialogue with each other and with one another, cooperate and collaborate with others, and live well together in order for the task of nation-building to be accomplished and sustained.

3

Democratic Education Reframed

There are many well-informed educationists, as well as students, who espouse a pluralistic philosophy of democratic education, one, that is to say, whose operations are based on the virtues, methods, goals, and ideals of various types of democratic education. But that does not mean that the said stakeholders will always have equal levels of adherence to various types of democratic education. Some, for instance, may consider themselves as primarily liberal democrats in education. Other stakeholders may, however, think that two or more versions of democratic education are equally more important than the other versions. In short, it is also possible for stakeholders, depending on their individual or collective experiences, perceptions, priorities, contexts, circumstances, and interests, to confer varying values on the different applications of democratic education. It has been shown in the discussions of selected concepts of democratic education that they are not mutually exclusive. All of them do not reject the view

16

M. A. G. Muega and M. B. Acido-Muega

that freedom, rationality, and open-mindedness play a crucial role in democratic teaching and learning. Nonetheless, it must be noted that a citizen who is a liberal, deliberative, participatory, and agonistic democrat is decidedly a critical democrat, too. And that is the critical democrat that the critical pedagogues were expressly referring to in their discourse on oppressive education. Based on the characterization of critical democratic education above, it may be inferred that a schoolteacher who is inclined toward it will always promote the transformative and emancipatory type of teaching and learning. The concept of critical democratic education is comparatively wide enough to cover the liberal ideals of deliberative, participatory, and agonistic democratic education. It is, therefore, to the best interest of all students and the society in which they live if the education system will maintain a secure curricular room for the pursuit of democratic values like social justice, sincere conversation or dialogue, mutually beneficial cooperation and collaboration, and constructive and reconstructive activism. Where there is evidence for concerns over social justice, equality, and equity, critical democratic education is a necessity. For it is difficult to build a strong nation when it is fragmented by collective doubts and indignation over perceived inequalities that are claimed to be chronically suffered by the underprivileged groups in a society that claims to advocate fairness and good life for the people. Critical democratic education should be a part of basic and tertiary education, as it is a protective device that any citizen could deploy to defeat not only the causes of neglect, indifference, violence, and oppression but also the causes of ignorance and false sense of consciousness. It has been shown that the above versions of democratic education have their respective potential and significant contributions to the production of welleducated citizens. However, we must lose sight of the possibility that in the absence of institutionalized advice on conceptions and priorities, teachers might end up placing varying emphasis on the implementation of the shared and other compatible tenets of the different versions of democratic education. Here, philosophy has a big role to play in the enactment of democratic education. For instance, philosophy has an immense role to play in the modification of the curriculum, from the basic up to the tertiary level of schooling. Logicians, philosophers, and philosophers of education, for instance, have already neatly classified various forms of generic higher-order thinking, including creative thinking, that are highly relevant across the curriculum. As was pointed out, the teaching of such forms of higherorder thinking should be sustained across all grade levels, as intellectual habits and dispositions necessary for democratic education are formed only with regular engagement in relevant and age-appropriate activities and thinking exercises in a democratic venue. Abilities necessary to perform the tasks of analyzing, criteriamaking, evaluating, reasoning, conclusion-drawing, among others, are best honed with the use of democratic pedagogies (e.g., joint inquiry, cooperative learning, thought experiment, conflict resolution, Socratic dialogue) of which philosophy, in all its forms, is known for.

1 The Role of Philosophy in Democratic Education

17

This critical democratic education should be done across the grade levels, and should rightly start in the early education of children in philosophy. Philosophy highlights the importance of developing knowledge, skills, and dispositions toward rational thinking and reasonableness, cooperation, and collaboration, taking action for change and transformation. Hence, if a society aims to develop children into the kind of citizens who could work effectively toward nation-building, democratic education that is built on the framework, methods, and processes of philosophy should be pursued. Bartels et al. [16] said thus: The concept of Philosophy with Children has much to contribute to the formation of democratic skills and attitudes: the ability and willingness to dialogue, to deal with differences, and the development of children’s thinking and judiciousness. These skills and attitudes also represent the values of democratic interaction between people. It is therefore important to develop them in education. These research study findings indicate that Philosophy with Children is successful in two of the three areas researched, i.e. dialogue and dealing with differences, the third, the development of children’s thinking and judiciousness could and should still be strengthened. That development of thinking is also necessary for philosophy to acquire an established place in education. It is precisely the integration of critical examination of thinking, judgments, and opinions, in dialogue with others, in which the unique strength of Philosophy with Children lies. Philosophy with Children can therefore be seen as an important element of democratic education. [16, pp. 36–37]

Any democratic society, thus, that seeks to strengthen democratic ways and processes in order to fortify the nation, should pursue a critical democratic education that is founded on philosophy, its framework, methods, and processes. Such will enable the development of knowledge and skills that would in turn help develop the young of society into citizens who will work toward nation-building. Moreover, it will also develop values and dispositions among these citizens that will allow and direct them toward working for social transformation. These values and dispositions fundamentally bind citizens into a common ground, that is, their common humanity, and this enables them to come together, dialogue, engage, collaborate, cooperate, work and live together in society. On these also are built a strong, sustainable, and progressive nation. Without those virtues, it is difficult to envision a citizenry that is capable of building a strong or better nation.

4

Conclusion

Philosophy, therefore, when used intensively, stokes up substantial development of critical democratic values into more reliable nation-building virtues. Such virtues propel people into doing action and carrying out tasks that would lead toward providing solutions to problems and issues. Being able to work well with others, because one has the rational knowledge and skills to dialogue, negotiate, and form consensus is a must if people have to find solutions to social issues and problems. Beyond this, bringing such social engagement into an even higher level of being

18

M. A. G. Muega and M. B. Acido-Muega

able to live together in harmony, can only be had through the citizens’ attainment of values and dispositions that allow them to acknowledge others as they do themselves. All these are grounded in a deeply philosophical positioning that allows us, humans, to know and understand our humanity—that is, that we are rational and reasonable beings, and are thus enjoined to be so at all times. It also helps us to enact and affirm our humanity by being humane—being moral, and ethical in our actions. It is toward this endeavor that we are being moved to pursue critical democratic education so that we can also affirm our humanity and lead reasonable lives with others, enact and affirm such through humaneness and living well with others, and direct our actions toward the pursuit of goals that are beyond ourselves. These thrusts are unquestionably directed toward the strengthening of the society and nation, and the sustaining of such requires that society should have critical democratic education that is founded on philosophy. Such is one of the purposes of human life in social contexts, which critical democratic education also pursues to forge a better society or nation. We, the authors, believe that a just and strong society can only be possible with the administration of a genuinely liberating education, and that possibility could only happen if education is critical, creative, imaginative, emancipatory, and transformative both in substance and form. Michael Arthus Muega and Maricris B. Acido-Muega

References 1. Dewey J (1916) Democracy and education: an introduction to the philosophy of education. The Free Press, New York. https://edtechbooks.org/democracyandeducation/the_democratic_ conception?fbclid=IwAR3IbiDnG2qiUXd4mg8MEfgEdCYmzJVvt3qAAXeX7U_rP97Gl eT16M3oq1g 2. Soccio D (2016) Archetypes of wisdom: an introduction to philosophy, 9th edn. Cengage Learning, Massachusetts 3. Harrell M (2016) What is the argument: an introduction to philosophical argument and analysis. MIT Press, Massachusetts 4. Ornstein A, Levine D, Gutek G, Vocke D (2011) Foundations of education, 11th ed. California, Wadsworth, Cengage Learning 5. Ozmon H, Craver S (2003) Philosophical foundations of education, 7th ed. Merrill Prentice Hall, Ohio 6. Hirst P, Peters R (1998) Education and philosophy. In: Hirst P, White P (eds) Philosophy of education: major themes in the analytic tradition. Routledge, London 7. Beaney M (2013) What is analytic philosophy? The Oxford handbooks of the history of analytic philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199238842.001.0001/oxfordhb9780199238842-e-039?print=pdf 8. Føllesdal D (1997) Analytic philosophy: what is it and why should one engage in it? In: Glock H (ed) The rise of analytic philosophy. Blackwell Publishers, Massachusetts, pp 1–16

1 The Role of Philosophy in Democratic Education

19

9. Kira N (2019) Dewey’s democratic conception in education and democratic schooling: lessons from the United States for Japan in a time of democracy in crisis. Educ Stud Japan: Int Yearbook 13:55–66. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1221549.pdf 10. Dewey J (1916) Democracy and education: an introduction to the philosophy of education. Macmillan, New York 11. Sant E (2019) Democratic education: a theoretical review (2006–2017). Rev Educ Res 89(5):655–696. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654319862493 12. Callan E (1997) Creating citizens: political education and liberal democracy. Oxford University Press, New York 13. Gutmann A (1999) Democratic education. Princeton University Press, New Jersey 14. Deane S (2019) Liberal democratic civic education and rampage school gun violence: why we need an alternative theory of democracy to guide contemporary civic education. Dissertation, Loyola University Chicago. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3329/ 15. Russell B (1932) Education and the social order. George Allen & Unwin, London 16. Bartels R, Onstenk J, Veugelers W (2018) Philosophical enquiry as part of democratic education. Curr Teach 33(1):23–38. https://doi.org/10.7459/ct/33.1.03 17. Samuelsson M (2016) Education for deliberative democracy: a typology of classroom discussions. Democracy Educ 24(1). Article 5. http://democracyeducationjournal.org/home/vol24/ iss1/5 18. Freire P (1970) Pedagogy of the oppressed. The Continuum International Publishing Group, New York 19. Merriam-Webster (2022) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agonOxford 20. Lexico (2022) https://www.lexico.com/definition/agon 21. Collins (2022) https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/agon 22. WordReference.com (2022) https://www.wordreference.com/definition/agon 23. Ruitenberg CW (2009) Educating political adversaries: Chantal Mouffe and radical democratic citizenship education. Stud Philos Educ 28(3):269–328. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-0089122-2 24. Dewey J (1938/1963) Experience and Education. Macmillan Publishing Company, New York

Michael Arthus G. Muega was first trained and educated in the tradition of analytic philosophy, but his pedagogical views go beyond the sphere of linguistic analysis in education. His ideas and beliefs in education are informed by knowledge and wisdom from philosophy, sociology, psychology, and other sciences. His philosophy of education is inspired by pluralistic social reconstructionism. He believes that the best things in education and life could be found through the path of different modes of thinking. While he learns a lot from his students, he also teaches to contribute to the broadening of his students’ intellectual horizon. He is always delighted to discuss big questions with students who are looking for something new and enduringly important in their learning experiences. He seeks to further create a community of inquiry with his students, where he wants them to feel comfortable in expressing their thoughts. Collegiality, critical inquiry, democracy, and open-mindedness are central to his teaching philosophy. Dr. Muega has published in peer-reviewed local and international journals of education. He had traveled overseas with his colleagues and graduate and undergraduate students to present the results of his own and their research findings

20

M. A. G. Muega and M. B. Acido-Muega in education. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism, a master’s degree in philosophy, and doctoral degrees in philosophy of education and in special education, all from the University of the Philippines Diliman. Dr. Muega is happily married and has two children. He is also basketball player, amateur visual artist, vlogger and blogger, long-time boxing student, and arnis enthusiast. Maricris B. Acido-Muega is professor of history and philosophy of education, and of values education at the University of the Philippines College of Education. She holds degrees in Ph.D. Educational History and Philosophy (2004), MA Philosophy (1998), BA Philosophy (1994), all from the University of the Philippines Diliman. She also earned a certificate in Ethics Teaching from the UNESCO Bangkok (2015), and a certificate in Philosophy for Children facilitation from the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children in Montclair State University, USA (July–August 2022). She was a Fulbright Senior Lecturing and Research Fellow at the School of Education, Indiana University Southeast, USA (2008), was part of the UNESCO Youth and Sustainable Futures (2015), and is a member of the Pi Lambda Theta International Honor Society (Philippines Chapter). She also currently serves as member of the Office for Student Ethics, under the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs in the University of the Philippines Diliman. She has extensive experience in capacity building and research in education and has actively pursued collaborative work on the ground with various stakeholders and schools across the country and overseas.

2

Learning to Navigate Disagreement in Democratic Education: The Potential of the Agonistic Community of Philosophical Inquiry Baptiste Roucau

One of the most valuable contributions philosophy has to make to the conversation of mankind with regard to civic education is the model philosophers offer of a community of inquiry in which the inquirers are profoundly aware of how much they can learn from other inquirers with whom they strongly disagree. [1, p. 72]

Abstract

In the context of widespread political polarisation, this chapter explores the potential of taking an agonistic approach to Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC). Agonism offers an innovative framework for democratic education founded on the recognition that, in a pluralistic democracy, political disagreement is ineradicable, inherently passionate and enmeshed in relations of power. After outlining the tenets of agonism, I briefly describe P4wC, its Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI) pedagogy and its tradition of democratic education. After arguing that the agonistic approach to democratic education is broadly compatible with P4wC, I explore what “the agonistic CPI” might look like, and envision the potential benefits to P4wC theory and practice. My main claim in this chapter is that an agonistic lens can offer valuable pedagogical and theoretical insights, particularly around the place of conflict, political issues, political emotions and historical knowledge in P4wC. I conclude that an

B. Roucau (B) Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_2

21

22

B. Roucau

agonistic approach to P4wC deserves further theoretical and empirical investigation, especially in a political moment characterised by rising polarisation, passion and populism. Graphic abstract

Agonistic community of philosophical inquiry

Keywords

Philosophy for/with children • Community of philosophical inquiry • Democratic education • Citizenship education • Agonism • Disagreement • Conflict • Dialogue • Discussion • Political polarisation

1

Introduction

Democracy is premised on disagreement. If citizens are political equals yet embrace a plurality of values, then they are bound to disagree about how to organise society [2]. Passionate engagement in political disagreement can be the sign of a healthy democracy [3], but it becomes dangerous when it leads to excessive polarisation among citizens, as illustrated by the storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters in January 2021. While political polarisation is a complex phenomenon, Neisser [4] argues that, at bottom, it constitutes a case of “disagreement failure.” What is dysfunctional about polarised political disagreement is its potential to undermine a pillar of democracy: the recognition of one’s fellow citizens as political equals. In many parts of the world [5], polarised citizens “are growing increasingly inclined to regard those with whom they disagree over politics to

2

Learning to Navigate Disagreement in Democratic Education: The Potential …

23

be not merely incorrect, but depraved, dangerous, and threatening to democracy itself” [2, p. 10]. Despite its central role in democracy, therefore, disagreement can also be its undoing. A key implication is that managing disagreement is a vital “democratic capacity” [6] to cultivate in young people as part of their democratic education [7]—their learning of the knowledge and skills of competent democratic citizenship. But how can democratic educators foster young people’s capacity for disagreement? While many conceptions of democratic education exist [8], this chapter focuses on an innovative approach that foregrounds the problem of political disagreement: agonism [9, 10]. In a political context characterised by rising polarisation, passion and populism, the agonistic approach is timely [11]. While other theories may be blindsided by these phenomena, agonism can make sense of them and offer ways to “mobili[se] them towards democratic designs” [3, p. 20]. Bringing this approach into conversation with Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC), I explore the idea that an agonistic lens might offer valuable pedagogical and theoretical insights, particularly around the place of conflict, political issues, political emotions and historical knowledge in P4wC. I begin by outlining the agonistic framework in political philosophy and in democratic education. Then, I briefly describe P4wC, its Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI) pedagogy and its tradition of democratic education. To build the case for an agonistic approach to P4wC, I show that agonism and P4wC are broadly compatible. Finally, I sketch what an “agonistic CPI” might look like and elaborate the potential benefits of this approach for P4wC practice and theory.

2

Agonism

2.1

The Agonistic Theory of Democracy

The agonistic theory of democracy, as Chantal Mouffe [3] conceives it,1 revolves around three key notions: dissensus, political emotions and “the political.” Drawing on poststructuralist analysis, Mouffe [3, 12] rejects the notion of a single, optimal political configuration to which all should assent. According to her, there is an ineradicable tension between the two fundamental values underpinning democracy—liberty and equality—such that any vision of society must interpret and prioritise these values differently, thereby excluding legitimate alternatives. Yet these incompatible interpretations must constantly challenge one another, since a social order in which one vision permanently prevails over others can only be totalitarian. Democratic life consists precisely in the continuous—and vigorous—renegotiation of these values and their instantiation in society. Dissensus, not consensus, is the norm of pluralistic democracy.

1

While agonism encompasses multiple theories, I focus on the dissociative form of agonism developed by Chantal Mouffe [3, 12] because it is the predominant one in democratic education [8].

24

B. Roucau

According to Mouffe [3], pluralistic democracy involves collective identities infused with political emotions. Drawing on psychoanalysis, she claims that emotions bind citizens together around political ideals by defining an “us” struggling against a “them,” and further, that this “need for collective identifications will never disappear since it is constitutive of the mode of existence of human beings” [13, p. 28]. When democracy fails to recognise the centrality of this desire, for example when it is reduced to technocratic, “Third way” politics, Mouffe [13] argues that it risks disengaging citizens, who can no longer emotionally identify with clear political factions. Worse, the need to belong to a collective is so powerful that disillusioned citizens may turn to extremist parties or fundamentalist religious groups to fulfil it—Mouffe [14] has recently pointed to the rise of right-wing populists like Bolsonaro or Trump as examples of this dangerous trend. Finally, Mouffe [3] foregrounds the role played by relations of power in democracy. Building on the Gramscian notion of hegemony, she views democracy as a contested arena in which political groups constantly struggle against one another to realise incompatible hegemonic projects, renegotiating the social order every time a new hegemony is established. This struggle—what Mouffe calls “the political”—necessarily shapes “politics,” the contingent set of political institutions and practices that structure society. She also recognises that some citizens have much less power to shape society due to historical oppression. In her view, theories that overlook these inescapable relations of power cannot properly account for the political dimension of democracy. Together, dissensus, political emotions and the political enable “the ‘agonistic struggle’ that is the very condition of a vibrant democracy” [3, p. 18]. However, Mouffe emphasises the need for boundaries to prevent this agonistic conflict from deteriorating into antagonism. What makes a society democratic is the commitment of its members to the “ethico-political values of liberty and equality for all” [12, p. 121]. Thus, democracy requires “political adversaries” who all honour these values even while disagreeing about their interpretation, but it disintegrates if citizens forfeit this commitment to become “moral enemies” who seek to destroy one another. The challenge facing pluralistic democracy, and thus democratic education, is to promote agonism while inhibiting antagonism.

2.2

The Agonistic Approach to Democratic Education

Agonism is a relatively novel yet rapidly growing approach to democratic education [15]. Building on the three features outlined above, agonistic democratic education aims to educate young people’s ability to sustain disagreement, address political issues entangled in relations of power, and harness their political emotions [6, 9, 16, 17]. Together, these objectives enable the “educa[tion of] political adversaries” [9] who can navigate the dissensus of pluralistic democracy while honouring the equality and liberty of all. The agonistic approach to democratic education is especially timely because it can help address the rise of polarisation and the need for political renewal in

2

Learning to Navigate Disagreement in Democratic Education: The Potential …

25

modern democracies [11, 15, 18]. It can do so, first, by inviting young people to see political principles and practices as open to a multiplicity of interpretations [18, 19]. Second, by helping young people to realise that political alliances and identities are inherently contingent, and thus open to renegotiation [18, 20]. Third, by “normalising conflict” [16], thereby building young people’s “capacity for disagreement” [6]. Fourth, by helping young people to channel their disillusionment about democracy and despair about economic and ecological crises “into positive re-engagement, especially for taking transformative action against injustices” [21, p. 2]. Together, these efforts can lower the risk of polarisation by discouraging young people from perceiving themselves or others in rigid ways that may lead to antagonism, while also empowering them to bring about the necessary political changes to reinvigorate democracy. Taking as their point of departure Mouffe’s notion of dissensus, agonists argue that young people should “become comfortable with conflict as a natural phenomenon and consider adversarial perspectives as necessary for pluralistic experience” [19, p. 88]. Only if young people learn to sustain disagreement, not necessarily resolve it, will they be able to navigate the dissensus of democracy while engaging others as adversaries rather than enemies. Otherwise, “if young people learn to avoid conflict or regard it as a breakdown of democracy,” it would be “a failure of political democratic education” according to Ruitenberg [9, p. 49]. Because citizens hold different values and visions of society, they tend to perceive one another as “strange.” While the fear and frustration associated with strangeness often trigger conflict, Lo [19] believes that young people can learn to “bear with strangers” by cultivating understanding and forgiveness. Dialoguing with strangers can allow young people to better understand others by “visiting” their different worldviews. Yet the persistence of disagreement creates the need for forgiveness, or the willingness to move past grievances to remain open to future negotiations. Thus, an agonistic democratic education should foster young people’s ability to “see strangers as strange (rather than as a version of themselves), confront their strangeness (potentially leading to conflict), and learn to bear with them (through the process of forgiveness)” [19, p. 96]. Further, agonistic democratic education seeks to foster young people’s ability to address political issues entangled in relations of power. This includes cultivating both political literacy and political efficacy. Ruitenberg defines political literacy as “the ability to read the political landscape both in its contemporary configuration and its historical genesis” [9, p. 278], with an emphasis on teaching young people about “the concept of power, and the role of power in constituting any social order” [9, p. 277]. It also involves the ability to envision political alternatives: “young people should gain an understanding of the institutions and discourses of the social order in which they live, but they should also be encouraged to imagine other, more desirable forms of collective life” [6, p. 51, emphasis in the original]. For agonists, addressing political issues also means doing something about them. “The end goal,” writes Lo, “is empowerment and action” [22, p. 8]. Ruitenberg goes so far as to say that “if a person has no idea how to translate her or his ideas about a desirable social order into actions that aim to bring this social order

26

B. Roucau

about, then I would argue that we cannot call this person ‘politically educated’” [23, p. 377]. A key attribute to develop in young people is thus “political efficacy” so that they can not only vote and deliberate, but also challenge the political status quo [23]. Accordingly, young activists such as Greta Thunberg are heralded as exemplary “political adversaries” [11]. Finally, agonistic democratic education aims to cultivate young people’s ability to harness their political emotions, which Ruitenberg defines as emotions “necessarily bound up with the power relations in a society and with a substantive vision of a just society” [9, p. 277]. According to Tryggvason, young people can develop politically relevant “collective identities” by experiencing emotions that create an “us-them distinction” [10, p. 260] between them and other members of society, or even between them and their classmates—though elsewhere he highlights the precautions necessary for such an approach [17]. Classroom discussions about controversial issues seem especially conducive to the emergence of passionate collective identities, since these discussions “will get ‘heated’… and the differences between the ‘us’ with whom one agrees and ‘them’ with whom one does not agree will become more pronounced” [6, pp. 51–52]. These emotional experiences can pave the way for collective identification with political factions, which Mouffe [3] argues lies at the heart of democratic politics. The main reason to encourage young people to harness their political emotions is to address political issues, whether by discerning their entanglement in relations of power or by taking action. Ruitenberg [9] considers that young people should learn to identify what emotions like anger or sadness can reveal about their society and the way it is shaped by power. She gives the example of understanding the implications of poverty by first feeling angry about the preventable death of a homeless person. Finally, political emotions can be mobilised toward political engagement. When young people encounter injustices, they should “learn to be difficult” and harness their “intransigent indignation” to voice their demands until the equality of all is recognised [24]. After this brief review of the agonistic framework, it is time to introduce P4wC, its CPI pedagogy and its tradition of democratic education.

3

Philosophy for/with Children

3.1

Philosophy for/with Children and the Community of Philosophical Inquiry

P4wC is an educational programme that was founded by American philosophers Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp in the 1970’s. While its initial aim was to foster young people’s critical thinking, its scope broadened as it evolved to include the cultivation of multidimensional thinking—the combination of critical, creative and caring thinking—along with other cognitive and social dispositions [25]. In its original form, P4wC comprises a pedagogical method, the CPI, and a curriculum consisting of philosophical novels and instructional manuals [25, 26].

2

Learning to Navigate Disagreement in Democratic Education: The Potential …

27

The Lipman-Sharp approach to P4wC is rooted in American pragmatism, notably in the thought of John Dewey, and in Lev Vygotsky’s social constructivist theory of learning [26]. Since its inception, however, P4wC has expanded both geographically and theoretically, growing into a multifaceted movement now practised around the world [27]. While many terminological and pedagogical variations exist in P4wC, the CPI can be defined as follows: At its core, this dialogical approach to philosophical inquiry consists of a group of children joined by a contestable question they deem central to their lives and about which they seek clarity and reasonable judgments through structured conversation supported by an adult facilitator… The CPI strives to equip children with the means to tackle issues that matter to them in the form of philosophical concepts—from selfhood to truth, goodness to justice— by appeal to their combined knowledge and experiences and by the use of specific thinking tools and attitudes. [28, p. 260]

The CPI invites young people to come together in dialogue to examine philosophical questions often sparked by a thought-provoking stimulus, with a view to developing meaningful judgments or positions on them [29]. Young people are assisted by an adult facilitator who helps strengthen the procedures of the inquiry while usually refraining from sharing their substantive views.

3.2

Philosophy for/with Children as Democratic Education

Fostering democratic dispositions has long been a central aim of P4wC [1] and it continues to be viewed as a promising approach to democratic education in such varied contexts as Ecuador [30], Scotland [31] or South Africa [32]. While different approaches to democratic education coexist within P4wC [33], these approaches have a lot in common. Most P4wC practitioners interested in democratic education invite young people to explore the fundamental ethical and political issues underpinning democracy through CPI dialogues, often with an emphasis on ensuring that the educational process itself is democratic [33]. This shared commitment derives from a recognition of young people as emerging agents capable of meaningful social engagement [28].

4

The Alignment Between Agonism and Philosophy for/ with Children

Agonism and P4wC have not often been examined together, likely because of the former’s novelty. Some P4wC theorists have recently drawn on the work of Rancière (e.g., [34]), an influential figure in agonistic political thought, while agonists, such as Claudia Ruitenberg, have published work on P4wC, albeit not from an agonistic perspective [35]. It might be these studies that Nishiyama has in mind when he claims that “scholars in P4wC, in their criticism of consensus, ground

28

B. Roucau

their rationale in agonistic thought” [36, p. 5]. Yet to my knowledge, Helkala and colleagues are the first to explicitly consider P4wC through an agonistic prism. They argue that P4wC is compatible with agonism, mainly because of a shared commitment to respectful disagreement. In CPI dialogues, young people do not “seek final answers but instead deeper and more comprehensive meanings” [37, p. 14, emphasis in the original], so there is no requirement to reach consensus. Further, P4wC’s emphasis on collaborative and playful inquiry enables young people to value alternative perspectives even when they disagree, thus “promot[ing] the transition from antagonism to agonism in Mouffe’s terms” [37, p. 14]. However, Helkala and colleagues [37] express concern about the agonistic framework’s lack of boundaries to structure discussions, which they claim should be addressed if agonism is to inform P4wC. Along with Helkala and colleagues [37], I do not claim that agonism and P4wC are perfectly compatible, and in the conclusion of this chapter I point out tensions between the two frameworks that deserve further consideration. However, I argue that they are sufficiently compatible to warrant further exploration, and that such exploration would be valuable given agonism’s potential to reduce polarisation and bring about political renewal. To demonstrate this broad alignment, I examine how agonism and P4wC conceive the three key notions of disagreement, political issues and political emotions in the context of democratic education.2 I will then describe what form the “agonistic CPI” might take and argue that considering P4wC through an agonistic lens can yield valuable pedagogical and theoretical insights.

4.1

Disagreement

Like agonism, P4wC favours disagreement over consensus. P4wC scholars reject consensus as a suitable aim for CPI dialogues because it threatens intellectual diversity and risks distorting philosophical inquiry [36, 39]. The first concern is that encouraging young people to reach consensus might end up pressuring them to conform to a single view, thereby excluding alternative perspectives and “silencing some students instead of giving them a voice” [37]. Further, an emphasis on reaching consensus can mislead young people into thinking that they have definitively resolved issues that are far more complex than they suspect, or that getting to a final answer is the primary goal of inquiry [37, 39]. Accordingly, P4wC theorists explicitly distinguish the CPI from consensus-oriented pedagogies (e.g., [39, 40]). Moreover, disagreement is valued for its own sake in P4wC, both as the engine of inquiry and as a conduit for understanding other perspectives [41–43]. Many P4wC scholars endorse the pragmatist notion that disagreement sparks and sustains

2

In my doctoral thesis [38], I also explore resonances—and dissonances—between agonism and the Deweyan conceptions of democracy and democratic education that underpin much of P4wC.

2

Learning to Navigate Disagreement in Democratic Education: The Potential …

29

inquiry by heightening doubt (e.g., [42, 44]). “Philosophy,” writes Worley, “begins with controversy” [43, p. 183]. When young people disagree, their beliefs are likely to be unsettled, which can prompt them to inquire further into the matter; conversely, in the absence of disagreement, there may be no unsettlement and thus no need to inquire [41, 42].3 Expanding young people’s understanding of different perspectives is another important goal of P4wC (e.g., [28, 46]). Disagreement serves this goal because it can allow young people to go “visit” others’ worlds [47], a notion also embraced by agonists [19]. It is often disagreement—the discovery that another thinks differently from me—that prompts the need to go visiting; at the same time, visiting can sustain disagreement by preserving difference. This is how I understand Sharp’s point that “when children go visiting, they realize just how different the world looks from different vantage points. Going visiting does not assume that consensus among all the people in the world is ultimately possible” [47, p. 310, my emphasis]. The purpose of going visiting, indeed the purpose of dialogue [46], is to deepen understanding rather than to secure agreement. The value placed on disagreement in P4wC thus accords well with the agonistic emphasis on developing young people’s “capacity for disagreement” [6].

4.2

Political Issues

Political issues have pride of place in both agonism and P4wC. P4wC scholars underscore the importance of discussing political issues with young people and empowering them to do something about these issues [1, 33, 44]. This is primarily accomplished through CPI dialogues, in which young people can “explore, challenge and reconstruct the meaning of political and economic concepts (such as citizenship, democracy, freedom, justice…) that are typically taken for granted or treated as fixed in the standard curriculum” [48, p. 160]. Critically examining political concepts in the CPI is not merely an abstract exercise: it can lead young people to consider concrete political issues and to realise the need for political engagement [33, 44, 49]. To help young people shift from analysis to action, Gregory recommends asking them specific questions at the end of CPI dialogues, such as “What ought we to do about this?” or “Are our current personal, institutional, communal and larger social habits consistent with our new judgments? If not, what adjustments should we make?” [29, p. 75]. An even bolder proposal is Bleazby’s [44] Social Reconstruction Learning model, in which young people involved in CPI dialogues carefully examine pressing political issues then address them through transformative action in collaboration with community members. Accordingly, Kizel argues that CPI dialogues are “ideal forums within which activism can be promoted” [49, p. 513]. The alignment between P4wC and

3

This is partly why CPI facilitators usually make sure that proposed questions are sufficiently “contestable” before young people inquire into them [45].

30

B. Roucau

agonism is thus apparent in the former’s commitment to developing what the latter calls “political literacy” and “political efficacy” [6, 22, 23].

4.3

Political Emotions

Finally, agonism and P4wC both recognise the important role played by the emotions in moral and political life. Following Dewey, P4wC theorists reject the problematic dualism between reason and emotion [44], with Sharp claiming that “emotion is the other side of reason and the education of both is essential in bringing about a better world” [50, pp. 255–256]. Accordingly, many P4wC scholars have theorised the “education of the emotions” that can take place in the CPI (e.g., [25, 50, 51]). While this work does not always foreground political emotions, P4wC scholars generally recognise the emotions’ “potential for social reconstruction and ability to provoke responses to injustice” [44, p. 121]. This potential is achieved in three main ways. First, by helping young people to recognise that emotions are entwined in relations of power. Bleazby claims that “P4C students should consider how expressing emotions is an important aspect of autonomy and how the denial of certain emotions to certain groups is a form of oppression” [44, p. 121]. Second, P4wC scholars contend that, in the CPI, young people can interrogate their society by working out the philosophical and political implications of how they feel about a given political issue [44, 50]. This is how I understand Sharp’s remark that “you have to be awake to the ethical and political meaning of your experience—emotionally as well as conceptually—before you can sense, and then articulate that there is something wrong with it” (in [52, p. 204]). Third, P4wC scholars emphasise the importance of helping young people to channel their political emotions into action [50] and underscore the risk that they become “frustrated and apathetic” if they are not given “any opportunity to act on those emotions” [44, p. 124]. There is thus significant overlap between P4wC’s goal of educating the emotions and the agonistic aim of cultivating young people’s ability to harness their political emotions. Overall, the agonistic and P4wC approaches to democratic education appear broadly aligned, at least in relation to the key areas of disagreement, political issues and political emotions. Having established this basic compatibility, I explore what an agonistic approach to P4wC might look like.

5

The Agonistic Community of Philosophical Inquiry

The previous section examined the affinities between agonism and P4wC as they are currently practised. This final section explores what might be different if CPI dialogues were designed and facilitated within an agonistic framework—what I term “the agonistic CPI.” As I see it, the agonistic CPI builds on the philosophical and political strengths of agonism and P4wC to offer a truly innovative approach

2

Learning to Navigate Disagreement in Democratic Education: The Potential …

31

to democratic education. I think this approach is especially well-suited for CPI dialogues exploring political issues with older children and adolescents.4 At this stage, I only offer some tentative ideas. In future work, I hope to develop these ideas more fully and to investigate them empirically.

5.1

Celebrating Dissensus

In the agonistic CPI, dissensus, or sustained disagreement, would be celebrated even more than it currently is in P4wC. Having formed at least two incompatible reasonable positions would be considered a positive outcome of CPI dialogues, not only because it demonstrates that young people have explored philosophical questions from multiple perspectives, but also because it means that they have practised “bearing with strangers” [19]. Through this kind of dialogue, young people could learn to endure the frustration of disagreeing with others, potentially about something very important to them, thus preparing them for the tumult of pluralistic democracy. Of course, some degree of agreement is necessary for philosophical inquiry to function [36] and to ensure effective coordination when taking action [44]. But learning to achieve agreement and to navigate disagreement can coexist as equally valuable objectives of democratic education. Since P4wC already rejects consensus, celebrating dissensus does not involve making radical changes to practice or theory. CPI facilitators can continue to encourage inquirers to explore various perspectives without requiring them to agree—or to disagree. If a dialogue ends on a dissensus, facilitators can explicitly highlight the outcome (e.g., “We end up with a really interesting disagreement!”). Additionally, facilitators can make moves that “stoke” disagreement when inquirers seem to shy away from it, for example by bringing inquirers’ attention to an overlooked tension between two positions or by encouraging them to imagine a dissenting perspective when they all agree without having examined the other side [38]. I can see at least two reasons why celebrating dissensus might be beneficial to P4wC practice and theory. First, it provides a strong theoretical justification for valuing disagreement as a legitimate outcome of philosophical dialogue—helping young people to manage disagreement is part of what it means to educate them for pluralistic democracy. Second, it might help address a practical problem that can crop up in P4wC: young people, and even CPI facilitators, sometimes feel frustrated when a CPI dialogue “goes nowhere,” i.e., when it does not lead to a clear answer, which presupposes agreement on a position [38, 53]. Presenting dissensus as a valuable outcome in its own right might lessen this sense of frustration.

4

While extant agonistic scholarship is mostly theoretical and has left practical aspects like age unspecified [15, 16], the examples used by agonists suggest that their programme mainly concerns secondary students.

32

5.2

B. Roucau

Becoming Comfortable with Conflict and Negative Emotions

An agonistic approach to P4wC would encourage young people and CPI facilitators to become more comfortable with conflict and negative emotions. In agonistic thought, political disagreement is inherently passionate: citizens are emotionally invested in their political beliefs and identities, and they vigorously oppose their adversaries’ visions of society [3]. Further, becoming aware of intractable issues or injustices can trigger strong feelings of anger or sadness [9, 24]. An agonistic democratic education seeks to prepare young people for these emotional upheavals [6, 10]. Accordingly, the agonistic CPI would aim to give conflict and negative emotions a central place. P4wC theory is ambivalent toward conflict and negative emotions. There is a strand of thought that recognises the inevitability of conflict in the CPI, or even values it as a potentially transformative force (e.g., [42, 54]). Similarly, negative emotions like anger, confusion or discomfort have been considered inherent aspects of philosophical inquiry (e.g., [42]). However, several scholars point out that the CPI’s communal ethos seems to favour cheerfulness and congeniality, thereby precluding conflict and negative emotions [51, 55, 56]. I agree, for example, with Kennedy’s observation that “we tend to hold implicitly to a homeostatic or ‘order’ model of group process, which understands conflict to be inherently demonic and disintegrative and therefore to be avoided or suppressed at any price” [42, p. 81]. Adopting an agonistic approach to P4wC would require replacing this “demonic” notion of conflict with the more constructive conception outlined by Mouffe [3]. Two agonistic pedagogical methods could be implemented to embrace conflict and negative emotions in the CPI. Following Lo [19], CPI inquirers could be invited to explore a controversial issue by role-playing characters who feel strongly about different sides of the issue. Inquirers would drop their roles once disagreement has become sufficiently heated, then take stock of the positions and emotions that have emerged. Crucially, the group would discuss the conflict dynamics with the help of the facilitator to “practi[se] how to forgive one another” [19, p. 95]. Young people could learn that, in the heat of an argument, it is tempting to impose one’s view and easy to confuse agonism with antagonism. We can think of this as adding an emotional component to the process of self-assessment and selfcorrection that often concludes CPI dialogues, thus fostering what Fletcher calls “a global sense of self-correction that includes mental and bodily habits” [54, p. 18]. Alternatively, CPI dialogues could end with the facilitator establishing “hegemony”—recognising a given view’s dominance without forcing anyone to agree with it [17]. According to Tryggvason [17], establishing hegemony after a heated disagreement can offer young people a sense of closure and pacify potential tensions before they crystallise into resentment. P4wC scholars may worry that recognising some positions as hegemonic might introduce a competitive dimension that is antithetical to the spirit of the CPI. However, in earlier work [57],

2

Learning to Navigate Disagreement in Democratic Education: The Potential …

33

I share the empirical finding that many young people seem to experience regular CPI dialogues partly as competitive interactions anyway. Further, I argue there that competitiveness can have a place in the CPI, notably because I agree with Tryggvason that it is “educationally valuable that young people get to experience both what it means to win and what it means to lose democratic conflicts” [17, p. 5]. Establishing hegemony within an agonistic CPI might help young people learn to coexist as political adversaries rather than as moral enemies.

5.3

Foregrounding Relations of Power

Finally, in the agonistic CPI, young people would explicitly address the relations of power underpinning political issues. A cornerstone of agonistic political thought is the idea that power pervades the social order [3]. An agonistic approach to P4wC would foreground this dimension to ensure that young people do not abstract political issues away from their implication in complex arrangements of power. Further, in the agonistic CPI, young people should become aware of the relations of power that structure the community of inquiry itself. In P4wC, relations of power have primarily been discussed by proponents of “critical pedagogy” [33], who worry that P4wC tends to de-emphasise power, thus potentially undermining its legitimacy as a form of democratic education [58– 61]. For example, according to Chetty [55, 58], issues related to colonialism and racism are often dehistoricised and depolitised in the CPI because of a common preference in P4wC for abstract reasoning and fictional stimuli. Considering P4wC from an agonistic standpoint can bolster the argument that the field needs to better recognise the role played by relations of power in the CPI and even in P4wC itself [58–60, 62]. For example, one possibility I lack the space to discuss here but that I hope P4wC theorists will explore is the potential relevance of the agonistic notion of hegemony [20] to the question of what counts as legitimate and reasonable perspectives in the CPI. The agonistic insistence on relations of power also raises questions about the place of substantive knowledge in P4wC. Zanetti decries the fact that in many CPI dialogues, “priority is given to the process of inquiry rather than to the content of the inquiry” [63, p. 17, emphasis in the original]. While it may be retorted that this omission of content is mainly a problem for teachers who lack philosophical training (e.g., [64]), the focus is still on philosophical knowledge. Yet, as Chetty [58] points out, historical knowledge may be what is lacking in CPI dialogues that investigate complex political issues. An agonistic perspective can strengthen this case: Ruitenberg [9, 23] argues that fostering young people’s political literacy and efficacy is impossible without also developing their knowledge of political history. P4wC scholars may agree yet feel uncertain about how to incorporate history into the CPI. I believe that an agonistic perspective can offer pedagogical guidance as well. Following Ruitenberg [9], I think that directly teaching young

34

B. Roucau

people the historical background of political issues before exploring them in CPI dialogues—perhaps through closer partnerships with teachers—can be appropriate, or even necessary. But young people should also engage with history during CPI dialogues. A promising approach is to invite them to consider fundamental “questions about historiographic interpretation” [23, p. 380] to help young people realise that historical knowledge and methodologies are themselves contested. This approach would capitalise on the CPI’s philosophical strengths and potentially lead to fruitful—and historically informed—inquiries into political issues. The “progressive stack” is a final pedagogical strategy that can raise young people’s awareness of the relations of power operating within the (agonistic) CPI. Designed during the Occupy Wall Street movement, this tool reorders speaking turns to ensure that historically marginalised participants can share their opinions first. Agonistic theorist Backer [65] claims that, with sufficient scaffolding, this tool can be used in classroom discussions to include marginalised young people and to spark conversations about the role of power in society. If used during CPI dialogues on racism, for example, a progressive stack would give children of colour the opportunity to speak first and other children the chance to hear what they have to say, potentially helping to address Chetty’s [58] concern that the former’s perspectives may be perceived as unreasonable by the latter.

6

Conclusion

In this chapter, I explored the potential of an agonistic approach to P4wC for democratic education. After describing agonism and P4wC, I tried to show that their respective approaches to democratic education are broadly aligned. Going a step further, I envisioned what “the agonistic CPI” might look like, and I argued that considering P4wC through an agonistic lens could yield valuable theoretical and pedagogical insights. Of course, agonism is no panacea. Its theory of democracy has been criticised (e.g., [66]) and concerns have been raised about agonistic democratic education. These concerns revolve around the emotional intensity of agonistic pedagogies, their danger for vulnerable young people, and the risk of exacerbating polarisation in a volatile political context [67, 68]. In relation to P4wC, there are tensions between the adversarial nature of agonism and the collaborative ethos of the CPI that cannot be easily resolved [37]. More theoretical and empirical work is needed to examine whether these problems can be overcome. Yet I remain hopeful, mainly because agonism is still a novel framework that continues to evolve [15]. Further, I am convinced that its basic insights cannot be ignored. Whether about COVID vaccines, presidential elections or solutions to climate change, heated disagreement is inherent to pluralistic democracy. In a political moment characterised by rising polarisation, passion and populism, we need an approach to democratic education that recognises these facts of democratic life and prepares young people to navigate them. The alliance of agonism and P4wC explored in this chapter offers a promising avenue to do so.

2

Learning to Navigate Disagreement in Democratic Education: The Potential …

35

The agonistic Community of Philosophical Inquiry builds on the philosophical and political strengths of agonism and Philosophy for/with Children to offer a truly innovative approach to democratic education. Baptiste Roucau

References 1. Lipman M (1988) Philosophy goes to school. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 2. Aitkin SF, Talisse R (2020) Political argument in a polarized age: reason and democratic life. Polity, Cambridge 3. Mouffe C (2013) Agonistics: thinking the world politically. Verso, London 4. Neisser PT (2006) Political polarization as disagreement failure. J Public Deliber 2(1):Article 9 5. McCoy J, Rahman T, Somer M (2018) Polarization and the global crisis of democracy: common patterns, dynamics, and pernicious consequences for democratic polities. Am Behav Sci 62(1):16–42 6. Ruitenberg CW (2010) Conflict, affect and the political: on disagreement as democratic capacity. Factis Pax 4(1):40–55 7. Hess DE, McAvoy P (2015) The political classroom: evidence and ethics in democratic education. Routledge, New York 8. Sant E (2019) Democratic education: a theoretical review (2006–2017). Rev Educ Res 89(5):655–696 9. Ruitenberg CW (2009) Educating political adversaries: Chantal Mouffe and radical democratic citizenship education. Stud Philos Educ 28(3):269–281 10. Tryggvason Á (2017) The political as presence: on agonism in citizenship education. Philos Educ 24(3):252–265 11. Ruitenberg CW (2020) Political education in context: the promise of more radical agonism in 2019. Philos Educ 2019:559–564 12. Mouffe C (2000) The democratic paradox. Verso, London 13. Mouffe C (2005) On the political. Routledge, New York 14. Mouffe C (2019) For a left populism. Verso, London 15. Koutsouris G, Stentiford L, Benham-Clarke S, Hall D (2021) Agonism in education: A systematic scoping review and discussion of its educational potential. In: Educational review advance online publication, pp 1–26 16. Sant E, McDonnell J, Pashby K, Menendez Alvarez-Hevia D (2021) Pedagogies of agonistic democracy and citizenship education. Educ Citizen Soc Justice 16(3):227–244 17. Tryggvason Á (2019) How to end a discussion: consensus or hegemony? Democr Educ 27(2):Article 5 18. Sant E (2021) Political education in times of populism: towards a radical democratic education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham 19. Lo JC (2017) “Bearing with strangers” in democratic education. In: Diem R, Berson M (eds) Mending walls: historical, socio-political, economic, and geographical perspectives. Information Age Publishing, Charlotte, pp 81–100 20. Snir I (2017) Education and articulation: Laclau and Mouffe’s radical democracy in school. Ethics Educ 12(3):351–363 21. Zembylas M (2022) Democratic education in the post-democratic turn: disenchantment with democracy and the pedagogical potential of ugly and negative feelings. In: Education, citizenship and social justice advance online publication, pp 1–14 22. Lo JC (2017b) Empowering young people through conflict and conciliation: attending to the political and agonism in democratic education. Democr Educ 25(1):Article 2

36

B. Roucau

23. Ruitenberg CW (2010) Learning to articulate: from ethical motivation to political demands. Philos Educ 2010:372–380 24. Ruitenberg CW (2018) Learning to be difficult: civic education and intransigent indignation. J Res Debate 1(1):1–4 25. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 26. Oyler J (2016) Philosophy with children: the Lipman-Sharp approach to philosophy for children. In: Peters MA (ed) Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory. Springer Singapore, Singapore, pp 1–7 27. Vansieleghem N, Kennedy D (2011) What is philosophy for children, what is philosophy with children—after Matthew Lipman? J Philos Educ 45(2):171–182 28. Fletcher NM (2018) Envisioning valuable lives: moral imagining, autonomy and philosophy in childhood. Dissertation, Concordia University 29. Gregory M (2007) A framework for facilitating classroom dialogue. Teach Philos 30(1):59–84 30. Cevallos Estarellas P (2005) Democracy, culture and education in Ecuador: philosophical education as a means to promote a culture of democracy. Dissertation, Montclair State University 31. Cassidy C, Christie D (2014) Community of philosophical inquiry: citizenship in Scottish classrooms. ‘You need to think like you’ve never thinked before.’ Childhood Philos 10(19):33– 54 32. Ndofirepi AP, Shumba A (2012) Reasonable children, reasonable citizens: the contributions of philosophy for children to post-apartheid South Africa. J Soc Sci 30(3):251–261 33. Michaud O (2020) What kind of citizen is philosophy for children educating? What kind of citizen should it be educating? Philos Inquiry Educ 27(1):31–45 34. Davis JJ (2019) The possibility of philosophy in schools: Jacques Rancière and community of philosophical inquiry. Dissertation, Columbia University 35. Ghazinejad P, Ruitenberg CW (2014) Is respecting children’s rationality in their best interest in an authoritarian context? Ethics Educ 9(3):317–328 36. Nishiyama K (2019) Rethinking consensus in the community of philosophical inquiry: a research agenda. Childhood Philos 15:83–97 37. Helkala S, Järvinen M, Tomperi T (in press) Bridging the theories of democratic education through the practice of pedagogical philosophy. Democracy Educ 38. Roucau B (2022a) Navigating disagreement in democratic education: the potential of the community of philosophical inquiry. Dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington 39. Davey S (2004) Consensus, caring and community: an inquiry into dialogue. Analytic Teach Philos Praxis 25(1):18–51 40. Gregory M (2004) Practicing democracy: social intelligence and philosophical practice. Int J Appl Philos 18:163–176 41. Butnor A (2012) Critical communities: intellectual safety and the power of disagreement. Educ Perspec 44(1–2):29–31 42. Kennedy D (1997) The five communities. Inquiry: Critical Think Across Discip 16(4):66–86 43. Worley P (2017) Dissonance: disagreement and critical thinking in P4/wC. In: Duthie E, García Moriyón F, Loro RR (eds) Family resemblances: current trends in philosophy for children. Anaya, Madrid, pp 178–187 44. Bleazby J (2013) Social reconstruction learning: dualism, Dewey and philosophy in schools. Routledge, New York 45. Splitter LJ, Sharp AM (1995) Teaching for better thinking: the classroom community of inquiry. Australian Council for Educational Research, Melbourne 46. Kennedy D (2010) Philosophical dialogue with children: essays on theory and practice. Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston 47. Sharp AM (2007) Let’s go visiting: learning judgment-making in a classroom community of inquiry. Gift Educ Int 23(3):301–312 48. Gregory M (2021) Philosophy for children and children’s philosophical thinking. In: Laverty M, Hansen D (eds) A history of Western philosophy of education in the contemporary landscape. Bloomsbury Publishing, London, pp 153–178

2

Learning to Navigate Disagreement in Democratic Education: The Potential …

37

49. Kizel A (2016) From laboratory to praxis: communities of philosophical inquiry as a model of (and for) social activism. Childhood Philos 12(25):497–517 50. Sharp AM (2007) Education of the emotions in the classroom community of inquiry. Gift Educ Int 22(2–3):248–257 51. Sprod T (2001) Philosophical discussion in moral education: the community of ethical inquiry. Taylor & Francis, London 52. Gregory M (2011) Philosophy for children and its critics: a Mendham dialogue. J Philos Educ 45(2):199–219 53. Jensen SS (2020) The art of facilitating philosophical dialogues from the perspective of teachers. In: Educational studies advance online publication, pp 1–15 54. Fletcher NM (2014) Body talk, body taunt—corporeal dialogue within a community of philosophical inquiry. Analytic Teach Philos Praxis 35(1):10–25 55. Chetty D (2014) The elephant in the room: picturebooks, philosophy for children and racism. Childhood Philos 10(19):11–31 56. Chetty D, Suissa J (2017) ‘No go areas’: racism and discomfort in the community of inquiry. In: Gregory M, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York, pp 43–50 57. Roucau B (2022b) The community of philosophical inquiry as a place of agon: exploring children’s experiences of competitiveness in philosophical dialogue. J Philos Schools 9(2):84–113 58. Chetty D (2018) Racism as ‘reasonableness’: philosophy for children and the gated community of inquiry. Ethics Educ 13(1):39–54 59. Kennedy D, Kohan WO (2021) Some ethical implications of practicing philosophy with children and adults. Childhood Philos 17:01–16 60. Kohan WO (2018) Paulo Freire and philosophy for children: a critical dialogue. Stud Philos Educ 37(6):615–629 61. Yorshansky M (2014) Students’ meaning of power: a challenge to philosophy for children as a practice of democratic education. Thinking: J Philos Children 20(3–4):12–19 62. Reed-Sandoval A (2019) Can philosophy for children contribute to decolonization? Precollege Philos Public Pract 1:27–41 63. Zanetti L (2020) Why am I here? The challenges of exploring children’s existential questions in the community of inquiry. Childhood Philos 16:01–26 64. Gardner ST (2015) Commentary on ‘Inquiry is no mere conversation.’ J Philos Schools 2(1):71–91 65. Backer D (2017) The critique of deliberative discussion. Democr Educ 24(1):Article 5 66. Dryzek J, Niemeyer S (2010) Pluralism and meta-consensus. In: Dryzek J (ed) Foundations and frontiers of deliberative governance. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 85–116 67. Leiviskä A, Pyy I (2021) The unproductiveness of political conflict in education: a Nussbaumian alternative to agonistic citizenship education. J Philos Educ 55(4–5):577–588 68. Yacek D (2019) Should anger be encouraged in the classroom? Political education, closedmindedness, and civic epiphany. Educ Theory 69(4):421–437

38

B. Roucau Baptiste Roucau recently completed a Ph.D. in education at Victoria University of Wellington and he is currently undertaking a postdoctoral fellowship at Université de Montréal. His postdoctoral project explores how teachers navigate unacceptable student speech when discussing politically sensitive issues in the classroom. His research interests include Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC), dialogic pedagogies and democratic education. He is the program coordinator for Canadian educational charity Brila (http://brila.org/), where he develops and facilitates P4wC programs following Brila’s Philocreation® approach with young people from preschool to university.

3

Why Vote? A Reflection on the Democratic Nature of Dialogical Inquiries Joana Rita Sousa and Pieter Mostert

A society is a number of people held together because they are working along common lines, in a common spirit, and with reference to common aims. The common needs and aims demand a growing interchange of thought and growing unity of sympathetic feeling. The radical reason that the present school cannot organize itself as a natural social unit is because just this element of common and productive activity is absent. [1, pp. 27–28]

Abstract

In the inquiries, as practiced in the P4wC community, voting is a common feature: after the stimulus (usually a story or a picture), the students get the opportunity to bring forward the philosophical questions they would like to explore. One of these questions is selected by a vote. Arguments for voting as a procedure are practical (it is a quick way to come to a decision) and political (choosing the question shows that the students are in charge; they are the owners of the inquiry). The current practices of voting generate a number of

J. R. Sousa (B) filocriatividade, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] URL: https://filosofiaparacriancas.pt/en/ Catholic University of Portugal, Lisbon, Portugal P. Mostert The Philosophy Foundation, Dorchester, England e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_3

39

40

J. R. Sousa and P. Mostert

important questions, both from the perspective of democracy and of reasonableness. Among others, we will argue that the practice that voting equals “the majority decides” does not take the rights of the minority into consideration. We will recommend a more comprehensive look at the use of voting from the perspective of ownership by the students. Graphic Abstract

Why vote?

Keywords

Community of inquiry . Consensus . Dialogue . Dissent . Fairness . Ownership . Polling

1

Introduction

Our chapter is about voting (and polling) as a procedure for a community of inquiry to choose the question of the dialogue. The idea originated in an online group, which has been meeting weekly since June 2020. This is an informal group known as #P4CThursday and it brings together colleagues from all over the world.1

1

In July 2021, when we had a dialogue about voting, colleagues from 16 different countries participated.

3 Why Vote? A Reflection on the Democratic Nature of Dialogical Inquiries

41

Initiator and organiser of the group is Topsy Page,2 who wanted to create an opportunity for having philosophical inquiries online, while we were in lockdown. In those days, due to the Covid-19 restrictions, the schools were closed, and social life had come to a standstill. It looked like there would be no room to practise what had become so dear to us: having a philosophical dialogue. The online conversations of the #P4CThursday group were for us—in John Dewey’s words—“this element of common and productive activity”. During our preparations of one of the #P4CThursday dialogues we decided to bring the topic of voting to the group. When we searched for articles in the databases of the Philosophy Documentation Centre and PhilPapers, we could not find a single article that addressed voting in the context of P4wC. This made us think.

1.1

Collaborative Thoughts on the Practice of Voting

Question 1: What do we think about voting? At the #P4CThursday meeting, which was the origin for writing this chapter, several questions were raised: Is voting obvious, because it is one of the common features of any P4wC session? If so, is it part of the ‘method,’ or rather a part of the ‘routines’ we follow in P4wC sessions, like that the students sit in a circle or that the inquiry starts with a stimulus, chosen by the facilitator? Or is there a lack of awareness of alternatives? Or, more fundamentally, have we forgotten to question voting and its place in inquiries? Given the absence of the topic of voting in published articles we looked at handbook materials, used for introductory training in how to facilitate philosophical inquiries among students. We present two examples. The first one is from Dialogue Works,3 specifically their analysis of a P4wC session in 10 steps. Step 6 is: “One question is agreed upon for the focus of the enquiry/dialogue to follow. The question is either chosen by the community (usually by voting) or negotiated by the facilitator”. Dialogue Works underlines the importance of the question choosing, because here “the children take control of the direction of the inquiry.”4 The second example is from the level 1 handbook developed by SAPERE.5 It explains the common rule “one person / one vote (OPOV)” and adds a few relevant considerations:

2

Since the beginning of the group, Topsy Page has gathered the topics and thoughts in two padlets that can be accessed online: https://padlet.com/topsy/mqqos9qeattr7lzp and https://padlet.com/ topsy/fm7gr83vwz0skrxr 3 Dialogue Works is an organisation focused on philosophical learning and teaching. https://dialog ueworks.co.uk/. Accessed 16 February 2022. 4 Cf. Dialogue Works https://dialogueworks.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/P4C-4-phasemodel.pdf. Accessed 16 February 2022. 5 SAPERE is a charity based in the United Kingdom, focused on providing training for schools in implementing P4wC: https://www.sapere.org.uk/home.aspx. Accessed 16 February 2022.

42

J. R. Sousa and P. Mostert … Omnivote (voting for as many questions as you like) and Multivote (normally between 2 and 6 votes, sometimes distributed ‘how you like’ using ticks or tokens, or sometimes ‘ranked’, e.g., 3/2/1 or just 2/1). Voting with your Feet (standing by your favourite question) is a good variation on OPOV, and sometimes leads naturally into TV (Transferable Voting) whereby anyone voting for a ‘minority’ question is invited to transfer their vote to another question, and so on until one question emerges with a clear majority. ‘Immature’ communities may vote ‘blind’; ‘mature’ communities may choose a question by open consensus. Do be aware, though, that voting needs to be tempered with judgement. Simple majority voting can lead to a ‘tyranny of the majority’ where minority positions and issues are not heard. Ensure then that the democracy gives fair chances for a diverse and inclusive range of interests.6 [2, p. 15]

Question 2: How do P4wC facilitators use voting in their inquiries? Since the #P4CThursday is an international group it gives us a wide perspective regarding P4wC approaches. We asked our colleagues to participate in a short survey with questions7 about the use of voting in their inquiries and their main reasons and objectives. . Which rules do you use to vote? . Please describe as many as you can. What’s the reason for choosing those rules and not others? . Are there other rules for voting besides “the majority decides”? If so, what are the rules? The survey showed that voting is a common practice and that it is a “majority decides” moment. Voting is mainly done as a practical procedure to solve two specific problems: during the inquiry there is room for only one question, and we do not want to lose time by having lengthy discussions about which question to choose. This practice is in line with the two handbooks we quoted from above. Voting is rarely used at other moments of the inquiry. At the #P4CThursday meetings we converse via Zoom, a popular video conference platform. One of its features is that it offers the option of having a poll. Although the option of having a poll has always been around (a facilitator could ask “hand up from those who agree/disagree with the statement that …”), it is our experience that polling has become much more common in the era of online conversations. It encourages the participants to be active and take position, and it helps the facilitator in considering what the next step in the inquiry will be.

6

SAPERE [2, p. 15]. Readers can access the survey and still contribute via this link: https://forms.gle/9HTBPPLLggUJ LMTSA 7

3 Why Vote? A Reflection on the Democratic Nature of Dialogical Inquiries

43

Question 3: Is polling different from voting? In the survey we asked: Is polling different from voting? Can you explain why? Most of the answers are around the idea that polling makes visible to what extent certain opinions, positions and preferences are present among the participants of the inquiry. A poll leads to a general impression of the current views in a group. Current, not definite. Views, not decisions. A poll does not ask for commitment, a vote does. This reflects the origin of the word, from the Latin ‘votum’, in current English: vow, a solemn promise to which one commits oneself: . Polling seems to be treated as a way to find out what many people think about a question. . Voting seems to be treated as a way of deciding the answer to a question. . Polling is a head count to take a snapshot of current views. Voting has connotations of permanency. We also found that the use of polls makes the facilitators more aware of some of the shadow sides of voting. We mention two of them. One is that voting (about the question) may create a feeling of competition between the participants, just like when politicians run for elections: some win, some lose. At the same time however, the idea of a community of inquiry is that it functions on the principle of collaboration. Polling can help to reduce the tension between competition and collaboration. It makes visible how preferences are distributed within the group, which can be followed by a short dialogue about reasons and views behind these preferences. After this exchange the voting takes place. The other shadow that hangs over voting is that, although it is a vote about a question, it cannot be denied that it is also a vote for a person (who has proposed this question). In some practices it is common that the facilitator writes the name of the students behind their question. This could be done with the intention to know whom to ask for a clarification, if needed. But the downside is that it creates a strong connection between the person and the question. From the perspective of the individual participant, it looks like this: shall I vote for my friend’s question or not? Have a look at the following case: As a guest teacher, I have a class for ten weekly sessions. After one of the classroom conversations, two boys come to see me and ask, “Can we talk about football next week?”. My class is right after lunch, and from the excitement on their faces I can see that quite a few of them, but not all, join in playing football. I understand that they want me to organise a vote, which, I imagine, they are sure to win. I present a different proposal: I ask you to come up with three questions about football which are interesting for everybody in the class, whether they like football or not. If all think these questions are interesting, then a week later we’ll discuss them. A week later, the questions were excellent, and nobody objected. We had a thorough and engaging inquiry about how to determine what a fair salary is: for teachers, doctors, film stars, and football players.

44

J. R. Sousa and P. Mostert

Question 4: Voting is advocated because it is practical and saves time. Is that true? In the inquiry of the #P4CThursday group, we explored two types of complexities. One is that there are quite a few different ways of structuring the vote. It looks simple: ‘here are five questions, let’s see which question gets most votes.’ But do the participants vote: . . . .

anonymous (also called “blind”) or in person (by raising hands)? with only one vote each or with multiple votes? question-centred (who votes for Q1) or person (vote)-centred (I vote for Q …)? until one question gets a majority (= more than 50%) of the votes, or is that not necessary?

From the survey we also learned that voting is more than just the act of casting the votes. As a facilitator one should also consider the following: . Will there be time to discuss the different questions that have been proposed? Are they clear to everybody? Are they open to being rephrased? Do they have to meet certain criteria (for example being non-empirical)?8 . Is there room for objections, room for someone to say, “I do not want to discuss question …, because …”? Most facilitators know of examples of students who for personal reasons would be very uncomfortable with having to discuss a particular question. . Is there a dialogue with the minority, i.e., those who voted for questions that in the end have not been chosen, about how they feel about the chosen question and their motivation (or reluctance) to discuss this question? . Is there a strategy for what to do, when—say after ten minutes—it becomes clear that the chosen question does not ‘work’, i.e., it does not generate an interesting, philosophically oriented inquiry? These questions can be answered in different ways, but together they build a kind of policy about the aims, means, steps and conditions of voting. We recommend that such a policy is made explicit and regularly reviewed, preferably with involvement of the students, as it is part of a community of inquiry to reflect on its own practice and make adjustments where needed. Question 5: Why is the choice of the question regarded as the key-decision? So far, the thinking about voting has focused on the choice of the question of the inquiry. Generally, philosophers consider asking questions as “a fundamental part of philosophy because questioning is a crucial part of thinking and of inquiry” [3, p. 3]. Questioning can guide the inquiry towards the most reasonable answer

8

Philip Cam’s “question quadrant” is a popular tool for structuring such a discussion.

3 Why Vote? A Reflection on the Democratic Nature of Dialogical Inquiries

45

[4]. But the activity of questioning is distinct from the decision to focus on one question per dialogue. Our survey and a dialogue about its outcomes led to the following list of challenging questions: . . . . .

What is the difference between voting for a question and for a topic? Is voting for a question a part of the dialogue? Can we have a philosophical dialogue without questions? Do we really need a question to get our philosophical inquiry started? Can we only proceed with the inquiry when we have one question? Or could we work with multiple questions?9 . Is the necessity of voting created by the previous steps in the inquiry: identify a broad topic or big idea—choose a stimulus which is open to multiple interpretations—collect questions for the inquiry? In our #P4CThursday conversations, we do not have a practice of voting. Each week, one of us volunteers to host the session, choose a topic and provide a short introduction. More we do not need, as experience has taught us, because questions arise, develop, and move on during our inquiry. We are aware that specific conditions are favourable for such a practice to flourish: in this case we are a group with a shared interest and we can be considered as a group of P4wC “experts”. Such a group has a philosophical sensitivity10 and this is reflected in the quality of the questions. When one of us presents a question, it is quickly endorsed by others as a relevant one. Listening skills are well developed and the main reason for participating in this group is a genuine curiosity in different and new perspectives for approaching a certain topic. In comparison with the Thursday group, the average situation in a classroom will be quite different. When, for example, the facilitator tells or reads a story, different minds may hear the story differently, which leads them to proposing different questions. A vote about which question to choose seems inevitable, whether it is a closed or opened question.11 What is needed is a question to start with. From there, the conversation will find its own way. Some students may point out that the question is closely related to one or two others. Another student may introduce an example, in order to illustrate a particular point or argument, but the example

9

See for example the model of The World Café. The participants are divided into a number of small groups. A common topic has been agreed upon, maybe even a question to start with, but each group follows its own thinking path. After some time, a carrousel starts, when some participants of each group move to a different group. Previous thinking (of the group) and new thinking (by the newcomer) fuse. This movement is repeated a few times during the session [19, p. 80]. 10 “Philosophical sensitivity involves the development of our ability to identify and ponder fundamental questions about the human condition and to be unwilling to stop at whatever answers we find.” [25, p. 23]. 11 Peter Worley proposed in 2015 an approach on questions, introducing the conceptual and grammatical open and closed questions table.

46

J. R. Sousa and P. Mostert

triggers new questions. An experienced facilitator will not rule out such moves. A question is not like a fenced playground, within which one must stay. There is another consideration from the perspective of the individual student: questions hardly ever exclude each other. If my question has not been chosen, during the inquiry around the chosen question there will be ample opportunity for me to contribute thoughts which connect with my own question. It is more likely that questions are somehow related than that they are clearly distinct. In a certain sense one can say that the question determines the direction of the inquiry, and that therefore it is important that the students vote about the question, so that the inquiry goes into a direction which meets their interests. But at the same time, inquiries, like all conversations, meander and develop. Rarely, they show a linear pattern. That’s why it is so valuable to look back at the end of inquiry and try to reconstruct ‘how we ended up here, given where we started’. We recommend that this looking back movement is done by students themselves.

1.2

Practical Suggestions and Tips

Taking in consideration our collaborative reflection, we gathered some recommendations about voting in a P4wC context (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Recommendations about voting

3 Why Vote? A Reflection on the Democratic Nature of Dialogical Inquiries

2

47

Deliberation on Four Key-Issues

In the second part of our chapter, we used the outcomes of the considerations in the first part for a closer and more systematic look into the following key-issues: . what is meant by ‘ownership’ and does voting actually contribute to ownership? . when are inquiries ‘democratic’ and what is the contribution of voting? . how does the affirmation “I agree” function within the development of an inquiry? . what is the power of ‘dissent’ within the development of an inquiry?

2.1

Voting and Ownership

The pupils who were interviewed generally showed their appreciation of the P4C sessions. The activity gives control to pupils in developing questions and voting for the questions. Pupils enjoyed the feeling of being in charge of the process. [5, p. 27]

A philosophical inquiry is about the students’ interpretations of the stimulus or provocation, their questions, and their responses. Above, under question 5, we have distinguished between the choice of the question to begin with and later developments in the inquiry, when questions evolve and are connected with other questions. The main function of the chosen question is to guide the students in the first phase of the inquiry. In McCall’s “COPI” method the chair (the person who facilitates the dialogue) starts the inquiry by asking the first question and makes sure that it is a clearly philosophical one. The students discuss this question and continue with their own questions [6, p. 14]. Similarly, in his book “The Philosophy Shop,” Worley presents the start question that “is designed to take the participant(s) straight to the problem by asking the question that has proved, in the classroom, to best illuminate the problem in the context of the stimulus” [7, p. 5]. The question sets a task for the group [8, p. 13]. Commonly, facilitators choose such an approach, when they have a single opportunity for a dialogue in a group, instead of a weekly pattern. For the students it is not self-evident that ownership means that the selection of the question is their responsibility. One of our groups had a clear stance: “Mr. Pieter, you decide, because then we know for sure that it is a real philosophical question, and not something we can discuss among ourselves”. For these students, ownership is not shown in a decision (selecting the question), but in a process, in the inquiry as a whole: It is not essential in order for them to have ownership that they choose the question or the topic of consideration, but it is essential that the way any ensuing discussion follows a question be, to as great an extent as possible, a result of the group’s own ‘direction-making.’ [9, p. 66]

48

J. R. Sousa and P. Mostert

Voting about the questions at the beginning is not enough to claim that the students have ownership of the inquiry. There are many decisions to be taken when the inquiry proceeds: a new example, a related question, an exercise, a thought experiment, a personal experience. If the facilitator takes these decisions, instead of creating an opportunity for the students to determine the flow and development of the inquiry, it is no longer clear what the ownership by the students amounts to. It seems rather limited. We also noticed how the word ‘majority’ is applied in situations where in absolute numbers the chosen question received the most votes but fell far short of being the majority. A ‘dominant minority’ would be a more appropriate expression, for example in this case: . a class with 25 students . 6 questions are proposed . the distribution of the votes is: 8—6—5—2—2—2. The first question receives the most votes but is actually chosen by less than one third of the students, which raises the question “How does a routine of voting for a question give due consideration to minority concerns?” [10, p. 12]. In such cases, we recommend that the facilitator finds out whether the students who did not vote for the first question nevertheless have an interest in discussing this question. If they express concerns, these should be taken seriously by all participants: “The Community of philosophical inquiry is a space where the clear intention of the teacher is to ensure those participants have the opportunity to speak and where the plurality of the group is taken seriously” [11, p. 8]. For us, it depends on how the inquiry unfolds. If different perspectives and different questions, reflecting different interests, are welcomed, the inquiry may well “give due consideration to minority concerns” and “take the plurality of the group seriously”. From the perspective that ownership relates to the inquiry as a whole, the main concern about the choice of the question is that it is the outcome of a fair process. “Fair” is generally understood by the students as meaning “everybody has an equal chance.” Voting is one way of achieving this, but there are alternatives. Here are some of the options collected among our colleagues at the #P4CThursday: (1) a lottery: the proposed questions are put in a box, and one is drawn; (2) the student whose birthday is closest to the session’s date may decide about the question of the inquiry; (3) a roster, based on the attendance list, of groups of three students who decide on the topic and the question. Deciding what the question of the inquiry will be does not stand on its own. Depending on the question, students will have ideas about what kind of inquiry to expect. If it is a controversial topic, how can we avoid an antagonising atmosphere and protect the community of inquiry? If it is a sensitive topic, how do we speak about it with respect and in appropriate language? Ideally, we recommend that students have a pre-inquiry about the upcoming inquiry of a specific question. A practical and pleasant tool for such a pre-inquiry is the set of “Thinking moves,” developed by Roger Sutcliffe and colleagues from Dialogue Works [12].

3 Why Vote? A Reflection on the Democratic Nature of Dialogical Inquiries

49

For example, the thinking move “Ahead” is about the question “What are you aiming for?”, and it can be done in combination with the move “Back”, which invites to reflect on the previous inquiry and “recall what you have learnt” [12, p. 59].

2.2

Voting and Democracy

Voting does not make an inquiry democratic per se. More is needed, as our explorations of ownership have shown. Voting, however, is relevant, as it is a way of showing to all that we have different interests and that we want them to be taken in consideration. In an interview, Matthew Lipman addressed this topic as follows: Gregory: What’s the significance of students setting the agenda of inquiry with their own questions? Lipman: It lets everybody see what the distribution of interests is in that community. It sort of maps out where people are, what they are hoping to discover. And that’s very useful. Gregory: Is it useful in a democratic way, or is it useful for inquiry? Lipman: I think it’s both. And I deliberately said ‘distribution of interests’, because for Dewey, interest is the lubricant of the community of inquiry. Inquiry and learning move or float on interest. [13, p. 61]

For Lipman, as we see, it is about making the ‘distribution of interests’ visible to all participants. This view leaves it open to the community to determine a fair and practical way of moving on from this distribution of questions to a selection of a single one. Voting is one of the options for making this move. It is worth pausing for a moment and reflect on what we mean when we say that the students set the agenda “with their own questions.” Should each participant tell what his or her ‘own’ question is? Or is collecting questions rather a collaborative exercise, which goes beyond speaking from strictly individual preferences? The facilitator could encourage the students to think of any question that might be interesting to be jointly explored. Individual preferences could be balanced with thinking from the perspective of the participants as a group which has things in common, like any community. From the perspective of developing a democratic environment we consider the dialogue before the vote more important than the actual outcome of the vote. We recommend that facilitators avoid being in a hurry to get to the question, so that dialogue can begin. The dialogue, we want to point out, begins at the moment that we meet students in the classroom for a philosophical enquiry. It might even begin in the hallway when we greet students, and they ask us something or are involved in an interesting exchange among each other. Consider the following example: . I was invited to a school for a P4wC workshop. As I entered the classroom, I said, ‘good morning’ and asked the group: “So, do you know what we are going to do for the next hour?” They answered in chorus: “No!”. So, they were asked:

50

J. R. Sousa and P. Mostert

“And is that a problem? Not knowing what is going to happen?”. This was the starting point of a dialogue about the relevance of knowing what is going to happen, which lead into an inquiry about the different ways of knowing things. Regarding the democratic nature and purposes of P4wC inquiries, a wide range of research is available and still in progress. It falls outside the scope of this chapter to engage with this literature extensively.12 As a starting point we recommend Matthew Lipman’s answer to a question about fostering democratic habits: Gregory: What kind of evidence do we have, that democratic habits fostered in a philosophical community of inquiry among children and teachers transfer to more democratic classrooms and schools? Lipman: That’s controversial. There are two ways in which philosophy affects democracy. One is the substantive way, in which philosophy encourages the Jeffersons and the Madisons and other people to identify ideals and to push for others to accept them. Then there is a procedural way, in which the way that philosophy deals with substantive ideals is normative and sets a model for deliberation. [13, pp. 60–61]

2.3

The Meaning and Function of “I Agree”

In some P4wC practices, the students are encouraged to frame their contributions in the format of “I (dis)agree with X, when (s)he said that Y, because I think Z”. Generally, the phrase “I agree” is used as an affirmation of being of the same view or being convinced of the same argument. In our experience, we hear facilitators use the word “agree” in a more ambiguous sense. An example. At some point the facilitator tells the group: “First we were discussing X and then we agreed to discuss Y.” One of the participants raises his hand and poses the question: “Did we agree?”. The facilitator had said something like “shall we move on to…” and the group had accepted this move. It made sense to them. Here “I agree” means “I support your proposal; let us do so”. A similar situation is when in voting for the question, participants have to choose between voting for their own questions, the one they agree with individually, or support one of the other questions, because they have high expectations of an inquiry of that particular question. “I agree”, here means “I support”. When we wondered whether this is a common use of “I agree,” we reminded ourselves of Plato’s dialogue Phaedo. In this dialogue, Socrates moves from question to question, while his conversation partners Simmias and Cebes repeatedly affirm what Socrates implies in his questions. Here is a short section of the inquiry, about whether knowledge is a matter of recollection.

12

See for example part 1 of The Routledge International Handbook of Philosophy for Children, 2017.

3 Why Vote? A Reflection on the Democratic Nature of Dialogical Inquiries

51

Socrates: Do not equal stones and pieces of wood, though they remain the same, sometimes appear to us equal in one respect and unequal in another? Simmias: Certainly. Socrates: Well, then, did absolute equals ever appear to you unequal or equality inequality? Simmias: No, Socrates, never. Socrates: Then, those equals are not the same as equality in the abstract. Simmias: Not at all. Socrates: But from those equals, which are not the same as abstract equality, you have nevertheless conceived and acquired knowledge of it? Simmias: Very true. Socrates: And it is either like or unlike them? Simmias: Certainly. Etc. [14, 74C]

The dialogue follows this pattern for quite a few pages. As a reader one wonders whether Simmias really agrees. In the P4wC community, the general opinion is that one should not conduct dialogues in this way. Should not Simmias say what he really thinks? Why does not he speak up? One possibility is that Simmias understands Socrates’ question “do you agree?” as “shall I continue unfolding my thoughts along this path?”. Simmias’ way of answering Socrates’ questions definitely encourages Socrates to continue and to explore the interesting path they are on further and further. Later in the dialogue the following happens: When Socrates had said this there was silence for a long time, and Socrates was apparently absorbed in what had been said, as were also most of us. But Simmias and Cebes conversed a little with each other … And Simmias said: “Socrates, I will tell you the truth. For some time, each of us has been in doubt …” [14, 84C]

Here it becomes clear that Simmias’ previous affirmations are meant as encouragement, not as “I agree with the content/truth of your statement.” This attitude of accepting what the other person is thinking allows one participant to really unfold his thinking. After a certain time in silence, the listeners start speaking and expressing their doubts. In the Phaedo, Socrates leads the dialogue, but Simmias shows his co-ownership of the dialogue by encouraging Socrates to explore his questions and unfold his views, before sharing his doubts and views. The person who speaks may practise a similar use of “I agree”, when bringing forward a view or argument which is worth exploring. It adds to the value, richness, and depth of the inquiry. Whether it is exactly what this person believes is not the point. It is about contributing to the inquiry by ‘putting it on the table.’ Other participants may respond and say: “good point, thank you for bringing it up”, without implying that they agree. Generally speaking, agreeing with the content

52

J. R. Sousa and P. Mostert

is different from agreeing with the value that it is brought up and now subject to further inquiry. It reminds us of St Benedict’s recommendation to the abbots to encourage all who are present at a counsel not to focus on their own opinion, but to share all the views, arguments and knowledge that should be taken into consideration, by all [15, Chap. 3].

2.4

The Power of Dissent

Let us move our thinking from agreeing to dissenting. It is common practice that when at a certain moment the facilitator asks, “who agrees?” and “who does not agree?”, this is not meant as a vote, rather as a poll, so that all can see how the different views are distributed within the group. And then? Should one start with those who agree, like in a debate, and then hear those who disagree? We recommend starting with the minority and give them an opportunity to voice their dissent with the majority. Why? A PhiE facilitator does not try to bring a group to consensus as a point of principle (…) or to draw all members of the community towards an agreed group-answer (…), but actively seeks out the dissenting views, allowing the awkward questions to be asked, welcoming controversy, and including the “annoying kid at the back of the class.” [9, p. 34]

In every dialogue we need at least one Simmias, a person who listens, encourages others to unfold their views and show their argument, but then speaks about his own doubt. Plato uses the Greek word ‘aporos’ (to us better known as a noun, aporia). It literally means ‘I see no pore, no opening, no path, so I cannot follow you’. And then the person who dissents shows the path that (s)he does see, to get closer to the core of the issue. A P4wC inquiry aims at creating a safe space where different viewpoints are welcomed, even if they are not popular among the students. One of the traits of the philosophical attitude is “the courage to question and perhaps even abandon the familiar in order to understand something new—to become comfortable with being uncomfortable and learn to dwell in the unfamiliar” [16, p. 80]. This includes exploring what Chetty calls “no go areas” [10]. Dissent (in the sense of not agreeing with what the majority thinks) empowers a dialogue, but it does more, it plays an essential role in democracy and should therefore be encouraged and protected: Dissent is essential in a democracy. If a country has to grow in a holistic manner where not only the economic rights but also the civil rights of the citizen are to be protected, dissent and disagreement have to be permitted, and in fact, should be encouraged. It is only if there is discussion, disagreement and dialogue that we can arrive at better ways to run the country. [17]

3 Why Vote? A Reflection on the Democratic Nature of Dialogical Inquiries

53

Surely, dialogues will become a happy place when we all agree and easily arrive at a shared conclusion, but happiness is not the desired outcome of a dialogue. More important it is to focus on creating a safe space for different ways of approaching the central issue. In order to achieve this in a dialogue, a facilitator may consider supporting a hesitant voice of dissent and protecting this voice from an instant rebuttal by the majority, because the facilitator’s concern “is not only for participation but also the quality of participation: to recognize possibilities for the range of voices both within and beyond the community” [11, p. 4]. The facilitator, for example, may ask the student who voiced the dissent “can you tell us more about …?”. Such a simple question may help the dialogue to move into a new territory, new in the sense that it was not part of the thinking when the question of the dialogue was chosen. Building ideas collaboratively becomes a richer and more valuable process, if it draws on contributions from both those who agree and those who dissent. A good dialogue is a place where knowledge and understanding takes place [18, p. 55].

3

Reflection

When we, the authors, look back at our collaborative effort of exploring the different perspectives from which one can look at the practice of voting in dialogues, we ask ourselves: what are the main points that we learned? Where did we change our minds? What comes to mind is the similarity with a common philosophical inquiry: we started with a simple question (“Why vote?”), we moved away from the rather comfortable position of being either in favour or against voting, we explored the different questions and perspectives that are entangled in the topic of voting, and we looked at voting (regarding the question of the inquiry) in connection with other aspects of the inquiry. We noticed that over time one idea became much stronger, more than it had been before, namely the idea that ownership cannot be restricted to the decision about the question of the inquiry; it should also encompass the other aspects and stages of a dialogue. Most revealing to us was the exercise of looking into the double use of “I agree,” both at the level of content and of process. Understanding this use is a condition for any facilitator in the endeavour to protect and support “the power of dissent”. Therefore, the final words are for Simmias, when he said: “Socrates, I will tell you the truth. For some time, each of us has been in doubt …” [14, 84D].

54

J. R. Sousa and P. Mostert

We became followers of Simmias. Once we had really understood his contribution to the dialogue, we recognized this use of “agree” in many dialogues nowadays. Show your co-ownership of the dialogue by encouraging others to explore their questions and their views, before sharing your own doubts and views. (See Sect. 2.3) Joana Rita Sousa and Pieter Mostert

Acknowledgements We would like to thank the members of the #P4CThursday meetings who generously shared their thoughts, contributed to the survey, and reached out to us by e-mail. Without such a community of inquiry we would not have been able to examine ourselves and write this chapter.

References 1. Dewey J (1899) The school and society. University of Chicago Press. https://www.gutenberg. org/ebooks/53910. Accessed 21 Feb 2022 2. SAPERE (2020) Handbook to accompany the level 1 P4C foundation course, 6th ed. SAPERE, Abingdon, England 3. Mendonça D, Carvalho MC (2017) Thinking as a community: reasonableness and emotions. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York, pp 127–134 4. Reznitskaya A, Wilkinson IA (2017) The most reasonable answer. Harvard Education Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 5. Gorard S, Siddiqui N, Huat See B (2015) Philosophy for children: evaluation report and executive summary. Educational Endowment Foundation, Millbank 6. McCall C (2009) Transforming thinking philosophical inquiry in the primary and secondary classroom. Routledge, London and New York 7. Worley P (2012) The philosophy shop: ideas, activities and questions to get people, young and old, thinking philosophically. Independent Thinking Press, Carmarthen, Wales 8. Worley P (2021) Corrupting youth: how to facilitate philosophical enquiry, vol 2. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham 9. Worley P (2021) Corrupting youth: history and principles of philosophical enquiry, vol 1. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham 10. Chetty D, Suissa J (2017) No go areas: racism and discomfort in the community of inquiry. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York, pp 11–18 11. Echeverria E, Hannam P (2017) The community of philosophical enquiry. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York, pp 3–10 12. Sutcliffe R, Bigglestone T, Buckley J (2019) Thinking moves A-Z: metacognition made simple. Dialogue Works, London 13. Gregory M (2000) Inquiry, democracy and childhood: an interview with Matthew Lipman. Inquiry Crit Think Discip 19(2):58–65. https://doi.org/10.5840/inquiryctnews200019215 14. Plato (1914) Phaedo. In: Plato in twelve volumes. Transl. from Greek by HN Fowler. Heinemann, London; reprint 1971 15. Benedict (1948) The rule of Saint Benedict. Transl. from Latin by Doyle LJ. Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota. https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/50040. Accessed 19 Feb 2022

3 Why Vote? A Reflection on the Democratic Nature of Dialogical Inquiries

55

16. Weber B, Wolf A (2017) Questioning the question: a hermeneutical perspective on the “art of questioning” in a community of philosophical inquiry. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York, pp 74–82 17. Gupta D (2020) Right to dissent. https://thewire.in/law/right-to-dissent-constitution-justicedeepak-gupta. Accessed 21 Feb 2022 18. Chetty D, Ferner A (2019) How to disagree. Quarto Publishing, London

Other Sources 19. Brown J, Isaacs D (2005) The world café: shaping our futures through conversations that matter. Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco 20. Cam P (2006) Twenty thinking tools. ACER Press, Camberwell, Australia 21. Chetty D (2018) Racism as ‘reasonableness’: philosophy for children and the gated community of inquiry. Ethics Educ 13:39–45 22. Fulford A, Lockrobin G, Smith R (eds) (2020) Philosophy and community: theories, practices and possibilities. Bloomsbury, London 23. Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) (2017) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York 24. Hooks B (1994) Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. Routledge, London 25. Lone JM (2012) The philosophical child. Rowman & Littlefield, London 26. Lone JM (2018) The cultivation of philosophical sensitivity. https://merlinccc.org/scholarlyarticles/cultivation-of-philosophical-sensitivity/. Accessed 8 April 2022 27. Sousa JRS (2019) Queres saber? Pergunta. https://repositorio.uac.pt/handle/10400.3/5258. Accessed 16 Feb 2022 28. Worley P (2015) Open thinking, closed questioning: two kinds of open and closed question. J Philos Schools 2(2):17–29 29. Worley P (2019) 100 Ideas for primary teachers: questioning. Bloomsbury, London

Joana Rita Sousa graduated in Philosophy, has a M.Sc. in Philosophy for Children, works as a P4wC trainer and teaches at the postgraduate P4C course at the Catholic University in Lisbon, Portugal. She has been developing P4wC workshops since 2008 at filocriatividade. Whenever people ask her what you do for a living? she says, “I collect questions and I dare to answer.”

56

J. R. Sousa and P. Mostert Pieter Mostert introduced P4wC in the Netherlands in 1981. His Ph.D. (1988) was about different conceptions of philosophy and how they shape our teaching styles. He is the co-author of Free Space. Field Guide to Conversations (2009). His passion is to enable conversations, wherever. His motto is a paraphrase of one of Friedrich Nietzsche’s: “There are still so many voices which have not yet been heard”.

4

A Unique Contribution to Democratic Life: Emotions, Meta-ethics, and Meta-cognition in P4wC Dina Mendonça

and Susana Cadilha

The most characteristic feature of inquiry, according to C. S. Peirce, is that it aims to discover its own weaknesses and rectify what is at fault in its own procedures. Inquiry, then, is self-correcting (Note 12 from Lipman quotation: C. S. Peirce, in “Ideals of Conduct” Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931–5), vol. 1, discusses the connection between self-correcting inquiry, self-criticism, and self-control.). [1, p. 218]

Abstract

It has long been argued that Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) is crucial for democratic education. As is repeatedly discussed in the literature, children and teenagers who take part in philosophy sessions become more thoughtful, more reflective, more considerate, and more reasonable adults, and thus more capable of becoming “participants in the process of democracy itself” (Lipman in Teaching philosophy on the eve of the twenty first century. International Federation of Philosophical Societies, Ankara, p. 6 [2]). Although this is clear to practitioners and theorists who observe and provide training for P4wC sessions, it is still hard to convince those who have not experienced the application of the methodology and the impact of such sessions firsthand. The present chapter attempts to overcome this gap by arguing that an important part of this contribution to citizenship is the way in which P4wC promotes the consideration of meta-ethical D. Mendonça · S. Cadilha (B) IFILNOVA, NOVA FCSH - NOVA University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] D. Mendonça e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_4

57

58

D. Mendonça and S. Cadilha

questions in the processes of ethical reflection. Understanding the full impact of meta-ethics in ethical inquiry requires a comprehensive approach that recognizes the central role that emotions and metacognitive moments play in teaching reflexivity in P4wC sessions. In addition, P4wC practitioners will understand in greater detail how and why the methodology of the community of inquiry and the topics explored in the sessions contribute to preparing participants for global citizenship. Graphic Abstract

Emotions, meta-ethics, and meta-cognition in P4wC

Keywords

Philosophy for/with Children Democratic education

1

.

Emotions

.

Meta-ethics

.

Meta-cognition

.

Introduction

Democratic societies aim to foster better habits of thinking in their citizens. P4wC sessions promote this democratic ideal insofar as sessions are concerned with helping participants to adopt and practice the skills needed to improve thinking.

4

A Unique Contribution to Democratic Life: Emotions, Meta-ethics …

59

Nevertheless, the full scope of the impact of P4wC on democracy can only be properly understood when key elements of P4wC, which are “built unapologetically on Deweyan foundations” [3, p. 150], are recognized. This means that appreciating the P4wC program’s ability to contribute to democracy requires acknowledging the power of the relationship between democracy and education [4]. Philosophy for Children (P4C) is a pedagogical practice that aims to improve thinking by offering philosophical sessions. Originally developed in the 1970s, it is now an international movement that has been adapted and developed around the globe [5]. The multi-layered learning experience that happens in a philosophy session occurs by promoting dialogue in a group, where participants are encouraged to speak and listen to each other’s opinions and discuss philosophical issues with the help of a facilitator. There are now many different formats for applying the methodology, some of which more clearly contain the pragmatist methodological traces. Nevertheless, most applications of the program take up the notion of a community of inquiry inspired by the pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce. Thus, the philosophy sessions install “a community of inquiry”, which embodies Peirce’s claim that, “individually [we] cannot reasonably hope to attain the ultimate philosophy which we pursue; we can only seek it […] for the community of philosophers” [6, p. 29]. The phrase “community of philosophers” is used within P4wC to highlight that what happens in a philosophical session is an inquiry that can never be carried out by a single individual and requires the coordination of a community of individuals [4]. Equally important is the way in which most formats incorporate a reflective attitude that promotes self-correction in the community of inquiry as participants learn to revise their own thinking processes. Understanding this aspect is especially important when it comes to recognizing P4wC’s crucial contribution to promoting democracy. When the pedagogical program is understood in light of the influence of Dewey’s philosophical work, it becomes clear that the best way to understand democracy as a form of government is to connect it with an ideal form of living in community because, as Dewey argues, democracy is “primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” [7, p. 93]. This ultimately means that democracy as a form of government aims to continually create a freer and more humane environment for its citizens [8, p. 230] which affects all modes of association (family, school, industry, religion) [9, p. 325]. One can find reference to this connection between democracy and education in almost every piece of writing in which Dewey reflects on the importance of education [4]. The connection is especially important insofar as it guides Dewey’s reflection on education in his central work Democracy and Education [10]. In a short essay entitled “The Need for a Philosophy of Education”, first published in 1934, Dewey points out again and again that, “[t]he educational end and the ultimate test of the value of what is learned is its use and application in carrying on and improving the common life of all” [7, p. 202]. Many of Dewey’s statements remain relevant today

60

D. Mendonça and S. Cadilha

and are indistinguishable from the kinds of things we might read on this theme nowadays.1 Take, for example, the following quotation: In a world that has so largely engaged in a mad, often brutal, race for material gain by means of ruthless competition the school must make ceaseless and intelligently organized effort to develop above all else the will for cooperation and the spirit which sees in every other individual an equal right to share in the cultural and material fruits of collective human invention, industry, skill and knowledge. [7, p. 203]

This could have easily been written today to describe how competitiveness in schools undermines the spirit of cooperation and collaboration. Dewey’s reference to the wave of nationalist sentiment in the following passage would likewise (unfortunately) be at home in current discussions: “The other especially urgent need is connected with the present unprecedented wave of nationalistic sentiment, of racial and national prejudice, of readiness to resort to force of arms” [7, p. 203]. The connection between democracy and education pointed out by Dewey is bi-directional. This means that democratic society becomes a lively and dynamic relationship that fosters further flourishing and growth when its concrete mode of government is connected with its ideal meaning. It is precisely this bi-directional reinforcement that makes P4wC’s contribution unique. The methodology incorporates a reflexive and self-corrective attitude that both instills democratic habits in the community of inquiry, and simultaneously it promotes the refinement and improvement of these habits with ideal scenarios of how to maintain the democratic spirit. Accordingly, Ann Margaret Sharp has stated that “[d]emocracy and education are therefore interdependent, and gaining the tools to learn to think well for oneself is essential to both” [11, p. 194]. That is, on the one hand, P4wC is important for democracy in the sense that it helps to form citizens who are more attentive to others, more interested in dialogue and in debating ideas, and fully aware of the diversity of perspectives. The community of inquiry embodies the self-corrective pragmatic attitude because it recognizes that the existence of different perspectives inevitably grants the community the ability to reflectively revise thinking processes by taking up alternative points of view. Consequently, sessions often implement self-corrective procedures that integrate and accommodate as many insights as possible. It is also true that the very establishment of democracy also has effects on education. Paraphrasing Amélie Rorty, for whom morality is an “educational institution”, one can also argue that democracy is an educational institution in the sense

1

Thanks to Shaun Gallagher for making this claim about Dewey’s writing and proving the claim by showing a quotation of Dewey, first without reference for the audience to recognize the contemporary pertinence of the idea, and then showing the full reference to Dewey’s work. (Shaun Gallagher invited talk “Embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended mindreading” at Thinking with Shaun Gallagher Workshop on Philosophy of Embodiment, Self and Agency (March 2012) within Research Project “The Cognitive Foundations of the Self” (PTDC/FIL-FCI/110978/ 2009—PI Jorge Gonçalves).

4

A Unique Contribution to Democratic Life: Emotions, Meta-ethics …

61

that it demands a continuous and sustained process of re-defining the basis and methods of education, which are specifically “designed to produce certain types of persons, with specific virtues, mentalities, habits, and skills directed to affect the world in a certain way” [12, p. 68]. P4wC ideally embodies the mutual growth relationship between democracy and education [4] because participants in P4wC sessions develop their capacity to reason well and strengthen communication and processes of cooperation [13, p. 171], and the methodology is ideal for adopting a plural theoretical take on ethics [12]. Thus, many other philosophers, including Martha Nussbaum in Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities [14], have argued that philosophy for children is a crucial tool for democratic education. Clearly, recognition of a plurality of ethical perspectives provides a foundation for democracy that helps citizens “to embrace a wide range of disparate and often conflicting views and [to] forge out of them new perspectives and horizons” [15, p. 48]. Nevertheless, questions remain about how this should promote a more solid experience for ethical inquiry. One important part of its contribution to citizenship is how P4wC promotes meta-ethical considerations in the process of ethical reflection and their impact on the overall ethical inquiry. That is, Pw4C integrates the meta-cognitive level and the meta-emotional level, while at the same time cultivating a caring way of thinking relevant for maintaining inquiry. In the following, we hope to show that this is due to the philosophical nature of the pedagogical program, even though the pedagogical impact of the methodology is also given by its dialogic activity and the sustenance of the community of inquiry.

2

The Impact of Meta-ethical Considerations

Meta-ethical considerations inevitably appear in philosophy sessions because “[a]lmost any mental act by any person can be the subject of almost any mental act by another person, or by oneself. This crisscrossing of metacognition is an important aspect of the fabric of classroom dialogue, just as dialogue is essential to ethical inquiry” [16, p. 145]. Thus, it is not surprising that meta-ethical considerations arise when education fosters ethical inquiry. This has been observed in the topics treated within the research project P4C-AIM,2 which shows how philosophy can play a role in promoting excellence in thinking and reasoning and thus contribute for a conscientious citizenship. The project can be more broadly described as treating subjects that range from ethics, to morality, to political philosophy. The intersection of these philosophical areas can also be identified in Lipman and Sharp’s philosophy for children program. When one makes use of the pedagogical materials designed by Lipman and Sharp, the topics and materials have a certain order: the novel Lisa [17] focuses on ethical and moral issues, while the novel Mark [18] generally concerns issues related to social and political philosophy.

2

See https://ifilnova.pt/en/research-projects/pc4-aim/.

62

D. Mendonça and S. Cadilha

Even though the Manual for Teachers and Educators that accompanies the novel Lisa was designed “to encourage children to consider and reflect upon their moral values” [19, p. i], mostly covering issues in what is generally called ethics, it also touches on issues related to social and political themes. Examples include a discussion of ownership rights and issues of privilege and obligations in chapter six (episode 14), as well as a discussion of the concepts of justice and friendship in chapter eleven (episode 25) of Mark. This is not surprising insofar as the fictional realm of the philosophical novels written by Matthew Lipman introduce philosophical issues into the characters’ conversations, which inevitably brings to light philosophical issues from other fields of philosophy. In the novel Lisa, this is very clear when the question concerning the nature of art is raised in chapter seven (episode 17). The amplitude of philosophical focus beyond the specific focus on ethics precisely because of the difficulty of establishing a clear-cut division of labor among these different fields. In addition, readers of the novels will identify that all of the novels of the original program designed by Lipman and Sharp are always concerned with reasoning, a trend that traces back to the early implementation of the P4C project. In Philosophy in the Classroom, Lipman, Sharp and Oscanyan specifically state that the novel Lisa also covers issues related to logic and reasoning when they write that “[t]he reader of Lisa will readily recognize not only that the book is about reasoning and morality. But that it is very much concerned with the interrelationship of logic and morality” [20, p. 178]. The logical focus of the pedagogical methodology is in part given by what Lipman described as “following the argument where it leads” [1, p. 85] and is in part linked to the ongoing self-corrective attitude of the methodology [1, pp. 102, 123, 184, 218, 238, 244]. The self-corrective attitude will often give rise to the meta-cognitive level insofar as the participants in the community of inquiry will revise their thinking processes and, by self-correcting their procedure, incorporate insights from this evaluation [4]. The importance of self-correction for a better understanding of the meaning of this or that concept cannot be ignored, and yet it is not easily captured. One way to illustrate this is by showing how a self-correction process can amplify the meaning of a painting by helping to reveal its technical innovation and historical significance. Take the famous painting The Third of May 1808 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746–1828), which can be seen in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The work is known to be a clear break from previous painting traditions and as a revolutionary piece of work in style, subject and intention [21]. However, it first received mixed reviews and was even considered technically flawed. This initial evaluation was later corrected by identifying how the painting referred to a number of other earlier works of art and how it was tied to the position of martyrdom in Christian art (the figure with their arms raised in the center of the piece has often been compared to a crucified Christ) [22, p. 195]. Although Goya’s works break with previous painting traditions, it also refers to several other paintings from the past, offering an added meaning to heroism and highlighting how the anonymity in heroic action is a mark of the modern world [23, p. 122]. Art critics are able to self-correct their initial impression by engaging in further reflection

4

A Unique Contribution to Democratic Life: Emotions, Meta-ethics …

63

on the nature of painting and its role in the modern world, which enable them to appreciate the greatness of Goya’s work and the crucial importance of its meaning. Similarly, in a P4wC session, the way in which meta-ethical considerations are somehow always implicitly present in classroom dialogue helps participants in P4wC sessions to better understand two related and essential aspects of ethical reflection [24–27]: first, the interpersonal and intersubjective nature of ethics [28], and second, the idea that we should adopt a plural theoretical take on ethics [12]. The first point is largely uncontroversial; ethics is not and cannot ever be an individual achievement. In ethical reflection, others are frequently implicated, and questions such as “How should others be treated?”, “What limits do others’ rights set on individual actions?”, “What are our duties and obligations towards others and the community?” are typical questions in the ethical realm. Consequently, the other is always present in ethical reflection to the extent that ethical inquiry must always incorporate the social sphere. Darwall [28] argues that the second-person point of view is at the heart of ethical reflection and that this is precisely what grounds the authority of ethics. All the concepts, such as the concepts of obligation, dignity, responsibility and respect, are essentially second-personal. This means that all our moral notions constitutively imply the perspective of second-personal interaction, which Darwall characterizes as “the perspective you and I take up when we make and acknowledge claims on one another’s conduct and will” [28, p. 3]. The very structure, principle and basis of moral life lies, in its multiple manifestations, in this second-person interaction, where two or more people mutually recognize themselves as agents and make and acknowledge claims or demands on one another. One of Darwall’s objectives is to argue that the Kantian project of grounding morality in individual practical reason fails because the first-person standpoint cannot be the basis of any genuine moral point of view by itself. As Darwall explains, “[t]he second-person perspective of the moral community is as much one’s own as it is anyone else’s. One demands the conduct of oneself from a point of view one shares as a free and rational person” [28, p. 35]. The moral point of view must be irreducibly intersubjective if it is to be moral at all. This also means that the demands that others make are the demands that one also makes from the first-person perspective and that one shares as a member of a moral community. This intersubjective aspect of morality is clearly visible in the P4C methodology. By promoting ethical dialogue and ethical thinking with others, this methodology emphasizes and highlights the role that the other’s perspective plays in the construction of the overall ethical point of view, and how moral authority is the authority of a common point of view acquired through ethical inquiry with others. In order to count as a truly common point of view, however, it must be constructed as a common enterprise. As Amélie Rorty nicely puts it, “morality is not the enterprise of isolated individuals, who, as it happens, contingently depend on one another for their welfare. It is rather the enterprise of a complexly divided community of complexly divided individuals who nevertheless can, and often should, act independently of one another” [12, p. 69].

64

D. Mendonça and S. Cadilha

By promoting meta-ethical reflection, the P4wC methodology is also ideal for uncovering the complexity to which Rorty is pointing in the quotation. By engaging in P4C sessions, participants become acquainted with this complexity at least in two different ways: they become acquainted with different ways of addressing moral issues, which suggests that a plural theoretical approach to ethics is unavoidable, and they become sensitive to the complexity of the problems at stake. Needless to say, the goal is not to provide a pluralistic theoretical approach to ethics to help participants choose which theory of ethics best suits their specific purposes or the best outcome for this or that ethical dilemma. Rather, the philosophy sessions aim to be thought-provoking and to encourage participants to engage in meta-ethical considerations and debating the details of theoretical positions so as to gain insight into specific issues. Take, for example, the issue of moral luck, first explored by Williams [29] and Nagel [30]. Designing pedagogical material based on Williams’s and Nagel’s discussions invites a type of thinking that is similar to what we find in the original material of these philosophers’ philosophical reflections. Similar thought-provoking sessions could be built upon Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” [31] or Onora O’Neill’s paper “Children’s Rights and Children’s Lives” [32]. Even though each of these authors argues from a specific ethical perspective, the problematic issues they raise engage those who defend different positions, and the meta-ethical reflections are thought-provoking for all. For instance, Singer’s paper “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” [31] defies the dividing line between “conduct that is required and conduct that is good although not required” [31, p. 237]. Although Singer argues from a utilitarian perspective, the issue at stake concerns the dividing line between morally good actions and supererogatory actions. The goal of a session based on Singer’s example of a drowning child is not to acquaint participants with utilitarian arguments but to show how Singer’s work provides grounds for thinking about “the intersection of the axiological and the deontic, the ‘good’ and the ‘ought’” [33, p. 3] and conceptual questions about what is meant by an action beyond the call of duty and whether such actions really do exist [33, p. 7]. The subject is philosophically rich, and when presented in a philosophy session it prompts participants to think, not because they have to adopt this or that ethical theoretical perspective but because of the philosophical complexity prompted by the issues at stake. Of course, the expectation is not that the participants will capture all the argumentative details of these philosophical reflections nor that they will leave the sessions with a clear position. The expectation is that, in thinking together with others about these issues, they will understand the process of thinking and will find that certain aspects of the argumentative process are important because it makes participants more capable of thinking more thoroughly about problematic issues. Moral situations have details that are evident to some people and not to others. Thus, being able to recognize moral complexity and to identify the morally salient aspects of situations is crucial for ethical development. Williams in particular argues that different factors contribute to this developed ability to grasp the

4

A Unique Contribution to Democratic Life: Emotions, Meta-ethics …

65

moral salience of different situations. Rational abilities are one such factor, but Williams also famously argued that it is not the only, or the decisive, one [34]. It is of course true that we can use reason to think about morality, but the point is that if we are not sufficiently imaginative and sensitive, if we do not have certain concerns and cares, or are not sufficiently well trained, it will be difficult to completely understand the moral salience of certain occasions. In this process, Williams underlines the role of education and training—and our claim is that P4C sessions are to be included here. That is, the ability to identify the moral salience of different situations—the “moral shape of the world” [35, p. 110]—is cultivated in P4wC sessions because participants in a community of inquiry can identify the many aspects of a moral situation from a multitude of perspectives and under various lines of collaborative reflection. For instance, in a session about whether luck makes any change in moral judgment and discussing Williams’s example of the drunk driver, the participants concluded that the introduction of the element of luck diminishes the agent’s sense of responsibility and simultaneously increases the power of justification one is able to offer. This is a reflection that can be matched by Nagel’s comments on different types of luck or the distinction between the justification of an action and the notion of responsibility at stake in an action. It should be clear by now that we are not proposing that P4wC’s goal is to teach participants how to behave ethically. The suggestion is that P4wC sessions provide an environment that is especially conducive to cultivating and calibrating capacities such as moral sensitivity and imagination. Developing and fine-tuning moral sensitivity requires attention to context and detail, training, exercising the imagination and a certain concern and attention for the other, which are all capacities that are strongly fostered in P4wC sessions. This does not commit practitioners to this or that perspective on how to sensibly grasp the ‘moral shape of the world,’ and at this point it is important to show that this can be presented in different ways. Take for instance John McDowell, who also refers to this ability to identify the moral salience of situations [36]. Taking inspiration from Aristotle, he also highlights the role of moral training and education. More specifically, McDowell uses the German word Bildung to designate that process by means of which our ethical character is shaped; to go through this formative process is to acquire a culture and to be initiated into a certain conceptual space (that is, to be able to apply certain concepts to reality— including moral concepts). There are two important differences between McDowell and Williams on this front. First, McDowell often appeals to the figure of the moral expert—the virtuous person—who is able to discern, on each occasion, what the appropriate thing to do is. The virtuous person is the one who has a correctly formed sensibility and is thus prone to detect the moral salience of situations and to grasp reasons for actions that others may not see. This means that a correct reading of the situation undoubtedly indicates what one should do, and the underlying problematic nature of moral evaluation is that one might not have one’s eyes open to that. Williams and McDowell also differ on the question of which capacities make one capable

66

D. Mendonça and S. Cadilha

of recognizing the moral salience of events. For McDowell, the most important role is reserved for the conceptual skills that are recruited in this process, whereas for Williams moral education is primarily a matter of refining sensibilities and emotional training—it is to a large extent, as in Hume, a sentimental education. Whereas for McDowell the ability to detect the moral salience of situations is a matter of being correctly initiated into a particular conceptual space, for Williams it is mostly a matter of having developed a proper sentimental education. This happens, according to Williams, because ethical judgments are also carried out with feelings, emotions and sentiments, since these are also part of the process of rationality. This does not mean that emotions and feelings have no moral importance, according to McDowell. But for him, the process of emotional refinement and adjustment is simply a consequence, a kind of side-effect, of the improvement of conceptual abilities. It is not at the origin of a certain way of seeing but is instead the result of the formation of a certain way of seeing. Although we believe that the moral salience of situations is closely connected to their emotional content, as we have tried to demonstrate elsewhere [37], we also think that those who develop the perspective described by McDowell will recognize the importance of P4wC sessions in cultivating moral expertise. More specifically, even though we have argued that what gives the moral concepts their specific moral overtones is precisely the emotional content, we also recognize that it is possible to describe the learning process that occurs in P4wC sessions in a McDowell’s line as sessions that promote the consequential emotional refinement and adjustment that underlies a self-corrective attitude. Of course, the full description of the importance of emotions for ethical development is beyond the specific scope of this chapter, and the literature on P4wC has widely demonstrated that emotions, meta-emotions, and caring thinking are a crucial part of fully understanding the role of affectivity in thinking [1, 3, 38–42]. For present purposes, and for a better understanding of the importance of reflexivity in P4wC sessions, it is sufficient to recognize the crucial connection between emotions/feelings and ethical/moral considerations [4] which can better explain our alliance with Williams’ position. Reflexivity arises in P4wC sessions in at least two ways: first, insofar as they embody the interpersonal and intersubjective nature of ethics and the methodology’s ability to prompt self-corrective attitudes, which highlights the meta-ethical dimension; and second, insofar as they reveal caring to be an inherent part of ethical inquiry. Although the way in which reflexivity appears in the methodology and promotes the meta-cognitive level has already been pointed out, it is crucial to also understand how the meta-emotional level also contributes to reasonableness [42]. As has been argued in the P4wC literature, emotions are a necessary part of thinking and reasoning well. In addition, the importance of emotions also consists in the fact that they guide the focus of inquiry and help us to determine what really

4

A Unique Contribution to Democratic Life: Emotions, Meta-ethics …

67

matters at each step of the inquiry, which is also reflexively highlighted and selfcorrected by other emotional processes. It has been argued that, in addition to firstorder emotions, meta-emotions also play an important role [43]. That is, there are emotions, and then there are emotions about emotions, which play a central role in the self-corrective processes of thinking well and in fostering reasonableness [42]. Reflexivity in P4wC sessions appears in another decisive way, namely by way of the dimension of caring thinking. When Lipman introduced the notion of caring thinking, he showed that it was an important part of fully understanding his proposal for cultivating excellence of thinking. In fact, Lipman clearly showed that P4wC demanded a type of critical thinking that was both creative and caring [1, 38]. As Ann Margaret Sharp also acknowledges, however, there is more to it than that. As Sharp writes [44], “[t]o think caringly means to think ethically, affectively, normatively, appreciatively and to actively participate in society with a concern for the common good … It is thinking that reveals our ideals as well as what we think is valuable, what we are willing to fight and suffer for” [44, p. 65]. The work of Harry Frankfurt, who stressed ‘the importance of what we care about’ [45], can help us to better understand what this entails. According to Frankfurt, ‘caring’ is not merely a dimension of thinking; in a certain sense, its importance encompasses one’s whole life: “the notion of what a person cares about … coincides in part with the notion of something with reference to which the person guides himself in what he does with his life and in his conduct” [45, pp. 259–260]. If genuine care is reflexive—in addition to caring about something, one cares to care about something—, this ultimately means that all actions and attitudes are manifestations of the capacity to care. Of course, some attitudes may just be the result of habit, thoughtless tendencies or passing interests, and consequently the ability to care demands that one defines and understands what it is that one really cares about through reflection, self-awareness, and processing things over time. It is a process in which people construct their own identities, in the sense that caring about something lends unity, consistency and continuity to the moments and episodes that comprise each individual’s life. As Frankfurt puts it, “[t]he fact that someone cares about a certain thing is constituted by a complex set of cognitive, affective and volitional dispositions and states” [45, p. 262], and thus one must not confuse caring about something with simply wanting or desiring something. Wanting or desiring may be something that merely happens to an individual, whereas caring about something is an active exercise of the will. This is one of the reasons why wanting or desiring something does not say anything really important about a person, whereas knowing what someone cares about says something meaningful about them. All of this implies that the importance of what we care about goes beyond ethics, in the same sense that Williams [35] told us that ethics goes beyond morality. To define what we care about (if one is able to do that) is to define what is most important for one. As for ethics, Frankfurt views it as involving a single general topic: how to behave. Thus, even if there are occasions when the two issues are related because knowing what one cares about matters to the question of how

68

D. Mendonça and S. Cadilha

we ought to behave, it is clear that the first question is more general and much more fundamental than the second. More specifically, ethics is concerned “with the contrast between right and wrong, and with the grounds and limits of moral obligation” [45, p. 257]. Even if one takes these moral requirements very seriously, in principle there will always be other things that matter. This is why Frankfurt argues that the question of defining what one cares about is distinguishable from the question of deciding what is morally right. According to Frankfurt, there are other important differences as well. In the case of ethics, it is a matter of deciding how to behave given the various alternatives for action. But when one considers the things that one cares about, it is not a matter of considering the pros and cons, calculating utilities or balancing moral obligations, because in this case the thing to do presents itself with an unshakable certainty and necessity, such that “every apparent alternative to that course is unthinkable” [45, p. 263]. Frankfurt calls this a “volitional necessity,” and in his view “a person who is subject to volitional necessity finds that he must act as he does” [45, p. 264] insofar as to act otherwise is to be untrue to oneself. Another difference is that moral judgments are impersonal—everyone should be able to appreciate the difference between right and wrong, and if morality requires that something should be done, this is valid for everyone in the same circumstances (regardless of who the agent is). On the contrary, judgments concerning things we care about are personal, and even if the conclusions to be drawn (about how to act) coincide, there is a difference between a conclusion’s being derived from moral conviction and its being derived from ‘volitional necessity’: [i]f a mother who is tempted to abandon her child finds that she simply cannot do that, it is probably not because she knows (or even because she cares about) her duty. It is more likely because of how she cares about the child, and about herself as its mother, than because of any recognition on her part that abandoning the child would be morally wrong. [45, p. 268]

If moral reasons must be impersonal or agent-neutral, as Nagel puts it [46], this is because morality involves a logical consistency requirement, but the volitional necessities to which Frankfurt is pointing imply a different kind of consistency— “consistency of a more personal kind” [45, p. 268] that relates to integrity and our own sense of identity. At this point, Frankfurt also goes along with Williams: if the moral point of view is the Nagelian “view from nowhere” [47], then we are not getting at what is most important for us, which means that the issues of volitional necessity can surpass those of morality. In the case of personal or affective relationships, for instance, if we care about someone’s well-being, this is not because everyone should recognize a reason to promote it but because that someone occupies a certain place in the world in relation to us. If we were to adopt the impersonal point of view, we would cease to value it in the same way. As Frankfurt says, “[i]t would be a serious mistake to believe that the importance of an object to someone is not fully genuine unless it is independent of his caring about the object” [45, p. 271]. The special relation that we have with someone is fundamental to understanding why we care about them the way we do. The fact

4

A Unique Contribution to Democratic Life: Emotions, Meta-ethics …

69

that we love someone makes us care about them in a special way, and this gives us reasons to act that, being personal, are no less genuine or important. As Williams puts it: What about someone who does something in the interests of another, and to his own disadvantage, because he loves that person; or, indeed, is in love with them; or admires them; or respects them; or because they are (after all) a member of the family? None of these reasons for acting have to be moral reasons, in any exigent or purified sense of that term; equally they are not prudential reasons. … Clearly the list of examples could be extended indefinitely to include vast numbers of the special relationships in which one person can stand to another. It is a grotesque product of theory and strenuous moralism to suppose that “moral” and “prudential” sufficiently divide up the justifiable motives or reasons a man can have for doing something: they leave out, in fact, almost everything. … Some of our decent actions come not from that motive which Christians misrepresent as our loving everybody, but just from our loving somebody. [48, pp. 70–71]

When it comes to the various applications of P4wC, it is clear that even though the movement “is no longer unified by an identifiable theory, purpose, pedagogy, method, or curriculum but is now used to further a number of disparate educational agendas” [5, p. 161]. the role of emotions in thinking in a community of inquiry remains crucial for the methodology and for fostering thinking well. In sum, the above-described reflection can be applied to any format of the methodology, independently of the different philosophical grounds that sustain it. This means that the importance of affectivity in general and of caring thinking in particular is an important part of understanding the unique contribution of P4wC to democracy, independently of the specific way in which the methodology is applied.

3

The Centrality of Emotions and Caring Thinking for Thinking Well

Our conclusion is that the caring thinking developed in P4wC sessions is crucial for a variety of reasons. Here, we would like to highlight that part of its force resides in lending vividness to the collaborative thinking process, which greatly contributes to the excellence of thinking. Emotions have been recognized as an important element of the P4wC practice [38–42, 44, 49–56]. The vivacity and freshness of thinking experienced in many P4wC sessions is best captured by the idea of caring thinking and its reflexivity [4]. This is in part because the reflexivity of the emotional world is one way to regulate and develop emotional maturity; feeling about feeling enables us to guide feeling, just as thinking about thinking can improve our thinking processes [42, p. 131]. This means that reflexivity can lead to change insofar as it involves processing emotional evaluations and reevaluations in the direction of what matters to the participants [4]. Everyone knows that even when the right thing to do is clearly identified, this does not guarantee that people will do it. There are a variety of factors that interfere with the direct application of a decision to committed action,

70

D. Mendonça and S. Cadilha

yet vividness of commitment is the best possible guarantee that people will try to guide their actions in the direction they have decided on. It is one thing to focus on justice and have it guide action; it is another to identify the necessary modes of implementing a commitment to justice [18, p. 186]. Our suggestion here is that when this is done in a community of inquiry, it will occur in a sustained and stronger fashion insofar as people are more capable of thinking together about new and fresh ways to cooperatively invest in what matters to them when they do so collaboratively, instead of when they do so in isolation or simply individually within a group. In addition, this increases the rigor of such deliberation; in a community of inquiry, collaborative thinking cultivates strategies for testing ideas [4]. This is perhaps most evident in the extent to which participants are fully present in the sessions [57]. Lipman connected the notion of caring thinking with the cultivation of excellence in thinking because he recognized that only the cultivation of a multidimensional type of thinking can promote reasonableness. As Lipman writes: [t]his means that it is not just rational, in the sense of a thinking that is rule- and criteriongoverned, but that it is also a thinking that accepts the fallibility of its procedures, that engages in self-corrective practice, that takes the contextual differences into account, and that is equitable, in the sense that respects the rights of others as well as its own. [1, p. 238]

Only when caring thinking is integrated can the democratic ideal be part of a democratic mode of life [58]. Though there are many reasons why P4C has this developmental impact on moral development, we want to highlight that an enormous gain is achieved by adopting a plural perspective of ethical theories and by enabling the introduction of meta-ethical considerations in classroom inquiry. That is, in addition to promoting ethical reflection, meta-ethical considerations inevitably appear in the reflective process done in the context of a P4C session and, we propose, they are especially important and decisive for P4C contribution for moral education and its follow up impact in contributing to support the development of individuals capable of participation in a global citizenship. (…) Doing philosophy sessions will give them an important experience to understand what is at stake in guiding and evaluating moral action in a democratic context because they will be sensitive to the plurality of perspectives, the plurality of theoretical proposals as well as the metaethical complexities at stake in moral inquiry. Mendonça and Cadilha “Philosophy for Children and the Participation in the Democratic Life” [4, p. 2, 12–13]

Acknowledgements This research work is supported by national funds through FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the context of the celebration of the program contract foreseen in numbers 4, 5 and 6 of article 23.º of D.L. no. 57/2016 of 29 August, as amended by Law no. 57/ 2017 of 19 July. This research work is also supported by national funds through FCT with Strategic Project of the Nova Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA) no. UIDB/00183/2020 and Research Project PTDC/FER-FIL/29906/2017. We also would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for comments and suggestions which helped us to improve the chapter, as well as professional editing work by Carolyn Benson.

4

A Unique Contribution to Democratic Life: Emotions, Meta-ethics …

71

References 1. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2. Lipman M (1998) The contributions of philosophy to deliberate democracy. In: Teaching philosophy on the eve of the twenty first century. International Federation of Philosophical Societies, Ankara, pp 6–29 3. Lipman M (2008) Philosophy for children debt to Dewey. In: Taylor M et al (eds) Pragmatism, education and children: international philosophical perspectives. Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York, pp 143–152 4. Mendonça D, Cadilha S (2022) Philosophy for children and the participation in the democratic life. Philosophical News 23 5. Gregory M (2021) Philosophy for children and children’s philosophical thinking. In: Pagès A (ed) A history of western philosophy of education in the contemporary landscape, Volume 5 of A history of western philosophy of education (Laverty M, Hansen G, general editors), pp 153–77 6. Peirce (1992) Some consequences of four incapacities. In: Houser N, Klosel C (eds) The essential pierce, Volume 1: 1867–1893. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, pp 28–55 7. Dewey J (1989) The need for a philosophy of education. In: Boydston J (ed) The later works (1925–1953), Volume 9: 1933–1934. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, pp 194–204 8. Dewey J (1991) Creative democracy—the task before us. In: Boydston J (ed) The later works (1925–1953), Volume 14: 1939–1941. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, pp 224–230 9. Dewey J (1988) The public and its problems. In: Boydston J (ed) The later works (1925–1953), Volume 2: 1925–1927. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, pp 235–372 10. Dewey J (1985) Democracy and education. In: Boydston J (ed) The middle works (1899– 1924), Volume 9: 1916. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville 11. Sharp AM (1986) Is there an essence of education? J Moral Educ 15(3):189–196 12. Rorty AO (1995) The many faces of morality. Midwest Stud Philos:67–82 13. Vansieleghem N, Kennedy D (2011) What is philosophy for children, what is philosophy with children—after Matthew Lipman. J Philos Educ 45(2):171–182 14. Nussbaum M (2010) Not for profit: why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. 15. Sharp AM (1995) Philosophy for children and the development of ethical values. Early Child Dev Care 107(1):45–55 16. Lipman M (1987) Ethical reasoning and the craft of moral practice. J Moral Educ 16(2):139– 147 17. Lipman M (1983) Lisa. Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, New Jersey 18. Lipman M (1980) Mark. Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, New Jersey 19. Lipman M, Sharp AM (1995) Manual for teachers and educators. Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, New Jersey 20. Lipman M, Sharp AM, Oscanyan FS (1980) Philosophy in the classroom. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 21. Clark K (1968) Looking at pictures. Beacon Press 22. Spivey N (2001) Enduring creation: art, pain and fortitude. University of California Press 23. Licht F (1979) Goya, The origins of the modern temper in art. Universe Books 24. García-Moriyón et al (2020) Research in moral education: the contribution of P4C to the moral growth of students. Educ Sci 2020(10):119 25. Gardner S (2008) Teaching children to think ethically. Anal Teach Philos Praxis 32:74–81 26. Gasparatou R (2016) Philosophy for/with children and the development of epistemically virtuous agents. In: Gregory M, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, Abingdon, pp 103–110

72

D. Mendonça and S. Cadilha

27. Sprod T (2001) Philosophical discussion in moral education: the community of ethical inquiry. Routledge-Falmer, New York 28. Darwall S (2006) The second-person standpoint: morality, respect, and accountability. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 29. Williams B (1981) Moral luck. Cambridge University Press, New York 30. Nagel T (1979) Mortal questions. Cambridge University Press, New York 31. Singer P (1972) Famine, affluence, and morality. Philos Public Aff 1(3):229–243 32. O’Neill O (1988) Children’s rights and children’s lives. Ethics 98(3):445–463 33. Heyd D (2019) Supererogation. In: Zalta E (ed) The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition) (last accessed February 2022) https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win 2019/entries/supererogation/ 34. Williams B (1979) Internal and external reasons. In: Harrison R (ed) Rational action. Cambridge University Press, pp 101–113 35. Williams B (1985) Ethics and the limits of philosophy. Harvard University Press 36. McDowell J (1998) Mind, value and reality. Harvard University Press 37. Mendonça D, Cadilha S (2019) Bernard Williams and the concept of shame: what makes an emotion moral? Labyrinth, Int J Philos Value Theory Sociocult Hermeneutics 21(1):1–17 38. Lipman M (1995) Using philosophy to educate emotions. Anal Teach 15(2):3–10 39. Sharp AM (2007) Education of the emotions in the classroom community of inquiry. Gifted Educ Int 22(2; 3):203–225 40. Mendonça D (2009) Let’s talk about emotions. Think: J Philos Children 19(2 & 3):57–63 41. Murris K (2012) Is Arthur’s anger reasonable? In: Costello P (ed) Philosophy and children’s literature. Rowman & Littlefield, New York 42. Costa-Carvalho M, Mendonça D (2016) Thinking like a community—reasonableness and emotions. In: Gregory M, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, Abingdon, pp 127–134 43. Mendonça D (2013) Emotions about emotions. Emot Rev 5(4):390–396 44. Sharp AM (2003) The other dimension of caring thinking. C&CT 12(1):65–71 45. Frankfurt HG (1982) The importance of what we care about. Synthese 53:257–272 46. Nagel T (1970) The possibility of Altruism. Oxford Clarendon Press 47. Nagel T (1986) A view from nowhere. Oxford University Press 48. Williams B (1972) Morality: an introduction to ethics. Harper & Row, New York 49. Lipman M (1995) Caring as thinking. Inquiry: Crit Think Across Discip 5(1):1–13 50. Kristjánsson K (2006) Emotional intelligence in the classroom? An Aristotelian critique. Educ Theory 56(1):39–56 51. Lowry P (2009) Exploring caring. Think: J Philos Children 19(2 & 3):32–41 52. Brenifier O (2008) Caring thinking about caring thinking. Accessed 28 Oct 2020. http://www. buf.no/pdf/ob-ct.pdf 53. Murris K (2009) A philosophical approach to emotions: understanding love’s knowledge through a frog in love. Childhood Philos 5(9) 54. Mehmet AD, Demir M, Tarhan S, Bacanl H (2011) Quadruple thinking: caring thinking. Procedia: Soc Behav Sci 12:552–561 55. Shaari A, Hamzah A (2018) A comparative review of caring thinking and its implications on teaching and learning. Malays J Learn Instr 15(1):83–104 56. Mendonça D (2018) A esperança e a Surpresa nas perguntas da FpC. In: Santos T (ed) Filosofia para Crianças. Pressupostos e Linhas de um curso, Universidade de Évora, Évora, pp 11–25 57. Gardner S (2022) P4C and ‘self-education’: how can philosophical dialogue best solicit selves? In: Mendonça D, Figueiredo FF (eds) Conceptions of childhood and moral education in philosophy for children. Metzler, Stuttgart, pp 113–126 58. Gregory MR (2000) Care as a goal of democratic education. J Moral Educ 29(4):445–461

4

A Unique Contribution to Democratic Life: Emotions, Meta-ethics …

73

Other Sources 59. Burgh G (2003) Philosophy in schools: education for democracy or democratic education? Crit Creat Think: Austr J Philos Schools 11(2):18–30 60. Di Masi D, Santi M (2016) Learning democratic thinking: a curriculum to philosophy for children as citizens. J Curric Stud 48(1):136–150 61. Mendonça D (2022) Foundations of philosophy for children, reasonableness and the education of thinking. In: Miras Boronat NS, Bella M (eds) Women in pragmatism: past and future. Springer 62. P4C-AIM https://ifilnova.pt/en/research-projects/pc4-aim/ 63. Sharp AM (1991) The community of inquiry: education for democracy. Thinking: J Philos Children 9(2):31–37 64. Sharp AM (1993) Peirce, feminism and philosophy for children. Anal Teach 14(4):51–62 65. Wikipedia contributors (2021, 29 Nov) The third of May 1808. In: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10:35, 17 Feb 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_ Third_of_May_1808&oldid=1057729528

Dina Mendonça is a senior research member of IFILNOVA (https://ifilnova.pt/en/people/dina-mendonca/). She teaches, publishes and researches on Philosophy of Emotions and Philosophy of Education with a special concentration in Philosophy for Children. Her research focuses on developing a Situated Approach to Emotions, which takes emotions as dynamic and active situational occurrences (Mendonça 2012). This pragmatist research of Deweyan inspiration aims at elaborating a critical interpretation of philosophical reflections on emotions clarifying different problems and advantages of different methodological and philosophical approaches as well as identifying the key issues emotions theories (Paradox of Fiction, shared emotions, etc.) and further complexities of the emotional landscape (variability of valence of emotions, meta-emotional processes, etc.). In addition, she teaches Didactics of Philosophy concentrating on the role of writing for the education and improvement of thinking skills, and she promotes and creates original material for application of philosophy to all schooling stages, and as an aid in the creative processes. Being the author of the book “Brincar a Pensar? Manual de Filosofia para Crianças” (Toying with thinking? Manual of Philosophy for Children), which is the outcome of three years’ work with Kindergarden teacher Maria João Lourenço, she has done P4wC sessions in many different educational settings (Escola Voz do Operário 2005–2012, Escola Criativa with Serviço Cultural e Educativo of Câmara de Cascais 2006–2014; Project 10 × 10 at Gulbenkian 2012–2014; CCB 2019, 2021, 2022).

74

D. Mendonça and S. Cadilha Susana Cadilha holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from University of Porto and she is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at IFILNOVA, where she coordinates its Ethics and Political Philosophy Laboratory. She is also a lecturer in Ethics and Applied Ethics at FCSH—School of Human and Social Sciences, NOVA University of Lisbon. Before coming to IFILNOVA, she was an Invited Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto, and at Católica Porto Business School. Previously she held an FCT doctoral scholarship and in that period, she was Visiting Researcher at NIEHS – National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (North Carolina – EUA), where she was trained in bioethics. She is the author and editor of books, articles and special issues mainly on ethics and metaethics, and has published in journals such as Disputatio, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, Principia, and Kant Yearbook. In 2021, she also published with Rowman & Littlefield Sovereignty as Value. Currently, she is part of the research team of three FCT funded projects: “Philosophy for Children and the Dawn of Moral Intuition: Values and Reasons in Rationality and Reasonability” (PTDC/FER-FIL/29906/2017); “Integration of Refugees in Portugal: Assessing Moral Duties and Integration Policies in the Context of European Values and Policies” (PTDC/ FER-ETC/30378/2017) and “Present Democracy for Future Generations” (PTDC/FER-FIL/6088/2020).

Part II Community of Philosophical Inquiry in the Classroom

5

P4wC’s Outcomes Are Both Skills and Dispositions: Expanding the Whole Notion of “Outcomes” in Applying the OBE Framework in P4wC Abigail Thea O. Canuto

Only a teacher thoroughly trained in the higher levels of intellectual method and who thus has constantly in his own mind a sense of what adequate and genuine intellectual activity means, will be likely, in deed, not in mere word, to respect the mental integrity and force of children. [1]

Abstract

The P4wC pedagogy seeks to cultivate critical thinking among students not only so that they would do better in school but to help them become “more thoughtful, more reasonable, and more judicious” (Lipman in Thinking in education, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, New York [2]). Right off the bat, P4wC would appear incompatible with the Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) framework which excludes values, beliefs, attitudes, and other psychological states from those considered clear and demonstrable learning results (Spady in Outcome-based education: critical issues and answers, American Association of School Administrators, USA, p. 76 [3]). While P4wC finds affinity with OBE’s view that thinking skills must be clearly identified, the latter tends to narrowly construe thinking skills as isolated behavioral outcomes, which often result in truncated critical thinking instruction that focus entirely on the directly and immediately observable, but do not necessarily uphold high standards of performance. This section argues that applying the OBE framework in P4wC thus requires that teachers watch out for how thinking skills are applied in meaningmaking processes that occur in reflective discourse, particularly by (1) going

A. T. O. Canuto (B) College of Education, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_5

77

78

A. T. O. Canuto

beyond an aggregative conceptualization of thinking; (2) identifying the cognitive status of emotions; and (3) finding appropriate ways of assessing the quality of how all such skills and dispositions are coordinated. Graphic Abstract

Applying the OBE framework in P4wC

Keywords

P4wC . Community of inquiry . Reasonableness . Multidimensional thinking Outcomes-based education . Assessment

.

5

1

P4wC’s Outcomes Are Both Skills and Dispositions: Expanding the Whole …

79

Introduction

Matthew Lipman coined the term “multidimensional thinking” to describe the kinds of thinking required for one to be reasonable. Reasonableness, for Lipman, is not multidimensional only because there are several thinking processes that propel it, but also because these processes occur simultaneously and are equally significant in being reasonable. In this sense, Lipman is clearly objecting to hierarchical notions of thinking that rigidly ascribe certain kinds of thinking to be either higheror lower-order, arguing that there is no issue of which is better a skill as it is: in some contexts, it is more useful to evaluate than to remember while in other situations, it might be more suitable to recall and make connections between one memory and another than to evaluate an event in isolation. In any case, reasonableness goes beyond merely mechanical thinking (i.e., carrying out of discrete mental operations). One is reasonable when one is persistent, disciplined, and focused, which all necessitate that one is emotionally invested in what one is thinking about. An individual is also reasonable when she appreciates that her ideas may be flawed or mistaken and that she could change her mind in light of better reasons. This is essential in the cultivation of morally upright citizens who are capable of self-criticism and self-correction. Lipman calls it “creative and emotional strengthening” [2, p. 203], which underscores the inextricable link between thoughts and feelings. It needs to be said, further, that this link does not delineate one from the other. Rather, it shows that thoughts and feelings share a common thread: emotional maturity is intellectual maturity and vice versa. We become less prejudiced, less illogical, less egotistic, more tolerant, more willing to compromise, and more respectful of others when we know what our emotions mean, when we care about what we are problematizing, when we understand that our emotions are judgments themselves, and when we acknowledge that all these likewise apply to everyone else. We may therefore regard reasonableness as a virtue in that it is dispositional, skillful, and is cultivated through habit. For Lipman, this habit is best exercised through Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC), where students are enjoined to think and question together and challenge one another in the spirit of community and camaraderie of shared inquiry. Teachers may come to appreciate this holistic nature of multidimensional thinking and become motivated to plan instruction toward their development. But the extemporaneous, reflective, and deliberative nature of P4wC lends assessment of students’ thinking very challenging. For one, assessment in P4wC is particularly difficult because dialogical inquiry can be lengthy and is not always linear due to its philosophical nature. The reflection and deliberation that students do in P4wC also occurs spontaneously and not always overtly for not all thinking manifest in what students say or do. Hence, P4wC researchers and practitioners often conclude that identifying various skills and attitudes and judging whether they have improved over time is a task too formidable. But thanks to frameworks such as the Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) which insists on the identification of behavioral manifestations of learning, teachers find ways to account for the occurrences of

80

A. T. O. Canuto

particular thinking skills and to monitor shifts from simple to complex thinking. It is thus understandable why this largely remains to be the typical practice in P4wC. However, Golding [4] and Schwarz [5] claim that we remain wanting of more comprehensive and systematic criteria for assessing children’s ability to understand and to devise improved conceptions through the use of such skills—criteria that account for all the dimensions of multidimensional thinking, including the dispositions and how they work together with skills—which are all indispensable in being reasonable. This section will thus examine possible areas of convergence between P4wC practice and the OBE framework, identify some limiting conditions of OBE on P4wC pedagogy, and pinpoint some conditions that need to be met in order to make the OBE framework compatible with P4wC. In doing so, OBE will prove useful in helping teachers monitor and evaluate the progress in students’ thinking, particularly by determining what such thinking behaviors for which to look out. As will be argued, this should be done without constricting the spontaneous flow of the group’s reflective, deliberative dialogue which necessitates (1) going beyond an aggregative conceptualization of thinking; (2) identifying the cognitive status of emotions; and (3) finding appropriate ways of assessing the quality of how all such skills and dispositions are coordinated.

2

The Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) Framework

Outcomes-Based Education (OBE) encourages teachers to clearly identify the outcomes that students are expected to demonstrate at the end of their schooling and then design their curriculum and instruction down from these outcomes. The idea is that when teachers ensure parallelism between ultimate, culminating outcomes and their pedagogy, they are more likely to ensure that what happens in day-to-day learning will be transferred to life beyond the school. This requires eliminating the ambiguity that surrounds the teaching and learning process, often attributed to the curriculum’s focus on values, beliefs, attitudes, and other psychological states that, while important, cannot be considered outcomes since they are largely implicit and are consequences of various factors beyond the scope of the school. Hence, the OBE framework categorically excludes these non-behavioral aspects from what are deemed legitimate educational outcomes since it cannot be determined whether students will, in fact, have successfully learned them as a result of the educational process. At best, these mental processes may or may not influence what students can do with what they know and understand. If teachers were to include them among the articulated objectives in the curriculum, they can only approximate the extent to which the former could be said to be true, which renders curriculum development and delivery of instruction counterproductive. As such, while OBE advocates and practitioners recognize that no learning can transpire without psychological states and that mental processing are applied to demonstration processes and verbs, they cannot be considered as outcomes in themselves.

5

P4wC’s Outcomes Are Both Skills and Dispositions: Expanding the Whole …

81

Numerous researchers have noted that OBE practitioners have different reasons for gravitating toward OBE, which means that there also are a wide range of interpretations for how OBE should be implemented [6–8]. While there is not only one way of applying the OBE framework to curriculum and instruction, Spady and Marshall [9] maintain that there are better, more apt ways of OBE implementation.

2.1

Traditional OBE

Traditional OBE or, as Spady and Marshall [9] put it, “curriculum-based objectives”, characterizes the ways in which OBE is implemented in school settings where administrators, curriculum developers, and teachers remain rooted to their long-held educational thoughts and practices and use the existing curriculum as their anchor. Whereas the intent of OBE is to design down from ultimate, culminating outcomes, traditional OBE puts premium on and works around the educational content and strategies already in place. Moreover, traditional OBE remains constrained by the academic calendar and measures learning success primarily in terms of how content is mastered over time. Applying the OBE framework in the curriculum in this manner is limited to modifying how pre-OBE curricular objectives are articulated (e.g., from the use of nouns to verbs to denote observable behaviors) and there is hence no genuine shift in the paradigm of how curricula and pedagogies are to be planned, designed, and carried out. Simply put, traditional OBE is a fundamentally misguided way of applying the OBE framework. Because outcomes in traditional OBE are tied down to academic content, the curriculum fails to strategize how student learning will relate to life beyond the school.

2.2

Transitional OBE

Where schools recognize that they need to go beyond existing curriculum content but for various reasons cannot yet undergo major overhaul in their educational philosophy and practice, they implement what is referred to as “transitional OBE”. In contrast to traditional OBE, transitional OBE emphasizes on students “culminating capabilities”, which are often articulated in terms of “broad attitudinal, affective, motivational, and relational qualities or orientations” and “higher-order competencies such as critical thinking, effective communication, technological applications, and complex problem-solving, rather than particular kinds of knowledge or information” [9, p. 69]. Transitional OBE thus recognizes that subject-specific content knowledge serves only as means to a greater end, which is life beyond the school. A downside of transitional OBE, however, is that it does not clearly establish what the role of curricular content is in the achievement of such culminating capabilities. While not the most evolved form of OBE implementation, transitional OBE paves the way for transformational OBE, where there is more intentional, explicit,

82

A. T. O. Canuto

and direct relationship between curriculum content, instructional practices, and ultimate, culminating outcomes.

2.3

Transformational OBE

Transformational OBE fully embodies the design-down philosophy by designing curriculum and planning instruction to gear toward students’ future roles as adult individuals and as citizens of their respective societies, which requires “carefully developed descriptions of future conditions” [9, p. 71]. For transformational OBE to be successful, classrooms should foster high student engagement through authentic, multimodal pedagogies that mirror real-world settings [3]. Transformational OBE has been interpreted by many teachers to refer to the transformation of “values, attitudes, and psychological frames of mind of students into something the state desires” [3, p. 146]. As mentioned, Spady [3] clarifies that while affective factors play a role in learning, they are strictly speaking not outcomes but goals, which are admittedly targeted by outcomes just the same. The following example from the University of Toronto [10] illustrates the difference between vague (i.e., value-laden) and more precise (i.e., demonstrable) outcomes, where the latter nevertheless work toward the former: Vague outcome By the end of this course, students will have a deeper appreciation of literature and literary movements in general. More precise outcome By the end of this course, students will be able to:

. identify and describe the major literary movements of the twentieth century . perform close readings of literary texts . evaluate a literary work based on selected and articulated standards. Teachers are hence advised to be careful not to muddle what it means to apply the OBE framework in the curriculum by separating “the notion of having learners demonstrate complex role performance abilities” from “having them advocate any particular personal or social value or attitude” [3, p. 147]. The utmost concern of transformational OBE is thus the (1) articulation of ultimate, culminating outcomes, which will then guide the (2) clear and explicit identification of demonstrable skills and knowledge that will each play a role in the achievement of such exit outcomes. Because these demonstrable skills and knowledge are clearly and explicitly identified, they are observable and will therefore allow the teacher to determine whether students have successfully achieved them.

5

3

P4wC’s Outcomes Are Both Skills and Dispositions: Expanding the Whole …

83

P4wC and OBE

Assessment is a major concern in education. It serves as evidence of the extent to which schools have been successful in teaching what they are supposed to teach students and they provide students with feedback for how they fared throughout a given period and on which aspects of their learning they need to improve. In other words, assessment makes the school accountable to their students, and the students accountable to themselves. It is thus to be expected that schools will want to ensure that they can appropriately measure student learning and provide an unambiguous picture of student progress. The OBE framework has hence been revolutionary in school reform precisely because it insists that schools use language devoid of vague terminologies and fuzzy concepts that often lead teachers to implicitly assume, without necessarily clear and sufficient evidence, that they are already doing what they intend to be doing. According to Baron and Boschee [11]: … success in intent can be ensured only when teachers commit to the idea that “more specific proficiencies or competencies must be identified for each learner outcome in order to provide the bases for organizing curriculum, instruction, and assessment within each content area. These specific proficiencies, which can be accurately measured, serve as indicators that learners are achieving competence in the content areas and are satisfying the more complex behavioral expectations expressed in the broader outcomes. [11, p. 575]

Meanwhile, assessment in P4wC is a source of much debate among its advocates, practitioners, and critics. While it has been established by empirical research that P4wC develops a wide range of cognitive and socioemotional skills, Biesta [12] cautions against the instrumentalization of philosophy in P4wC which appears to take for granted the issue of “the extent to which it is possible to identify causes, effects, and their interrelationships” [12, p. 310] among the skills developed on the one hand, and the activity of philosophizing itself on the other. Biesta’s concern regarding the instrumentalization of philosophy in P4wC bears tremendous implications to assessment in P4wC. For example, we can be certain that mental acts, when performed in communities of inquiry, lend evidence to the kinds of cognitive and socioemotional skills that are developed in the process of students thinking together. However, what we can expect to happen when skills are articulated as predetermined outcomes to be performed by each student and to be measured for each student, is that teachers will ultimately focus on such skills in isolation. This means that the togetherness component—that thinking in the context of P4wC is done collaboratively with other individuals—will be taken for granted. Apparently, this is the case in OBE when applied haphazardly to P4wC. On the other hand, following Biesta’s train of thought, identification of competencies developed in P4wC should be done while simultaneously describing how the collaborative process of dialogue resulted in the development of such competencies. This means having to “present mental phenomena in a unified and developmental manner, while letting students know that the actual connections are yet to be understood” [2, p. 140].

84

A. T. O. Canuto

The OBE framework can assist P4wC practitioners in doing this, particularly in naming such mental phenomena and in establishing the link between them and P4wC’s ultimate, culminating outcomes. The challenge, then, is how this may be done without oversimplifying the nature of the community of inquiry as a complex communicative system where the teacher’s preoccupation must always be “to enable as much as possible communicative diversity and clarity, in the intent of acquiring new meanings, and better participation” [13, p. 16]. The aim here is not to acquire a full grasp of the complexity of the community of inquiry as a social and linguistic system but to respect it as “a system that is constantly unfolding and becoming” [13, p. 17]. The spontaneity of communication in dialogical inquiry shall furthermore be emphasized strongly here: How ought the teacher judge, when facilitating interactions in P4wC, the nature of an utterance made, whether it needs to be clarified or corrected, for example? How is the facilitator to decide how to act on what is said by students at that moment of communication? Eventually, how is the teacher to evaluate the quality of the students’ thinking skills given what they had expressed in those moments?

4

Applying the OBE Framework in P4wC

In applying the OBE framework in P4wC, the first question that therefore needs to be answered is what its ultimate, culminating outcomes are. This is tantamount to asking about the educational philosophy of P4wC. Foundationally Deweyan, Lipman conceptualized the establishment of cooperative communities within the school setting that will help form the character, habits, and virtues of future democratic citizens. To design down from this—or, more specifically, to apply the OBE framework in P4wC—would require that we identify what sorts of demonstrable competencies are necessary in the achievement of such aims. To this point, we turn to Lipman’s notion of reasonableness as the primary object of P4wC. As mentioned, Lipman [2] argues that reasonableness is multidimensional thinking. Exemplifying excellence in thinking, reasonableness satisfies the criteria of critical, creative, and caring thinking. It is honed through the practice of disciplined deliberation that is logically structured, rigorous, and focused toward a progressive movement of ideas. Lipman further prescribes that educationally, this is done through a community of inquiry, where participants will be compelled to entertain various points of view, weed out ideas that make less sense, justify their opinions, negotiate when perspectives may be just as acceptable as the next, and grow comfortable with persisting divergences in opinions. The sharpening of one’s listening faculties, the habit of genuinely welcoming other ideas, the willingness to reconsider one’s convictions, the openness to better opinions, the tolerance for diversity of perspectives, and the exhilaration of doing it all—all these develop students’ intellect and character. This is what makes robust democratic societies where the young grow up to be citizens who know how to live harmoniously with each other despite their differences and, simultaneously, who look out for the interests of all members of the community.

5

P4wC’s Outcomes Are Both Skills and Dispositions: Expanding the Whole …

4.1

85

Going Beyond an Aggregative Conceptualization of Thinking

While it makes sense to say that teachers will be able to appraise students’ learning validly and reliably if they were to come to an operational definition of what educational outcomes should be, we must at the same time note that the Gestalt principle applies to reasonableness: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is because the various skills at work result in outcomes that are “not merely additive but multiplicative” [2, p. 198]. So, while teachers should be able to clearly articulate what sorts of thinking skills are being targeted in P4wC, they should not stop at prescribing what ought to manifest in the dialogues because utterances may not naturally correspond to pre-established, clear-cut, or absolute categories that depict levels of thinking. Lipman [2] made this clear in saying that “a good critical thinker is a good craftsperson and craft is never a mere aggregation of skills” [2, p. 77]. This implies that more than identifying every thinking skill there is to identify, teachers must be able to appropriately examine the relationships among variables such as the complexity of thoughts, emotions, and various forms of linguistic expressions by exemplifying what students mean when they say the things that they say. This can be done by clearly extrapolating, hermeneutically, the patterns that emanate from the participants’ utterances, and from those patterns, map out where better, more reasonable ideas are uttered. This requires viewing students’ dialogues as a kind of language-game. As Wittgenstein [14] puts it: Don’t say: ‘There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games” – but look and see whether there is anything common to all. – For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look! [14, p. 31]

Teachers will need to be comfortable with the idea of relinquishing the kind of control that they might have become accustomed to having in terms of planning lessons, directing the course of classroom discourse, and in the case of assessment and evaluation, identifying exactly what students need to demonstrate and when exactly they are supposed to demonstrate them. Biesta [12] expresses that after all, we cannot be entirely sure of what philosophizing achieves for the answer to this question “lie(s) beyond our control and imagination” [12, p. 305]. This, of course, does not mean that we are to ignore the question of assessment in P4wC altogether because there must be a way to judge whether students are, in fact, becoming more reasonable after having participated in P4wC. This entails knowing what to look for and how to properly look at them.

4.1.1

The Outcomes of P4wC

Lipman [2] speaks of how judgments are the “outcomes” [2], p. 209] of critical thinking. It is useful to begin here so that we establish at the onset that in

86

A. T. O. Canuto

assessing learning in communities of inquiry, it is the quality (i.e., reasonableness) of students’ judgments that teachers ought to appraise. Interestingly, it has been noted that until the early to mid-2000s, there had been very little to no systematic assessment method for doing so. While Lipman [2] claims that there appears to be none that “effectively evaluate children’s judgment” [2, p. 223], Schwarz [5] points out that evaluating the effectiveness of P4wC is often done only by determining whether participants are able to acquire certain skills rather than by assessing if they are able to enhance their ability to understand through the use of these skills which, he claims, is the ideology of P4wC. Golding [4] adds that “no comprehensive and systematic conception of philosophical progress is available to support philosophical progress in P4wC” [4, p. 226]. Meanwhile, García-Moriyón et al. [15] observe that while scholars have started to develop qualitative assessments in P4wC, there continues to be an absence of “a specific and shared methodology” that “makes it difficult to get a clear understanding of the findings of their evaluations” [15, p. 6]. Reznitskaya [16] substantiates this in saying that “many empirical investigations of P4(w)C present largely unsystematic reflections on the goals and practices of the practice, typically supported with exemplary excerpts from discussions and quotes from students and teachers” [16, p. 4]. This lack of standardization in assessing the outcomes of P4wC has largely been the ground for skepticism regarding the effectiveness of the pedagogy. In my own experience of training pre- and in-service teachers, for example, many raise the question of whether P4wC is worth pursuing since it appears as though after all, teachers cannot be entirely sure of what they are supposed to assess or how exactly they ought to go about assessment in P4wC. Questions often posed include: What exactly does it mean for students to be reasonable? How would progress in reasonableness be tracked? What is the product of students’ exercise at reasoning? The last decade, however, has seen strong efforts toward more comprehensive and holistic assessment of development of the quality of students’ judgments in communities of inquiry. Heeding Splitter and Sharp’s [17] call for a philosophically and procedurally valid evaluation in P4wC,1 I utilized their list of Marks of Philosophical Discussion as reference in determining the occurrences of critical thinking skills and sub-skills in each dialogue, as well as in confirming whether there was an increase in the frequency of 8-year-olds’ use of the skills across 15 sessions of P4wC. Additionally, Golding’s [4, 18, 19] criteria of philosophical progress were used to assess the utterances, questions, ideas, and conclusions generated by the pupils. Golding’s criteria of philosophical progress guarantee that participants’ mental acts are not divorced from the intersubjective sphere where they are exercised. In this study, the philosophical progress in the children’s ideas was therefore the mark of qualitative improvement in their thinking.

1

Canuto (2013) Critical thinking and philosophical progress in dialogues of grade two children in a community of inquiry. Master’s thesis, University of the Philippines

5

P4wC’s Outcomes Are Both Skills and Dispositions: Expanding the Whole …

87

Meanwhile, Daniel [20], along with her colleagues [21, 22], analyzed transcripts of children’s dialogues in P4wC and typified how exchanges among students customarily develop from anecdotal to monological, to non-critical dialogical, to semi-critical dialogical, and finally, to critical dialogical. Their analyses led them to conclude that children’s insights were characteristically reflective and intersubjective, and thereby more reasonable, when the classroom community of inquiry has reached the semi- and critical dialogical stages. More recently, Säre et al. [23] investigated the role that open-ended questions in P4wC played in the enhancement of children’s verbal reasoning, which required them to be sensitive to the kind of linguistic context that transpires in P4wC’s dialogical inquiry. This is appropriate as Splitter and Sharp [17] stress that for the assessment of P4wC to be consistent with its pedagogy and its spirit, the intimate relationship between the assessment of P4wC and doing philosophy itself must be maintained. This means having to look for not only what sorts of reasoning skills children are using or how often they are using them, but more importantly, how well they are employing these reasoning skills. Admittedly, these means of assessment are perhaps too tedious for teachers, many of whom are overworked as it is. This is unfortunate and is likely due to most schools’ preoccupation to teach as much as it could to students, the result of which are teachers filled to the brim with classroom and administrative duties. This dismal situation, while deeply rooted, need not keep teachers from exploring innovative ways of developing students’ thinking capabilities but it will require teachers to be open to new possibilities. And while we do not want to unnecessarily add to their burden, we also must insist on a comprehensive and holistic assessment of students’ thinking. For instance, periodic, though less frequent, transcriptions of dialogues could be done to monitor changes in the classroom community of inquiry’s discourses, minimally once per quarter of the academic year or per midsemester. Analysis of the transcripts could then identify the occurrences of clearly identified critical, creative, and caring thinking skills, while recognizing that when one skill is used, at least one other is used at the same time, and that all such skills may not be observed concurrently. Thus, in applying the OBE framework in P4wC, identifying observable thinking skills helps teachers know what to look for in classroom discourse but as thus far argued, this is not enough in appraising the extent to which students are becoming more reasonable. Appropriate assessment of these skills requires that teachers acknowledge that reasonableness is so much more than just an aggregate of skills.

4.2

Identifying the Cognitive Status of Emotions

Perhaps the most apparent conflict that can be found between P4wC and OBE is regarding their respective notions on the role that emotions play in education. Both affirm that emotions are indispensable in the learning process, yet they disagree on how they are related to what and how students think and on how teaching ought to be conducted in view of them. The nature of disagreement stems from

88

A. T. O. Canuto

diverging assumptions on the relationship between thinking and how they manifest in observable behaviors on the one hand, and on the other, feelings and how they are subjective and implicit. OBE insists on teachers focusing only on developing knowledge and skills that can be performed and observed, and glosses over what the teacher ought to do, with clear intent, as regards the cultivation of students’ affective states. Contrarily, P4wC is comfortable with and celebrates the unanimity between thoughts and feelings. It contends that our emotions, first and foremost, allow us to focus on certain aspects of a given situation or a concept and predisposes us to maintain our attention toward the situation or the concept in question. This is caring thinking, which denotes how we think in values: that when we care about something, there are reasons behind that emotion. Lipman [2] invokes Elgin in saying that our emotions provide “frames of reference in terms of which we think” [2, p. 130]. Thus, one role that emotions can play in education that cultivates reasonableness is in having students articulate what they feel about what they are talking about and why they think they feel that way. This is a matter of inviting students to bring their emotions to the surface which will allow them to consider questions such as Why is this important to me? Why do I feel bothered or uncomfortable when we are talking about this? What makes it exciting to talk about? Teachers then should be able to help students recognize the reasons they offer for how they feel about the topic in question and, in the process, understand why others may think and feel differently about that same thing. Once students become aware that their emotions do not only affect the judgments that they make but are also judgments themselves, they can then start to understand that although emotions may predispose us to accept or reject certain ideas, we can take a step back, consider the reasons for those emotions, and decide whether it is reasonable to feel that way. Of course, this involves critically thinking about such ideas that we are predisposed to either accept or reject, as well as being emotionally invested and thereby committed to the process of inquiry itself. And so, it becomes clear how thoughts and feelings are intimately related, and more importantly, how it is therefore imperative to educate students with regard to emotions – because our emotions have a cognitive status and are therefore “teachable”. The OBE framework, when applied to education for caring thinking, will require that the teacher articulates how they are to be performed by students. If they are to remain at the level of mere psychological states that cannot be observed, then they cannot be considered outcomes. For OBE, this ultimately means that the curriculum may only hope to foster them incidentally but cannot work toward them intentionally. Lipman [2] agrees that we ought to be able to identify the defining characteristics of what we are trying to cultivate among students. In this case, he names varieties of caring thinking that, in noting them, could help the teacher identify their instances in the discourse. But he does not concede that only when we are able to name the performable aspects of caring thinking can we target their development among students. In fact, he surmises that much of what we do in caring thinking, we do mentally—hence, covertly. And so, we identify different

5

P4wC’s Outcomes Are Both Skills and Dispositions: Expanding the Whole …

89

kinds of caring thinking, as we do with critical and creative thinking, so that the teacher has a pool of skills and dispositions to which she can refer when she is making sense of the students’ dialogues. Apparently, this runs counter to OBE’s positivist stance which has been criticized for being “obsessed with accountability, or more accurately, hyper-accountability, with everything requiring proof and an adiposity of evidence” [24, p. 3]. In any case, to be able to observe at least some of them during a given session or period is enough for the teacher to conclude that students are developing their caring thinking and, as a result, are becoming more capable of producing more reasonable judgments.

4.3

The Coordination of Skills and Dispositions

In P4wC, what we are aiming to see are students becoming more reasonable: more inquisitive, more discerning, more linguistically precise, more open-minded, more tolerant, and more willing to be criticized and to self-correct. We have thus far established how reasonableness is the simultaneous performance of critical, creative, and caring thinking, all of which consist of distinctive sub-components that are neither clear-cut nor hierarchical. Their coordination, therefore, is “the first order of importance” [2, p. 171]. As Lipman [2] and several others [4, 5] argue, it is often the practice of teachers to focus only on incidences of thinking skills both in instruction and assessment. This is what will likewise be done if we were to apply the OBE framework to P4wC hook, line, and sinker. This individualistic approach to developing thinking skills is akin to ticking off items in a checklist: as long as students perform them and the teacher is able to observe that performance, it is good enough. The consequence of this is that students’ reasoning will be limited to expressing and confirming their pre-established views. But if we appreciate that reasonableness requires the coordination, orchestration, and mobilization of critical, creative, and caring thinking skills, then we understand how vital it is that students are urged to make judgments and then have them juxtaposed with other students’ judgments. This is necessary so that we draw out “conflicting passions or conflicting goods or competing arguments” [2, p. 289] which will compel students to compare and contrast, recalibrate, and ultimately, make a final, albeit provisional judgment about that which they initially thought they already knew. What happens when there is not enough problematization of what students say, when the teacher makes little attempt to invite students to think further and deeper, is that students get to think more but not necessarily better. It is understandable that in the beginning, students’ thinking skills and dispositions will not be well-coordinated, especially when they have no prior experience in participating in communities of inquiry. What the P4wC teacher will observe at the onset is that students’ skills and dispositions are typically largely disassociated, where the latter mainly “represent a readiness to employ such skills” [2, p. 171]. Because the community of inquiry, like all other classrooms, is a sociocultural environment, this coordination will take time to develop and will require resolute effort for the teacher to foster. The teacher must thus strive toward developing an atmosphere

90

A. T. O. Canuto

where students would feel that their ideas are genuinely welcome and that it is safe to take risks in expressing their opinions. Once the environment has become more conducive for the sharing of ideas and posing of questions, the teacher can then emphasize on the importance of being accountable for the things that they say by consistently prompting students to justify their own claims and to think further about such justifications. At the same time, they could also be invited to prod their classmates’ reasons and, as a group, follow a unified, logical train of thought. Once students’ utterances are becoming interdependent, then we start to see the classroom transforming into the beginnings of a community of inquiry [20]. This is when students have become more emotionally invested in the process of inquiry, where they are now more attuned to what may be problematic and start to spontaneously justify their ideas, perceptibly needing less prompting from the teacher. The most effective mobilization of students’ critical, creative, and caring thinking will be seen in what Daniel [20] refers to as “critical dialogical” [20, p. 116] type of exchange. At this point, the teacher is likely to observe students using a greater number of thinking skills. Whether there is quantitative increase in the frequency of the use of such skills, however, matters less than whether there is qualitative improvement in how they are using them. This is seen not necessarily when students settle conflicting ideas with finality. Instead, we look at how students make philosophical progress as a result of the judgments they make: We make progress primarily by identifying philosophical problems and then transforming our conceptions to resolve these problems. This is progress even though there are other options and even though we are liable to revise, refine or reject our resolutions in the future. However, we also make progress by discovering new, more refined and sophisticated problems and resolutions, and moving to conceptions which, compared with the alternatives, resolve more of the currently identified philosophical problems, are in greater reflective equilibrium with the total set of our rational considerations, and raise more new but productive problems … Furthermore, we make philosophical progress as we reach milestones on the path to resolving philosophical problems such as asking questions, devising arguments, and revising resolutions. [19, p. 217]

Assessing the qualitative improvement in thinking therefore requires that teachers examine students’ utterances without extracting them from the sociolinguistic context where they were uttered. It cannot be done by having students merely go through predetermined steps but by constantly reinforcing the rational, reciprocal, and intersubjective nature of the classroom discourse and ensuring that they adhere to high standards of performance in reasoning. P4wC, as democratic and reflective pedagogy, is most conducive for this in that it requires that all such skills and dispositions are coordinated: … the critical thinker looks for answers in the form of questions that will point the way to the elimination of inquiry. The creative thinker looks for questions in the form of answers that will lead to the perpetuation of inquiry. And both are concerned with the preservation of what matters. Therefore, both care about questions that are important. Teachers who wish to strengthen judgment must encourage the three forms of thinking and their convergence. [2, p. 276]

5

5

P4wC’s Outcomes Are Both Skills and Dispositions: Expanding the Whole …

91

Conclusion

OBE and P4wC are unlikely allies. It is not difficult for P4wC practitioners to wholly dismiss the OBE framework’s behaviorist, positivist paradigm since facilitating communities of inquiry necessitates that the teacher adopts a dialectical relationship with her students, instead of strictly guarding that predetermined outcomes are observed at given points in the curriculum. While seeking to hone students’ reasonableness, the P4wC teacher simultaneously develops her sensitivity toward their sensibilities and imaginations and allows them to be the ones to direct the course of the dialogue. A list of performable thinking competencies should therefore serve merely as a descriptive guide [2] for assessing students’ ability to inquire, clarify concepts, and construct their own meaning, and for monitoring the community’s growing interdependence and increased spontaneity in the students’ exchanges. This is the most appropriate way that the OBE framework may be applied in P4wC and in no way should it sacrifice the integrity of the organic and deliberative nature of the community of inquiry. P4wC is a form of life, the direction of which is directed by its participants who are, in turn, mediated by layers of perceptions, knowledge, opinions, and interpretations. Because of this, assessment in P4wC must emanate from the context in which thinking skills and dispositions are performed and is itself self-correcting and contestable [17]. Evidently, this is where OBE appears incompatible with P4wC and it is indeed so, if we do not expand the whole notion of “outcomes” in a way that will include dispositional aspects of thinking that are part and parcel of reasonableness. P4wC is a sociolinguistic phenomenon that will always have unexplored dimensions because thinking happens largely implicitly. Any attempt at making connections between mental activities and observable behaviors will thus always be tempered by some degree of approximation. No matter how hard we try to identify every possible educational outcome, we cannot be definitive about its relationship with students’ skills and dispositions. Teachers should not take this to mean, however, that we should not have a set of identifiable thinking skills for which to look out. Having a list of such skills allows the teacher to consciously model them as tools and procedures for inquiry [17] and to encourage their emulation. Applying the OBE framework in P4wC should assist teachers in this regard but should not lead them to presume that the list is exhaustive or that the demonstration of identified observable skills is a sufficient condition in attaining P4wC’s culminating outcomes. Effective P4wC practitioners, because of their love for philosophy and respect for the non-linear, collaborative, and reflective nature of dialogical inquiry, have learned how to be comfortable with the risk and uncertainty that comes with focusing on students’ questions and ideas, and with allowing students to direct the course of the inquiry. Indeed, as long as the teacher has adequate experience participating in communities of inquiry herself, has a sufficient understanding of the theory that underlies the practice of P4wC, is genuinely respectful of students’ rights to learn how to think, and truly believes in students’ capacities to be

92

A. T. O. Canuto

reasonable, her assessment will be a legitimate picture of both the contributions and limitations of P4wC in helping students become more reasonable individuals. Teachers must trust the process which requires that they break free from the positivist philosophy, of which they have been so accustomed, that which is “the epitome of the modernist critical project, to think of knowing in its explicit dimensions only” [25, p. 32]—and that which is the bedrock of OBE. The school is a social environment by nature, a microcosm of the greater society. Building togetherness, therefore, is education’s most natural means, as well as its very end. This demands a re-examination of both the educational outcomes to pursue and the pedagogy that will most likely successfully see them through. Abigail Thea Canuto

References 1. Dewey J (1904) The child and the curriculum. In: Boydston JA (ed). Dewey J.: the middle works 1899–1924, vol 2. SIU Press, Carbondale, pp 271–291 2. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, New York 3. Spady WG (1994) Outcome-based education: critical issues and answers. American Association of School Administrators, USA 4. Golding C (2009) “That’s a better idea!”—philosophical progress and philosophy for children. Childhood Philos 5(10):223–269 5. Schwarz B (2009) Argumentation and learning. In: Mirza N, Perret-Clermont A-N (eds) Argumentation and education: theoretical foundations and practices. Springer, Berlin, pp 91–126 6. Akramy SA (2021) Implementation of outcome-based education (OBE) in Afghan universities: lecturers’ voices. Int J Qual Educ 5(2):27–47 7. Evans CM, Landl E, Thompson J (2020) Making sense of K-12 competency-based education: a systematic literature review of implementation and outcomes research from 2000 to 2019. J Competency-Based Educ 5(4):1–28 8. Iloanya J (2019) Preparing the 21st century teacher for the implementation of outcomes-based education: the practical reality. Am J Educ Res 7(7):439–444 9. Spady WG, Marshall KJ (1991) Beyond traditional outcome-based education. Educ Leadership 49(2):67–72 10. University of Toronto (n.d.) Appendix A: examples of learning outcomes. https://teaching. utoronto.ca/teaching-support/course-design/developing-learning-outcomes/appendix-a-exa mples-of-learning-outcomes/. Accessed 8 Feb 2022 11. Baron MA, Boschee F (1997) Dispelling the myths surrounding OBE. The Phi Delta Kappan 77(8):574–576 12. Biesta G (2011) Philosophy, exposure, and children: how to resist the instrumentalisation of philosophy in education. J Philos Educ 45(2):305–319 13. Kennedy N (2012) Community of inquiry as a complex communicative system. Anal Teach Philos Praxis 33(1):13–18 14. Wittgenstein L (1958) Philosophical investigations (trans: Anscobe GEM). Basil Blackwell, Oxford 15. García-Moriyón F, Rebollo I, Colom R (2005) Evaluating philosophy for children: a metaanalysis. Thinking: J Philos Children 17(4):14–22 16. Reznitskaya A (2005) Empirical research in philosophy for children: limitations and new directions. Thinking: J Philos Children 17(4):4–13

5

P4wC’s Outcomes Are Both Skills and Dispositions: Expanding the Whole …

93

17. Splitter LJ, Sharp AM (1995) Teaching for better thinking: the classroom community of inquiry. The Australian Council for Educational Research Ltd., Melbourne 18. Golding C (2010) “We made progress”: progress in dialogue across difference, where the difference remains. Paper presented at the AARE international research conference, University of Melbourne, 28 Nov–2 Dec 2010 19. Golding C (2011) A conception of philosophical progress. Essays Philos 12(2):200–223 20. Daniel MF (2005) Learning philosophical dialogue in preschool. In: Fisher R (ed) Creative engagements: thinking with children. Interdisciplinary Press, London, pp 115–124 21. Daniel MF, Pettier JC, Auriac-Slusarczyk E (2011) The incidence of philosophy on discursive and language competence in four-year-old pupils. Creative Educ 2(3):296 22. Daniel MF, Belghiti K, Auriac-Slusarczyk E (2017) Philosophy for children and the incidence of teachers’ questions on the mobilization of dialogical critical thinking in pupils. Creative Educ 8(6):870–892 23. Säre E, Tulviste T, Luik P (2019) The function of questions in developing a preschooler’s verbal reasoning skills during philosophical group discussions. Early Child Dev Care 189(4):555– 568 24. Berlach RG (2004) Outcomes-based education and the death of knowledge. Paper presented at the AARE international research conference, University of Melbourne, 28 Nov–2 Dec 2004 25. Cannon D (2012) P4C, community of inquiry and methodological faith. Anal Teach Philos Praxis 33(1):30–35

Abigail Thea O. Canuto is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Education at the College of Education, University of the Philippines. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and a Master’s degree in Teaching in the Early Grades (K-2), both from the University of the Philippines. Her Master’s thesis is a synthesis of her background in philosophy and early childhood education, as it explored the progress of philosophical thinking among young children through the implementation of the Philosophy for/with Children program. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student of Educational History and Philosophy at the College of Education, University of the Philippines. Her research interests include Philosophy for/with Children, the development of critical, creative, and caring thinking, education for democracy, values/moral education, and the implementation of the community of inquiry in basic and higher education.

6

A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children Celso Vieira , Débora Mariz, and Ligea Hoki

Ninguém pode dizer a palavra verdadeira sozinho, ou dizê-la para os outros, num ato de prescrição, com o qual rouba a palavra aos demais. No one can say the true word alone or say it for the others in a prescribing act that steals the word from the others. Paulo Freire

Abstract

The chapter presents the prototyping of a thinking routine designed to foster good inference habits in children ages 6–11. The prototyping was developed at Ninho, an educational project for children from underprivileged households in Brazil. The thinking routines by Ritchhart and colleagues [1] served as our starting point. Following a Virtue Education (VE) approach, we supposed that the repeated application would conduce to habituation. In addition, to increase peer-to-peer interactions, the teacher applying the routines worked as a facilitator in a Community of Inquiry (CI). After six months of application, the results were partially successful. We identified that the repeated exposition to the magic question “What makes you say that?” made children more aware

C. Vieira (B) Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany e-mail: [email protected] D. Mariz Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Minas Gerais, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] L. Hoki Universidade Federal Do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_6

95

96

C. Vieira et al.

of the evidence supporting their assumptions. Furthermore, the interactions between peers made them recognize different perspectives. However, we also identified some shortcomings. Most of them seemed to arise from cognitive biases. At the individual level, belief perseverance kept children too attached to their first assumptions. They preferred self-serving rationalizations instead of accepting a counter-argument. At the group level, we identified problems of social contagion such as information cascades. The effects of a first opinion rhetorically voiced were hard to efface. Since none of the steps on the previous routines addressed these biases, we prototyped a routine to start filling this gap. Following Critical Thinking (CT) theorists, we added a step of structured instruction concerning one specific reasoning technique—the inference to the best explanation. Moreover, the recommendation of cognitive psychologists motivated the inclusion of some extra features to avoid groupthink biases. For instance, a visual table that juxtaposes contrasting arguments should facilitate comparative evaluations. Also, a star-based evaluation scale should help different individuals to discuss their assessments based on a common ground. As described in the end, the prototype with elements from VE, CI and CT presented promising results. Graphic Abstract

Developing inferencing skills through a thinking routine

6

A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children

97

Keywords

Intellectual virtues . Critical thinking . Community of inquiry . Inference to the best explanation . Philosophy for children . Thinking routines

1

Introduction

This chapter presents the implementation of a thinking routine to develop in primary school children the ability to make inferences to the best explanation. Our general aim was to start developing Critical Thinking abilities in the pupils of the Ninho Educational project. As described in Sect. 2, we started with a weak pluralist approach. It combined the features of education for the intellectual virtues and the community of inquiry into a thinking routine based on Project Zero’s ‘see, think, and wonder’ [1]. Despite some positive results, our qualitative analysis revealed some shortcomings. Many of the problems seemed to be traceable to the occurrence of cognitive biases. At the individual level, children remained attached to an egocentric perspective while problems of social contagion became evident in the group dynamics. Section 3 describes the two guiding strategies used to avoid the previously identified shortcomings. We followed the suggestion of some Critical Thinking theorists and added a step of structured instruction. Since the egocentric perspective seemed to be a problem of unaware inference, we opted to make the structure of the inference to the best explanation visible. Moreover, following the recommendation of cognitive psychologists, we added some extra features to control for the groupthink biases. A visual table that juxtaposes contrasting arguments should facilitate comparative evaluations. Finally, using a common evaluation scale should allow different individuals to discuss their assessments with less noise. The implementation occurred within the context of Ninho, an educational project aiming to provide a top-notch education for children from low-income households in the region of Lagoa Santa/MG in Brazil. The project has two phases. At first, Ninho provided scholarships for poor children to attend the best private school in the region. The gap between public and private education in Brazil demanded a significant amount of support for the children to keep up with their duties. Thus, they spent the counter-shift at Vila Ninho, the physical facility of the project. There, children had reinforcement classes, received help with their homework, and participated in more exploratory activities. In this context, we offered a series of routines to foster good habits of thinking. In 2022, the project entered a new phase and became a full-time school. Three groups of pupils participated in the activities: 10 pupils in the 2nd grade, 10 pupils in the 3rd grade, and 6 pupils in the 5th grade (ages 6, 7, and 9 years old, respectively). No group had previous experience with philosophy classes. Each session of the activities lasted one hour per week during the whole year of 2021. The activities took place in the classroom, each grade separately.

98

C. Vieira et al.

In the first six months, we applied the thinking routines suggested by Project Zero, following the course ‘Critical Thinking through Art’ [2] described in Sect. 2.2 below. In the next six months, we prototyped a routine for the inference to the best explanation. The three of us participated as facilitators, but the activity had a hybrid setup. Débora was present in the classroom and acted as the main facilitator. Ligea and Celso joined the sessions remotely. The children could see and interact with the facilitators through a TV monitor. The research followed a qualitative method of ethnographic observation [3]. Some of the sessions were recorded by video. Ligea took the field notes and made the observation protocols for the contribution of each pupil in every session. Celso was responsible for the analytical memos. The ethnographic method suits our object of investigation, namely, the tacit inferential practices of children. The study design with recursive data collection and analysis allowed for ongoing prototyping of the routine. The analysis of the first set of routines revealed how the pupils’ unawareness of their own inferential process led to failures seeming to stem from associative memory. After consulting the literature on critical thinking [4–6] and cognitive psychology [7–10], we developed a first prototype that should address the pupils’ unawareness and biases. Repeated applications elicited more cases for recursive analyses. These were used to improve the prototype. Both stages are described in the following. Section 2 conveys our starting theoretical assumptions and how the data collection suggested a reformulation. Section 3 presents the final design.

2

The First Application

2.1

The Conceptual Framework

Three pedagogical priority claims guided our decision to choose thinking routines as suitable activities to foster critical thinking at Ninho. . The Community of Inquiry Claim (CI) circumscribes reasonableness. It claims that to foster good thinking in children priority should be given to the constitution of a communal structure in which the participants feel safe, supported, and motivated to engage in dialogic discussions with their peers. Participation in this community develops truth-conducive inquiry strategies [11]. . The Virtue Education Claim (VE) circumscribes a reasonable disposition. It claims that to foster good thinking in children priority should be given to nourishing proper intellectual disposition [12, 13]. Intellectual disposition includes the ability to reason, the sensibility to judge when such reasoning applies, and an inclination to be reasonable [14].

6

A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children

99

. The Critical Thinking Claim (CT) circumscribes reasoning. It claims that to foster good thinking in children priority should be given to the structured instruction of the techniques of good reasoning [4, 5]. These techniques consist of the principles of formal and informal logic. These are priority claims, not exclusivity ones. Thus, each position has a different stance on what should be the prior concern of education without necessarily excluding the content of the other claims. If so, defenders of one position can reckon secondary roles to the circumscription of the others. For instance, CI enthusiasts are not claiming that we should only care about the community of inquiry without addressing disposition and reasoning techniques. Moreover, there is an overlap among these claims.1 This justifies our use of the vague expression ‘good thinking’ as a shared goal for all three cases. The use of the circumscriptions reasoning, reasonable, and reasonableness also tries to do justice to the agreement among the views. It should be clear that they are not attached to each of the claims. For instance, one can foster reasoning without endorsing CT. Reasoning is defined as thinking constrained by inferential norms that one deems to be appropriate [15]. A reasonable disposition refers to the mental acts that make an agent act and react in a reasonable way [13]. Reasonableness encompasses the social aspect of being able to be reasoned with [11]. In the following, while talking about the approaches, we will refer to the claims CI, VE, and CT, but while talking about the object, we can rely on the three Rs without committing to the claims.

2.1.1 Disagreements The disagreements between the claims become more evident after noticing the difference in scope among them. CT, the more restricted approach, assumes that structured instruction concerning the techniques of good reasoning is sufficient to develop good thinking. From a CT perspective, environment and disposition might help, but they are not necessary and certainly not sufficient for developing the competencies of good reasoning.2 CI and VE both argue for a wider scope than CT. VE is agent-centered. Thus, it focuses on cultivating dispositions instead of teaching techniques alone.3 The community-centered CI is even wider and focuses on an environment in which

1

The overlapping can also generate confusion. Both CI and VE use ‘critical thinking’ in a broader way than the one defined in CT above. In the following, we use it as in CT. 2 See 7. Also, for Siegel [6] the virtuous intellect is not necessarily rational. Thus, in addition to intellectual virtues, one must learn thinking techniques. However, he concedes that VE provides better descriptions of the virtues that may help students. 3 See the Responsibilist approach to Intellectual Virtues [13]. For Baehr [16, p. 23], virtues contribute to becoming a better person while cognitive abilities do not.

100

C. Vieira et al.

several agents interact. VE and CI recognize the importance of reasoning techniques but also point out their insufficiency.4 VE enthusiasts think that the direct instruction of the techniques of logical reasoning neglects the difference between having an ability and acquiring a disposition. For the CI enthusiasts, CT dismisses the role of peers, context sensibility and the affective aspects of pupils that are central to learning.5 The disagreement between CI and VE appears in the difference between top– bottom and bottom-up strategies.6 VE defends an exemplarist top-down approach in which the students should have contact with virtuous reasoners to admire and emulate. CI, on the other hand, is peer-centered. The teacher plays the role of a facilitator in emphasizing the good practices in a dialogic discussion that should occur among the participants.

2.2

The First Applications, Soft-Pluralism

The recognition of the overlap among the above mentioned positions convinced us that we could find a conciliatory activity that encompasses most of the positive aspects of the three. We call this first approach a soft pluralism because, at first, we did not think it would be necessary to make sure that each of the circumscriptions (the three Rs) was being addressed in a very well-defined way. Based on the tension between VE + CI versus CT, we conceived an opposition that served as our starting guideline: . Exercise: the repetitive exercise of a competence stripped of any (or most) elements that are external or peripheral to that competence. Ex. Exercises on truth tables [5, p. 136]. . Habituation: the repetitive exercise of a competence in an artificial scenario with external and peripheral elements. These elements emulate some of the features of real-life occasions in which the use of the competence will be valuable. The scenario tries to capture the social aspects and the role of peers.

4

Baehr [17, p. 258] admits that VE educators should focus not only on virtues but also on techniques. Bevan [18] and Batally [19] also argue for a joint approach. However, they all point out that the techniques are insufficient. We will argue for the necessity of a joint approach in a much stronger way. 5 Concerning CT, the materials of P4C include training on logic but, again, the focus is on peerguided activities leading to the discovery and development of rules of deduction and avoidance of fallacies. 6 Again, there is an agreement. Baehr [12, Chaps. 20 and 21] suggests creating the ideal classroom and environment for the development of virtues while reasonableness in CI is also dispositional.

6

A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children

101

We believe that detached practice, as in a series of exercises of formal logic, may be partially responsible for a backlash of a restricted approach to critical thinking by VE and CI. Moreover, the thicker conception of practice in habituation suits the thicker conception of good reasoning suitable to agent-based and communitycentered approaches. Good reasoning should go beyond the ability to become a disposition and guide social interactions. The willingness to contemplate a thicker conception of good reasoning led us to the ‘making thinking visible’ approach and its application through Project Zero’s ‘thinking routines’ [1]. More specifically, we decided to start the implementation following the model of the course ‘Critical Thinking through Art’ (National Gallery of Arts).7 The activities usually start with careful observation of a work of art followed by different activities designed to develop good thinking habits by following some ordered number of steps. Take the routine ‘see, think and wonder’ as an example. The children are asked to observe a painting carefully, describe what they see, and tell what the previous steps made them think. After that, they take the whole experience a step further through wondering. In this step, the pupils provide the reasons that justify their wonder. The facilitator then uses the so-called magic question ‘What makes you say that?’ to prompt the pupils to become aware of their reasons. The magic question nudges the pupils to expose and become aware of what may be grounding their thinking but does not make them engage in dialogic argumentation. To increase this type of peer interaction, the teacher assumed the role of a facilitator in a community of inquiry. Whenever conflicting interpretations arose, the children were encouraged to give evidence-based reasons for their views. They were also encouraged to appraise one another’s reasons [20]. Thus: Facilitator: You say that there is a wolf in the painting, did anyone say that it was something different? Pupil: Yes, a dog. Facilitator: And what makes you think that it is a wolf and not a dog?

7

The ‘critical thinking’ in the title is closer to the wider conception of critical thinking in CI and VE than that of CT defined above. For an evaluation of the program, see 16.

102

2.2.1

C. Vieira et al.

First Results

After six months of application, a qualitative analysis of the notes and protocols of the routines revealed clear positive results. The aesthetic-related gains in observation,8 sensibilization9 and justification10 will not be topics of our reflection. Concerning reasoning, we could confirm that the strategy of making the thinking visible was responsible for much improvement in reflective thinking measured by the awareness of one’s own assumptions.11 At first, the pupils were so eager to jump to conclusions that they did not differentiate between description (seeing), interpretation (thinking) and extrapolation (wondering). The facilitator almost naturally assumed the role of making these differences salient through questions such as ‘Can you provide evidence?’ or ‘Where are you taking this information from?’ Throughout the sessions, the pupils became more competent in stepping back and identifying the sources of their conclusions. However, after the first six months, they still had a hard time evaluating the degree of certainty of information arising from these different sources. For instance, they could not distinguish the likelihood of a conclusion based on observation from a fanciful association of ideas. One extreme case may provide an illustration.12 The children saw the film Luca in one of Ninho’s movie afternoon sessions. The film features a half-fish, halfhuman ‘hybrid’ character. The following week, the children saw Gauguin’s Maria in the thinking routine. It did not take long until one of the students suggested that the baby on the mother’s shoulder was a ‘hybrid’. Many others agreed. Association of ideas is a source of creativity, and we want to be careful not to hinder children’s imagination.13 However, it is part of the required awareness for good reasoning that they assess the sources of their conclusions. During the first semester, we tried to raise their self-critical awareness relying on the suggestions by VE and CI.

8

Children became better at observation. In the beginning, the descriptions of what they saw were empty such as ‘people’, and ‘trees’. We adopted a fractal method to push further descriptions. They name three elements in the painting. Then they had to give three adjectives for each element. Only after that, they were invited to say what they think concerning the described aspects. 9 There was also a visible gain in the familiarity with artists and artworks, with children being able to identify by style the paintings by Tarsila do Amaral or Van Gogh. 10 The children became more interested in the paintings, but there is much work to do. They usually rely on vague assessments such as ‘I like it’. Thus, there is also room for development in the aesthetic realm. 11 See [21, p. 26]. 12 Extreme cases offer good illustrations but their intensity should not be taken as representative. 13 Lipman et al. [22, p. 62–64] identify the thin line educators have to walk in. Children are not good at reasoning, and their creativity does not survive schooling.

6

A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children

2.3

103

Shortcomings in VE

Children are intuitive thinkers. Thus, one of the main steps in their philosophical education involves overcoming the egocentric perspective characterized by an unreflected certainty that theirs is the only view of the world [23, p. 301].14 The information coming from the egocentric perspective plays a significant role in confirmation, egocentric, hindsight, and overconfidence biases. These, together with the availability heuristic, share the common feature of retrieving, selecting or even forging information that fits one’s worldview.15 In our experience, this type of behavior deeply influenced the children during the routines. For instance, in the face of the evidence that the animal in Kirchner’s View of Basel and the Rhine could not be a horse because it was too small in relation to the humans, a pupil preferred to come up with a justification that it might be a little colt instead of changing his anchored view. Since biases are so manifest in adults, it is not surprising that they occur even to a greater extent in children. We adopted two VE strategies in an attempt to avoid them. . Narrative examples: Following the exemplarist approach, defenders of VE suggest that an efficient way to elicit virtuous behavior is by telling narratives of virtuous agents in action [25]. In our applied context, we added stories of how the artists were constantly trying to improve their views to the point of abandoning strategies that were successful in their previous work. For instance, in a routine based on the Great Wave, the facilitator would tell how Hokusai spent his whole life trying to perfect his mastery. He even changed his name to mark these developments.16 . Theoretical reflection: VE enthusiasts recommend including some theoretic discussion about what it is to have a particular intellectual virtue [12, p. 306]. Accordingly, we added some sessions in which we explained, discussed and praised intellectual humility. Some of the sessions were before the routines, others on separate days. Our qualitative analysis in the first six months of application did not identify any effect on the egocentric selection of information. Narrative examples and theoretical reflection did not seem to diminish the prevalent biases.17 We found a possible explanation for the failure in previous theoretic objections to the limitations of

14

Children also fail to notice that most of the contents of their views stem from inputs by adults through several cultural sources. 15 The literature on biases is extensive, see [24] for a general account. 16 Hokusai even wrote on the Great Wave that he was changing his name, thus the children could see the evidence. 17 This is a limited application both in time and number of participants. So we are not claiming that they do not work. We just did not see an effect.

104

C. Vieira et al.

VE concerning biases. To put it simply, experts do acquire better intuitive judgments through habituation. However, experts also are susceptible to biases [26, p. 63–65]. Thus, even if a dispositional education provides a better judgment, the improvement will not necessarily work against biases.18 The behavior of children in our restricted experience confirmed this line of reasoning. During the theoretical reflection, the pupils could understand intellectual humility as the willingness to change their position in light of compelling counterevidence or argument.19 However, in practice, they remained prone to engage in fanciful rationalizations in order to keep their initial position instead of changing it. The shortcoming also fits the CT critique of VE’s ostensive pedagogy. VE is agent-based and not act-based. Thus, it avoids breaking down procedural recommendations to action, which it deems to be simplistic. Instead, agents will become virtuous by modeling virtuous agents [29, p. 154; 30, p. 15; 31, pp. 17–18]. Once that is accepted, there is no specific set of techniques for good reasoning. This is criticized by CT enthusiasts [5, p. 132]. Exemplarism expects too much of novices. They must recognize what makes the behavior of a virtuous agent virtuous and figure out by themselves how to operate in difficult situations. Moreover, even if the novice acquires such a disposition, they will not be able to provide a conscious justification for their chosen behavior. In our experience, the opacity of acquiring a disposition also contrasts with making thinking visible, which proved to be one of the most useful features of the routines. CT, on the other hand, is act-based. Accordingly, the CT teacher can provide structured instruction via a step-by-step procedure to evaluate arguments and a non-personal way to justify why the procedures work.20 Psychologists studying bias in the judgment of experts agree that acquiring expertise by practice works. However, experts are still subject to biases which procedural rules and guidelines can reduce [7, Chap. 8]. If so, procedural guidance plays an important role even when acquiring and cultivating good habits work.

2.3.1

Shortcomings in CI

Due to its social nature, CI offers a solution against the tendency to select only the information that confirms an egocentric perspective. A growing body of evidence corroborates that CI increases the force of arguments due to the consideration of opposing views [32, 33]. In our applications, the facilitator prompted pupils to appreciate their conflicting views. This peer interaction should lead them towards a relativistic view in which one recognizes that there are other ways to see the world

18

See [27]. See [28] for an attempt to defend VE. One difficulty that we had to overcome was children’s tendency to mix humility and intellectual humility together. 20 As Kotzee et al. [5, p. 136] argue, even if one is going to teach by exemplar narratives, it should be necessary to tell how the virtuous agent acted and why it is justified. 19

6

A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children

105

[15, 23].21 The goal, however, should lie in a step forward. From an intersubjective perspective, these different views are assessed collectively. Psychological research confirms that, under certain conditions, the joint deliberation in group decision-making decreases confirmation biases because the participants have to face the objections of others. However, the ‘under certain conditions’ apposition is important. In natural setups, spontaneous group discussion also generates an ideal environment for the manifestation of other biases, namely, those related to social influence. In our application, CI did increase the recognition of other points of view. However, we also identified that the dynamic was susceptible to biases associated with groupthink [8]. More specifically, our qualitative analysis suggested that the group opinion depended more on information cascades than on the plausibility of a view. A cascade in cognitive psychology refers to a biased information chain in which an arbitrary first opinion or evaluation generates a contagious trend that influences further ones [9]. Popularity proves to be so socially self-reinforcing that the effects of the first evaluations become almost impossible to efface. Evidence that the cascade relies on arbitrary factors comes from the fact that similar groups with similar information will differ a lot in their evaluations due to randomly selected first opinions. Social contagion occurred a lot in our group dynamics. For instance, in one session, a pupil jumped in and claimed that Santa Claus was one of the characters in Picasso’s Saltimbancs. He was fat, wore red clothes and had a bag. The adherence to the position was massive. Another pupil then suggested that it could be a clown. But the proponent of the Santa hypothesis argued that it could not be so because clowns do not work in the desert. The facilitator praised him for the good point and asked if Santa Claus usually is represented in the desert. In general, pupils are more willing to change the subject instead of openly changing their opinion. A minority of pupils pointed out more counterevidence. The character had no beard, and despite being red, his hat and clothes did not look like Santa’s. The facilitator tried to help by inviting these pupils to voice their arguments more than once. However, the first impression was so strong that, even in the face of seemingly convincing counterarguments, the great majority of pupils in this class could not abandon their view. Proving that there is some arbitrariness in the dynamics, in other classes, the hypothesis of Santa either did not appear or appeared but was not particularly popular.22

21

However, it is not so clear that the pupils are really open to going beyond the simple recognition of different views and are willing to change their minds. See, for instance, the identification that the students cannot build an argument for the opposing views in [34]. 22 The facilitator usually asks who wants to voice their opinions first. This design selects the more extroverted students. These students are likely to be more popular as well. Both factors increase the likelihood of cascades. See [35].

106

C. Vieira et al.

We hypothesized that the prevalence of groupthink biases such as cascades might be connected to a shortcoming identified even among experienced practitioners of CI. They fail to take a knowledge-centered approach to intersubjectivity in which not only the multiple views are accounted for, but they do so under a joint goal of getting as close as possible to the truth of the matter.23 Reasoning was defined as thinking constrained by the inferential norms that one deems appropriate (Sect. 2.1). Thus, we supposed that one way to prompt a knowledge-centered intersubjectivity was to make the relevant inferential norm collectively visible to the group. To do so, we would need some instruction concerning the methods of good reasoning and their justification as CT supports. However, we wanted to keep the success of habituation through a visual structure that is accessible to all participants of the community of inquiry. This hypothesis motivated our design of a routine to train children to make inferences to the best explanation. Meanwhile, to sum up the information that served as our guiding principles: . Making the structure of thinking visible works, but biases are pervasive. . The community approach helps diminish the egocentric perspective, but it brings its own set of social biases. . A structured instruction of procedural techniques for critical thinking was missing and might help. Before we proceed, we want to mention that we anticipate that defenders of each of the approaches above will point out that the shortcomings may come from our failure to follow the recommendations of each claim or the apparent time limitations of the application. Our response is a pragmatic one. Our application is too restricted to serve as evidence against any of their claims. However, we do believe that our experience identified important problems and that our reaction to them indicates promising solutions that might be useful for other contexts.24 Reasoning is complex but has a determinable complexity. Educating for good reasoning will be unavoidably complex but should be so in a determinate way. Combining virtues education, community of inquiry and critical thinking offer a way to structure such a determinate complexity.

23

See intersubjectivity oriented towards knowledge in [23]. Neither are we claiming that there were no practices in CI, VE and CT that meet the criteria for what we are calling strong pluralism.

24

6

A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children

3

The Prototype

3.1

The Natural Outset

107

Familiarity and fallibility are useful pedagogical criteria to select a starting point for any teaching endeavor. We treat them as complementary conditions. Familiarity gives the educators something to build upon, while fallibility assures the need for learning. While reflecting on which specific technique we wanted to incorporate into a thinking routine, it became clear that the inference to the best explanation is both familiar and fallible. Undefined inference occurs almost naturally in human cognition. In our experience, children usually jumped to different conclusions based on unconscious inferences concerning some elements of the paintings. The process came so naturally to them that they tend not to perceive it.25 This immediacy is part of the problem. Without awareness, children cannot properly evaluate their reasoning.26 In our application, we noticed that many biases affected the children’s assessment of the reasons they provided for their interpretations. Thus, we hypothesized that the inference to the best explanation could provide an effective way to combat these shortcomings.27 In line with habituation as defined above (Sect. 2.2), our routine tries to mimic the occasions in which questions demanding an inference to the best explanation arise. Instead of starting with formal instruction and then presenting the routine, we kept the initial steps of ‘see, think and wonder’. The first step was ‘see’. The students (in groups of ~10) should carefully observe a painting. However, we included another feature. The children were asked to write their thoughts before the public discussion. This step should diminish the social contagion effects on their opinions. As research in decision-making confirms most of the benefits of having diverse perspectives in a group occur when individual opinions are truly independent [10]. After writing their thoughts, public discussion follows as usual. Children present their views, and the facilitator constantly asks the magic ‘what makes you say that’ questions. As previously identified, interpretative issues arise very early on these occasions. In Kirchner’s View of Basel and the Rhein, some saw a church while others saw a castle and even a rocket! The facilitator takes the opportunity to choose the most promising polemical element in a painting and make the different views salient to the whole class. At this point, making the thinking visible begins. A table is made on the blackboard with a column for each hypothesis. The children also received a copy of the table on a piece of paper which they need to fill in with all their hypotheses (Fig. 1).

25

See [36]. Thus, even if they became perfect dispositional believers as in a VE utopia, it would not be enough. 27 Strictly speaking, the inference to the best explanation is not a formal method. Some philosophers even characterize it as fallacious, but its usefulness for scientific investigation is undeniable. Hence, the necessity of being self-aware of its potential shortcomings. 26

108

C. Vieira et al.

Fig. 1 Inference for the best explanation

The observation, notes and the visible structure provided by the table set the stage for the formal instruction.

3.2

The Formal Instruction

We added a step of formal instruction to our routine to answer the CT requirement. Furthermore, instead of simplifying the vocabulary by avoiding jargon, we opted to try out and see if the children would learn to use words such as hypothesis and evidence.28 They immediately nicknamed them the ‘hard words’, but they were keen to use them.29

28

We also have a step of instruction on ‘inference’, but we did not include it here. It is hard to know to what extent the children understand the concepts and their use as we present them. They clearly did not achieve a full-fledged use competence even after one year of activities. However, in our experience, the repetition that is a feature of a routine approach was key for the assimilation and progress. We repeated not only the routines but also the theoretic explanations. In addition to that, the in-person facilitator would spend the day with the children and use quotidian

29

6

A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children

109

3.2.1 Hypothesis To explain what a hypothesis is, we offer near synonyms such as supposition, opinion, and others. However, the most useful pedagogical strategy consists in emphasizing the structure in which hypotheses present themselves. In this case, we say that a hypothesis is what happens in an ‘I think that…’ phrase. The facilitator takes the opportunity to make it evident that all the interpretations on the table suit the model: Look at the table. We can fit the ‘I think that’ phrase in each column. For instance, I think that… it is a rocket. Hence, these are our working hypotheses.

3.2.2 Evidence and Explanation When faced with the question about the polemical element, the children tend to be very excited to defend their views, so much so that they express it by screaming their answers. Here is the opportunity for the facilitator to calm down the atmosphere and show that the proper way to defend a view is by giving reasons that support it.30 At this point, the moderator makes evident the full structure of a hypothesis and its reasons. We use the same strategy of offering a fixed structure with the content to be filled. The reasons are what come after a ‘because’. Thus, we have: I think that … [and we enter a hypothesis] because ... [and here we provide a reason]

The tricky part is to differentiate the evidence that is accessible to all and the cognitive work leading to an explanation. Each pupil must realize that each explanation is an individual cognitive process. Thus, the others will only be able to grasp an explanation if it is made explicit: Usually, giving a reason is giving evidence that makes clear to others what we are thinking. The evidence is the same for all and the ‘because’ is our reasoning. Take the explanation ‘I think it is a rocket because it has a red triangular top.’ Everybody can see the red triangular top, but not everyone will agree that this proves that it is a rocket. That is why we must explain the evidence, and the explanation must be convincing. Think about another explanation for the same evidence. For instance, ‘the red triangular top is a roof’. Which one do you think is more convincing?31

events as opportunities to point out occasions for using what they learned in the routines (see an example in ‘Meta-cognition’ below). 30 The facilitator must always navigate through the children’s excess of excitement or lack of interest throughout these routines. Lack of interest tends to appear in the more theoretic explanations. Excessive excitement usually occurs when children want to defend their views. Hence, asking for children’s opinions can make the environment livelier, including during theoretic explanations. 31 In the future, we may experiment with more refined divisions such as Toulmin’s [37]: claim, data, warrants, backing, rebuttals and qualifiers. But, at first, it seemed too complex to be useful for the pupils.

110

C. Vieira et al.

I think that…

because...

Fig. 2 Gestures help fixing the structure

The facilitator should provide several examples based on what the children previously expressed. Then the children are also invited to offer more evidence and explanations. While they do so, the cells of the table below the hypotheses are filled. There is the possibility of inserting a rule of gesture to fix the structure. For instance, the pupil should raise their finger in connection to the ‘I think that… (hypothesis)’ and then turn it 90° to make a point in connection to the ‘because… (evidence)’ as in Fig. 2.

3.2.3

Counter-Evidence

Once evidences for the competing hypotheses are supplied, it is time for the facilitator to point out another way of arguing for a view: We can also give counter-evidence that weakens a competing hypothesis.

The children do it naturally, so some examples tend to be available. Again, the facilitator only has to make it salient and structured. For instance: It cannot be a rocket because it is in the middle of a city.

Then the children are invited to find counterevidence for each of the reasons they provided. The third row in the table is filled. The pupils now have a structured visualization that maps all the hypotheses and the reasons for and against them. This sort of argument mapping is in line with some trends in critical thinking [38]. Apart from that, up until here, there is nothing new in comparison to CI. But the main problem we wanted to address concerns assessing the arguments.

6

A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children

3.2.4

111

Assessment

To offer the pupils a procedural approach to assessing different arguments, we built upon recommendations from the research on judgment-making. We focused on three guidelines from cognitive psychology. (1) Our final judgments are more on point when the main question is divided into simpler ones. (2) We are better at relative judgments based on comparing options rather than absolute ones. (3) The adoption of a common scale helps to provide mutually comparable partial answers [7]. In our table, the choice of a hypothesis stands for the general question. The explanatory evidence breaks it up into more specific questions. Since these are divided into “for and against”, we are in a good position to make relative evaluations. To supply the missing feature, a scale, we present the pupils with a three-leveled system going from three stars for compelling reasons to one star for weak ones.32 During the presentation, the facilitator points out the comparative nature of the assessment. Since we have pros and cons, we need to judge how many stars we give to a reason in relation to one another. For instance, before giving the stars for the reason ‘rockets have red and triangular tops’, we have to compare it with the reason ‘red triangular top is a roof and rockets do not have a roof’. The stronger should receive more stars. Other reasons can come to help. Thus, ‘rockets do not stay in the middle of the city’ might enter into the comparison and help us decide to put more stars for one or another reason.

The children should individually perform the assessment on their own tables first. We took as positive evidence that, at this point, most of the children have already changed their minds, and the less plausible hypotheses are tacitly abandoned.33 However, more than one contender usually remains.34 This is a positive feature since it mimics most of the situations that the children will face in their lives. For the educators, conflict brings the opportunity to make reasoning collective.

3.3

The Collective Assessment

Let us start with a quick overview. After a natural start for the routine, we had procedural instruction as recommended by CI. Then we made the structure of the elements and evaluation of inference visible in the table, following the Project Zero and the argument mapping approaches. According to the recommendations

32

We used a scale of three for simplicity. More trained groups might experiment with a 5 or 7 scale. More than seven is not recommended [39]. 33 See [36]. Children are good at evaluating the certainty of deduction. In particular after they become aware of their inferences. 34 There seems to be a tendency that more abstract and less precise paintings lead to more competing hypotheses.

112

C. Vieira et al.

of cognitive psychology, we used comparisons to calibrate each pupil’s degree of certainty concerning each explanation. Hopefully, this will also train their intuitions, as in VE. Finally, the stage is ready for approaching the inference to the best explanation from the perspective of collective reasoning. We predicted that this step and the previous one will decrease the groupthink biases. The common scale of stars comes to hand in open discussions. The facilitators tell that the first shared goal is to try to agree on how many stars each reason deserves. After reading one of the reasons, we ask one of its defenders to suggest how many stars it deserves and argue for their level of certainty. Thus, we avoid extroverts always coming first. In the sequence, other pupils can express their agreement, doubts and objections. The collective enterprise is emphasized by contrasting the two phases: When thinking about the evidence in favor of and against a hypothesis, each one of us defended our views. This is important. People who are for some hypothesis will be good at providing reasons for it, while people who are against it will be better at spotting the weak points. The strongest version of each hypothesis is created by explaining the evidence (the things that all can see in the painting) and its interpretation. We also did that. Now, we have to select the best explanation. From this point on, it is no longer about trying to defend individual opinions anymore. All the information belongs to all of us as a group and, collectively, we must try to decide which one of them provides the best general interpretation of the issue, that is to say, which one offers the best explanation.

A series of comparative discussions about the pros and the cons follow. At each step, we try to agree on how many stars should be given to each pro and con in the open collective table. In the end, we do a collective general appraisal of the stars in the whole table to estimate which hypothesis is the best. This sums up our proposal to make intersubjectivity visible.35 The development of this final design of the routine was the result of ongoing applications and adaptations. Thus, based on the need, we are already planning other applications to gather the necessary data for a steadier evaluation. However, the first impressions were promising. During the second semester, we noticed that the awareness of the pupils’ own reasoning continued to increase. Also, exaggerated fancifulness in an association of ideas was spotted when making the evaluation and usually received just one star. The use of the stars applied to each reason provided a way for the pupils to convince themselves to abandon their first anchored general hypotheses. Much to the surprise of the pupils, when they added the results of their divided evaluations they recognized that the final result frequently ended up being different from their first general evaluation. Finally, the level of agreement as a group at the end of the sessions was higher than before. More importantly, only the more plausible hypotheses tend to survive the process.

35

If there were close cases, we were OK with letting the matters open. Also, if some of them want to stick to any other hypotheses, they can do so.

6

A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children

113

Thus, it seems that the power of arbitrary criteria was reduced, including the effect of a first voiced opinion.

3.3.1

Meta-Cognitions

We hope that the open table filled individually but discussed and assessed collectively works as a map for collective metacognition. To emphasize the meta-level, after the routine, the facilitator openly reviews what the class has made [40]. While doing so, the role of each part of the table should also become clear. Thus, the children are visually exposed to the metacognitive awareness of the technique: It all started when we saw that the same element in a painting led to different conclusions. After hearing the others, we realized that there were several plausible hypotheses. To try to find the best one, we filled the first row with all the hypotheses. Then we had to investigate what were the sources of our hypotheses. We also had to explain them to the others to show how compelling they were. We also saw that some of us saw that some explanations did not seem to work that well. These problems are the cons or the counterarguments with which we filled in this column. After filling it, we used the stars to evaluate each piece of information. But we always did so in comparison with the counterargument and other explanations. After some discussion, we arrived at a very confident answer.

It is also important to show that the same process can be used in their quotidian. During the semester, we had an event that provided a convenient occasion to do so36 : We can use this table and this scale of values in all sorts of situations in our everyday life. For instance, last week the 4th grade built a city in our garden. The following day, the 3rd grade entered the play and added some buildings! But after the weekend, the city was destroyed. Some of you said that the 3rd grade was responsible for that. You can resort to the table of the best explanation to solve the matter.37

The final review provides an opportunity to praise the children for their good behavior. In this context, the facilitator emphasizes the necessary intellectual virtues for the activity, open-mindedness and intellectual humility. Again, there is the occasion for nurturing self-awareness: Intellectual humility is necessary for us to admit that our initial positions were not strong as we supposed they were before arguing for them. Without open-mindedness, we cannot seriously engage with the other hypotheses, reasons and counter-arguments.

36

The use of this and other situations (such as noticing how the movies that the children saw influenced their interpretations, see ‘First Results’ above) was only possible because Débora, one of the facilitators, interacted with the children in several of their activities daily. We also informally discussed the possible effects of the routines with the teachers of the project. 37 The children concluded that the 3rd grade would not destroy something they helped create.

114

C. Vieira et al.

Finally, it is also time to increase self-awareness about the importance of collective enterprise. At this point, it is worth emphasizing how the group arrived at a hypothesis stronger than the sum of the individual opinions and that this is only possible because of using the right technique, with the right disposition, and in the ideal environment.

4

Conclusion

To conclude the report, we want to reinforce that, after six months of application, the results, although remarkable to us, must be considered carefully. The overall quality of the arguments and even children’s attitudes improved. They also became more and more at ease with identifying the origins of their conclusions. Of course, these positive results probably have to do with the overall experience, including the first six months of routines. More specifically, in the second phase, the children started using new vocabulary such as hypothesis and evidence, including in other contexts. The system of evaluation of each reason in comparison seems to be the source of much improvement since the good results became evident even before the collective step. However, there is no denying that the collective discussion increases the likelihood of the prevalence of the more plausible hypotheses. The six months of application was a prototyping period. Now that we have arrived at a final set-up, we plan to apply this routine in different schools and contexts to gather more feedback. We also hope that this publication will reach an audience that may be willing to apply some versions of it. More generally, we are also interested to see if the triadic approach to the routines with well-defined steps to combine reasoning, a reasonable disposition, and reasonableness can live up to our expectations. Following that, we also expect to develop other routines that deal with different specific techniques of good reasoning. Reasoning is complex but has a determinable complexity. Educating for good reasoning will be unavoidably complex but should be so in a determinate way. Combining virtues education, community of inquiry and critical thinking offer a way to structure such a determinate complexity. Celso Vieira, Débora Mariz, and Ligea Hoki

References 1. Ritchhart R, Church M, Morrison K (2011) Making thinking visible. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco 2. Poce A (2021) Virtual museum experience for critical thinking development: first results from the National Gallery of Art (MOOC, US). J Educ Cult Psychol Stud 24:67–83 3. Breidenstein G, Hirschauer S, Kalthoff H, Nieswand B (2013) Ethnografie—Die Praxis der Feldforschung. UTB, Stuttgart

6

A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children

115

4. Bailin S, Siegel H (2003) Critical thinking. In: Blake N et al (eds) The Blackwell guide to the philosophy of education, pp 181–193 5. Kotzee B, Carter JA, Siegel H (2019) Educating for intellectual virtue: a critique from action guidance. Episteme 18(2):177–199 6. Siegel H (2017) Critical thinking and the intellectual virtues, intellectual virtues and education. In: Baehr J (ed) Essays in applied virtue epistemology. Routledge, London, pp 95–112 7. Kahneman D, Sibony O, Sunstein C (2021) Noise: a flaw in human judgment. Little, Brown Spark, New York 8. Bang D, Frith CD (2017) Making better decisions in groups. R Soc Open Sci 4(8):170–193 9. Salganik M, Watts D (2008) Leading the herd astray: an experimental study of self-fulfilling prophecies in an artificial cultural market. Soc Psychol Q 71:338–355 10. Davis-Stober CP, Budescu DV, Broomell SB, Dana J (2015) The composition of optimally wise crowds. Decis Anal 12(3):130–143 11. Splitter LJ, Sharp AM (1996) La otra educación Filosofía para Niños y la comunidad de indagación. Manantial, Buenos Aires 12. Baehr J (2015) Cultivating good minds: a philosophical & practical guide to educating for intellectual virtues. Intellectual Virtues, Maryland 13. Roberts R, Wood WJ (2007) Intellectual virtues. OUP, Oxford 14. Tishman S, Jay E, Perkins DE (1993) Teaching thinking dispositions: from transmission to enculturation. Theory Into Practice 32(3):147–153 15. Moshman D (2004) From inference to reasoning: the construction of rationality. Think Reason 10(2):221–239 16. Baehr J (2011) The inquiring mind: on intellectual virtues and virtue epistemology. OUP, Oxford 17. Baehr J (2013) Educating for intellectual virtues: from theory to practice. J Philos Educ 47(2):248–262 18. Bevan R (2009) Expanding rationality: the relation between epistemic virtue and critical thinking. Educ Theory 59(2):167–179 19. Battaly H (2016) Responsibilist virtues in reliabilist classrooms. In: Baehr J (ed) Intellectual virtues and education: essays in applied virtue epistemology. Routledge, London 20. Reznitskaya A, Glina M, Carolan B, Michaud O, Rogers J, Sequeira L (2012) Examining transfer effects from dialogic discussions to new tasks and contexts. Contemp Educ Psychol 37(4):289–306 21. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education. CUP, Cambridge 22. Lipman M, Sharp A, Oskanyan FS (1980) Philosophy in the classroom. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 23. Daniel MF, Splitter L, Slade C, Lafortune L, Pallascio R, Mongeau P (2004) Dialogical critical thinking: elements of definitions emerging in the analysis of transcripts from pupils aged 10 to 12 years. Aust J Educ 48(3):295–313 24. Novakowski D, Mishra S (2018) Biases. In: Shackelford T, Weekes-Shackelford V (eds) Encyclopedia of evolutionary psychological science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/9783-319-16999-6_627-1 25. Battaly H (2006) Teaching intellectual virtues. Teach Philos 29(3):191–222 26. Mizrahi M (2013) Why arguments from expert opinion are weak arguments. Informal Logic 33:57–79 27. Carter JA, Pritchard D (2016) Cognitive bias, skepticism and understanding. In: Grimm SR, Baumberger C, Ammon S (eds) Explaining understanding. Routledge, London, pp 272–292 28. M˘ar˘as¸oiu AI (2020) Intellectual virtues and biased understanding. J Philos Res 45:97–113 29. Hookway C (2000) Regulating inquiry: virtue, doubt, and sentiment. In: Axtell G (ed) Knowledge, belief, and character: readings in virtue epistemology. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, pp 149–162 30. Zagzebski L (2017) Exemplarist moral theory. OUP, Oxford 31. Annas J (2011) Intelligent virtue. OUP, Oxford

116

C. Vieira et al.

32. Kuhn D, Shaw V, Felton M (1997) Effects of dyadic interactions on reasoning. Cogn Instr 15(3):287–315 33. Osborne J, Erduran S, Simon S (2004) Enhancing the quality of argumentation in school science. J Res Sci Teach 41(10):994–1020 34. Brem S, Rips L (2000) Explanation and evidence in informal argument. Cogn Sci 24(4):573– 605 35. Robalino JD, Macy M (2018) Peer effects on adolescent smoking: are popular teens more influential. PLoS ONE 13(7):1–12 36. Pillow BH, Hill V, Boyce A, Stein C (2000) Understanding inference as a source of knowledge: children’s ability to evaluate the certainty of deduction, perception, and guessing. Dev Psychol 36:169–179 37. Toulmin SE (1958) The uses of argument. CUP, Cambridge 38. Gelder TV (2005) Teaching critical thinking: some lessons from cognitive science. Coll Teach 53(1):41–48 39. Miller GA (1956) The magical number seven plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychol Rev 63(2):81–97 40. Berkowitz MW, Bier MC (2007) What works in character education. J Res Charac Educ 5(1):29–34

Celso Vieira is a Wissenschaftler Mitarbeiter at the RUB specializing in the history of philosophy. He met his co-authors, Débora Mariz and Ligea Hoki, while studying philosophy at UFMG. In 2021, despite following different paths, the willingness to apply the results of their research on philosophy brought them together to participate in the Ninho Project as part of its scientific committee. Through this project, they developed a series of activities that foster critical thinking in children.

Débora Mariz after ten years of experience as a philosophy teacher, is now a professor at the Faculty of Education at the UFMG. Her area of concentration is teaching philosophy at the basic education level. She met her co-authors, Celso Vieira and Ligea Hoki, while studying philosophy at UFMG. In 2021, despite following different paths, the willingness to apply the results of their research on philosophy brought them together to participate in the Ninho Project as part of its scientific committee. Through this project, they developed a series of activities that foster critical thinking in children.

6

A Routine to Develop Inferencing Skills in Primary School Children

117

Ligea Hoki is currently doing her master’s at UFRJ. Her focus is on using philosophy to help children develop the ability to generate good questions. She met her co-authors, Celso Vieira and Débora Mariz, while studying philosophy at UFMG. In 2021, despite following different paths, the willingness to apply the results of their research on philosophy brought them together to participate in the Ninho Project as part of its scientific committee. Through this project, they developed a series of activities that foster critical thinking in children.

7

The Practice of Reasonableness in the Secondary Classroom Raymond Driehuis and Alan Tapper

To produce individuals who can thrive in and contribute maximally to a democratic society, we need to ensure they develop the intellectual skills needed to inquire and to argue, individually and collectively, and to value these activities as the soundest path to achieving goals, solving problems, resolving conflicts, and maximizing individual and group welfare. [1, p. 14]

Abstract

A central task of schooling is to cultivate reasonableness in students. In this chapter we show how the teaching of reasonableness can be practiced successfully in secondary schools, using materials from the Western Australian curriculum. First, we take reasonableness to be both a skill and a disposition. Students learn reasonableness through the practice of specific skills such as open questioning, clarifying, and categorizing, and evaluating the merits of each contribution toward the question under consideration. Second, we discuss pedagogies that cultivate reasonableness, particularly the Philosophical Community of Inquiry. This can be supplemented with Cam’s Thinking Tools approach or Harvard Project Zero’s Thinking Routines. We also introduce our own skillbuilding exercises, the Reasoning Game and the Argument Game. Third, we show how this approach can be applied not just in Philosophy classes, but in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We argue that our approach develops

A. Tapper (B) Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] R. Driehuis Perth Modern School, Perth, WA, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_7

119

120

R. Driehuis and A. Tapper

understanding and reasonableness, and bumps up student engagement. Fourth, we discuss the assessment of reasonableness. The way students perform in the Philosophical Community of Inquiry is the focus of assessment. The desirable qualities of being reasonable become the assessment criteria for an on-balanced judgment about the student. Graphic Abstract

Reasonableness as practice

Keywords

Reasonableness . Community of inquiry . Thinking skills . Thinking routines Assessment

1

.

Reasonableness as a Key Aim of Schooling

Schooling is a complex business, but the cultivation of reasonableness in students is one of its central aims. In this first section we outline how we think reasonableness fits into the educational process. We find it helpful to distinguish five tasks of secondary schooling. One, to transmit bodies of knowledge to the student. A graduating student should be well

7 The Practice of Reasonableness in the Secondary Classroom

121

grounded in a variety of academic disciplines. Two, to give students an understanding of and practice in basic research skills. Students should know how to find out more than they already know in various fields. Three, to show students how to structure ideas and arguments. This skill is especially demonstrated in essay writing. Four, to help students become competent and skilled presenters of their knowledge and arguments, not just on paper but in live presentations. Five, to cultivate the individual student’s ability to work together with others in a collaborative process. A well-rounded secondary student will be proficient in all five of these aspects of their education. A well-designed upper-level school system will foster all five aspects. A good teacher will practice a pedagogy in which all five are kept in mind. How does “reasonableness” fit into this picture? It plays a part in all five aspects. One, bodies of knowledge are understood as knowledge, and not just as belief or opinion, because they are reasonable, having stood the test of time and the criticism that disciplines practice. Two, research skills are skills in finding out what is accepted within a given discipline and in adding to the body of knowledge that is the current state of the discipline. Three, the structuring of ideas and arguments is central to the practice of reasonableness. A reasonable person seeks out cogent arguments whenever there are contentious or problematic matters at hand. Four, being articulate in the handling of ideas and arguments requires one to be competent in their presentation in ways that are clear and not confused. Fifth, being reasonable involves working together with others respectfully and cooperatively. In cooperative discussion, each member of the group contributes a part to the whole and learns with and from the other members, while also exercising critical judgment on the group’s performance. What is reasonableness? It is important to think of reasonableness as both a skill and a disposition. We take our cue from Matthew Lipman’s point that “Reasonableness is not pure rationality; it is rationality tempered by judgment” [2, p. 11]. For him, schools need to be reasonable institutions where curriculum and pedagogy are open to discussion and rationally defensible. A central feature of reasonableness is being able to articulate the function or purpose of something in human life. In general, for someone to be reasonable requires the ability to justify the ends or the purpose. Practicing reasonableness is an activity which we do together, and we do it to establish knowledge and understanding, which we think is at the core of good judgment. In any inquiry we conduct research, formulate arguments, and present them to peers. The aim is always to make clear some end or purpose or relevance to human life. Thus, it is not the case that the end or purpose or relevance of something is delivered via pure reasoning from uncontestable “facts” derived from explicit instruction. The reality of being reasonable is much messier than that. As Lipman, observes, “Approximations are needed, and we have to develop a sense of the appropriate rather than expect our thought and the shape of things to correspond exactly” [2, p. 21]. This is what we have experienced in the classroom. Most of the time we operate with limited knowledge. We fill in gaps. We struggle with

122

R. Driehuis and A. Tapper

contestability, and we research so that we can shape our positions and present our arguments. We each become convinced by a point of view that we bring to the Inquiry, knowing well enough that some of what we have brought will be challenged and changed. In plain terms, we put our faith in the wisdom of the group. As we will discuss further below, this is the hallmark of Community of Inquiry as a philosophical practice, making it an excellent medium for cultivating reasonableness. One naturally learns to be reasonable through trial and error, in the company of others and by disagreement, so that being reasonable is something one becomes only through the mill of collective understanding of one’s peers. Learning through trial and error, by disagreement, in this way, is an experiential and dialectical process, making the Community of Inquiry the most fit pedagogy for the classroom by virtue of its design and purpose. Why be reasonable? The straight answer is to learn to persuade and be persuaded. We rarely survey the whole terrain of a topic without some bias. We like to believe we have a complete picture, and yet we rarely find ourselves in complete agreement with our peers. In the world of facts or bodies of knowledge, there is much uncertainty, and so we must find ways to nudge ourselves together a little closer to truth. As John Stuart Mill observed [3, pp. 44–45], we are each only part bearers of the truth, and it is only through disagreement and discussion that we come closer to a fuller sense of the whole truth, if not the whole truth. Adults know this. Students know this too. They do this quite naturally with their peers. There are always open questions, and they often outnumber the closed questions students are forced to consider in typical curriculum and assessment, or even in daily life. Ask a student what questions they have about the content being taught and it does not take long for an open question to arise and push certainty away. This is especially true in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In this climate, should the teacher allow a candid conversation about open questions around content? Should the teacher open up the classroom to disagreement and discussion about the purpose of the content, entertaining the particular views of each student? If one does, then one finds out some revealing things, such as the tendency for students to want to be comfortable in the world of facts and feel at a loss when that slips away. Some cope by switching off, ignoring the uncertainty which they know will finish when the bell rings the end of the period. Some are keen to be reasonable but not skilled in being so. Young children are often like this. Some can also be skilled but not disposed to be reasonable, as is sometimes the case with teenagers when they argue for an individual good rather than a common good. Students of secondary school age tend to have a particular view about knowledge and its value. As Deanna Kuhn puts it: By adolescence a radical change in epistemological understanding is likely to emerge. In a word, everyone now becomes right. The discovery that reasonable people – even experts – disagree is the likely source of adolescents recognizing the uncertain, subjective aspect of knowing. This recognition initially assumes such proportions, however, that it eclipses recognition of any objective standard that could serve as a basis for evaluating conflicting

7 The Practice of Reasonableness in the Secondary Classroom

123

claims. […] At this multiplist (sometimes called relativist) level of epistemological understanding, knowledge consists not of facts but of opinions, freely chosen by their holders as personal possessions and accordingly not open to challenge. Knowledge is now clearly seen as emanating from the knower, rather than the known, but at the significant cost of any discriminability among competing knowledge claims. [1, p. 32]

In order to respond to this “epistemological understanding”, classrooms need to be environments in which both the skill and the disposition to be reasonable is cultivated. The discipline most closely associated with reasonableness is Philosophy. Here, however, we contend that reasonableness can and should be practiced in all classroom settings, whether or not it is explicitly a Community of Inquiry and whether or not it is in a Philosophy class. We recognize that the teaching of Philosophy is a rarity in most school systems, and we accept that Community of Inquiry is a minority form of pedagogy. We contend, nevertheless, that reasonableness is central to good classroom practice and that open questions should be entertained and explored with the aim of cultivating familiarity with uncertainty, contestability, persuasion, and judgment. It should be modelled by the teacher and rewarded as part of good student performance. We are fond of Lipman’s use of the term “conversational apprenticeship” [2, p. 24] because the notion of an apprenticeship emphasizes the experiential and dialectical learning of specific skills and dispositions required to apply them with excellence in the practice of being reasonable. We think that the reasonable classroom should conduct itself in the manner of a conversation and allow students the time to learn, apply, and struggle with the skills and dispositions of being reasonable. This does students justice in two ways. Firstly, it gives them the confidence to handle uncertainty better in their academic lives, particularly when open questions arrive and create the feeling of havoc or of being stuck in a world of facts. Secondly, it prepares them for life beyond school where the uncertainty is greater and often more profound. Having the capacity to be reasonable, as both a skill and disposition, inspires the confidence to find certainty or its closest approximation. For the purposes of the present chapter, this entails three kinds of inquiry. Firstly, we should be explicit about what counts as being reasonable in a secondary school classroom setting. Secondly, we should be able to demonstrate how it is practiced in a variety of disciplinary areas. Thirdly, we should show how good performance can be assessed. In the following sections we discuss each of these in turn.

2

The Practice of Being Reasonable in the Classroom

The experience of open questioning is indispensable when learning how to be reasonable. Open questions initiate students into uncertainty and contestability. Managing and responding to uncertainty and contestability is the main reason why we need to be reasonable. In schools, the teacher should model the way

124

R. Driehuis and A. Tapper

such questions are raised and addressed. We think this is the best way to enter a conversational apprenticeship. Teachers should use the open question as the switch into a suitable pedagogy for teaching and learning how to be reasonable. Open questions will include the recollection of content, but they prompt more from students. Students dive from an open question into murky waters and need to find relevant similarities between things so that a well-understood thing serves to illustrate the workings and purpose of a less understood thing. Analogical thinking also paves the way for another important feature of being reasonable, the act of categorizing where the known unknown might sit in the order of things. Open questions also prompt the need for a disposition that is relevant to being reasonable, such as reflecting or being considered. Politeness also matters. Being polite involves listening to another, rather than satisfying an impulsive need to cut him or her short with your latest thought. It is the skill of using an analogy, of comparing and contrasting and categorizing, and the disposition of being considered or polite or reflective that the teacher models as students are being inducted into reasonableness. Open questions prompt the use of more specific types of questioning, such as using questions to clarify what has been said, or questions to evaluate the relevance of a contribution to the direction of the conversation. We think the best way to practice the complexity and power of open questions in the classroom is to play two intellectual games. The first we will call the “Reasoning Game” and the second the “Argument Game”. Both games are built on the principles of open questioning and collaborative, conversational learning between the students and the teacher. They involve the teacher explicitly teaching the basic parts of an argument (conclusion, premises and inferences), the contestability of both the claim and its support, and the degree of its persuasiveness or cogency given the uncertainty that remains. The teacher may choose reasonable strategies or thinking tools to help achieve this aim. For example, she can use a suite of relevant thinking tools from Philip Cam’s Twenty Thinking Tools [4] or from Harvard Project Zero’s Thinking Routines [5]. The Reasoning Game involves students playing with the nuts and bolts of an argument in two ways. Firstly, they identify the parts of a simple argument in an example provided by the teacher and then evaluate the relevance and the strength of those parts to determine the persuasiveness or cogency of the argument. We define a simple argument as an example consisting of one conclusion, one inferential move and one premise or perhaps two or three premises if linked together. Secondly, using the teacher’s example as the model, students team up to construct their own examples, playing with the parts of an argument in a creative and critical manner. Students may create an argument similar in terms of strength and relevance on a different topic, or they may try to improve the teacher’s example after the collective evaluation of its persuasiveness or cogency. The students’ own examples may then undergo critical evaluation by way of open questioning from their peers, which the teacher facilitates in order to ensure that students follow their own arguments, through trial and error, where they lead, suggesting possible strategies students could employ to help scaffold their thinking.

7 The Practice of Reasonableness in the Secondary Classroom

125

Fig. 1 Relevant thinking tools for the reasoning game (adapted from Cam [4])

For instance, students may employ the “What Makes You Say That?” Thinking Routine or the “Claim Support Question” Thinking Routine as they zoom in on the relevant criteria. Cam’s Thinking Tools also focus on relevant criteria (see Fig. 1). Students may map or diagram their arguments as part of the evaluation, and they may look closely at the reasons for agreement or disagreement in their evaluations. They may also consider examples of simple arguments that present some common fallacies such as attacking the man or ad hominem, misrepresenting a position or straw man, or drawing impulsively a conclusion from small evidence or a hasty generalization. We have found that instructing students to create their own examples of common fallacies based on examples modelled by the teacher to be highly successful and to generate much joy, which we have noted bumps up student engagement. We have also on occasion instructed students to turn cogent arguments into fallacies or fallacies into cogent arguments. The practice of doing so is a conversational apprenticeship in the skills and dispositions of being reasonable, which is the key aim. The Argument Game follows the same format as the Reasoning Game. What is distinctly different is that an argument constructed in the Argument Game is more complex due to the different positions that students can take when presented with a proposition. Because this is so, the Argument Game is more focused on the acceptability of claims being made, prompting the use of evaluative thinking tools such as the ones suggested in Fig. 2 or any of the Core Thinking Routines available online at Harvard Project Zero’s Thinking Routine Toolbox [5]. Once the contestability has been considered and reasonable positions have been formed, it is then possible for students to consider the mechanics of their arguments, such as inference strength or support, in order to shape and strengthen their positions. As with the Reasoning Game, in the Argument Game the teacher models the first round. For example, take the following: Our obligations to those outside of our own society are no different from the obligations we have to those within our society. [6, p. 22]

The question requires students to build an argument either for or against the proposition. Clearly the question has more than one possible answer. The first thing the class should do is brainstorm together all those possibilities and the teacher begins by modelling aloud some options and their reasons. Once completed, the next

126

R. Driehuis and A. Tapper

Fig. 2 Relevant thinking tools for the argument game (adapted from Cam [4])

move for the class is to group and categorize the brainstorm so that positions start to form, and students can then proceed with the task of taking each position and constructing premises or reasons out of the brainstormed ideas. Again, the teacher talks through her ideas and reasoning, inviting students to take up the process with further examples of their own. Students will need to consider carefully whether or not their position is for or against the conclusion (the original question) before they proceed with the building of an argument. Depending on how many positions or possible arguments emerge from the brainstorm, the teacher can instruct students to work in pairs or small groups on all of them or invite students to work collaboratively on any one of them, making sure (if time permits) that all positions are covered. When the time comes for students to present their arguments to their peers, the class must have the opportunity to evaluate the acceptability of all the positions that emerged from the brainstorm. This process is collaborative and conversational. Each strategy itself operates through open questioning to cultivate reasonableness. Cam’s Question Quadrant, a popular thinking tool in Australian classrooms, can be adapted to organize ideas from the brainstorm into relevant categories [4]. The teacher can facilitate the first round of questioning. Which brainstormed ideas are closed ideas? Which are open ideas? Do they support a position? How do they support a position? Do they need research? Can reason and imagination help us speculate and understand how they work to support the position? The act of sorting out ideas is heavily dependent on successful questioning and collaboration between students. Questions enable students to compare, contrast, and make connections. This process of sifting and sorting and shaping premises, facilitated by the teacher, opens up uncertainty and contestability and enables students to explore borderline cases, as well as agreement and disagreement, to cultivate a reasonable understanding of the support the premise needs to provide. This will in turn strengthen their understanding of their argument so that they may confidently accept their peers’ evaluative criticism with a reasonable measure and a reasonable response. Another approach might see the teacher sequence the following Thinking Routines: See Think Wonder, Circle of Viewpoints, Claim Support Question, Connect Extend Challenge, What Makes You Say that? and I Used to Think … Now I think

7 The Practice of Reasonableness in the Secondary Classroom

127

[5]. This sequence of routines allows for a structured progression of collaborative and conversational thinking. Thinking Routines themselves simply scaffold thinking in an accessible and visible manner through open questions. Ideally, over time, students ought to be aware of a suite of routines and tools for thinking at their disposal and select whatever they need accordingly. As a test of being reasonable, students ought to be able to explain and justify the choice of tools or routines to the class, further enriching their conversational apprenticeship. We end this section with an observation by Kuhn: Students readily experience and appreciate [the] value [of inquiry and argument] as they engage in them and gain mastery of the skills they entail. They are empowering. Once they are found useful in pursuing individual and collective goals, no further incentive is needed for practicing and perfecting the skills they entail. [1, p. 28]

3

Being Reasonable in a Discipline

In this section we seek to demonstrate how reasonableness is practiced in a disciplinary setting, that of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Uncertainty and the consequent need for open questioning commonly occur in the Humanities and the Social Sciences. The disciplines grouped under these umbrellas have human goods as their end and purpose. As we stated in the first section, being able to articulate the function or purpose of something in human life is a central feature of being reasonable, and so being reasonable requires the ability to justify the ends or purposes of many forms of human social practices. Cultivating the ability to do this is the ultimate aim of schooling, and the ability to do this collaboratively is a key virtue. We agree with Howard Gardner that we should “crave human beings who understand the world, who gain sustenance from such understanding, and who want—ardently, perennially—to alter it for the better” [7, pp. 19–20]. This requires an education which goes beyond the narrow focus of the repetition of facts and the standardized testing of achievement. As he contends, education should be “a virtues-filled education in the disciplines” and should involve the development of the whole person [7, pp. 32–35]. Because of this, education must involve the practice of skills and the cultivation of dispositions that make reasonableness possible and relevant. To make this more concrete, consider some examples from the Western Australian Curriculum in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The curriculum document itself contains many opportunities to practice conversational learning and the art of being reasonable. Our focus is the Year 7–10 Scope and Sequence of content [8, pp. 46–50]. Browsing through the mandated content, one can see the typical raw materials from which teachers build programs, anchored in textbooks from major publishers. Typically, this content is sequenced and stepped out in a week-by-week manner, with explicit instruction in content doing the heavy lifting of learning. We have here the familiar image of teaching as a practice based on

128

R. Driehuis and A. Tapper

content and key points or relationships, with the students attentively taking notes and answering closed questions to test for understanding. This is fine and necessary for some of the curriculum content, most notably the accepted facts. But not all of the curriculum content is accepted fact. Many instances of curriculum content are “big ideas”, and big ideas are best understood when explored through open questions and conversation. Big ideas require one to be reasonable. It is interesting to note that the two pages that follow the curriculum content map out the inquiry skills in the Humanities and Social Sciences. These skills are: questioning and researching; analyzing; evaluating; and communicating and reflecting. These fit neatly with our examples of the skills and dispositions we have raised in this discussion on reasonableness and its pedagogies. In fact, it can be said that any opportunity for conversational learning in the classroom enables students to practice these mandated curriculum skills, as well as sharpening their ability to be reasonable through open questioning and a pedagogy such as Community of Inquiry. Furthermore, we believe that these mandated skills cover the explicit criteria of being reasonable, of what we expect students to be able to do as young adults and citizens with a healthy respect for truth, beauty and excellence. In the grand scheme of things, this is the purpose of education in liberal societies. The teacher’s primary objective is to make the climate in the room safe for students to take intellectual risks with open questions and ideas among their peers. We believe this is crucial. Without modelling open questioning as a safe practice, no conversational learning will take place. In fact, students will initially distrust the milieu the teacher is trying to establish, and for good reason. Students are simply not prepared to risk their reputation. Answering an open question is risky business. One might look foolish because one gets the answer wrong and so the perception of being incompetent is enough to make one suffer as a result. Whether or not that perception is real is not the point. Perceptions of incompetence are enough to make someone feel unsafe, which ruins the possibility for trust that is so crucial to the process. As Thomas Hobbes made clear in Leviathan, distrust is one of the three key elements that leads to discord and conflict, along with competition and the pursuit of glory. Now it is simply the case that the typical culture of a school encourages the latter two elements, competition and glory, which automatically fosters the potential for the erosion of trust. So how does the teacher achieve a safe climate in the classroom? The act of thinking aloud, particularly wondering, does the trick, but the teacher needs to be prepared to commit to frequent repeats of the process to establish the feeling of safety in their students. Open questioning needs to be approached as a performance, orchestrated in such a way that the teacher’s own knowledge becomes the object of an open questioning for students to see.

7 The Practice of Reasonableness in the Secondary Classroom

129

As an example of “big ideas”, consider the following from the Year 7 curriculum in Geography in Western Australia. The focus is on “Place and Liveability”. The points below are mandated content for the teacher to teacher. . The factors that influence the decisions people make about where to live and their perceptions of the liveability of places . The influence of accessibility to services and facilities on the liveability of places . The influence of environmental quality on the liveability of places . The strategies used to enhance the liveability of places, especially for young people, including examples from Australia and Europe Each point of the curriculum is well-supported through textbooks, providing a plethora of content to teach, with a structured focus on the annual report, The Liveability Index, published by The Economist Intelligence Unit. However, while this addresses Geography content and disseminates facts, it ignores the actual importance of liveability as a concept. Why does liveability matter? Underpinning this question further are the seven geographical concepts in the Western Australian curriculum that fundamentally invite open questioning and conversational learning. The seven geographical concepts are place, space, environment, interconnection, sustainability, scale, and change. After explicit instruction in content or knowledge about liveability and the Index, the teacher might start thinking aloud. She might ask the class, “I find all this really fascinating but I am not sure why. Can you help?” The students might then shift around uncomfortably. Some may even look incredulous. How can the font of knowledge be so troubled? Priming the pump, the teacher continues to pose more open questions that deliberately interrogate the importance of the curriculum content. The teacher does so not to undermine it but to foreground its value and the possible reasons for the value. The teacher might ask for more direct help from the students by being more strategic with the open questions. “Should we rank cities?” “What is the benefit?” “Why should economics concern itself with quality of life and the value of space and place?” The aim of course is to provoke thought and hook an answer. Perhaps the teacher provides an answer to her own open question. “Maybe we rank cities so we can find out how to make more money. But why would we do that?” And so on. We think the most important aspect of this performance is to demonstrate the naturalness of not knowing or not being sure and the excitement of discovering why humans might do what they do. The open questioning of curriculum content, especially the big ideas, is also a good opportunity to build a climate of safety in the classroom through pedagogies for thinking. Thinking strategies and thinking tools need to be used to scaffold and support the process of open questioning and the development of trust. Whichever pedagogy is used to do this is up to the teacher. The aim is to promote and support conversational learning. For example, the teacher could set up a Philosophical Community of Inquiry using an appropriate stimulus material that provokes open questions about living environments, quality of life and their moral

130

R. Driehuis and A. Tapper

importance. The teacher could instruct their students to complete a Plus-MinusInteresting (PMI) to structure a dialogic classroom and use the PMI as the stimulus material for conversational learning. For the teacher who feels comfortable with Thinking Routines, an appropriately selected sequence of routines such as Options Explosion, Circle of Viewpoints, and Think Puzzle Explore, can pry open the questions in a structured and scaffolded manner, building up the necessary feeling of safety along the way. Students could begin a conversation in the Philosophical Community of Inquiry before breaking out into small groups to complete relevant Thinking Routines before reconvening in the circle of the Community. Here they would share and build ideas about the big idea and the topic, and so build understanding through explaining and justifying their positions on a mandated curriculum point such as “The factors that influence the decisions people make about where to live and their perceptions of the liveability of places”. There are many other opportunities for this flexible yet structured approach to big ideas in the Western Australian Curriculum for Humanities and Social Sciences, and thus many opportunities to practice the explicit criteria of the skills identified in the Scope and Sequence. For example, in Year 8 History, there is room to open up questions and conversations on “The effects of the Black Death on Asian, European and African populations, and conflicting theories about the impact of the plague”. In Year 9 Civics and Citizenship, students could discuss in a Community of Inquiry “The factors that can undermine the application of the principles of justice (e.g. bribery, coercion of witnesses, trial by media, court delays)”, with a particular focus on why justice is important to human life. Or in Year 10 Economics and Business, students can practice being reasonable on “The distribution of income and wealth in the economy and the ways in which governments can redistribute income (e.g. through taxation, social welfare payments)”, particularly the reasons why and the moral and economic benefits that may follow. As we said at the start of this section, these disciplines have as their modus operandi human goods in mind, and so it is important to reiterate that, “Without such understanding, people cannot participate fully in the world in which they—we—live” [7, p. 18]. We believe that this holds true for curriculum in other jurisdictions too.

4

Being Reasonable in Assessment

Lastly, we consider what kind of assessment best suits the teaching and learning of reasonableness. It is perhaps tempting to write content-based assessment after your students have thought together and struggled with open questions, opinions, and reasons. We think this does happen, but we also believe that this would not honor what has been achieved in the practice of thinking together or being reasonable or being engaged in a process of conversational learning. A content-based assessment such as a short answer test may give you an accurate picture of your students’ abilities to explain content, but it is not that different from testing for content knowledge

7 The Practice of Reasonableness in the Secondary Classroom

131

via multiple choice. What we are after, if we are to honor the practice we have worked hard to establish, is to find out what it means for a student to explain themselves in a collaborative manner, what it means to be reasonable in a context of uncertainty and contestability, rather than finding out how correct they are in a static climate of facts. Content-based assessment will give the teacher information, but no information whatsoever about the students’ ability to argue or explain and whether a student is being reasonable as they do so. The Western Australian Curriculum document provides a table of suggested assessment strategies from which we have selected ones we deem suitable for assessing conversational learning and reasonableness: Conversational learning, grounded in Philosophy, is performance-based and each suggested strategy in Fig. 3 accommodates this. For example, whether peerassessed or teacher-observed or both, students must demonstrate the skill set associated with arguing for a claim or explaining a position. These two skills, philosophical argument and philosophical explanation, underpin the pedagogies we have discussed as examples of conversational learning and being reasonable. The Philosophical Community of Inquiry is probably the best example of philosophical argument and philosophical explanation in action because it comes directly out of the discipline of Philosophy, through the work of Lipman. Its function or purpose is to induct students into the practice of thinking together and to scaffold it through stimuli, typically narratives, that provoke open questioning, explanation, and justification. This involves demonstrating two complex skills, philosophical argument and philosophical explanation, in a performance, and the criteria that make up the marking key or rubric. Where does one find these criteria? We think that the Scope and Sequence of Humanities and Social Science inquiry skills in the Western Australian Curriculum document [8, pp. 51–52] offers direction on the criteria in a marking key. To further help refine such a marking key, the teacher can also draw upon the Critical and Creative Thinking capability or

Fig. 3 Relevant strategies for judging student performance on explicit criteria of conversational learning and being reasonable [8, p. 16]

132

R. Driehuis and A. Tapper

the Ethical Understanding Capability for words that will describe the performative distinctions on the criteria. For example, assessing the questioning and researching skills in the Humanities and Social Sciences Scope and Sequence could lead the teacher to mine the organizing elements of Inquiring or Generating Ideas in the Critical and Creative Thinking capability [9]. Or it could lead the teacher to mine the organizing elements of the Ethical Understanding capability for the relevant language to describe and assess distinctive differences in student performance [10]. Whatever the case, assigning appropriate points to each criterion will result in a total score that suggests the standard of reasonableness the student has achieved. But of course, the accuracy of that judgement depends entirely on the appropriateness of the criteria, particularly the wording of the performative distinctions, that make up the marking key. The teacher can assess student performance in the Community of Inquiry directly too. There are examples of assessment rubrics available online, though we think two papers in particular step out the criteria of being reasonable in a clear way that we think will appeal to teachers [11, 12, pp. 22–24]. But the criteria of philosophical argument and philosophical explanation in a Community of Inquiry will be different from the use of these criteria in a sequence of Thinking Routines or a sequence of specific Thinking Tools, even if they have thinking together in common. Whatever pedagogy the teacher uses to scaffold the conversational learning, the marking key for the assessment of being reasonable must marry the distinctive features of that pedagogy with the explicit criteria of being reasonable. For example, assessing student performance on two Thinking Routines will involve constructing a marking key or rubric that accommodates their specific criteria. The “What Makes You Say That?” Routine will provide the teacher with the opportunity to assess student performance on the criteria of philosophical argument, and “Circle of Viewpoints” will allow for the assessment of student performance on the criteria of philosophical explanation. And both combined in a sequence provides students with the opportunity to engage in open questioning and conversational learning. Assessing a performance like reasonableness is not an easy task but is it not impossible. Drawing on the ideas of Hattie [13] and William [14], we believe that providing students with explicit criteria and feedback in the assessment of reasonableness, frequently fine-tuned through a teacher’s reflective practice, will definitely help students to progress and increase the effect of the thinking pedagogies or strategies employed. From the point of view of the student, knowing the criteria, experiencing them in action, and understanding them from the practice of conversational learning, is epistemologically good because there is no better way to learn how to be reasonable than to do it and know what you are meant to be doing. Each pedagogy for teaching and learning how to be reasonable will have its distinct truth, beauty and good in the form of assessment criteria unique to each. Truth, beauty and good are “thin” concepts, concepts that need the context, method, and criteria of a pedagogy to become specifically meaningful. A good or true or beautiful performance in one strategy or skill is not the same as another,

7 The Practice of Reasonableness in the Secondary Classroom

133

so the differences of each must reflect what good, true, or beautiful will look like in a student’s performance. In the world of assessment, this approach is known as analytical marking or the construction of analytical marking keys. The unique and explicit criteria of a pedagogy, observable and described in the marking key, shapes the way conversational learning is assessed. So, the truth, goodness, or beauty of any criterion are the ideals we have in mind when we judge a student’s ability to explain or argue philosophically in a classroom of conversational learning.

5

Conclusion

A central feature of reasonableness is being able to articulate the function or purpose of something in human life, and to do so through bodies of knowledge, basic research skills, structured ideas and arguments, clear presentations, and working collaboratively. We mostly operate with limited knowledge, struggle with contestability, and respond with researched but inconclusive positions and arguments. In the teaching of reasonableness, students learn to persuade and be persuaded so that they can get a little closer to truth. Reasonable contestability is especially common in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Central to good classroom practice is breeding familiarity with issues involving uncertainty, contestability, persuasion, and judgment. Exploring open questions teaches us to be reasonable because open questions include content recollection while prompting more from students. We have argued that a valuable way to practice open questions in the classroom is to play two games, the Reasoning Game and the Argument Game. In addition to this, the teacher may choose reasonable strategies or thinking tools such as the Philosophical Community of Inquiry, Philip Cam’s Twenty Thinking Tools, or Harvard Project Zero’s Thinking Routines in an appropriate sequence for structured and visible thinking. The aim is always to enrich the students’ conversational apprenticeship. We agree with Gardner that the aim of education is cultivating the whole person through engagement with truth, beauty, and goodness, and that education should be virtues-oriented in the study and practice of the disciplines. The curriculum content of the Humanities and Social Science includes “big ideas”. We argue that these big ideas are best understood when explored through open questions and conversation. Big ideas require one to be reasonable, and big ideas require conversational learning with the teacher modelling open questioning to establish a safe intellectual practice in the classroom. Lastly, if we are to honor the practice of conversational learning, we must assess what it means for a student to explain, to collaborate, and to be reasonable in an environment of uncertainty and contestability. Conversational learning, grounded in Philosophy, is performance-based and assessment must reflect this. We point out that curriculum documents offer direction on the kind of criteria teachers can use in a marking key, and we have given the Western Australian Humanities and Social Sciences curriculum as an example. Knowing the criteria, experiencing the

134

R. Driehuis and A. Tapper

criteria, and understanding the criteria through conversational learning are epistemologically healthy. There is no better way to learn how to be reasonable than to practice it and know what you are meant to be doing. Reasonableness is a skill and a disposition which can and should be taught and assessed in schools. There are well-established pedagogies for achieving this. Students who graduate without having learned these skills are disadvantaged, even if their education is otherwise good. Raymond Driehuis and Alan Tapper

References 1. Kuhn D (2008) Education for thinking. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass 2. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 3. Mill JS (1975) In: Spitz D (ed) On liberty: a Norton critical edition. WW Norton and Company, London 4. Cam P (2006) Twenty thinking tools: collaborative inquiry for the classroom. Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) Press, Victoria 5. Project Zero (2016) Project Zero’s thinking routines toolbox. Harvard Graduate School of Education. http://www.pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines. Accessed 23 April 2022 6. School Curriculum and Standards Authority (2020) Philosophy and ethics ATAR course examination. Western Australia. https://senior-secondary.scsa.wa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_ file/0007/643786/2020_PAE_Written_Examination.PDF. Accessed 23 April 2022 7. Gardner H (2000) The disciplined mind. Beyond facts and standardized tests, the K-12 education that every child deserves. Penguin, New York 8. School Curriculum and Standards Authority (2017) Humanities and social sciences curriculum—Pre-primary to year 10. Western Australia. https://k10outline.scsa.wa.edu.au/__data/ass ets/pdf_file/0009/364554/Humanities-and-Social-Sciences-Curriculum-Pre-primary-to-Year10.PDF. Accessed 23 April 2022 9. Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (2022) The critical and creative thinking capability—version 8.4. Sydney, New South Wales. https://www.australiancurri culum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/critical-and-creative-thinking/. Accessed 23 April 2022 10. Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (2022) The ethical understanding capability—version 8.4. Sydney, New South Wales. https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/ f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/ethical-understanding/. Accessed 23 April 2022 11. Ng K (2013) The challenge of assessment for the community of inquiry: Negotiating individuals and community. Presented at the Asian conference on ethics, religion and philosophy. Accessible online at https://www.academia.edu/3484644/The_challenge_of_assessment_for_ the_Community_of_Inquiry_negotiating_individuals_and_community?msclkid=ea7d23b1c 6a211ec963f027438f86484. Accessed 23 April 2022 12. Piric A (2014) Motivating students to participate in classroom discussions through the Socratic Circle approach. J Foreign Lang Teach Appl Linguist 1(1):17–31. Accessible online at http:// jfltal.org/document/jfltal-05.pdf?msclkid=fbc52cf6c67111ec94ae9302381b5743. Accessed 23 April 2022 13. Hattie J (2011) Visible learning for teachers. Maximizing impact on learning. Routledge, London 14. William D (2011) What is assessment for learning? Stud Educ Eval 37(1):3–14. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2011.03.001. Accessed 23 April 2022

7 The Practice of Reasonableness in the Secondary Classroom

135

Raymond Driehuis is a secondary teacher of Philosophy in the senior years and Humanities and Social Sciences in the junior years at Perth Modern School in Western Australia. He was Chair of the Association for Philosophy in Schools (WA) in 2009–12.

Alan Tapper is a philosopher and public policy researcher. He is Adjunct Senior Fellow at the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy at Curtin University in Western Australia. He has coauthored three textbooks designed for teaching philosophy in secondary schools. He was Chair of the Association for Philosophy in Schools (WA) in 2006–09 and in 2020.

8

Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching Cathlyne Joy P. Alvarez-Abarejo

Caring thinking encompasses thinking that is concerned (with the predicaments others are in), appreciative (of every arrangement of parts and wholes), normative (suggestive of what ought to be done in moral situations), and deliberative (in the sense that it seeks to weigh all the factors and take the context into account before judging). [1, pp. 5–6]

Abstract

In a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world, how do teachers educate students? In this chapter, I discuss how focusing on the concept of caring thinking can help teachers and educational institutions navigate the problems that constantly confront education systems. I draw from the brainchild program of Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp, Philosophy for/ with Children, and the cultivation of reasonableness through its Community of Philosophical Inquiry approach. Caring thinking, as part of multidimensional thinking, establishes reasonableness. Caring thinking, when applied to teaching, fosters reasonableness among teachers by promoting a more caring and humanistic approach to education. To support this claim, I first demonstrate the complementarity of reason and emotion through studies that debunk the reasonemotion dichotomy to provide a warrant to the application of care in teaching. Next, I demonstrate the centrality of care in the Philosophy for/with Children program and explore the concept of caring thinking. In the end, I propose that

C. J. P. Alvarez-Abarejo (B) University of Santo Tomas, España, Manila, Philippines e-mail: [email protected] University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_8

137

138

C. J. P. Alvarez-Abarejo

applying caring thinking in teaching promotes reasonableness which may help teachers address critical issues in education. Graphic Abstract

Cultivate reasonableness through caring thinking

Keywords

Caring thinking . Care emotional learning

1

.

Philosophy for children

.

Pedagogy of care

.

Social-

Introduction

Humanity faces a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world and education systems need to adapt to it [2, 3]. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were already growing concerns as to the ways in which education addresses challenges brought about by globalization, rapid technological changes, dramatic demographic growth, and ecological disasters among many others [4, 5]. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, health and economic threats exacerbated the problems of education. Achievement gaps among children from different socioeconomic backgrounds widened due to worsening poverty caused by economic losses [6]. Data on mental health issues such as anxiety and depression among students across the globe grew exponentially due to lives lost and imminent harms [7–11]. Indeed, education was greatly disrupted in recent years. Paralyzed in various ways, education institutions responded by undergoing abrupt transitions and integrating technological innovations into the system. Schools suddenly shifted to online teaching and learning after closing physical

8

Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching

139

classrooms. Learning management systems gained widespread attention. More recently, hybridization of modalities is becoming popular in educational institutions. Although public perceptions of online learning during the pandemic were rather polarized [12, 13], there were public demands placed on educational institutions for measures that promote academic ease and effective student support [14, 15]. People working in the field of education are constantly under pressure to reevaluate and reconsider their response to the critical issues and challenges that humanity faces today. Contemporary educationists assert the need to prepare students for the VUCA world through the promotion of social-emotional competencies [16–18]. At the heart of it is social-emotional learning (SEL), defined by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), as the process by which “children and adults learn to understand and manage emotions, set goals, show empathy for others, establish positive relationships, and make responsible decisions” [17]. In SEL, students learn about mindfulness and self-awareness, as well as how to be more conscious of their own and others’ emotions which may likely develop in them emotional agility and resilience in times of distress. Positive relationships with other students and teachers are significant in the formation of social-emotional skills, so SEL is contextualized in classroom social interactions. The idea behind SEL is that when students begin to feel safe and secure as a result of positive social and relational experiences (e.g., being respected and showing respect, recognizing their feelings and doing the same for others), they develop socio-emotional behaviors such as empathy or the ability to share other people’s feelings and emotions, which leads them to making responsible decisions in diverse situations. Because of its nature, SEL can instill “affective literacy” in students, which includes the ability to “face situations that are equivocal, frustrating, and uncomfortable without becoming overwhelmed or immobilized” [16, p. 7], a skill critical to students in times of crises. Teachers must be prepared to facilitate social-emotional learning because it is heavily dependent on the environment created in the classroom. Thus, social-emotional competencies must be developed not only in students but also in teachers as the latter serve as “role models for future generations of citizens” [5] and the “engine that drives social and emotional learning” [19]. Nurturing environments foster social-emotional skills. When students feel nurtured and cared for, they thrive and flourish in the face of adversity. In a similar vein, Raab [20] contends that “if we want students to be prepared to flourish in an unpredictable future, we shouldn’t be focused on the future at all: we should be focused on ensuring they flourish now.” Students flourish when their core needs are met, they feel empowered to make their own choices based on their values and interests, and they are given opportunities to collaborate with others [20]. The classrooms must then be transformed into spaces conducive to student flourishing. Teachers play a crucial role in achieving this goal. They are the ones who can create environments and design experiences in classrooms where students can feel respected, valued, loved, and seen [20], which appears to be what happens in

140

C. J. P. Alvarez-Abarejo

social-emotional learning. Teachers create space for social-emotional learning by fostering a climate of caring and nurturing in the classroom. This chapter, then, argues that in the face of a VUCA world, exercising “caring thinking,” which is central to the development of social-emotional competencies, cultivates “reasonableness” in teachers allowing them to respond adequately to the critical concerns of the times. This chapter will examine and draw from the notion of caring thinking espoused by Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp, the proponents of Philosophy for/with Children and the Community of Inquiry approach. Caring thinking, as part of multidimensional thinking, establishes reasonableness. Caring thinking, when applied to teaching, fosters reasonableness among teachers by promoting a more caring and humanistic approach to education. To support this claim, I first demonstrate the complementarity of reason and emotion through studies that debunk the reason-emotion dichotomy to provide a warrant to the application of care in teaching. Next, I demonstrate the centrality of care in the Philosophy for/with Children program and explore the concept of caring thinking. In the end, I propose that applying caring thinking in teaching promotes reasonableness which may help teachers address critical issues in education.

2

The Locus of Care in the Reason-Emotion Dichotomy

The idea of fostering “care” in the classroom is sidestepped in the extant literature in favor of authoritarian educational theories. In fact, there are studies that show that imposing stricter rules and discipline on students, rather than creating caring environments in classrooms, has a positive effect. The positive impact of establishing strict rules on student achievement was revealed in one study, and the researchers discovered that those who were highly disciplined performed better academically [21]. Stricter pedagogical approaches were found to improve student outcomes and foster a stronger work ethic in students [22, 23]. It seemed that a rule-based education that demands achievement and excellence and imposes strict discipline on students is highly valued. Going easy on students, on the other hand, is seen as corrupting rather than supporting students. Instead of encouraging good behavior among students, the teacher’s leniency is blamed for poor performance and misconduct. It is understood that regulating teachers’ caring dispositions may prove to be difficult, making it a disadvantage of a caring approach. A lot happens inside classrooms, making it difficult to figure out when it is appropriate to show empathy to students rather than enforcing stern discipline. There are students who do not pay full attention to a teacher’s requirements because they know the teacher will let them off the hook eventually. Some students take advantage of the teacher’s caring attitude because caring is frequently interpreted as being excessively lenient, too tolerant, and far too considerate which may lead to further difficulties. However, it is a fundamental mistake to associate “care” solely with the concept of emotionality and “rigidity” with “reasonableness” especially when it is contextualized in education. This is due to the fact that care is an indispensable feature of education.

8

Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching

141

Care should be incorporated into the vocabulary of teaching and education, and not treated merely as a concern in extreme circumstances. It should be at the heart of any teaching approach. But what exactly justifies this? To begin with, there should be no polarization between what is emotional and what is rational. In psychology, the reason-emotion debate demonstrates that emotions are, in fact, complementary to reason. The dichotomy of reason and emotion has long fallen into disuse. Both the ability to care and the ability to make reasonable decisions are considered mental acts. Psychologists acknowledge that the activities of reason and emotions in the brain, despite their obvious differences, have remarkable similarities. For example, Salzman and Fusi [24] argue that variables describing emotions have the same ontological status as variables describing cognitive processes like memory, attention, decision-making, language, and rule-based problem-solving. Emotions (feelings) and cognition (e.g., thinking, decision-making, memory retrieval and storage) are managed and processed by similar brain regions, specifically the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex [24]. The concept of reason and emotion coexisting in the brain is encapsulated in the term “feeling brain” [25]. The “feeling brain” concept states that both the cognitive (reasoning) and affective (emotion) parts of the brain play important roles in the facilitation of thinking and other cognitive processes. In other words, when the brain is in thinking mode, cognition works in tandem with emotions. Essentially, the brain feels when it thinks. The confluence of the two results in judgment and thought. This is also a well-corroborated fact in educational psychology. Emotions play critical roles in cognitive processes and learning [26, 27]. Findings in educational psychology correlate pleasant emotions to better information storage, improved learning, and increased student motivation [26]. On the other hand, negative ones such as frustration, anxiety, and even boredom are said to contribute to memory loss by inhibiting neurogenesis thus leading to bad student performance and poor learning [26]. More neural connections are established when learning content and subject matter are emotionally charged. Further, meaning-making is strengthened when students are exposed to emotionally charged content and subject matter. This relevance of emotions in learning is supported by the famous avowal of Immordino-Yang and Damasio [27], “We feel; therefore, we learn.” Essentially, educational psychologists argue that emotions play a very important role in education based on research in the neuroscience of emotions. After investigating the inextricable link between emotions and cognition, I contend that using care as a foundation for teaching is also reasonable. In the following section, I look closely at the centrality of care in Philosophy for/with Children.

3

Care and the Philosophy for/with Children Program

In the 1960s–1970s, Matthew Lipman together with Ann Margaret Sharp pioneered and introduced a thinking skills program for children widely known today as “Philosophy for/with Children” in response to the decline of the number of reasonable

142

C. J. P. Alvarez-Abarejo

thinkers produced by the education system in the US. The Philosophy for/with Children or P4wC program aims to teach young learners from preschool to high school philosophical thinking skills by training them to reason with others as a “community of inquiry” (COI). In the community of inquiry, or in some accounts, the community of philosophical inquiry (CPI), the teacher serves as the facilitator of a philosophical dialogue among children. Children engage in a dialogue, challenge everyone’s opinion, and work together to reach a reasonable philosophical judgment. Using philosophical stories or novels as prompts for thinking, children are encouraged to ask their own questions and choose which ones, in the spirit of democracy, will be addressed in the inquiry. The philosophical inquiry in which the children participate is primarily student-directed; however, the entire exchange of ideas is facilitated by the teacher, who acts as a guide on the side, particularly observing and carefully following where “reason” leads. In essence, philosophy for children seeks to bring philosophy closer to children. Sharp states that the philosophy brought forth here is a kind of “quest for self-knowledge, or … a love for wisdom [28, p. 46].” This quest for self-knowledge and love for wisdom is the foundation of the inquiry and dialogic moves involved in the CoI which include “good questioning, paying attention to the details of one’s experience, dialogue with others, open inquiry, recognition of one’s ignorance, and a willingness to follow the inquiry where it leads [28, p. 46].” In his seminal book “Thinking in Education” [29], which thoroughly outlines the theoretical foundations and descriptions of the P4wC program, Matthew Lipman describes thinking as multidimensional. He specifically mentioned that thinking has cognitive and affective components. These are creative, critical, and caring thinking dimensions. Creative thinking constitutes imagination and reflection among many others. Critical thinking is often associated with reasoning and argumentation. Caring thinking is the affective, normative, and value component. This multidimensionality of thinking serves as the foundation for introducing a thinking skills pedagogy to children, the community of inquiry approach, which engages them to reason and reflect with others in an atmosphere of care and mutual respect. It should be noted that in the dialogue of a Philosophy for/with Children session, care takes center stage. Although care is an understandably rich concept in and of itself, Lipman coined the term “caring thinking” to emphasize how judgment and action become so intertwined in the concept of care that they are almost unidentifiable separately. The community of inquiry is a “pedagogy of care”, caring thinking is “the very context of inquiry, judgment making, and action [30, p. 202].” It is in this vein that Sharp describes participation in a CoI as an “experience of caring” [31, p. 214]. She notes, “Children are committing themselves to a practice that … calls forth their care: their care for the tools of inquiry, their care for the problems they deem worthy to be inquired into, their care for the form of the dialogue, and their care for each other as they proceed in the inquiry itself [31, pp. 213–214].” Caring is both the method and the goal of a community of inquiry [30, p. 202].

8

Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching

143

Care, as a method, provides the context for discussion and participation to occur and flourish in the community of inquiry. This is because, as Sharp puts it, the community of inquiry is a “hotbed of care” [31, p. 213]. By this, Sharp means that the CoI provides a plethora of opportunities for children to discover values, things, ideas, ideals, and people they can care about [31]. She adds, “With time and practice in communal inquiry, children come to realize that their teachers and classmates really do care about them as persons. They believe in their potential ability to make a difference. In turn, this realization makes it possible for children to care about a variety of things and motivates them to act with courage and hope in the world [31, p. 213].” Caring as a method is also seen in the themes of P4wC novels used in the COI. Lipman acknowledges the importance of the concept of caring that the latter is incorporated into the IAPC novels such as Mark, Elfie, Kio and Gus, among many others. The fictional characters in the IAPC novels demonstrate caring gestures such as being “considerate of one another, of the child whose father has died, of the child who was born blind, of the child who has been accused of vandalizing the school. They console and support each other, and provide one another ideas to build upon and criticize [1, p. 6].” As the fictional characters in the novels model caring attitudes and dispositions that must be brought to the inquiry, children are hoped to emulate the same care towards the process of inquiry and the people in the community. Even the way participants are seated during the inquiry also reveals the idea of “caring” central to the method of the community of inquiry. Sitting in a circle, the usual COI classroom setup of chairs, shows the caring aspect of the community of inquiry. Benjamin and Echeverria [32, p. 74] assert that this non-traditional classroom furniture arrangement in which students and teachers face each other emphasizes that “learning is a social activity” one in which people listen intently and care for one another. Students are learning “as” rather than “in” a group—they are learning together, each one contributing to the community, making group learning necessary [32, p. 74]. Again, caring is also the goal of the community of inquiry. Caring as a goal can be seen in a variety of ways. The way P4wC empowers children’s voices treats caring as a goal. Philosophy for/with Children is one of those “intellectual movements” that “aim to make unheard voices heard, to give sectors of the population encouragement and a space to speak their own word, to participate in the ongoing conversation that is their birthright… it is an attempt to voice the concerns, bring the interests and perspectives of children to the conversation [28, p. 47].” Additionally, caring becomes evident in the way children participate in the inquiry as they begin to realize the importance of (and in a profound sense, care for) the elements of the inquiry: the tools they use, the persons they share their thoughts with, their own voices, and the topics they choose to tackle. Sharp notes that “A community of inquiry is a group of individuals who come together to deliberate matters of concern… They come to care for each other as persons and for the procedures that they use to inquire [28, p. 61].” The development of a caring disposition in the participation of the children in the COI comes full circle when it extends beyond what is going on inside the

144

C. J. P. Alvarez-Abarejo

dialogue. When children begin to realize what they care about they develop other values that they may use even outside the COI space. In line with this, Sharp [31, p. 210] writes, “What we care about reveals to others and to ourselves what really matters to us. To care is the opposite of being apathetic or indifferent. Care is the source of friendship, love, interpersonal understanding, commitment, human tenderness and compassion… It is a feeling denoting a relationship of commitment and dedication, taking the ultimate form of being willing to delight in, to suffer with, or even to die for those values and persons we care about.” Children’s behavior transforms in the inquiry. The practice of the community of inquiry is envisioned to change the way children think and behave [33, p. 38]. This is the very crux of the Philosophy for Children program envisioned by Lipman and Sharp.

4

Caring Thinking

But what exactly is caring thinking? Below, I discuss at great length what the concept of caring thinking refers to in the existing literature. First, caring thinking is the affective dimension of the thinking process as ordinarily conceived. Lipman [29, p. 201] admits it when he said that caring thinking is “ordinarily thought of as falling in the affective rather than the cognitive camp.” Caring thinking is the affective dimension because it is that which adds a “values” component to thinking. Caring thinking expresses the values component of thinking. Lipman [29, p. 270] asserts, “If thinking does not contain valuing or valuation, it is liable to approach its subject matters apathetically, indifferently, and uncaringly, and this means it would be diffident even about inquiry itself.” Caring thinking means “to think solicitously about that which is the subject matter of our thought [29, p. 262].” To think solicitously about something is to be concerned about it—to value or esteem it. Thus, to think solicitously of a person is to be concerned about the person—to value the person and esteem it. This also applies to other objects whether concrete or abstract. In this regard, Lipman [29] also connects caring thinking with appreciative thinking. Lipman [29, p. 265] argues “there is no prizing that does not contain at least a germ of appraisal, and vice versa.” In the analogy of receiving a gift from a significant other, Lipman [29, p. 265] asserts, When we prize, admire, cherish, and appreciate, we are engaged in valuing something for the relationships it sustains. To value a gift is to value the thing given for the feelings it expresses toward us from the donor of the gift.” In relation to appreciative thinking, to appreciate is “to pay attention to what matters, to what is of importance… [t]hat what matters is of importance precisely because we pay attention to it. [29, p. 265]

Caring people are considered such because they attend to things of importance. Precisely, caring thinking is an emotion in and of itself. Lipman writes, “Some emotions are not merely the physiological consequences of human judgments:

8

Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching

145

They are those judgments themselves [29, p. 266].” Caring thinking is an example of that kind of emotion. Second, caring thinking is a cognitive process. Lipman [29] contends that caring thinking is employed in mental acts like screening, filtering, gauging, weighing, and the likes. Lipman asserts, “(T)he cognitive is not restricted to acts of high visibility alone, just as the vital bodily organs are not limited to those that are engaged in dramatic pumping activities such as the heart and the lungs. The liver and the kidneys are vital organs too, for the screening or discriminations they perform are essential to our lives [29, p. 270].” Even in the act of solicitously thinking about something, which is one manifestation of caring thinking, one engages in the cognitive process of assigning value to the object of care. Valuation, on its own, is a cognitive process of appreciating the worth or value of the object given care and esteeming the object itself. Thus, when one thinks caringly, one undergoes the mental process of valuation or esteeming of value or worth as well as appraisal and the evaluation or calculation of value. Furthermore, the act of caring about things of importance in an inquiry is not merely “emotional display,” as Lipman notes, but has “genuine cognitive worth” [29, pp. 265–266]. Also, caring thinking is “to be concerned about one’s manner of thinking” [29, p. 262], and this is where the cognitive aspect is greatly manifested. Complementary to critical thinking, caring thinking involves being concerned about and committed to reasonableness. One commits to reasonableness when one scans for alternatives, discovers or invents relationships, institutes connections among connections, and gauges differences [29], which happens in an inquiry. More importantly, caring thinking “obliterates distinctions and rankings when they threaten to become invidious and, thereby, outlive their usefulness” [29, p. 264]. Caring thinking is involved in cognitive operations but also functions to regulate these operations in adherence to values and principles that we deem important in governing thinking. Third, caring thinking is the confluence of the affective and the cognitive. Caring thinking as the mixture of the affective and the cognitive means that caring is the judgment and the process that led to it, and the emotion that motivates action. When entering into a decision and making judgments, “emotion is the choice, it is the decision, it is the judgment [29, p. 271].” Emotions are judgments on their own [34, 35]. Lipman profoundly expresses this mixture as he talks about the caring relationship between a parent and a child: She cares for her son because he matters, and her caring is the judgment that he does matter… We continue to debate how the ethical emerges from the non-ethical and how the aesthetic emerges from the non-aesthetic, completely ignoring (that) the unethical and nonaesthetic are myths stemming from totally antiquated epistemological ideas… For example, mere sounds and mere paints are intensely imbued with aesthetic qualities already. Creation is not an extraction of the aesthetic out of the wholly non-aesthetic, but a transformation of one kind of aesthetic quality into another. [29, pp. 262–263]

Lipman adds that caring thinking as affective thinking is “a conception that cuts like a laser across the reason versus emotion dichotomy. Instead of assuming that emotions are psychological storms that disrupt the clear daylight of reason, one

146

C. J. P. Alvarez-Abarejo

can conceive of the emotions as themselves forms of judgment, or more broadly, forms of thought [29, p. 266].” Emotions are forms of judgments as well. Caring thinking as construed as an emotion is a judgment on its own. Fourth, caring thinking is active thinking. Caring thinking is active thinking because it is both an action and a way of thinking [29]. Caring thinking is care in action. As defined, active thinking is “caring for, in the sense of taking care of or looking after,” one that is cared about [29, p. 267]. One type of active thinking, as Lipman notes, is “curatorial,” that is, “a conserving of what one cherishes” or the active preservation of what one values [29, p. 267]. In the context of the community of inquiry dialogue, the facilitator-teacher shows care to students and care for reasonableness by particularly being concerned with the kind of thinking or cognitive process the students are engaged in. Are the students still being reasonable? Is any participant of the dialogue displaying attitudes of intolerance and closedminded thinking? Is the inquiry already becoming repetitive and stunted? Out of caring thinking, the facilitator-teacher would act to redirect the inquiry and foster reasonableness in the interest of benefiting the whole community of inquirers and achieving the goal of the inquiry. Finally, caring thinking highlights the social dimension of thought. Michaud and Valitalo [36] identify caring thinking as the social aspect of thought. Central to P4wC is the idea of the individual as a social self [37, p. 148]. Caring thinking is also emphasized in the inward-facing arrangement of the chairs in a COI that is symbolic of the kind of dialogue the participants engage in which is not participating in a debate but building upon the ideas of everyone [37, p. 148]. Caring thinking introduces values and emotions to the process of inquiry exercised along with critical and creative thinking that shows both the cognitive and ethical dimensions of a community of inquiry [38, p. 128]. Also, it is caring thinking as the social component that allows the presence of collaborative thinking because creative and critical thinking skills may be there even without collaborative thinking. It is only caring thinking that justifies the centrality of dialogical inquiry made possible by collaboration. In the following section, I discuss what reasonableness is and how caring thinking is integral to the cultivation of it.

5

Reasonableness

It must be noted that reasonableness is almost always mistakenly tied to pure rationality. However, being reasonable is more than possessing reasoning and logical skills [39, p. 102]. Gewirth [40] in the article “The Rationality of Reasonableness” explains that rationality and reasonableness are both based on reason, however, rationality entails a kind of straightforward calculation, while reasonableness consists in equitableness or fair judgment. In moral situations, for example, applying rationality alone means going after the most efficient means to one’s ends while reasonableness pushes one to decide in consideration of many other things such as the rights of the others vis-a-vis the self [40]. In the existing literature, a rational

8

Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching

147

person is taken to be a “formal, preference-maximizing agent” while a reasonable person is a “pragmatic, socially conscious observer [41].” In other words, whereas rationality is “abstract and individual-focused,” reasonableness is “context sensitive and socially focused [41].” Reasonableness does not trump rationality but extends it as it involves a wider range of consideration. Costa-Carvalho and Mendonca define it as “the ability to make intelligent judgments in indeterminate situations that are not amenable to the strict application of rational procedures [38, p. 128].” Reasonableness is the application of the same standards of reason in relation to other relevant factors in order to deliver a sound, more realistic and inclusive judgment. Lipman agrees to the same definition as he describes reasonableness along the lines of being able to “develop a sense of the appropriate,” “to reach an equitable solution” and a “sensible outcome” [29, p. 21]. Lipman illustrates it this way: To be reasonable indicates that one has the capacity to employ rational procedures in a judicious manner, in the sense that, say, a hospital physician dealing with a highly contagious patient must make reasonable judgments as to the employment of standard medical procedures. But to be reasonable can refer not just to how one acts, but to how one is acted upon: It signifies one’s capacity to listen to or be open to reason. [29, p. 97]

In sum, reasonableness is not pure rationality, but one that is tempered by judgment [29]. It is linked to judiciousness or fairness in judgment. In connection, Lipman describes what a reasonable person is: [A] reasonable person is one who is cognitively responsible, and who therefore recognizes the need for reasoned justifications of his or her conduct as well as for reasoned explanations of the things that happen to them over which they have no control. The reasonable person will also propose reasonable hypotheses as to what might be done to correct unsatisfactory conditions that require restructuring or transformation. Such a person, in short, is likely to make reasonable judgments that follow from his or her reasonings, whether of a formal or informal nature. [42, p. 21]

Notwithstanding the descriptions above, reasonableness as a concept is still vaguely construed in P4wC theories [43, p. 105]. Gasparatou summarizes the meanings associated with reasonableness employed in the P4wC literature: “Reasonableness is a feature of one’s moral character, it relates to the ability to provide justification and select criteria, it belongs to individuals, it is required for democracy. In any case, reasonableness is not just solid reasoning, critical thinking skill or a path to true beliefs [43, p. 105].” The vagueness of the concept of reasonableness led Gasparatou [43] to propose a treatment of reasonableness as a virtue epistemic good linked to concepts like “open-mindedness,” as being open to different views from co-inquirers, “intellectual courage,” as being ready to defend one’s position and accept dissent if need be, and “intellectual autonomy”, as thinking independently with willingness to share in the understanding of others, among many others.

148

C. J. P. Alvarez-Abarejo

Additionally, reasonableness takes into account the socio-ethical dimension of judgment. Reasonableness is thinking as a community [38]. Lipman argues that “it is not reasoning alone that leads to reasonableness, but the experience of trying to reason together, as a community, that leads to the introjection of reasonableness in each participant [44, p. 21].” Reasonableness as a “regulative ideal” of the community of inquiry ties together reasoning, feeling and acting within a community, emphasizing the social dimension of rationality [38, p. 127]. Costa-Carvalho and Mendonça add that “reasonableness in P4C is the mark of the social nature of thinking and it opens the community to the connection between reasoning and the character, that is, to the bridging of the cognitive and the ethical dimensions of inquiry [38, p. 129].” This socio-ethical aspect of reasonableness fortifies the argument that it is developed through caring thinking in the context of a community of inquiry. Also, reasonableness, which is a matter of character or disposition, is cultivated in practice [39]. Reasonableness is produced through developing “habits of reasoning,” inculcating “respect for reasoning,” and having appreciation for the “value of reasoning” [39, p. 104]. Participants in the community of inquiry, thus, develop reasonableness when they practice philosophizing with others as a community. As Thomas notes, “One who is reasonable has internalized the practice of reason and adopted it as a fundamental value for herself or himself [39, p. 102].” It is in the same vein that Ann Margaret Sharp and Laurence Splitter think of reasonableness as “primarily a social disposition: the reasonable person respects others and is prepared to take into account their views and their feelings, to the extent of changing her own mind about issues of significance, and consciously allowing her own perspective to be changed by others. She is, in other words, willing to be reasoned with [45, p. 6].” From the above discussions, reasonableness may be summed up as wellrounded thinking. Thus, a reasonable judgment is a carefully developed, allencompassing thought with emphasis on the affective, cognitive, and socio-ethical dimensions of thinking. One who truly caringly thinks puts a premium on reasonableness and sound judgment. A truly reasonable person, in effect, is one who is committed to the standards of correct reasoning but is not limited by it. This person knows that judgment and the action that springs from it have socio-ethical implications for the self and the others. It is in this light that a reasonable person carefully and judiciously evaluates situations before coming up with judgment and proceeding in action. A reasonable person understands that he is not an exemplar in rationality because reasonableness is developed continually as he subjects his thought to the scrutiny of others in dialogues. A reasonable person is someone who recognizes that beliefs that one may hold are not merely propositional but affective and evaluative as well [46]. Thus, a reasonable person, because of constant practice, is able to develop a comprehensive ensemble of character traits and dispositions that enable him to gain insight into things. In the next section, I discuss the implications of caring thinking for education.

8

6

Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching

149

Implications for Education: Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching

In an age that over-glorifies outcomes in education, teachers tend to forget their principal role of nurturing students. In a very profound way, the role of teachers is one of a gardener not a sales manager; students are seeds to be sown in a fertile ground, not commodities to be marketed. As teachers play the role of sowers of these seeds, they must till the ground or cultivate an atmosphere conducive to developing one’s potential, remove bad weeds that stunt and disrupt growth, and do all possible ways to cater to each seed. Sharp describes the teacher’s role in a similar fashion as she discusses the intentionality of care. She said, [C]are is a kind of intentionality. If I care, I have the capacity to wish the other well, to take care of, to attend to, to nurture, and to help something or someone grow. If teachers do not care about their students, not much educational growth can take place. Rather, a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness on the part of both children and teachers is almost a certainty. [31, p. 213]

This intentionality of care propels one into action. As Sharp also notes, To care is always to care about something. We are caught up in our experience of the object – the thing or idea or event or person – that we care about. When I care, I feel I must do something about the situation. I must make some judgment. I must act. And it is at this point that our care brings our loving and our willing into unity. [31, p. 211]

The way Lipman also sees it, education must not only be a “laboratory” for the development of rationality; it should be a space in which “young people learn to be reasonable so that they can grow up to be reasonable citizens, reasonable companions, and reasonable persons [29, p. 22].” The Philosophy for/with Children program provides this space to educate children for reasonableness which is lacking in the traditional education setup. As highlighted in the previous section, education for reasonableness is made possible by the caring thinking aspect of the COI approach. Caring thinking cultivates reasonableness of judgment which in turn produces reasonable courses of action that position care at the center. Caring thinking is the concern for matters of importance given that it is a careful discrimination and assessment of an object’s worth [29]. That said, one can deduce that reasonableness developed through caring thinking gives the same attention to things of importance. Lipman offers a way of seeing the principle of caring thinking in action: Caring thinking encompasses thinking that is concerned (with the predicaments others are in), appreciative (of every arrangement of parts and wholes), normative (suggestive of what ought to be done in moral situations), and deliberative (in the sense that it seeks to weigh all the factors and take the context into account before judging). [1, pp. 5–6]

150

C. J. P. Alvarez-Abarejo

Specifically, among the first obvious implications of caring thinking for education is the justifiability of a pedagogy grounded on care. An approach to teaching in which care and compassion are extended to students is oftentimes questioned and frowned upon. In many ways, with the popularity of authoritarian style of teaching, teachers find themselves in an irrational conundrum as they feel so guilty whenever they tend to approach student concerns with empathy and compassion. However, a caring approach should not be viewed as unreasonable and senseless because reasonableness emanates from caring thinking. As pointed out in the previous section, care is both the judgment and the act springing from it—caring is both thinking and action. Caring about our students is thinking of their overall condition; actualizing the thought into acts of care is caring on its own. Thus, thinking of the welfare of students and acting on it is a reasonable course of action in education. Next, as to care for one’s object of care means to esteem, put value on, appreciate and be concerned about the latter, caring for students is appreciating them and esteeming them as they are: human beings who are in need of emphatic support and compassionate understanding. Education must acknowledge human frailty and vulnerability. When we look at our students, we should look at them caringly as they are fragile persons and not emotionless machines. They have their own individualities and individual needs. They have strengths they need to discover and weaknesses they need to improve. Their minds sometimes wander away but with the right support and motivation they will discover what they are able to do and what they want to do which will potentially lead them to successful ventures. Students, without a doubt, deserve to be valued because they have inalienable worth as human beings. A reasonable teacher approaches student concern with empathy and compassion. Further, caring thinking demands that teachers see students at the heart of education. Caring thinking is a concern for matters of importance. Applied to teaching, it means to be more concerned about our students than we are about the curriculum, mission and vision of the school, and learning outcomes. To be much more concerned about the latter is to have concerns for matters of negligible importance. Moreover, the discussions we hold in our classes must be “about matters that mean something in the lives of the student” to ensure “that their outcomes are likely to have some practical effect on how students live [22, p. 75].” In education, teachers are dealing with human persons. Human persons are far more important than educational goals, learning outcomes, and curricula for without them these things will never even have any use. Teachers must never teach for the accomplishment of the school vision/goals alone but for the overall welfare and development of students. The value of students in the educational process supersedes those of the other elements for in the absence of students to teach and educate, education would be a meaningless and senseless endeavor and pursuit. The presence and the need of students are the very reasons why education became a natural human engagement. A reasonable teacher sees the overall welfare of the students as a very important matter. Additionally, it is part of the caring thinking employed in education to be mindful of what would benefit the object of care. This means that to truly care for the

8

Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching

151

welfare of the students is to not spoil them but to help them maximize their potential. Caring does not mean spoiling as in giving them the easiest examinations, spoon-feeding them with answers, making the experience always easy for them. This shows the balance between the cognitive and affective aspects of caring thinking. Genuine care towards students involves scaffolding learning for them, i.e., assisting them in the beginning of the study in case the subject is very difficult and releasing them little by little if need be. It also involves creating individualized plans when teaching students with different learning needs and styles, never assuming that one size fits all. To genuinely care is to do things in moderation. A teacher that is too lenient creates learners who do not have respect for rules while a very stern teacher produces learners who are too afraid of the rules causing them to become too uneasy when making decisions and too conscious of their mistakes. Keeping an eye for the bigger picture, a reasonable teacher knows how to regulate her actions for the benefit of the students. Also, caring thinking paves the way for meaningful and positive relationships to be built among people. Caring thinking involves “explicitly acknowledging human relations [47, p. 15].” In the context of a community of inquiry, this leads to the education of emotions in students [47, p. 15]. Within a community of inquiry, participants develop trust and communicate care and concern for one another leading to personal development and emotional maturity [47]. Children get to discover, understand, and manage emergent feelings. In connection, Haynes [48, p. 84] calls these feelings “philosophical feelings” or those feelings that intertwine the affective and the cognitive dimensions of thinking. She notes: Children experience perplexity, curiosity, wonder. They experience the pleasure of agreement, the frustration of disagreement. They meet confusion, struggle and disenchantment… Their emotions are often visible in the children’s facial expressions and physical postures: a furrowed brow, a serious look, a mouth open, the eyes absent, brimming with tears or alight with the spark of recognition or a whole body bursting to speak. [48, p. 84]

As they come across these emotions, they learn to manage them. A reasonable teacher, therefore, will usher students into experiences that will help them understand and manage their emotions. Such a teacher creates a classroom community of inquirers among the students and environments that foster positive and nurturing relationships. Finally, caring thinking pushes for a teaching and learning that happens in a dialogue. A reasonable teacher sees the importance and beneficial impact of collaborative experiences. Setting up communities of inquiry in the classroom must be prioritized. As Sharp points out, “the community of inquiry is the pedagogical ideal [28, p. 50].” This means that the best caring pedagogy to use as it effectively addresses student needs and concerns is the community of inquiry approach.

152

C. J. P. Alvarez-Abarejo

In summary, below are some ways of putting caring thinking into practice and establishing reasonableness in teaching: . Understanding where the students are coming from, especially in times when they can no longer meet the expectations of the course you are handling. Students may be struggling due to personal, financial, and family-related issues that we do not have any idea of. Instead of demanding them to live up to high expectations, a reasonable, caring-thinking teacher would find ways to adjust the curriculum to accommodate the different needs of students. . Finding out what things and topics pique the interest of students. Finding a way for the course to provide the students opportunities to reflect on the topics that mean a lot to them. . Finding out ways to support the overall development of students and staying away from being too concerned about structures that may not be helpful at all. Being willing to adjust the structure to meet the needs of the students and not the opposite. . Making use of effective verbal communication tools and careful speech when communicating with students such as listening intently to students who have concerns, thinking before speaking or uttering words that might hurt and affect the confidence of students, encouraging students to speak up, because care is also heard and felt through the way we communicate with students. . Capitalizing on every opportunity to make students feel safe, secured, heard, and genuinely cared about.

7

Conclusion

As social and emotional learning is defined as “the process of integrating cognition, emotion, and behavior in our lives” [49], a pedagogy that takes cue from caring thinking is what the present educational landscape requires. Caring thinking fosters reasonableness in teachers by weaving together the affective, cognitive, and socio-ethical aspects of thought that are significant in developing reasonable courses of action in the classrooms. Caring thinking applied to teaching draws us back to the fundamental importance of “care” in education. Craft [50] noted that one of the two Latin roots of the term education is “educare” which means “to train and mold.” The image depicts a potter carefully and purposefully molding a pot. Education, as educare, or “caring or nurturing,” highlights education’s role in developing learners’ skills and learners as individuals. From this perspective, teachers are viewed as caregivers or nurturers who guide and assist students in reaching their full potential and making the best use of their inherent skills and capacities. For the student’s potential to become an actuality, the way is to properly steward and nurture it. In general, caring thinking applied to teaching reminds

8

Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching

153

teachers to toil in pursuit of things of importance—to be flexible and show compassion and care in educational situations that require it, to see our students at the heart of education. The value of students in the educational process supersedes those of the other elements, for in the absence of students to teach and educate, education would be a meaningless and senseless endeavor and pursuit. Cathlyne Joy P. Alvarez-Abarejo

References 1. Lipman M (2011) Philosophy for children: some assumptions and implications. Ethics Prog 2(1):3–16. https://doi.org/10.14746/eip.2011.1.2 2. Matsuda M (2021) Living in a VUCA world, what schools need to do to survive and thrive in the post pandemic world. https://voiceofoc.org/2021/04/matsuda-living-in-a-vucaworld-what-schools-need-to-do-to-survive-and-thrive-in-the-post-pandemic-world/. Accessed 15 July 2022 3. Lalla L (2021) Reimagining education in a VUCA world. https://mg.co.za/education/2021-1117-reimagining-education-in-a-vuca-world/. Accessed 15 July 2022 4. Waller RE, Lemoine PA, Mense EG, Garretson CJ, Richardson MD (2019) Global higher education in a vuca world: concerns and projections. J Educ Develop 3(2). https://doi.org/10. 20849/jed.v3i2.613 5. Hadar LL, Ergas O, Alpert B, Ariav T (2020) Rethinking teacher education in a VUCA world: teachers’ social-emotional competencies during crisis. Eur J Teach Educ 43(4):573– 586. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2020.1807513 6. Dorn E, Hancock B, Sarakatsannis J, Viruleg E (2021) COVID-19 and education: the lingering effects of unfinished learning. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-ins ights/covid-19-and-education-the-lingering-effects-of-unfinished-learning. Accessed 15 July 2022 7. Mental Health America (2022) The state of mental health in America https://www.mhanat ional.org/issues/state-mental-health-america. Accessed 15 July 2022 8. Panchal N, Kamal R, Cox C, Garfield R (2021) The implications of covid-19 for mental health and substance use. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/the-implications-ofcovid-19-for-mental-health-and-substance-use/. Accessed 15 July 2022 9. Radwan E, Radwan A, Radwan W, Pandey D (2021) Prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress during the covid-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study among palestinian students (10– 18 years). BMC Psychol 9(187). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00688-2 10. Wu S, Zhang K, Parks-Stamm E, Hu Z, Ji Y, Cui X (2021) Increases in anxiety and depression during COVID-19: a large longitudinal study from China. Front Psychol. https://doi.org/10. 3389/fpsyg.2021.706601 11. Jackson A (2022) The pandemic exacerbated mental health issues among incarcerated youth. How can we reverse the trend? Urban Wire. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/pandemicexacerbated-mental-health-issues-among-incarcerated-youth-how-can-we-reverse-trend. Accessed 15 July 2022 12. Harefa S, Sihombing GLA (2022) Students’ perception of online learning amidst the COVID19 pandemic: a study of junior, senior high school and college students in a remote area [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]. F1000Research 2022 10:867. https://doi.org/10.12688/ f1000research.52152.2

154

C. J. P. Alvarez-Abarejo

13. Mukhtar K, Javed K, Arooj M, Sethi A (2020) Advantages, limitations and recommendations for online learning during covid-19 pandemic era. Nat Libr Med Pak J Med Sci 36(COVID19S4):S27–S31. https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.COVID19-S4.2785 14. Hernando-Malipot M (2022) DepEd, CHED urged to implement nationwide academic ease amid a surge in COVID-19 cases. Manila Bulletin. https://mb.com.ph/2022/01/10/deped-chedurged-to-implement-nationwide-academic-ease-amid-a-surge-in-covid-19-cases/. Accessed 15 July 2022 15. OECD (2020) Supporting the continuation of teaching and learning during the COVID19 Pandemic. https://www.oecd.org/education/Supporting-the-continuation-of-teaching-andlearning-during-the-COVID-19-pandemic.pdf Accessed 15 July 2022 16. Stein S (2021) Reimagining global citizenship for a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. Globalisation, Societies and Education. https://www.academia.edu/455 96988/Reimagining_global_citizenship_education_for_a_volatile_uncertain_complex_and_ ambiguous_VUCA_world_2021_. Accessed 15 July 2022 17. Walker T (2020) Social-emotional learning should be priority during COVID-19 crisis. Nea News. https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/social-emotional-learningshould-be-priority-during-covid-19. Accessed 15 July 2022 18. Li L, Flynn KS, DeRosier M, Weiser G, Austin-King K. (2021) Social-emotional learning amidst COVID-19 school closures: positive findings from an efficacy study of adventures aboard the S.S. GRIN program. Front Educ Educ Psychol. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021. 683142 19. Schonert-Reichl KA (2017) Social and emotional learning and teachers. Spring 27(1). https:// files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1145076.pdf. Accessed 15 July 2022 20. Raab EL (2021) How do we prepare students to flourish in a VUCA future? Getting Smart. https://www.gettingsmart.com/2021/06/24/how-do-we-prepare-students-to-flourish-ina-vuca-future/. Accessed 15 July 2022 21. Baumann C, Krskova H (2016) School discipline, school uniforms and academic performance. Int J Educ Manag 30(6):1003–1029. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-09-2015-0118 22. Munro K (2016) Strict classroom discipline improves outcomes and work ethic, studies find. The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/education/strict-classroom-disciplineimproves-student-outcomes-and-work-ethic-studies-find-20161108-gsksiq.html. Accessed 15 July 2022 23. Baumann C, Hamin H, Yang SJ (2016) Work ethic formed by pedagogical approach: Evolution of institutional approach to education and competitiveness. Asia Pac Bus Rev 22(3):374–396. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602381.2015.1129767 24. Salzman D, Fusi S (2010) Emotion, cognition, and mental state representation in amygdala and prefrontal cortex. Ann Rev Neurosci 33:173–202. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10. 1146/annurev.neuro.051508.135256?src=recsys 25. Johnson E, Olson L (2015) The feeling brain: the biology and psychology of emotions. Norton Professional Books 26. Tyng CM, Amin HU, Saad MNM, Malik AS (2017) The influences of emotions on learning and memory. Front Psychol. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01454 27. Immordino-Yang MH, Damasio A (2007) We feel, therefore we learn: the relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education. Mind Brain Educ 1(1):3–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1751-228X.2007.00004.x 28. Sharp AM (1992) Women, children, and the evolution of philosophy for children. In: Reed R, Sharp AM (eds) Studies in philosophy for children: Harry Stotlemeier’s discovery. Temple University Press, pp 42–51 29. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education. Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn. 30. Morehouse RE (2018) Caring thinking, education of the emotions and the community of inquiry: a psychological perspective. In community of inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp. Routledge, London, pp 197–208 31. Sharp AM (2018) The other dimension of caring thinking. In community of inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp. Routledge, London, pp 209–214

8

Caring Thinking and Reasonableness in Teaching

155

32. Benjamin M, Echeverria E (1992) Knowledge and the classroom. In: Reed R, Sharp AM (eds) Studies in philosophy for children: Harry Stotlemeier’s discovery. Temple University Press, pp 64–78 33. Green L (2017) Philosophy for Children and developmental psychology: a historical review. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, London, pp 37–45 34. Solomon R (1983) The passions. University of Notre Dame Press 35. Nussbaum M (1990) Love’s knowledge: essays on philosophy and literature. Oxford University Press, Oxford 36. Michaud O, Valitalo R (2017) Authority, democracy and philosophy: the nature and role of authority in a community of philosophical inquiry. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, London, pp 27– 33 37. D’Olimpio L, Teachers C (2017) Drama, gestures and philosophy in the classroom: playing with philosophy to support an education for life. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, London, pp 145– 152 38. Costa-Carvalho M, Mendonça D (2017) Thinking as a community: reasonableness and emotions. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, London, pp 127–134 39. Thomas JC (1992) The development of reasoning in children through community of inquiry. In: Reed R, Sharp AM (eds) Studies in philosophy for children: Harry Stotlemeier’s discovery. Temple University Press, pp 96–104 40. Gewirth A (1983) The rationality of reasonableness. Synthese 57:225–247. https://doi.org/10. 1007/BF01064003 41. Grossman I, Eibach RP, Koyama J, Sahi QB (2020) Folk standards of sound judgment: rationality versus reasonableness. Sci Adv 6(2). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz0289 42. Lipman M (1993) Unreasonable people and inappropriate judgments. Crit Creative Thinking Aus J Philos Child 1(2):10–18. https://doi.org/10.5840/inquiryctnews199210342 43. Gasparatou R (2017) Philosophy for/with children and the development of epistemically virtuous agents. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, London, pp 103–110 44. Lipman M (1992) Unreasonable people and inappropriate judgments. Inq Crit Think Across Disciplines 10(3):18–22. https://doi.org/10.5840/inquiryctnews199210342 45. Splitter LJ, Sharp AM (1995) Teaching better thinking: the classroom community of inquiry. Australian Center for Educational Research, Melbourne 46. Marquez LP (2014) Belief as an evaluative and affective attitude: some implications on religious belief. Social Science Diliman, 10 47. Sharp AM (2014) The other dimension of caring thinking (with a new commentary by Philip Cam). J Philos Sch 1(1):15–21. https://doi.org/10.21913/jps.v1i1.989 48. Haynes J (2011) Children as philosophers: learning through enquiry and dialogue in the primary classroom, 2nd edn. Routledge Falmer Taylor and Francis Group, New York 49. Brackett MA et al (2019) RULER: a theory-driven, systematic approach to social, emotional, and academic learning. Educ Psychol 54(3):144–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2019. 1614447 50. Craft M (1984) Education for diversity. Education and cultural pluralism. Falmer Press, London and Philadelphia, pp 5–26

156

C. J. P. Alvarez-Abarejo Cathlyne Joy P. Alvarez-Abarejo teaches at the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Letters, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines. She obtained her BA Philosophy (magna cum laude) and MA Philosophy degrees from the Department of Philosophy, University of the Philippines, Diliman. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the College of Education, University of the Philippines Diliman, taking up Educational History and Philosophy. It is her strong interest in philosophy of education and passion in teaching that drew her to the Philosophy for/with Children program. Her research and teaching efforts are geared towards the introduction of Philosophy to young minds and the cultivation of thinking skills and intellectual virtues among the youth—all for her love of wisdom and the next generation.

9

Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans: A Proposal Leander Penaso Marquez , Michael Arthus G. Muega, and Maricris B. Acido-Muega

The school is a battleground because it, more than any other social institution, is the manufacturer of the society of the future … [1]

Abstract

Teachers often employ teaching tools such as lesson plans and textbooks to facilitate learning inside Philippine classrooms. Drawing from the LipmanSharp approach to dialogic inquiry, this chapter lays down a proposal on how Philosophy for/with Children can be incorporated in the crafting of lesson plans and textbooks. The following discussions frame the proposal in the context of Philippine basic education in which teachers utilize lesson plans and textbooks in a didactic fashion. It is argued in this chapter that providing teachers with L. P. Marquez (B) College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines e-mail: [email protected] M. A. G. Muega · M. B. Acido-Muega College of Education, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines e-mail: [email protected] M. B. Acido-Muega e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_9

157

158

L. P. Marquez et al.

lesson plans and textbooks that are inspired by the processes of Philosophy for Children can be helpful in transforming didactic classrooms into reflective ones. Although contextualized in the Philippines, the proposal may be applied in similar educational situations of teachers and textbook authors in other countries. Graphic Abstract

P4wC in lesson plans and textbooks

Keywords

Philosophy for/with children Philippines . Dialogic inquiry

1

.

Basic education

.

Lesson plan

.

Textbook

.

Introduction

Dialogic inquiry is an educational approach in which students and teachers engage in a collaborative dialogue to answer questions (i.e., inquiry) about the topic or subject of the lesson [2]. An example of dialogic inquiry is Philosophy for/ with Children. As advocates of Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC), we raise the question, “Can Philosophy for/with Children be used as an effective auxiliary pedagogical tool in Philippine basic education?” Basic education in the Philippines refers to the government-prescribed formal education that students receive from Kindergarten to Grade 12 both in public and private schools [3]. Philippine basic education is administered at three levels: (1) elementary school, which covers Kindergarten to Grade 6; (2) junior high school level, which covers Grades

9

Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans …

159

7–10; and (3) senior high school, which covers Grades 11–12 [3]. We believe that the answer to the question raised is in the affirmative given certain innovations that allow P4wC to fit well into the general framework and conduct of Philippine basic education. In Thinking in Education [1], Lipman elaborated on various misconceptions regarding teaching for critical thinking. Many Filipino teachers are guilty of acting out these misconceptions in the practice of their profession. They overwhelm students with questions, give them products of personal reflections and criticisms on the topics that were being discussed, and drill them in logical exercises, to name a few, believing that this is the way to teach learners how to think critically. These “drills” may be beneficial if done separately, but as Lipman points out, such exercises may actually cause more harm than good when carried out as institutional practices, as “drill … involves a dissociation of the thinking process from the meanings we might otherwise have to think about” [1, pp. 76–77]. As for straight lecturing, it is suspect when it comes to facilitating the development of critical thinking, even if one is teaching a course that is supposed to teach students how to be critical, and even if lectures can invite students to think [1, p. 73]. We asked several basic education teachers, through personal correspondence, regarding their observations on the conduct of teaching and other pedagogical practices in their respective schools.1 According to the teachers, 25– 50% of their class time is devoted to lectures [4]. This shows that the lecture method has still a major role to play in Philippine basic education and, perhaps, teachers will continue to view it generally as a necessary part of Philippine basic education. Meanwhile, P4wC—traditionally called Philosophy for Children (P4C)—was developed by Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp to engage young thinkers in philosophical inquiry [5]. Unlike the didactic approach, the very dynamics of Philosophy for/with Children aim to train students to think critically, creatively, and caringly as a community [1]. Since the Community of Inquiry (COI)—or more precisely, the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI)—focuses on shared thinking, students will be trained to think collaboratively about questions and to arrive at settlements to their problems as a community. The students, then, would begin to value the statements of their classmates and learn from each other’s experiences. The teacher, on the other hand, will not conduct him-/herself as someone who is a repository of knowledge and whose thoughts and words are the only ones that matter inside the classroom. Rather, the teacher will be regarded as an enabler who grants opportunities for students to raise questions and welcomes challenges by students not as a threat but as avenues to strengthen the community that seeks the best answers to its problems. As a result, students will be able to think for

1

The teachers who gave their opinions were former students, friends, or colleagues. That opinions of teachers gathered through an informal survey and the teachers gave consent to use their opinions as anecdotes to provide an insight into what happens in the classroom.

160

L. P. Marquez et al.

themselves instead of merely waiting for the teacher to give some sort of answer that students will regurgitate in future examinations and quizzes. The intellectual disposition that P4wC seeks to cultivate among learners is in line with the opinions of several basic education teachers whom we were able to talk to. According to one teacher [4] who teaches Grade 10 students, employing P4wC in the classroom will improve the cognitive and academic skills of students, as well as make the learning process more successful. Bote [4] who handles student from Grades 8–12 believes that P4wC can help students think beyond what they already know. Another teacher [4] observes that philosophy has always been a part of life and, thus, P4wC will not only help students learn what to think but also how to think. Bote [4] observes that P4wC allows students to reflect on their lessons, challenge things that are presented to them, appreciate information more, and relate their lessons to their daily lives.

2

Philosophy as a Pedagogical Tool in Philippine Basic Education

In Thinking in Education [1], Lipman details the philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical foundations of the P4wC approach and provides a relatively clear picture be applied in the classroom. He also provided the supposed products of each stage of inquiry at the levels of psychology and pedagogy. Reading through Lipman’s text, one may easy see how robust the theory behind P4wC is, as well as how promising the approach could be since it draws insights from established theorists such as Vygotsky, Peirce, and Dewey [1]. Nevertheless, a theory does not often faithfully describe or predict the events in real-classroom situation. An advantage of writing papers on P4wC is that its practitioners get to assess their experiences in conducting the CPI and write down their self-evaluation in an organized and coherent narrative. The theory in CPI crystallizes since its practitioner can draw from actual personal experiences several first-hand applications of the pedagogy that Lipman and Sharp proposed. In other words, Lipman’s and Sharp’s theoretical claims on the CPI (i.e., the process and the effects) go beyond the level of mere speculation because those who apply or test, or both, such claims can experience the whole process, either as a facilitator or as a studentparticipant, and witness the concurrent challenges and effects, both psychologically and pedagogically, of the approach. Among the challenges that we experienced were the following: struggle of the students to formulate questions; reluctance to challenge the claims raised by friends and classmates; lack of interest of some students to engage in the dialogue; the struggle by the facilitator to comprehensively synthesize the diverse points that have been raised; and the tediousness to pay close attention to the distinctions and implications of every assertion presented, to name a few. We believe that these challenges are not due to the P4wC approach. They are rather birthing pains from the newly introduced pedagogical practice, that is, the community of inquiry. This phase could be overcome through consistent practice. The challenges

9

Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans …

161

that we mentioned can be categorized into (1) challenges on the part of the students as inquirers, and (2) challenges on the part of the teacher as facilitator. When several students, however, begin to display their interest in the focus of the inquiry, such response tend to have a snowball effect within the community. This often results in a lively CPI as most students end up actively participating in the activity. However, the lack of interest2 appears to be contagious, as well, as there are instances which only two or three students would engage in the dialogue and would eventually fizzle out once they see that their classmates are not as eager as they are to raise questions. At least one of the teachers [2] attested to having witnessed snowball effect of displayed interest and the eventual loss of the same when other students remain silent during the CPI exercise. Discussion plans could be very helpful in instances like this. Normally employed to “improve concept-formation through equipping students with such tools as criteria, reasons, arguments and definitions” [6, p. 65], discussion plans, which contain questions that were prepared by the facilitator for students to investigate in class, can also help as a breather for students from formulating questions while providing the opportunity to conduct a COI. A philosophical discussion plan consists of a group of questions that generally deal with a single concept, relationship (such as a distinction or connection) or problem. The questions may form a series, in which each [question] builds upon its predecessors, or they may form a circle around the topic so that each question focuses upon the topic from a different angle. [6, p. 65]

Lipman and Sharp provide samples of such questions in discussion plans featured in Looking for Meaning [7]. Meanwhile, as a facilitator, it is the duty of the teacher to ensure that students follow and respect the rules of the COI. It is also the duty of the teacher to monitor where the arguments lead by being cognizant of implicatures, monitoring settlements, clarifying statements, and so on. However, since often only one teacher is responsible for handling a classroom with 30–50 students, the necessity to consciously facilitate the dialogue, extract the nuances of questions, arguments, and counterarguments that arise, and synthesize what has been said by the community, among others, are challenging even if the facilitator has a philosophical training and pays attention to details and is analytical in assessing responses from the students. It is, therefore, much more difficult to facilitate a dialogic inquiry if the teacher lacks the required training and ability to think reflectively or philosophically. This led us to realize that learning the content of philosophy does not necessarily translate to being able to teach it effectively. Thus, what the future teachers need to learn addition to content is an effective pedagogy.

2

The lack of interest is often influenced by circumstantial factors, such as the timeslot of the class or the temperature in the classroom, which are outside of the teacher’s/facilitator’s control.

162

L. P. Marquez et al.

Bote [4] argues that a philosophy-based pedagogy is not about memorizing concepts. Rather, it is about training students to ask questions, respectfully challenge one another’s ideas, and apply whatever they learned to society to improve it. Similarly, education is not merely a passing of information from the teacher to the student. It is teaching the student how to learn and to think critically, creatively, and caringly. We are of the opinion that education is at its best when it allows the student to think critically, creatively, and caringly and at its worst when it leads the student to embrace pre-established truths completely. In the current state of Philippine education, students are the ones who lose the most when teachers teach for testing rather than teach for thinking. In addition, even some of the materials used in class are substandard. For instance, a Grade 8 textbook3 on physical education and health gives the following as example of gender roles: “masculine— breadwinner; feminine—babysitter”. Another example from a different book is an exercise with the following question: “Kapwa Pilipinong mula sa bulubundukin ng Cordillera and nanay at tatay ni Beno. Siya ay: (a) maliit at maitim, (b) matangkad at maputi, (c) matangkad at madilaw” [Beno’s mother and father are Filipinos from the mountains of Cordillera. Therefore, Beno is: (a) short and dark, (b) tall and white, (c) tall and yellow]. The supposedly correct answer is letter “a.” Just imagine what kind of citizens Philippine schools might end up producing if the educators would further reinforce such kind of textbook teaching as an established truth. It will not be surprising if students become hardly able, if not unable, to keep myopic and uncritical thinking at bay. The problem in view is multifaceted. First, the students are not adequately prepared to analyze and criticize the information that are presented to them and merely accepts them because the teacher or the textbook says so. “In most cases, teachers are taught to teach using manuals and textbooks. In this kind of training, their teaching ability is measured simply by their capacity to learn and memorize the manuals” [8]. Consequently, the child also ceases to ask questions because s/he is habituated that the relevant questions and correct or most acceptable answers could issue only from the teacher. This problem persists not only in basic education but also in tertiary education. For instance, when our class was discussing the difference between sentences and statements, where statements are carriers of truth value, we would give “Palma Hall is in Ateneo” as an example of a false sentence. When asked if they agree that the sentence is false, the students said “yes.” At this point, they would again be reminded that only statements have truth values and not sentences. Second, many teachers are preoccupied with the quantity of information transmitted rather than the quality of thinking developed. Bote [4] observes this to be true inside the classroom. In addition, Bote [4] claims that the employment of the spiral progression approach is meant to maximize the retention of information by students but fails to retain them altogether since they do not commit themselves to their lessons. That is, they do not see the relevance of these information to their

3

Deidentified (anonymized) for purposes of privacy and confidentiality.

9

Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans …

163

daily lives. Accordingly, many teachers stick to Bloom’s taxonomy, but fails to teach students to think beyond lower order thinking. One reason for this is the teacher’s failure to utilize higher order thinking such as analysis or reflection. In Bloom’s taxonomy, higher order thinking includes analyzing, evaluating, and creating, yet many teachers fail in analyzing and evaluating the reference material that they use in their classes. For instance, the modules in the Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao (EsP) Grade 10 textbook (see Footnote 3) that is widely used in Philippine public schools appear to preach. The students are given generalizations that the authors have chosen to include in the modules, e.g., pagiging anak ng Diyos, kasagraduhan ng buhay, pagkakaroon ng persona ng tao, etc. (being children of God, sanctity of life, humans as persons, etc.) and many of the activities are founded on these predetermined generalizations. “Sa pananaw ng iba’t ibang relihiyon, ang buhay ay sagrado … Paano mo mapapanatiling sagrado ang buhay ng tao?” (According to different religions, life is sacred … how can you keep human life sacred?) is another example of text that teachers are likely to teach in class without considering whether it has a discriminatory effect on some students. Whether this will change in the new MATATAG K to 10 curriculum that will be implemented in 2024 remains to be seen. Third, teacher-training institutions focus more on didactic teaching than reflective teaching and pedagogy over content. Most, if not all, institutions in the country that train teachers prepare prospective educators to teach didactically rather than reflectively [8]. One reason is that more information can be transmitted when taught didactically compared to reflective teaching. Since academic years are divided into quarters or semesters, teachers must be able to teach what they need to teach within the period allotted and ensure that students have learned the information they need before the testing period. Consequently, teacher-training institutions focus more on pedagogy, that is, teaching strategies that would help teachers to cover what they needed to teach in such a way that the students would be able to retain most of what was taught, over training teachers to analyze and evaluate the contents of what they are teaching. One of the teachers [4] even claim that one of the points that need improvement in the K to 12 program is the teachers’ mastery of their respective subject areas. Fourth, local schools have become so engrossed with outcomes-based education (OBE). To begin with, OBE is just a theory, but it has been required by the DepEd and CHED to be practiced in schools. The outcomes, which are heavily dependent on Spady’s verbs, limit the student’s opportunity to think reflectively and unfairly judges the student’s learning abilities based on the extent by which the student was able to satisfy the verbs. One major flaw in the OBE approach is that it relies on Bloom’s taxonomy and Spady’s verbs. Further, it is difficult to pinpoint where exactly critical thinking should be in the taxonomy since any of the existing categories cannot fully encapsulate what critical thinking is. In this light, there is also a lack of appropriate verb that can be used to capture critical thinking as an objective. Consequently, the teacher, given the intended outcomes of the subject may or may not be teaching the students critical thinking. Interestingly, a chapter in this collection argues how OBE can help achieve the goals of P4wC.

164

L. P. Marquez et al.

Fifth, the government’s priority is on producing skilled laborers rather than educated citizens [9, 10]. The Philippines is one of the leading labor exporters in the world. The government is working extra hard to provide ways for Filipinos to take technical-vocational courses that are in-demand overseas. This is driven by the amount of revenue generated by OFWs that are very important in keeping the nation’s economy afloat. The K to 12 program publicly claims that its graduates are ready to become part of the workforce. The said claim is reiterated by one of the teachers [4] that K to 12 graduates are ready for employment. Many of these predicaments have been alluded to by Lipman in Thinking in Education [1], but they are, for the most part, products of our personal experiences and observations. Through various experiences as students and educators, we came to see how Philippines schools are wanting in terms of preparing students to face the demands of the postmodern world. Many private schools are more concerned with the brand of education that they are offering instead of developing students to become multidimensional thinkers. Meanwhile, public school teachers are buried in paperwork and the sheer number of students per class alone discourages reflective teaching due to the number of insights that the teacher would have to handle at once. In both cases, it is the students who are the losers. It can be argued that the products of the Philippine education system have led our country to where it is today. One of the teachers [4] claim that based on social media interactions and day-to-day grassroots affairs, the Philippine basic education program has failed to produce critical and reasonable citizens. For instance, not uncommon to hear in the news thoughtless statements coming from supposedly well-schooled public officials. The same could be observed among ordinary citizens, who, for instance, would expressly take pleasure in the deaths caused by wars on just about almost anything. Though one may contend that there are many angles from which the problems of the Philippines can be considered, it is also undeniably true that many Filipinos spend a good part of their lives inside educational institutions. One can even go as far as saying that education also happens at home, in churches, local communities, and through media, among others. There is still much to do to produce a generation of Filipinos who are critical, creative, and caring thinkers. Philosophy is alien to many students and Philosophy for Children is remains a young discipline in the country. Nevertheless, through the consolidated efforts of local teachers who believe in this kind of pedagogy, it will be able to establish strong support and following in the Philippines, just like in the United Kingdom and South Korea. Several basic education teachers [4] reveal that there are teachers who are willing to be trained in P4wC. One of the teachers pointed out that it will help one to be a more efficient educator and another has expressed commitment to use it inside the classroom. According to the teachers, P4wC will be greatly beneficial in teaching subjects such as Social Studies, Filipino, English, and Values Education. Some even point out that all subject areas could benefit from such an approach to teaching. Haneda [2], however, observes that not everyone welcomes the thought of learning a new pedagogy. This could indicate that integrating P4wC in Philippine basic education classrooms may be perceived as an additional burden to teachers.

9

Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans …

165

Another teacher [4] also points out that they are usually being given jobs that do not necessarily relate to teaching, which can be considered a burdensome clerical work. Adding unnecessary workloads to the teachers must, of course, be avoided. In addition, although the teachers expressed interest to learn P4wC, it is also a fact that it will not be easy to change the K to 12 curricular framework to one that is based on P4wC or can easily accommodate P4wC in the classroom. One of the teachers [4] point out that the K to 12 program prefers the OBE, hence, it is focused on the teaching of hard skills and so-called twenty-first century global competencies, which in turn, translates to an emphasis on the quantity of information transmitted to the students. The teacher recognizes that there is an attempt to mask the K to 12 curriculum as learner-centered and reflective, but the practice is a far cry from the visions and ideals of the P4wC.

3

Integrating the Philosophy for Children Pedagogy in Philippine Schools

From the discussion above, we have identified five issues that need to be considered if one is to integrate P4wC in Philippine basic education. These are the following: 1. Lectures are a major part of Philippine basic education classrooms. 2. There are teachers who are willing to be trained in P4wC. 3. A difficulty to change the Philippine basic education curriculum to one that is based on or readily employs P4wC exists. 4. Philippine basic education can be improved by using P4wC in the classrooms. 5. P4wC has a place in Philippine basic education, but the use of which should not be viewed as an additional burden to the teachers. Individual efforts to bring P4wC in as many schools as possible are admirable and noble, but one can only do so much. The more important question to think about is how the above considerations can be addressed, with the purpose of integrating P4wC in Philippine schools in a much wider scale. To this end, we propose two solutions that can be taken into formal consideration. Firstly, Philosophy for Children can be integrated within the lesson plan so that the conduct of classes can be structured around P4wC. Secondly, Philosophy for/with Children can be integrated in textbooks to guide teachers and students in doing P4wC in relation to the lessons presented in the textbook.

3.1

Philosophical Lesson Planning Model

Lesson plans are important in the conduct of lessons in Philippine basic education. DepEd Order 42, S. 2016 provides the guidelines for preparing Daily Lesson Plan (DLP) and Daily Lesson Log (DLL) [11]. It serves as the blueprint or the

166

L. P. Marquez et al.

guide map of how the topic that should be taught in class will be delivered by the teacher. Thus, teachers, especially those who are at the early stages of their teaching career, are often required to submit lesson plans to their coordinators or principals to ensure that they have a “strategy” before they teach their respective classes. This also guarantees high-quality teaching and learning [12, 13]. For this reason, lesson plans appear to be an effective avenue to transform a traditional classroom into a reflective one by structuring it around the basics of Philosophy for Children. The P4wC approach, as devised by Lipman and Sharp (simply, the Lipman-Sharp approach) [5], consists of five steps (i.e., stimulus—agendasetting—inquiry proper—enrichment—evaluation), which shall also serve as the basis of our proposed five-point lesson plan model. Our proposed method for creating a lesson plan shall be called the “STAR Lesson Planning Model” or simply “STAR Lesson Plan.” The STAR Lesson Plan is inspired by the five-step Lipman-Sharp approach to building a community of inquiry. It is comprised of the following: (1) Stimulus, (2) Targeted Philosophical Dialogue; (3) Activities and Assessment; (4) Repetition of Reflection; and the (5) Lesson Proper/Plan itself. It is important to note that the STAR Lesson Plan adapts Lipman-Sharp’s 5-step approach into the practice of Filipino teachers of making lesson plans. We believe that the application of this approach has the potential to significantly contribute to the advancement of the quality of Philippine education.

3.1.1 The STAR Lesson Plan The STAR Lesson Plan is comprised of five points that lay out the framework of a philosophical or reflective lesson plan. It is expected that its sustained and masterful deployment in the classroom will give rise to highly reflective cases of learning in various subject areas. Below is a detailed discussion of each point of the lesson plan. Point 1: Stimulus The stimulus is meant to catch the interest of students and put them in a “learning mood” that will signal the beginning of the lesson. It is, therefore, imperative that the stimulus must be interesting and related to the lesson proper. One of the best stimuli that is used in Philosophy for/with Children is the reading of philosophical novels. In the reading of philosophical novels or texts, one of the strategies that is often employed is collective reading wherein the students read the assigned text in turn. This is greatly in contrast with the traditional approach of the teacher reading the text in front of the class while the students merely listen or follow with their eyes. Reading in turn allows the students the opportunity to speak before their classmates and helps them to focus on what is being read as they wait for their turn. Other stimuli that can be employed include games, thought experiments, short videos or movies, poems, and stories, among others. The only consideration that the teacher must keep in mind is that these stimuli must rouse the student’s faculty of wonder so that they may begin to ask questions and think. Thus, prior to

9

Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans …

167

selecting any stimulus, the teacher must always ask, “Does this material stimulate philosophical or reflective thinking?”. In addition, it may happen that students are unfamiliar of certain vocabulary that unlocking (meaning-offering and meaning-making) is needed. The teacher must make it a point to be ready to unlock new words starting from the stimulus up until the end of the lesson to ensure that the students understand most of what will be presented in class. Point 2: Targeted Philosophical Dialogue The targeted philosophical dialogue is where the community of inquiry is built through exchanges of ideas, questions, and challenges. It focuses on several “targets” that the learners are supposed to meet at the end of class. These targets may vary from one class or lesson to another but must always include the following targets: lesson/topic; question/s; skill/attitude; and conclusion/output. For the targeted philosophical dialogue to be successful, there must be a collaborative effort between the students and the teacher. This means that the targets are not only set by the teacher alone but must also include the inputs of the students. For example, the lesson for the day can be determined by the teacher but the question that will be tackled by the community of inquiry may be different from what the teacher had in mind. This is where agenda-setting (or raising and selecting questions come in). The direction of the philosophical dialogue will also be dependent on where the argument of the community leads and must not be directed by the teacher. This will allow students to take an active role in their education rather than be mere passive receivers of information. Simply put, this point is where the community of philosophical inquiry must take place. This is the part where the teacher ceases to become a teacher and begins to be a co-inquirer with the students in building a community. In this sense, setting the agenda, directing the discourse, managing the classroom, asking questions, challenging answers, presenting claims, and whatnot, are not the sole responsibility of the teacher alone, but of the whole community where every member collaborates with each other to learn and arrive at a particular judgement or conclusion. Point 3: Activities and Assessment The third point of the STAR Lesson Plan is all about reinforcement and evaluation. This implies that activities that will strengthen and follow up on what the student has learned should be formulated. These activities, as much as possible, must not be graded and must focus on highlighting what was learned during the day. This will give students ample time to digest what they had learned before being subjected to any form of evaluation. Meanwhile, assessment is where it gets a little complex. When doing the assessment, the teacher must not evaluate based on what the student has memorized or remembered from the lesson. What the teacher must keep in mind is that the assessment is meant to determine whether the student has learned how to think.

168

L. P. Marquez et al.

Thus, any assessment activity should allow for the students to showcase their thinking skills. This can be done in a variety of ways such as essays, projects, quizzes, exams, and recitations, among others. During the review of this chapter, our readers point out that the notion of “assessment” is at the center of many debates between P4wC theorists and practitioners. We have no intention to contribute to this debate because, as Filipino educators, it is common knowledge that assessment is an indispensable part of Philippine education. If P4wC will be successfully adapted in Philippine classrooms, then assessment is non-negotiable. Teachers, however, can be creative in doing their assessment. For this reason, suggesting that teachers should use assessment tools that encourage reflection (e.g., reflection paper, artwork, etc.) is our way to satisfy this basic education requirement in our context. Point 4: Repetition of Reflection Philosophy as a way of life greatly relies on habituating oneself on the practice of thinking. This means that for the students to become philosophical or reflective, they must be habituated to think critically, creatively, caringly, and collaboratively. For this reason, the fourth point of the lesson plan emphasizes repetition of reflection. What this implies is that outside of the targeted philosophical dialogue, the teacher should raise questions that will allow for the students to think reflectively. Thus, in the conduct of the lesson, thought experiments, ethical dilemmas, openended questions, exploratory queries, and the like must be inserted by the teacher. This also gives the opportunity for students to formulate and ask questions of their own that the teacher and the rest of the class can collaboratively answer. Our reviewers were correct to observe that this point is not a step in the LipmanSharp process but a general practice for teachers to do. This is a reason why our STAR Lesson Plan is comprised of points and not steps because the points are part of a whole and not a step in a sequence. Through this point, we want to emphasize that teachers must design their lesson plans in such a way that there are various opportunities for reflection even outside of the philosophical dialogue. Point 5: Lesson Plan/Proper The teacher must remember that these points do not exist independently of each other because they are, in fact, linked together in what is referred to as the lesson plan. In this light, the teacher must keep in mind that each point is something that the class can always go back to. In fact, it is encouraged that the teacher, during appropriate parts of the lesson, go back to the other points to clarify or reinforce what has already transpired. To be clear, this is where the lecture comes in. As mentioned earlier, lectures are integral in Philippine classrooms. Thus, there should be a time in class which teachers can use for their lectures. Ideally, this should be after the philosophical dialogue. In doing the lecture, however, we propose that teachers do it by going back to what transpired during the dialogue to emphasize the points that the learners made or supplement ideas that they may have missed.

9

Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans …

169

Returning or referring to the previous points is important not only because it enriches what has already been discussed and experienced during these points, but more importantly, one cannot expect the community to be able to discuss everything that needs to be tackled in the lesson during the conduct of these points. Thus, the teacher must be able to supplement what is lacking and complement what is already there with what s/he knows during the lesson proper. This ensures that the students do not only learn how to think but are also given up-to-date and relevant information by the teacher. Obviously, this is not a part of the Lipman-Sharp approach, but it is a feasible way that we see to be able to merge the Lipman-Sharp approach to the lecture-style approach that teachers employ in Philippine classrooms. It goes without saying that instead of simply adopting the Lipman-Sharp approach in the Philippine context, we retrofitted it to fit the current Philippine basic education classroom practice.

3.2

Philosophical Textbook Writing Model

Apart from integrating Philosophy for/with Children in the lesson plan, another proposed solution is to incorporate the approach in textbooks—a task that must be undertaken by practitioners of P4wC whenever they are presented opportunities to write textbooks. An alternative is for P4wC practitioners to collaborate with textbook writers and/or publishers to develop P4wC-inspired textbooks. Philippine basic education relies heavily on textbooks. In fact, critics point out that prevalent quality issues in Philippine education are often not properly addressed because the government tends to focus on increasing inputs—textbooks included—instead of resolving root causes [14]. There is also an apparent return to paper textbooks after e-textbooks have taken Philippine schools by storm [15]. Given this, it appears that the ideal scenario is to incorporate the P4wC approach in all textbooks regardless of subject or grade level. Incorporating P4wC in textbooks will not only make it easier for teachers to create STAR Lesson Plans, but more importantly, it will enable the students to read textbooks that could rouse and develop their reflective and philosophical aptitudes. To achieve this, the textbook must feature key components that are parallel to the Lipman-Sharp approach (and the STAR Lesson) Plan while making provisions for teachers to be able to transmit information to students through lecture. These components are: (1) Introductory Reading (Stimulus), (2) Preliminary Activity (Agenda-Setting and COI), (3) Lesson Proper (Lecture/Discussion), (4) Reflection Points (COI), (5) Reinforcement and Assessment Exercises (Assessment and Evaluation). Certain parts of the textbooks can be used to maximize the teacher’s understanding of how it can be used for reflective teaching. For instance, the Preface can explain some of the basics of conducting a community of philosophical inquiry inside the classroom and helps teachers to understand how the textbook is supposed to be used. From the onset, it should outline the structure of the entire textbook and explain the relevance and function of each part in the conduct of the lesson.

170

L. P. Marquez et al.

Moreover, it should also discuss what a community of inquiry is, as well as suggest a few ground rules to create such a community. This is important especially if the teacher is not familiar with how P4wC is done inside the classroom. To this end, part of the preface must also shed some light on the different kinds of questions that can be raised as well as gives examples on some procedural questions that can be used during the inquiry to further the development of the community of inquiry that is being built inside the classroom. The contents of the preface, once understood, make it easier for teachers to follow the flow of the textbook and at the same time helps them transform their classroom from a traditional to a more reflective one. It is ideal if teachers are trained on how to use the textbooks but limitations in financial and logistical resources as well as bureaucracy are big challenges to conducting teacher-training on the textbooks in the whole country. Thus, an explanation in the Preface is a practical, though inadequate way to give the teachers an idea on how to use the textbooks. As customary for textbooks, there is a brief introduction at the beginning of each lesson and an enumeration of its objectives. These objectives or “targets” are important in ensuring that the purposes of each lesson are adequately met in the end. This also makes it easier for the teachers to write their STAR Lesson Plan since these objectives can be adopted as additional targets. In the beginning of the lesson, the textbook provides a stimulus that serves as the introductory reading, which is immediately followed by an activity that aims to create communities of inquiry. The activity clearly explains what the focus of the COI should be since the inquiry has to be as closely related as possible to the subject-matter of the day. This allows the teacher to integrate a COI session from the onset of the lesson. Afterwards, the discussion proper begins wherein the teacher is allowed to discuss relevant information that was not tackled during the earlier COI. This is important since the textbook recognizes the possibility that not all the concepts that students need to learn are discussed during the COI. This also gives the teacher the chance to unlock new vocabularies. As pointed out earlier, there ought to be provisions for repetition of reflection. Thus, in the middle of the discussion, teachers are given several questions that they can raise for their students to think about and discuss. These questions are scattered in different parts of the lesson to break the monotony of the lecture. There are two distinct advantages to incorporating such questions in the textbook. First, it allows the teacher to continue the COI during the lesson proper. This reinforces the practice of thinking critically, creatively, caringly, and collaboratively in students. Second, when students go home and begin reviewing the lesson, they can think about answers to these questions more deeply and can raise new opinions regarding them during the next meeting. The teacher, however, must remember that these questions are not meant to be answered during the class alone. In fact, if the students cannot answer them during the class, they can be assigned as homework that can enrich the students’ understanding of the lesson. As a result, the class does not relegate to mere lecture, but continues in the spirit of reflective thought.

9

Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans …

171

The textbook should feature two kinds of exercises. First is the “Learning Reinforcement Exercise” that is meant to strengthen what the students have learned. This type of exercise is not meant to be graded. The second type of exercises is the “Learning Assessment Exercise” that is meant to evaluate what the students have learned. This type of exercise is designed to be graded and contributes to the student’s final grades. This two-fold approach on giving exercises ensures that the teacher does not only allow for the maximum opportunity for the students understand the subject-matter, but more importantly, to guarantee that the teacher does not merely teach for testing but also for thinking. Infusing the P4wC approach in textbooks in a national level can significantly contribute to a reflective education in the Philippines. However, there are political and practical issues that are outside the scope of this essay that need to be addressed first before this can become a reality. Thus, we see individual efforts by P4wC practitioners, textbook writers, and publishers as meaningful contributions to a P4wC-inspired education in the Philippines because we believe that every contribution to improving the thinking skills of Filipino students through P4wC, however small, matters. Ultimately, these two proposals can be realistic solutions to the problem of integrating Philosophy for Children in the Philippine K to 12 curriculum. The success of these solutions, however, can be achieved, among other ways, if teachertraining institutions will educate teachers in employing the STAR Lesson Plan and if the textbooks that they use in their classrooms are philosophically written.

3.3

Final Note

It is worth highlighting that P4wC is largely experiential. Inasmuch as learning how to philosophize depends not on studying various philosophical theories but on doing the act of philosophizing—experiencing philosophical thinking—using P4wC in the classroom does not simply require studying these models but the actual experience of building a community of philosophical inquiry is of utmost importance. This experiential dimension of P4wC enables one to gradually understand what doing P4wC looks, feels, and sounds. This understanding cannot be gained by simply studying these models without training and application. For this reason, without experiencing P4wC first-hand, these models can only do so much. Simply put, “what P4C is, can be experienced only in practice, and it embraces a wide range of practices worldwide” [16]. Another point that needs to be considered is that building a community of inquirers can be tiresome and time-consuming, especially at the beginning. Since students need to learn and get accustomed to the dynamics of P4wC first, the teacher-facilitator will be primarily responsible in ensuring that the inquiry remains on track. This means that tasks such as following the argument, summarizing points, enforcing rules, clarifying statements, and the like fall on the teacher until such time that the members of the community can perform these tasks themselves. Such activities can be tiresome. This, however, is not a problem of the method

172

L. P. Marquez et al.

but is largely biological in nature since thinking naturally causes fatigue [17]. Further, the time allotted for classes in the Philippines is usually around an hour per subject where students take between four to eight subjects per day depending on their grade level. With the quantity of topics that need to be covered in class, even a 20-min CPI can pose a threat to successfully completing the lessons for the day. These are some of the reasons why Filipino teachers may be discouraged to employ P4wC inside their classrooms and the inspiration behind a proposal to integrate dialogic inquiry in Philippine textbooks and lesson plans. In addition, there is still research that needs to be done when it comes to applying P4wC in all subject areas. It is a valid concern that there may be some subject areas where P4wC may not be applicable. Despite accounts in which P4wC was applied in the teaching of science and mathematics [18], these are examples of two subject areas in which the application of the P4wC can be extremely difficult. For this reason, these suggested models above have accommodated lectures so that the question on whether P4wC is feasible in Philippine schools can be addressed. This arrangement promotes the benefit of P4wC inside the classroom without having to forego the benefits of lectures especially in studying subjects such as science and math. The battle for social change through education cannot be won without effective tools. Teachers, therefore, must not only be trained to be reflective but must also be provided with tools that promote critical, creative, caring, and collaborative thinking.

4

Conclusion

We have proposed two ways by which dialogic inquiry, through P4wC, can be integrated in Philippine basic education. However, the successful implementation of P4wC does not simply mean that the lesson plans or textbooks were followed or that the teacher has effectively facilitated a COI. The success of P4wC can be determined more clearly if teachers are able to see a change in student behavior that mirrors the behaviors of someone who is acting as a builder of a community. At the forefront of the behaviors that characterize community-building is showing respect to others since “[i]ntrinsic to the P4C pedagogy are values such as tolerance and respect” [19, p. 13]. Another is improvement in thinking skills [20, 21]. These changes in behavior go beyond the conduct of a COI and can be very useful in the pursuit of personal and collective well-being in society. For this reason, beyond improved academic results, teachers should also watch out for behavioral improvements to determine whether they are successful in employing P4wC inside the classroom using these models. The behavioral improvements mentioned above could also serve as good indicators that the teachers are doing P4wC and not simply complying with the activities that need to be done. Inasmuch as philosophizing is truth-seeking, exploratory, critical, reasonable, and emotive, among others, philosophical activities should also reflect these standards. Thus, activities in the lesson plan and textbook should also reflect these standards for them to be considered philosophical. Teachers

9

Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans …

173

and textbook authors, therefore, should keep this in mind when preparing their instructional materials. The battle for social change through education cannot be won without effective tools. Teachers, therefore, must not only be trained to be reflective but must also be provided with tools that promote critical, creative, caring, and collaborative thinking. Leander Penaso Marquez, Michael Arthus G. Muega, and Maricris B. Acido-Muega

References 1. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education. Cambridge University Press, New York 2. Haneda M (2014) Dialogic inquiry. In: Coghlan D, Brydon-Miller M (eds) The sage encyclopedia of action research. SAGE Publications, Ltd., London 3. Department of Education (n.d.) K to 12 basic education curriculum. https://www.deped.gov. ph/k-to-12/about/k-to-12-basic-education-curriculum/ 4. Bote AM, Sanchez M et al (2019) Personal correspondence 5. Oyler J (2016) Philosophy with children: the lipman-sharp approach to philosophy for children. In: Peters M (ed) Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_226-2 6. Lipman M (1996) Philosophical discussion plans and exercises. Anal Teach 16(2):64–77 7. Lipman M, Sharp AM (1982) Looking for meaning: instructional manual to accompany pixie. https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=iapc_ primary_schl_curriculum 8. Mancenido-Bolaños MAV (2018) Narrowing the gap between theory and practice: community of inquiry and its state in the Philippines. Kritike Online J Philos 12(2):140–156 9. Tapang G (2015) Are we prepared for the K-12? The Manila Times. https://www.manilatimes. net/are-we-prepared-for-the-k-12/174317/ 10. Reyes E (2015) K to 12 to create more OFWs, not development of Philippines—UP Prof. InterAksyon.com. https://www.pasei.com/k-to-12-to-create-more-ofws-not-development-of-philip pines-up-prof/ 11. Department of Education (2016) DO 42, s. 2016—Policy guidelines on daily lesson preparation for the K to 12 basic education program. https://www.deped.gov.ph/2016/06/17/do42-s-2016-policy-guidelines-on-daily-lesson-preparation-for-the-k-to-12-basic-education-pro gram/ 12. Hernando-Malipot M (2018) Briones exhorts teachers to plan their lessons well. Manila Bulletin. https://news.mb.com.ph/2018/09/25/briones-exhorts-teachers-to-plan-their-lessonswell/ 13. Montemayor MT (2018) Lesson plan preparation ensures quality teaching, learning: DepEd. Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1049004 14. Read L, Atinc TM (2017) Investigations into using data to improve learning: Philippines case study. Global economy and development at Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-con tent/uploads/2017/03/global-20170307-philippines-case-study.pdf 15. Fabonan E III (2019) Returning to paper textbooks. OneNews. https://onenews.ph/returningto-paper-textbooks 16. Murris K, Bramall S, Egley S, Gregory M, Haynes J, Williams S (2009) What Philosophy with children is not: responses to some critics and constructive suggestions for dialogue about the role of P4C in higher education. https://www.academia.edu/4331847/What_Philoso phy_with_Children_is_not_responses_to_some_critics_and_constructive_suggestions_for_ dialogue_about_the_role_of_P4C_in_Higher_Education

174

L. P. Marquez et al.

17. Wiehler A, Branzoli F, Adanyeguh I, Mochel F, Pessiglione M (2022) A neuro-metabolic account of why daylong cognitive work alters the control of economic decisions. Curr Biol 32(16):3564–3575. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.07.010 18. Calvert K, Förster M, Hausberg A, Meerwaldt D, Nevers P, Paarmann S, Sprod T (2017) Philosophizing with children in science and mathematics classes. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, London and New York 19. Love R (2016) The case for philosophy for children in the English primary curriculum. Analytic teaching and philosophical praxis, 36. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/185248125.pdf 20. Zulkifli H, Hashim R (2020) Philosophy for children (p4c) in improving critical thinking in a secondary moral education class. Int J Learn Teach Educ Res 19(2). https://doi.org/10.26803/ ijlter.19.2.3 21. Wu C (2021) Training teachers in china to use the philosophy for children approach and its impact on critical thinking skills: a pilot study. Educ Sci 11(5). https://doi.org/10.3390/educsc i11050206

Leander Penaso Marquez teaches philosophy, educational foundations, and values education courses at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He has published several articles in local and international journals in addition to having presented some of his research in various local and international conferences. Leander sits as Co-chair of the Working Group on Bioethics of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities Global Health Program (APRU-GHP) and serves as Junior Ambassador to the Philippines for the Universal Scientific Education and Research Network (USERN). He was first introduced to P4wC in 2014 and received training from the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) in 2017. He has facilitated various training and workshops on teaching philosophy and P4wC. His research interests include Ethics, Epistemology, Bioethics, Research Ethics, Education Policy, Philosophy for Children, Philosophy of Education, and Philosophy and Popular Culture. Leander has published a textbook for Filipino students that is based on the P4wC framework titled, Trends, Networks, and Critical Thinking in the 21st Century Culture (2018). Michael Arthus G. Muega was first trained and educated in the tradition of analytic philosophy, but his pedagogical views go beyond the sphere of linguistic analysis in education. His ideas and beliefs in education are informed by knowledge and wisdom from philosophy, sociology, psychology, and other sciences. His philosophy of education is inspired by pluralistic social reconstructionism. He believes that the best things in education and life could be found through the path of different modes of thinking. While he learns a lot from his students, he also teaches to contribute to the broadening of his students’ intellectual horizon. He is always delighted to discuss big questions with students who are looking for something new and enduringly important in their learning experiences. He seeks to further create a community of inquiry with his students, where he wants them to

9

Integrating Dialogic Inquiry in Philippine Textbooks and Lesson Plans …

175

feel comfortable in expressing their thoughts. Collegiality, critical inquiry, democracy, and open-mindedness are central to his teaching philosophy. Dr. Muega has published in peer-reviewed local and international journals of education. He had traveled overseas with his colleagues and graduate and undergraduate students to present the results of his own and their research findings in education. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism, a master’s degree in philosophy, and doctoral degrees in philosophy of education and in special education, all from the University of the Philippines Diliman. Dr. Muega is happily married and has two children. He is also basketball player, amateur visual artist, vlogger and blogger, long-time boxing student, and arnis enthusiast. Maricris B. Acido-Muega is professor of history and philosophy of education, and of values education at the University of the Philippines College of Education. She holds degrees in Ph.D. Educational History and Philosophy (2004), MA Philosophy (1998), BA Philosophy (1994), all from the University of the Philippines Diliman. She also earned a certificate in Ethics Teaching from the UNESCO Bangkok (2015), and a certificate in Philosophy for Children facilitation from the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children in Montclair State University, USA (July–August 2022). She was a Fulbright Senior Lecturing and Research Fellow at the School of Education, Indiana University Southeast, USA (2008), was part of the UNESCO Youth and Sustainable Futures (2015), and is a member of the Pi Lambda Theta International Honor Society (Philippines Chapter). She also currently serves as member of the Office for Student Ethics, under the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs in the University of the Philippines Diliman. She has extensive experience in capacity building and research in education and has actively pursued collaborative work on the ground with various stakeholders and schools across the country and overseas.

Developing Reasonableness in Teaching: Rethinking Teacher Education Through the Lens of Philosophy for Children

10

Prince Airick Gapo

In genuine transformation there is an implication that something new has come into being- as if what was there before disappeared and something different has taken its place. [1]

Abstract

Often viewed as the source of knowledge and the primary moving force in the teaching-learning process, teachers are trained in the traditional mold of viewing their students as passive recipients of knowledge to be molded homogeneously adhering to a formulaic way of thinking. The enduring problems of education such as the deficient conceptual understanding of thinking, prioritization of conformity over creativity, and obsession with testing and results can be traced to the fractures of teacher education. The concepts and principles of Philosophy for Children offer an avenue to rethink teacher education and return the noble profession to its humble foundations that recognize the otherness of the learner and espouse reasonableness among teacher-trainees. This chapter surveys the work of Matthew Lipman’s Thinking in Education, the writings of John Dewey

P. A. Gapo (B) University of Santo Tomas, España, Manila, Philippines e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_10

177

178

P. A. Gapo

on education as well as other proponents of P4C in an effort to contextualize their thoughts in the current state of teacher education and offer a proposal that aims to rethink the education of the would-be pedagogue. Graphic Abstract

Philosophy for/with children in teacher education

Keywords

Philosophy for children . Teacher education . Pedagogy . Reasonableness

1

Introduction

Educating society is an act of self-preservation for it is through an organized transmission of knowledge that it thrives and endures [2, p. 1]. The development of society is hinged in the effectiveness and efficiency of how knowledge is preserved and transmitted to succeeding generations. Education ultimately shapes society and its aims reflect what society aspires to be. What comes with the importance bestowed on education is the necessary task of determining its goals and objectives. One of the most enduring among such goals is developing the capacity of the learners to think for themselves. Schools are then conceived to be a place where an individual is honed to think for himself/ herself and develop the capacity to be independent. The following discussion survey the work of Matthew Lipman’s Thinking in Education, the writings of John Dewey on education as well as other proponents

10

Developing Reasonableness in Teaching: Rethinking Teacher Education …

179

of P4C in an effort to contextualize their thoughts in the current state of teacher education and offer a proposal that aims to rethink the education of the would-be pedagogue.

2

Teaching, Schooling, and the Goal of Public Education

The educator Philip Jackson, one of the first scholars who examined the hidden curriculum in schools, noticed the hidden antithetical ideas reinforced by the school system such as the heavy emphasis on obedience that runs contrary to the stated objective of schools that explicitly promotes independence [3, p. 32]. He observed that schools tend to glorify “model students” who are often those who exhibit obedient behavior and those who are quick to adapt to the teacher’s authority. Jackson’s observation shows that public education, specifically what transpires inside the classroom, has been leaning towards conformity, subordination, and obedience in the conduct of educating society. This is troubling for Dewey [4] as he states that, “Conformity then becomes the criterion by which the pupil is judged in spite of the fact that initiative, originality and independence are precious quality in life” [4, p. 6]. Subordination plays an important part in advancing national interests and protecting its sovereignty. Dewey [5] noticed this as he states, “The educational process was taken to be one of disciplinary training rather than of personal development.” [5, p. 101] Conformity replaced creativity and originality. And putting conformity as the most important criterion in judging development puts the educational system in the same breath as a factory with its rigid mechanics of quality control and uniformed products. With this, comes the watering down of the understanding of intelligence in schools as it is narrowed to factors that are primarily concerned with technical production [5, p. 91]. Schools are also subjected to the push and pull of political maneuvering. Schooling and educating the masses have always been considered as a political act [6, pp. 45–46]. This leaves schools and other educational institutions susceptible to the sway of political authority. Education has the tendency to be weaponized to serve a particular political and even private interest. The corporatization of the education system is apparent in the widespread practice of rearing the students to be ‘marketable’ in a consumer-driven society. For Lipman, “we no longer live in a time in which education is valued for its own sake. It has value today, most students seem to feel, only as a ticket to enter the job market with a few acceptable credentials.” [7, p. 29]. The industrialization of schooling transformed that which was once a public good into a private one. The role of the school is therefore reduced to a facility of production and reproduction of manpower with apt marketability, devaluing the importance of social responsibility and raising economic usability as its utmost priority [6, p. 43]. With this in mind, it is important for the school to guard its position as a representative of all social factions for losing it means the loss of its claim of legitimacy in a democratic society [7, p. 10].

180

P. A. Gapo

There is also the problem of the school as a polarizing factor in society. With the current trend of the corporatization of educational institutions, schooling has become more expensive and somewhat exclusive. What was once considered a right and an element that would put every citizen in equal footing has returned to its privileged roots as priority is given to erecting gates rather than building bridges in the landscape of education. Kennedy [8] quoting John Dewey, stated that society has subjected itself in a thorough and radical change that “…If our education is to have any meaning for life, it must pass through an equally complete transformation” [8, p. 151]. For Kennedy, the schools have failed to transform accordingly as public education is satisfied with the hope that continual assimilation will eventually lead to transformation [8, p. 151]. Contemporary education sits in a variety of paradoxes that put the school in a precarious position. Both Matthew Lipman and David Kennedy described the school as a battleground where different ideologies and interests of various sectors of society clash. For Lipman, the school is a battleground because every social group or faction seeks to control it due to the school being “the manufacturer of the society of the future” [7, p. 9]. This statement is somewhat echoed by Kennedy [8] as he states that schools are now considered as the main initiation grounds of a child’s foray into the “forms of intersubjectivity of the culture as whole” [8, p. 24]. fractures of public education are apparent in all levels from the curricular level to the teaching-learning experience inside the classroom. Yet one area that has not been given much notice and attention is the area that remains the most crucial in understanding the dilemmas of education, the foremost battleground in education—the schooling of teachers.

3

The Tragedy of Teaching Teachers

Teaching has always been considered as a natural profession. One is naturally born a teacher. The capacity to teach is natural as it is deemed important for the transmission of knowledge to ensure the survival of society. Dewey [5] did not fail to mention this natural tendency: We are all born to be educators, to be parents, as we are not born to be engineers, or sculptors, or musicians, or painters. Native capacity for education is therefore much more common than native capacity for any other calling. Were it not so, human society could not hold together at all. But in most people this native sympathy is either dormant or blind and irregular in its action; it needs to be reawakened, to be cultivated, and above all to be intelligently directed. [5, p. 199]

The proper cultivation of the inherent teaching capacity must be directed to ensure the survival of society. Much hope has been given to pedagogy to ascertain that the transmission of human knowledge and culture will push through in the passing of generations. Amable [2] reiterated the importance of education when he stated that education is what gives life and vigor to society that without the schools,

10

Developing Reasonableness in Teaching: Rethinking Teacher Education …

181

society will lose its dynamism to grow and prosper [2, p. 1]. Such claim makes the teachers the lifeline on which society clings to for survival. But a problem continuously hounds the way schools and higher institutions of learning conduct teacher education which perpetuate the mistakes and lapses of the profession; it is the tragedy of teaching teachers. Traditional education and its methodologies still have a foothold in teacher education and the root of the recurring problems in education may be traced in the way teachers are being taught on how to teach. This does not mean that there are no proposals offered by education critics to address the situation, Giroux [9] tries to pinpoint where the problem lies as he states, “The problem has been that when such proposals do appear, they are generally either confined to a celebration of a more refined and reflective mode of inquiry or they remain confined in the prison house of critique” [9, p. 161]. For the curriculum theorist Eisner [10], the way we designed schools reflect the values that we cherish. The fascination for uniformity does not stop on what can be easily perceived for it also shapes how students are instructed, evaluated and even the development of their reasoning capabilities. As Eisner puts it, “What school programs tend to emphasize is the development of a restricted conception of thinking.” [10, p. 98]. Not all thinking is rule-abiding, but schools tend to neglect non-discursive forms of knowing in favor of measuring certain thinking mechanics. This results to stunting the formation of judgement of the child hindering the growth of reasonableness by promoting a one-size-fits-all formula of thinking. At the classroom level, the primary operators of the machinery of such education are the teachers. The mechanics of traditional schooling stifles the creativity of the child and even streamlines a certain brand and method of reasoning. The almost industrialized structure of the classroom which speaks of efficiency rather than comfort, a place that shares the monotony and repetition of factories and even hospitals. Dewey [5] noticed how traditional methods employed in the classroom disregard the diversity of learners and their capacities, “It [traditional school methods] virtually assumed that, for purposes of education at least, all human beings are as much alike as peas in a pod, and it therefore provided a uniform curriculum for all” [5, p. 5]. But can teachers who have worked long and hard to earn their professional education degree be blamed for this tragedy? Lipman has a striking view on this as he says, “What they are taught to do is likely to be where the problem lies, yet this is an area of education that is most taken for granted and most unlikely to be subject to reappraisal. Taking one’s professional preparation pretty much for granted is normal academic practice” [7, pp. 13–14]. What the teaching profession lacks is the inability (or neglect) to reflect on its own practice. And with it, various fractures are left untended and continue to widen. Among such fractures in the teaching profession is the teacher-centeredness that prevails in pedagogy. By looking at how teachers are educated to become teachers, we get to provide a response to the overarching question of Lipman that reads “How are we to educate for reasonableness?” [7, p. 11]. In order for our schools to become reasonable institutions,

182

P. A. Gapo

it is imperative for teachers to be reasonable educators which leads us to question if teacher education is an educative experience that cultivates reasonableness.

4

Teacher-Centeredness in Education and the Socratic Deception in Teacher Training

If there is one phenomenon that continues to persist in education, it is the teachercenteredness of pedagogy. Even with the constant reconceptualization of teaching and education, from the traditional constructivist to the radical progressivist, the teacher remains as the fountain of learning and an epistemic authority inside the classroom, a role that is assigned to them by the educational system [11, p. 95]. Education and pedagogy suffer from a self-inflicted narration sickness. A sickness that pervades the system from the structural system to the diminutive classroom teaching-learning experience. Teachers are teaching in the way that they were instructed during their schooling and their training in teacher education. For Marquez [12], “teachers consider themselves as the repository of knowledge inside their respective classrooms and that any deviation by the students from what has been taught to them is wrong”. Marquez continues by stating that this epistemic authority is rooted in their training to become educators [12, p. 295]. It is hard for teachers to separate themselves from the mold that shaped them as educators. It is these tendencies in pedagogy that are cultivated in teacher training that left a scathing mark resulting in the tragedy of teaching and the systematized colonization of childhood. And the way that it is perpetuated is concealed in the noblest of forms—the Socratic dialogue. The Socratic method remains a popular teaching method in contemporary pedagogy. In teacher education and training, Socratic dialogue is still considered the “gold standard” in pedagogy as it is thought to be a learner-centered pedagogy. The method supposedly grants the students a certain degree of ownership to an acquired skill or knowledge therefore making them more responsible to their own learning. As the common theme of modern is to reduce the influence of the teacher in the teaching-learning process, the Socratic method still enjoys its lofty status as the epitome of learner-centered pedagogy. The Socratic dialogue is renowned for its seeming learner-centered method as the teacher becomes a “midwife of knowledge”, an identity that reduces the role of a teacher to a mere facilitator, as the student, through the dialogue, brings out what is conceived to be already there. Yet, a careful reading of the Meno will prove that there is still a lot of teacher-initiated learning going on as Socrates tries to make the boy slave realize that what he thought he did not know is just locked inside of him waiting to be discovered [13, p. 453]. The impact of Socrates to the slave boy confirms the slave boy’s identity by engulfing him in the learning paradox of “How one can go looking for something when one doesn’t know what he is looking for”. The slave boy becomes the “student of pedagogy” and like the perfect murderer [13, p. 453], Socrates was able to conceal his participation in the act of learning. Socratic dialogue seems to be the holy grail of teaching as it allows the teacher to

10

Developing Reasonableness in Teaching: Rethinking Teacher Education …

183

not leave an imprint and make the student the captain who controls the rudder of his own learning experience. Yet, its directive nature emerges from the crevices of the learning paradox that still encapsulates the influence of the teacher and robs the learner of his individuality. The Socratic method is the fool’s gold of pedagogy. Walter Kohan discussed these “other faces” of Socrates: Socrates takes everyone to his house, to his place. As a teacher, Socrates knows what everyone should know and schools his students persistently in this knowledge - his knowledge, what he considers the knowledge. There is no space for creation, or invention of the other. [14, p. 18]

Teacher education still trains the teachers to become the Socrates of the classroom unbeknownst of the shortcomings of the age-old method that hides under the veil of decentered instruction [13, p. 452]. One is compelled to ask if the revered method in teaching can be considered as rhetoric or is it more of an argument. The Socratic Method ultimately enters the door of persuasion which puts the child in a position that is premeditatedly decided by the teacher posing as Socrates. What teacher education did not clarify in the training of teachers is that persuasion can be mistaken with education. As Lipman puts it, “If our only goal is persuasion, and we are willing to employ any rhetorical means to attain that goal, we are no longer in the realm of education. We are approaching manipulation” [7, p. 110]. Teachers are still trained in the traditional manner where repetition and handing down of knowledge trumps over thinking and verbalization of one’s thoughts [15, p. 85]. According to Mancenido-Bolaños [15], teachers are lacking the imagination and the courage to adapt to new design and methods to improve the praxis of education [15, p. 86]. Teacher education still refer to “experts on the field” to address the concerns of education and pedagogy. The greatest irony of the profession is that teacher education is still resistant to the recommendations of other disciplines yet education itself finds various disciplines as its foundation. What teacher education needs is a true revision of its methods. The limits of traditional education in promoting the development of thinking are apparent yet we still educate our future teachers in the traditional way by imbibing them with traditional skills through the utilization of traditional methods. What is needed is to reflect on the shortcomings of teacher education to save not just the profession, but also the whole system of education itself. For Mancenido-Bolaños [15], the burden of revolutionizing the educational system falls on the shoulder of the teachers. For it to materialize, teachers must become more open to all avenues of change. This is not to say that there is no thinking involved in traditional education, but the quality of such thinking is deficient [5, p. 31]. Training for reasonableness through philosophy for children offers an opportunity to rethink thinking in teaching.

184

5

P. A. Gapo

Philosophy for/with Children and Thinking in Teaching

Philosophy for/with Children is a movement conceived more than half a century ago by both educators and philosophers. The proponents of the Philosophy for/ with Children movement focused on the question of what childhood is and their capacity and power to think and reason. History has always treated the child as an undeveloped being making his/her way into adulthood. For David Kennedy, this can even be observed in Plato’s Republic as he states, “Plato in his utopian treatise Republic, not only excludes childhood altogether—which Plato seems to have implicitly understood as a kind of deformity of self-but is founded upon relations of internal hierarchy and domination [8, p. 151]. What the proponents of Philosophy for Children are raising is the idea that childhood holds a certain power because of a child’s unique relationship with questions, as with a philosopher, a question is a tool or sometimes, a weapon for a child [14, p. 11]. A child is an embodied question. Children have the capacity to reason but adults fail to notice and regard it as valid reasoning. Adults have this certain monopoly when it comes to being reasonable. For a very long period in our history, children are always understood as patterned on the interpretations of adults [8, p. 7]. What adults have failed to notice is that children can think and rationalize beyond our understanding of them and these views are heavily reflected in the traditional system of education—a system that seeks to educate the child out of his/her curious, imaginative and inquisitive self. Traditional education has failed to recognize what makes childhood special and has chosen to judge and evaluate a child through the eyes and understanding of an adult [8, p. 12]. This explains the reason why traditional education is almost synonymous with its obsession with metrics as scores and performance are gauged by scores on examinations that are focused on rote memorization [16, p. 143]. Schools have failed to make the students think and focus is given, as Lipman puts it, on solutions rather than engaging in inquiry [7, p. 14]. What should be occurring in the classroom is thinking and the development of reasonableness. It is the aspiration of the Philosophy for Children movement to return education to the child and with it, to teach children to use their own voices and give way to the questions which are truly important to them. What Lipman and other proponents of Philosophy for/with Children seek is to convert the classroom into a community of inquiry [7, p. 20]. The community of inquiry is built on the concepts of self-directed learning through inquiry, respect of each member towards another, drawing inferences from each other’s ideas and most importantly, adopting the habit of thinking as the process thinks [7, p. 21]. The method gives the participants a sense of ownership of knowledge as they become discoverers rather than bare receivers of knowledge. The method urges them to reflect on their own thinking and engage in dialogic inquiry with a group that also seeks to gain understanding for the sake of knowing. Lipman seeks to transform the classroom into a laboratory of rationality to create rational students who will ultimately become reasonable citizens who will then be the foundation of a rational society.

10

Developing Reasonableness in Teaching: Rethinking Teacher Education …

185

There are easily recognizable differences when it comes to defining the role of the teacher in a community of inquiry compared to traditional pedagogy. The role of the teacher is transformed to a facilitator rather than a fountain of knowledge from whence all learning emanates. Traditional pedagogy trains students to become passive, acting only as receptors of knowledge who are not given the chance to direct their own learning. The teachers who are particularly trained to perpetuate the mistakes of traditional education by doing what they are trained to do are unsuspecting perpetrators of such flawed practice. Teacher education creates educators who are great lecturers and deliverers of lesson who are grandstanding their intellectual superiority and orchestrating the flow of the teaching-learning experience. Lipman recognizes the brilliance of educators who have mastered the craft of the lecture method, yet he also mentioned its glaring limitations: It is not that the lecture is an inferior or obsolete mode of pedagogy. It can be brilliant; a work of art; it can often penetrate deeper into its subject matter from its single point of view than can discussion from its multiple points of view. But to the extent that it is fascinating and charismatic, it turns its listeners into passive admirers rather than inquirers. [7, p. 257]

If we are to look at how teachers are trained, we can see that the rigidity of the system and a tradition that continuously promotes unreflective practice is translated into the actual teaching-learning experience inside the classroom. This inadvertently leads to classroom practice that lacks reflective thinking. As Mancenido-Bolaños [16] puts it in a study on the state of COI in the Philippine context, “One of the reasons why students are not trained to think reflectively is because even their teachers have not been trained to do reflective thinking” [16, 155]. The first stage of revolutionizing education begins in teacher training and the lifting of the foot to move forward begins in returning thinking to teaching. The teacher is an adult and one of the biggest challenges of teaching is to remove all the presuppositions and assumptions that an adult carries when teaching a child. True teaching is the removal of such and engaging in a dialogue with the language of children which is the language of the world [14, p. 19]. The teacher and the learners must become co-inquirers who are engaged in an intersubjective construction of meaning. For this to happen, a certain degree of unlearning on the part of the teacher must occur, an unlearning that will take him/her back from the very beginning of his/her teaching journey, back to teacher education. And what entails such unlearning will begin in one’s discovery of reflective practice. The problem with the teaching profession is its lack of reflective practice. The profession has become almost exclusivist in developing its methods and the result of it is the regression of pedagogy and ultimately, the profession itself. Education may have been deemed as the mother of all professions but the problem is it barely listens to other professions. For Lipman, the practice of teaching is too institutionalized and tradition-bound [7, p. 16]. It can be noticed in the primary focus of research in the field of education which are mostly focused on solidifying existing educational practices.

186

P. A. Gapo

It is apparent that the focus of research on education stands on the ground of irony; too much focus on the practice of teaching while disregarding the one being taught. For teaching to become a reflective practice, teachers must engage in reflective thinking. Lipman defined reflective thinking as “thinking that is aware of its own assumptions and implications as well as being conscious of the reasons and evidence that support this conclusion” [7, p. 26]. If teachers would want to teach their children to engage in metacognitive, recursive, and self-correction thinking, it must begin with them as they examine their practices through the lens of reflective thinking. Anne Margaret Sharp referred to the act of self-correction as an essential tool in the revelation of the self to the self. For Sharp, it is through self-correction that we come to know the self [1, p. 38]. It will be easier for teachers to decenter the focus of learning from the self to the other if teacher education will shed its egoistic pedagogy by shifting from training lecturers whose point-of-view overrules the specific positions of children. Teachers trained in line with traditional education are placed in a position of absolute correctness when what should be fostered is the idea that one can never be right all the time. It is common practice for teachers to feign knowledge to the point of non-admission of fallibility in order to protect the visage of intellectual authority over the students [12, p. 295]. With the fear of losing his/her intellectual authority, the teacher fosters a learning environment that stigmatizes mistakes. The fear to commit mistakes becomes a paralyzing force on inquiry and stunts the growth of reasonableness among children and what we have is not the comforting silence allotted for “thinking time” but the eerie silence brought by the fear to be corrected. Sharp speaks of the fallibility that every member of the community of inquiry must adapt for authentic dialogue to transpire [1, p. 42]. A teacher can only encourage his/her students to engage in the process of selfcorrection if he/she himself/herself will let go of the intellectual authority granted to him/her by traditional education. To let go of the mirage of omniscience and reposition oneself in the onset of wonder which is the admission of not knowing. The possibility of such rests on the act of not just listening but entering the world of the other [1, p. 42]. This can only be possible through revising the curriculum of teacher education and refocusing and decentering its objectives to not just put emphasis on the teacher but give equal importance to the one being taught. Philosophy for Children with its principles and practices, offers an opportunity to return education to its true roots, an education that is truly for children.

6

Rethinking Teacher Education

There are some challenges to the inclusion of Philosophy for Children as a course in teacher education and even its integration in some established courses or subjects may face hurdles from within the discipline itself. Chief among these is the questioning of the relevance of philosophy of education in the teacher education curriculum [17, p. 232]. Philosophy has acquired a reputation as a discipline that

10

Developing Reasonableness in Teaching: Rethinking Teacher Education …

187

is purely conceptual, abstract, and somewhat remote from practical and immediate concerns [18, p. 208]. The place of philosophy of education in the education of teachers is not secure due to prevailing misconceptions regarding its nature [19, p. 319]. Engaging with ideas often presented in philosophy of education offer avenues for critique of established practice that it is tagged as a form of debunking. As Winch [19] claims, “It acquired a reputation in some quarters as a form of intellectual bloodsport, ruthlessly exposing and criticizing the intellectual shortcomings of policymakers, gurus and other educational researchers, despites some very serious and valuable constructive work” [19, p. 319]. The reflective nature of philosophy of education invites resistance from established education practitioners which is somewhat warranted due to its critical role. This “irritating” quality of philosophy was also noticed by Daniela and Duncan Marcieca, “Philosophy with its skeptical questioning, irritates education, while the social sciences are responding to society’s present problems and providing education with answers that cater to its immediate needs” [17, p. 232]. Philosophy is often misconstrued as a discipline that deals with abstractions. For a practical discipline like teaching, the concepts conceived by philosophy remain grounded as mere theories unless it can prove its effectiveness in the classroom. As with the experience of Dewey in his adaptation of the principles of progressive education into actual practice which met certain difficulties and challenges when it was first adapted in the formal school setting [5, p. 39]. The concepts of P4C may also face hurdles if the transition will not go smoothly and if college instructors are not well-trained or prepared to teach the methods utilized in the community of inquiry. This problem was also recognized by Chesters and Hinton as they found that some teachers are overconfident in their ability to facilitate philosophical inquiry as they equate it with other dialogic pedagogies which they are familiar with [18, p. 211]. Another issue is the question on who should introduce students to philosophy and who should train teachers for this process [18, p. 208]. Academic philosophers are trained for rigorous philosophical research and the development of a wide array of ideas while teachers focus on acquiring knowledge and developing skills that can be utilized in improving the teaching-learning experience. This concern is rooted in the nature of specialization as academic philosophers seldom possess pedagogical expertise while on the other hand, teachers typically lack a solid background in academic philosophy [18, p. 208].

188

P. A. Gapo

But one must not remain disillusioned with the aforementioned hindrances for there is still hope and the inclusion of Philosophy for Children in the curriculum of teacher education remains a distinct possibility. In the Philippines, various educational institutions are recognizing Philosophy for Children and the community of inquiry as the best move going forward in developing educational practice. In 2009, UNESCO [20] spearheaded an initiative to develop teaching philosophy in the Asia–Pacific region. The recommendations formulated by the study endorsed the concepts of Philosophy for Children as an effective method in developing philosophical thinking from pre-school to higher education [19, p. 14]. The University of the Philippines-Diliman has started their movement to comply with the UNESCO recommendation by associating with a laboratory school to familiarize their philosophy students with the community of inquiry. In the University of Santo Tomas, Marella Mancenido-Bolaños started an initiative to establish a seasonal P4C-CoI Program together with some graduate students of the same university. They concluded the program with a study comparing the reasonableness of children with young adults and professional educators of which the results can be found in this collection of works. These steps toward legitimizing philosophy for children as an effective method in cultivating reasonableness in children solidify the claim that teacher education will benefit in considering the methods of community of inquiry in the process of rethinking teaching. The Asia–Pacific region continues to develop facilitation skills in the community of inquiry among academic philosophers and educators through the Philosophy with Children and Youth Network for Asia and the Pacific (PCYNAP). Currently, the organization has members from various countries namely Japan, Australia, Philippines, Korea and other countries in the region. There is also a growing collection of literature associating Philosophy for Children with various subfields in education such as curriculum studies, educational psychology and teacher-training [17, p. xxi]. But there is still a long way to go. Traditional practices still have a strong foothold in teacher education. Tradition still trumps the need to move forward with the times and this is evident in how the curriculum is still structured based on the deeply-rooted obsession with metrics and assessments. It instills the notion that all facets of knowledge and learning are quantifiable. Illich highlighted this criticism as he states, “Schools initiate young people into a world where everything can be measured, including their imaginations, and indeed, (even) man himself” [21, p. 57]. There are still reservations about returning learning to the child. Teacher education must train teachers to shed the long-embedded history of the master-lecturers and engage in reflective thinking. Only through this can we make reasonable teachers who are willing to create a learning environment that cultivates reasonableness. Teacher-training must begin to open their doors to other disciplines such as philosophy. If education is colloquially considered as the mother of all professions, then it is the perfect time to listen to its children. Teacher education must focus on empowering teacher trainees who will in turn, empower their future students

10

Developing Reasonableness in Teaching: Rethinking Teacher Education …

189

not through the imposition of a methodized way of thinking but the capacity to recognize the diversity of the power of reason. The opportunity to return the teacher to the true sense of the word pedagogue (i.e., paidag¯ogos—a guide) lies in the recognition that childhood is a force. It is high time for teacher education to unlearn that which hinders it to move forward. It is now time for the would-be teachers to learn how to listen to the voices of the children and begin the journey of allowing themselves to be transformed by the child. For to know the child is to teach him/her. And in the act of knowing, the knower is transformed by the known [8, p. 16].

7

Conclusion

The learning experiences that are offered in schools are basically reproduction of the learning experiences of teachers in their professional formative years. If we are to educate for reasonableness, our teachers must become reasonable educators. The challenge is that this does not happen overnight because teaching practices are deeply ingrained in how teachers are trained. This puts the burden of reinvention on the shoulders of teacher education. For Kohan and Kennedy, instead of looking for a new schooling of childhood, we must consider looking for a new childhood of schooling [14, p. 12]. If this will ever come to fruition, this new childhood of schooling must be born at the beginning of professional teacher preparation. Rather than just producing outstanding lecturers and the modern-day versions of Socrates, teacher education must also develop reflective thinking and reasonableness among teacher-trainees. Philosophy for children offers an opportunity for teacher education to rethink the concept of a “good teacher”—a teacher who is aware of his/her own fallibility and indulges in self-correction, a teacher who engages in reflective practice, a teacher who recognizes imagination and creativity as precious qualities in life. Philosophy for children with its principles and practices, offers an opportunity to return education to its true roots, an education that is truly for children. Prince Airick Gapo

References 1. Sharp AM (1996) Self-transformation in the community of inquiry. Inquiry critical thinking across the disciplines, vol 16, no 1, pp 36–47 2. Amable GT (2005) Philosophy of education: a new perspective. Grandwater Publications, Makati City, Philippines 3. Jackson PW (1990) Life in classrooms. Teacher College Press, New York, NY 4. Dewey J (1922) Democracy and education. Aakar Books, Dubhash Chowk, Delhi, India 5. Dewey J (1964) On education. Edited by Reginald D. Archambault. Random House Inc. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, IL

190

P. A. Gapo

6. Giroux H (2001) Theory and resistance in education: towards a pedagogy for the opposition. Bergin & Garvey. Westport, CT 7. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education. Cambridge University Press, New York, New York 8. Kennedy D (2006) The well of being, childhood, subjectivity, and education. State University of New York Press, New York, USA 9. Giroux H (1988) Teachers as intellectuals: toward a critical pedagogy of learning. Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc., Granby, Massachusetts 10. Eisner E (1979) The educational imagination: on the design and evaluation of school programs. Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc, New York, USA 11. Kükürt RO (2015) A critical analysis of ontological foundations of modern education understanding. J Educ Future 7:79–98 12. Marquez LP (2017) Critical thinking in Philippine education: what we have and what we need. J Crit Educ Policy Stud 10:272–230. http://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/15-210.pdf 13. Biesta G (2013) Receiving the gift of teaching: from ‘learning from’ to ‘being taught by. Stud Philos Educ 32:449–461 14. Kennedy D, Walter K (2008) Aion, Kairos and Chronos: fragments of an endless conversation on childhood, philosophy and education. Child Philos 4(10):6–22 15. Mancenido-Bolaños MAV (2016) John Dewey’s democracy and education and the problem of education in the Philippines. Kritike 10(2):84–99. http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_19/ mancenido-bolanos_december2016.pdf 16. Mancenido-Bolaños MAV (2018) Narrowing the gap between theory and practice: community of inquiry and its state in the Philippines. Kritike 12(2):140–156. https://www.kritike.org/jou rnal/issue_23/mancenidobolanos_december2018.pdf 17. Mercieca M, Mercieca P (2014) Initiating a different kind of conversation between Philosophy of education and educators. Counterpoints 462:231–240 18. Chesters SD, Hinton, L (2017) What’s Philosophy got to do with it?: Achieving synergy between Philosophy and education in teacher preparation. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York, NY 19. Winch C (2012) For philosophy of education in teacher education. Oxf Rev Educ 38(3):305– 322. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2012.693299 20. UNESCO (2009) Teaching philosophy in Asia and the Pacific. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Paris, France 21. Illich I (1971) Deschooling society. Marion Boyars Publishers Limited

Prince Airick Gapo is a college instructor at the University of Santo Tomas (UST). He obtained his master’s degree in education from Ateneo de Manila University and finished Master of Arts in Philosophy in the University of Santo Tomas. His research interests in philosophy are philosophy for children, critical pedagogy, and Filipino Philosophy.

Part III Cultivating Reasonableness for Peace and Democracy

Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education

11

Jacob B. Castleberry

Violence… is both impractical and immoral… Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding… it… destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. [1]

Abstract

Ann Sharp and Laurence Splitter considered reasonableness to be a social disposition possessed by those who are “willing to be reasoned with” (Splitter and Sharp in Teaching better thinking: the classroom community of inquiry. Australian Center for Educational Research, Melbourne, 1995, [2, p. 6]). To be considered a reasonable person, she must be willing to engage in dialogue with others, even when she disagrees. However, those who engage in violence because of their beliefs have committed to living in monologue rather than dialogue: they have chosen to be unreasonable. Therefore, communities facing the threat of violence can benefit immensely from exposure to educational programs designed to cultivate reasonableness and foster peace in participants. Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp’s Philosophy for Children (P4C) is a program that has been successful in cultivating reasonableness in children. I argue that by combining the Lipman-Sharp approach to P4C with successful peace education projects—such as the Public Conversations Project—P4C can be fashioned into a form of peace education and violence prevention pedagogy for adults in high-risk communities. Further, I posit that the resulting program would not

J. B. Castleberry (B) Independent Scholar, Western Michigan, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_11

193

194

J. B. Castleberry

only increase reasonableness in the communities, but that the risk of violence in those communities may decrease. I conclude by defending the claim that the original goals of the Lipman-Sharp approach to P4C (the cultivation of reasonableness, an improved democratic citizenry, etc.) are still accomplished. Graphic Abstract

P4wC for peace education

Keywords

Violence . Reasonableness . Dialogue . Trauma Public conversations project . Democracy

1

.

Philosophy for children

.

Introduction

Just a few years after Dr. King famously remarked on violence, Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery found its way into a classroom and Philosophy for Children was born. Philosophy for Children (P4C) is an educational program designed by Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp to foster democratic ideals in children. Lipman and Sharp’s pedagogy aims at the improvement of judgment and the cultivation of virtues like reasonableness through participation in dialogue. The ability of citizens or members of a democratic community to engage in dialogue is critical to the health and flourishing of those communities. However, as Dr. King points out, violent actions are antithetical to dialogue. Thus, for programs that aim at contributing to the success of democracies (like P4C), understanding how violence blocks dialogue and what can be done to keep communication open is crucial [1,

11

Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education

195

3, 4]. In this chapter I examine how violence “leaves a society in monologue” and how P4C might respond. For this project to fit within the confines of a book chapter, I chose to focus on group violence (terrorism, vigilantism, bullying, and gang violence): violence that occurs between groups, or because of perceived group membership. I call the relationship between group violence and dialogue the violence problem. The violence problem is divided into at least four parts: two causes and two consequences of group violence. The causes of group violence are the belief that violence is the only way to achieve the group’s aims and the need to retaliate when harmed [5, 6]. The consequences of group violence are the development of biases against violent groups and the experience of trauma in victims [5, 6]. Each element of the violence problem represents a unique way that group violence blocks dialogue. What makes the violence problem so threatening to the health of democratic communities is that violence can turn these communities against themselves, change the way members of these communities see each other, and encourage community members to alter their values [7–9]. Violence can cause this perspective shift against the will of the community, and that is what makes the violence problem so threatening to democratic societies; no community is immune from risk.1 This is examined in more detail in Sect. 3. What can Philosophy for Children do to alleviate the violence problem? In Thinking in Education, Lipman defended a hypothesis that P4C would reduce violence in schools and others have supported his hypothesis [10–12]. Their argument is that P4C can reduce violence because it addresses causes of violence.2 Specifically, Lipman targets the way that violence can be used to provide people a sense of meaning, how this can cause violence to become implanted into a culture or ideology, and how that culture or ideology influences people into making bad judgments [10]. He claims that P4C participants engage in the social act of meaning making and this can break them free from the false sense of meaning that violence offers. Applying Lipman’s argument to the violence problem, P4C clearly has the potential to positively impact the causes of violence, but once the consequences of violence are included, P4C’s value as violence reduction pedagogy is called into question. P4C cannot alleviate the violence problem because it risks harming those traumatized by group violence. That said, P4C has the potential to be a

1

The perspective shift being described here is referred to under social identity theory as the formation or revision of community members’ “in-group” and “out-group” identities. I do not use that terminology here, but those versed in social identity theory may find my arguments easier to understand with that terminology in mind. Thanks to Laura Bain-Selbo for bringing this to my attention. 2 I am using the phrase “causes of violence” here to indicate that their argument applies to the elements of the violence problem I have labeled as causes. While Lipman and others would likely not agree with the use of the word cause, I intend the word to imply a strong probabilistic factor towards a specific effect—not an event or factor that necessitates that effect. I believe that using “cause” in this way would make Lipman and others comfortable with my description of their work. Thanks to Joe Oyler for pointing out this issue.

196

J. B. Castleberry

powerful tool in the fight against the violence problem if adjusted for the presence of trauma. I present two solutions. The first involves utilizing P4C in communities at risk of violence before violence can occur. This allows P4C to address the violence problem without having to navigate the complexity of trauma. Essentially, P4C becomes a preventative tool that practitioners can use in communities identified as having a high risk. The second possible solution is for P4C to adopt facets of programs designed to deal with trauma. The Public Conversations Project (PCP) is a successful peace education program created to deal with the harsh reality of trauma. If P4C adopted initial one-on-one meetings, included non-dialogic activities, increased emphasis on personal reflection, and offered a similar opening structure for sessions from PCP, then I argue that P4C could safely address the violence problem. My aim is to provide readers familiar with P4C with the tools necessary to utilize P4C for violence reduction safely and effectively. Violence is one of many problems that threaten the success of communities and endanger human flourishing. However, unlike other problems facing our communities (e.g., lack of resources, corrupt leadership, financial exploitation), P4C could positively impact the violence problem if adjustments like the kind I recommend are adopted. Philosophy for Children is already a tool to combat epistemic injustice against children, and its potential to combat violence is far greater than currently realized [13]. As practitioners, we may be able to use P4C to help solve the violence problem and cultivate reasonable communities.

2

Philosophy for Children

Philosophy for Children is an educational program founded by Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp in the 1970s to improve judgment in children by sharpening their thinking skills and cultivating reasonableness [1, 4, 10, 14]. The pedagogy centers around the Community of Inquiry (COI), with special attention towards engagement in philosophical dialogue [15–17].3 For Lipman, good judgment is the culmination of good thinking, the possession of reasonableness, and practice [4, 10]. The community of inquiry is the perfect practice space for judgment and the cultivation of reasonableness. While dialogue is the central element of a COI, there are three additional parts: a stimulus, student-generated questions, and metacognitive reflection [17]. The stimulus is any philosophically charged experience from which students can develop philosophical questions. Lipman and Sharp wrote several novels designed for this role, but alternative stimuli include picture books, short video clips, or even the classroom itself. Examples of good inquiry questions include

3

Lipman uses “Community of Inquiry” to refer to both an idealized social structure as well as the practices that make up that structure (2003). While I use COI to refer exclusively to the practices, the COI is more than a mere set of practices. Thanks to Joe Oyler for emphasizing the importance of this duality.

11

Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education

197

“Is it wrong to lie to your friend if you are trying to protect them?” and “Would it ever be right to hurt someone?” As students engage in dialogue, the result is typically not a finished or correct answer. Rather, students aim to identify a “most reasonable thing to believe” or a well-reasoned position that must be considered further later on [14, 18]. During metacognitive reflection, students assess their own thinking and group process: “Are we doing a good job listening to other participants? How can we improve our thinking in the future? Are we examining multiple perspectives?” [10, 17]. These questions promote self-correction by encouraging mindfulness about thinking and the inquiry processes [10, 15]. For example, if students indicate they are not doing a good job examining multiple perspectives, the facilitator can ask them how to address this issue moving forward. Importantly, this leaves the responsibility with students to identify problems and implement solutions. This is one of the ways that the program emphasizes the teacher’s role as facilitative rather than instructive [14]. A good teacher is one that disperses the classroom managerial powers amongst the students through good stewardship and the modeling of ideal behavior [19].

2.1

Reasonableness

Reasonableness is a complex concept, and it is not the goal of this paper to provide a final definition. Instead, I follow Michael Pritchard’s advice and “seek clarification” about the meaning of reasonableness and its appraisal [20, 21]. Of key interest is the relationship of the term reasonable to truth, as a whole host of theorists agree, something can be reasonable and be false [20–24]. Reasonableness should be adopted by democratic participants because it allows democracy to succeed, not because it leads people to truth.4 Reasonableness is a social virtue, a developable character trait that enables one to engage with others productively, even those they disagree with. As Ann Sharp and Laurence Splitter put it, “Reasonableness is primarily a social disposition: the reasonable person respects others and is prepared to take into account their views and their feelings, to the extent of changing her own mind about issues of significance, and consciously allowing her own perspective to be changed by others. She is, in other words, willing to be reasoned with” [1, p. 6]. They go on to add an action component, “We would not describe as reasonable someone who is able to formulate good judgments yet cannot, or consistently does not, put those judgments into practice” [1, p. 6].

4

That said, many theorists also agree that the truth is likely to be a reasonable option, the problem is that it might not be reasonable to us yet [23].

198

2.2

J. B. Castleberry

Dialogue

During the community of inquiry, P4C participants cultivate reasonableness through engagement in dialogues [10]. A dialogue is unlike a conversation or discussion because the aim of the dialogue is not grounded in the individuals. In a conversation, one may aim to express their thoughts on the latest office gossip or share what they ate for lunch, but in a dialogue the aim is simultaneously shared by all involved while being separate from each [10]. The aim of dialogue is an ideal, an object that can never be possessed but only moved towards. Some call this aim truth, others call it justice, but these are unachievable abstractions. Over time, COI participants recognize the futility of the abstract aim: its unachievable nature in tension with the practical needs of the participants. These practical needs eventually drag the abstract aim down into a state of achievability—a reasonable version of the original. This is how dialogue in COI fosters the cultivation of reasonableness—by necessitating its appeal to achieve a shared practical aim grounded in the interests of all rather than the interests of one [10]. The back and forth of participants in service of an aim that is shared by all is what makes an interaction a dialogue [10]. In dialogue, participants have equal power regardless of status or expertise. As participants engage in dialogue, they learn to care about the thoughts of others, see judgments as fallible, and become open to changing their minds or working through disagreements because those changes contribute to the group’s success [10]. Only through cooperation can the practical aim of the dialogue (an aim that all involved are interested in) be achieved. Reasonable participants in dialogue can work together to find solutions to problems, answer difficult questions, and make well-reasoned decisions. Not everyone will internalize these lessons at the same pace, but with the help of participants and a facilitator’s careful guidance, everyone can be shown the potential value of reasonableness, good judgment, and effective dialogue [10].

2.3

Philosophy for Children for Adults5

Philosophy for Children has practical experience being used with adults already; P4C and the Community of Inquiry have been successfully employed with college students, teachers, and P4C practitioners at training workshops. Further, Lipman and Sharp’s philosophy of childhood provides theoretical reasons for using P4C with adults.6 Lipman and Sharp were convinced that children were capable of far more than the average person gave them credit for. They believed children are,

5

Please no one call it this. I recommend sticking with Community of Inquiry or Community of Philosophic Inquiry when discussing pedagogy or methodology aimed at adults. I use P4C throughout this paper for simplicity’s sake. 6 For more on this please see Kennedy and Kohan [25].

11

Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education

199

in many important ways, the same as adults; children just have less experience to work with and their faculties of mind are less practiced.7 P4C provides practitioners evidence for Lipman and Sharp’s conception of a child as it empowers children to use their voice. For those who are able to listen, it becomes difficult to distinguish between the thoughts of a child and those of an adult. It becomes clear that generations of children have been ignored because of biases, false judgments, and a lack of reasonableness—that they have suffered an epistemic injustice [13].8 Children can do philosophy, and they are not in need of an education that turns them into adults [26]. The philosophy of childhood that P4C requires of its practitioners treats children as adults. Thus, utilizing the program with adults is nearly identical to using it with children.

3

Violence and Monologue

Group violence involves the actions of groups or group members that knowingly cause harm to another group or another group’s members and the consequences of that harm. Examples include bullying, vigilantism, terrorism or violent activism, and gang violence. What the kinds of group violence have in common is that the violence is perceived by the group to be a form of “self-help” [5, 6]. Violence is performed because of a shared belief that the violent act will help them, and it is required to achieve their aims. For an extreme example, suicide bombings in the Palestinian and Israeli conflict are analyzed by some through the lens of utility to the bombers. Pape [27] argues that suicide bombings are perceived as a useful tool for taking control back from occupiers. Others have proposed these same suicide bombings to be mostly retaliatory and meant to express the raw grieving emotion of an oppressed group [28]. Cases of retaliation are a kind of self-help as violence is often perceived as necessary for justice. Gang violence is often retaliatory as one group seeks “street justice” for the perceived wrong done by the opposing gang [29]. In a similar vein, vigilantism is a form of perceived self-help in that the violent group perceives the violence to be a way to maintain the power they already have and to protect the status quo [6]. Lynchings in the American south, genocides like those in Armenia and Germany during the World Wars, and many forms of bullying are all engaged in the “conservative violence” of vigilantism [30]. Importantly, group violence is often difficult to prevent because any rational person is at risk of succumbing to it—these actions are rationally justifiable by those performing them.

7

Given the Vygotskian roots of P4C, key differences between a child and an adult that are likely include: the tools of mediation available for growth, their linguistic skill, and the size of their zone of proximal development. Thanks to Kevin Clark for reminding me of this. 8 Adults in communities at risk of violence are also often victims of epistemic injustice as those outside the community ignore the voices of individual community members, opting to reduce the individual to mere group affiliation.

200

J. B. Castleberry

Group violence blocks dialogue in at least four ways. The first two are causes of violence, whereas the second two are consequences of violence. First, by believing that violence is the only way to achieve their aims, these groups have closed the door on dialogue as an alternative option. Second, once harmed, retaliation or revenge becomes rationalizable for victims—it becomes an action fit to their aims, which also closes the door on dialogue as a valid option [5, 6, 28, 29]. The third block is the formation of biases as a consequence of violent actions. The biases are formed in the minds of people who were not directly harmed by the violence. For example, after 9/11 a bias against Muslim people was solidified for many Americans because the attackers claimed to belong to that group. This one act of violence resulted in significantly impaired relationships between members of the same society even though the attackers had been from outside that society. This type of bias is the third way that dialogue can become blocked by group violence. Lastly, the trauma caused by violence has the potential to make dialogue impossible and lead to further violence [8, 9].

4

Community of Inquiry and the Violence Problem

To fully understand the potential impact P4C might have on the violence problem, it is important to examine Lipman’s own conception of violence and the impact he hypothesizes P4C to have. Lipman’s ideas render traditional education inadequate for dealing with violence. He argues that the loss of personal meaning in people’s lives can cause people to become obsessed with violence [10]. By turning to violence in entertainment, news, and even fantasies, he argues that people allow themselves to be implanted with a value structure that is not chosen. Worse, because violence now plays a role in giving people meaning, they are more inclined to turn to it in impulsive moments, and it can begin to play a much stronger role in the structure of institutions. Eventually, the prevalence of violence can increase the likelihood of errors in judgment. The errors in judgment that Lipman identifies are specifically those encouraged by an ideology or culture which values violence and the possession of certain prejudices [10]. Culture or ideology can be thought of here as the way our experiences, communities, living arrangements, religion, etc., color and shape our worldview. It is the source of our intuitive meanings, our social representations, and the definitions of our concepts. These meanings and ways we see the world bring with them automatic tendencies to approve of some things and disapprove of others. In other words, culture and ideology play a large role in determining our values. Do we approve of strength, aggression, and fast action; or do we approve of patience, reasonableness, and acting only when ready? The answer is in large part influenced by our experiences, culture, and ideology. Lastly, these values can lead us to develop prejudices over time towards that which we perceive as “other” to those values (i.e., a person who values reasonableness may develop a prejudice towards those who they perceive as unreasonable).

11

Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education

201

To undo the way that ideology or culture can lead to errors in judgment, people need to be exposed to value education. Lipman argues that the only way to educate for values is by giving people a chance to create their own meaning for these values through use in a social setting.9 “I have previously insisted that values like peace and the absence of violence cannot be taught. They must be practiced, embodied, and lived,” he states [10, p. 119]. Through COI, participants can learn to discover errors in judgment, how and why errors were made, and learn to create meaning rather than search for it. The community of inquiry is, Lipman argued, the space for value practice and embodiment that is necessary to actually reduce violence. There is some empirical evidence to support the idea. Daniel et al. [11] performed a study on the impacts of COI engagement on preschool children’s social representations of violence (violent acts, responses, etc.). Researchers were able to see small changes in the way children perceived social interactions regarding violence. This supports Lipman’s claims that the COI is indeed a place where meaning can be created by the participants themselves. Lipman makes two additional claims about how P4C as value education can result in violence reduction. The first is that focusing on the prejudices of the participants is unnecessary as an improved ethical judgment is enough to root them out. Fletcher [12] argues alongside Lipman that the meaning of concepts is often entrenched in participants prior to engagement in COI, but that through exposure to COI sessions, participants can open these meanings up to reconstruction. However, Fletcher disagrees with Lipman about the role an improved ethical judgment plays in the reconstruction. She argues that a facilitator needs to become what she calls a “difficultator” for these biases to come to light. To put it simply, a facilitator needs to challenge and push participants into scenarios where they have no other option than to identify the bias or error in thinking that is contributing to their position. This is a delicate process, but if done correctly, she argues that the benefits of COI identified by Lipman are far more likely to occur. Fletcher is wise to move away from Lipman’s claims about good ethical judgment as many studies indicate a disconnect between the strength of an ethical judgment and actual behavior [31–33]. Lipman’s final claim is that good ethical judgment is best generated by stimuli that focus on ethical concepts, but as Reed-Sandoval points out, the stimuli that he designed for this process are not broad enough [34].10 She argues that participants need to have perspectives presented to them that they would otherwise not consider. Reed-Sandoval’s method of drawing attention to positions involves options like bringing a victim of violence who can speak on the phenomenology of the concept, or a war veteran who believes that war is necessary into the classroom. Complicating the dialogue in this way would force participants to wrestle with relevant perspectives that they otherwise would not. Communities of Inquiry

9

For more on the relationship of P4C, Vygotsky, and social constructivism, see Castleberry and Clark [19], Lipman [16], and Green [26]. 10 Lipman does not intend the novels to do all the work here as he also points to using issues that arise in the classroom itself as a stimulus for ethical discussion.

202

J. B. Castleberry

that adopt this structure would be far more effective at challenging participants to practice or experiment with new value structures outside of the cultural standard.11

4.1

Applying Lipman to the Violence Problem

How do Lipman’s arguments fare against the violence problem? Group violence challenges dialogue by appearing to the group as the only way to achieve their ends. As mentioned before, group violence is often a kind of self-help (e.g., the reason a gang retaliates when harmed is because they believe that retaliation is essential for justice), and the violent act is often chosen because the actors do not see a non-violent route to achieve their goals. They have lost faith in state institutions and other non-violent means of need fulfillment—violence has become a rational option. I argue that COI can impact a group’s decision to engage in violence by increasing the perceptual efficacy of dialogue as a tool (i.e., the value of dialogue can be increased). By practicing the act of dialogue again and again, seeing for themselves the power such a tool has, individuals can internalize the potential value of dialogue [35]. The problem of violence is undeniably complex, but the process of healthy dialogue engagement may be just the life preserver that some need. The second challenge that group violence presents involves the aims of violence. The aim of terrorism and gang violence is often retaliation [5]. The mentality is akin to “they did this to us, so we need to do it back” or “for years they have mistreated us, kept us down, and now they need to get a taste of what it feels like.” While this is not reducible to the value a group places on violence, revenge, and retaliation, those values are certainly connected. Thus, it is safe to hypothesize that challenging the value of violence as a means to one’s end or challenging the value one has in the ends of revenge or retaliation may impact the likelihood of violence. However, these concepts need targeted directly, and facilitators cannot choose to be passive in their facilitation style. Fletcher’s “difficultators” are certainly going to be more effective at challenging participants to examine these values. That said, Lipman and Sharp are right when they claim that participation in COIs encourages the cultivation of reasonableness and the values naturally opposed to violence. In other words, facilitators can specifically challenge values that support violence while encouraging the cultivation of values opposed to it. Turning to the consequences of violence, two more blocks to dialogue must be dealt with. The first is the unconscious formation of biases towards those who are perceived to be linked to violence or violent groups. The problem these biases pose to dialogue is that they encourage epistemic injustices. Similar to the way biases against children prevented people from seeing their true person, biases caused

11

It is worth noting that Amy Reed-Sandoval’s work is meant to help P4C serve as a tool for decolonialization (2019). I have adopted her suggested methods for use with violence to support Lipman’s argument.

11

Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education

203

by group violence reduce people to their group affiliations and prohibit dialogue between the victims of bias and those who hold the biases. For example, a bias against a Muslim community member might result in the bias holder rejecting the Muslim community member’s viewpoint in favor of a viewpoint held by a non-Muslim community member. This rejection can be unconscious, automatic, and difficult to change, making the consequences of group violence all the more dire as a single act can lead to a demotion of epistemic status for an entire group of people. More extreme outcomes of these biases are also possible as community members can face exile merely for being perceived as a member of a violent group. A good example of this is the treatment of felons in the United States. Despite the high likelihood that a convicted felon is nonviolent, felons are unable to vote in many state elections [36]. They have effectively been exiled from community participation because of bias.12 However, I argue that there is reason to be optimistic about the outcome of COI participation on these biases. P4C aims at the improvement of judgment, and it does this in three relevant ways. First, participating in dialogue with others enables one to have good thinking modeled by the facilitator or other group members. A facilitator might model the kind of thinking that includes the thoughts and perspectives that participants are biased towards, thus offering those with the bias a chance to see the value in that perspective.13 Second, during metacognition the facilitator can ask questions like “Did we examine all the possible perspectives?” Assuming the worst and the children say yes, the facilitator can then ask if the potential perspective of the biased group was examined. A participant might say “No, because their perspective does not matter,” or “No, and we really should have.” Either way, the facilitator can guide participants toward elements of this perspective that may be missed, ignored, or undervalued. Utilizing Fletcher’s work, it may be possible to safely challenge the participants into a detailed examination of their bias, followed by an inquiry into preventing it in the future. Empirical research exists to support the idea that challenging bias directly and formulating a plan for dealing with it in the future can reduce the cognitive impacts of bias [37, 38]. Lastly, the COI offers participants a space to practice new thinking methods, approaches, and styles with others. If the bias is challenged and the plan for dealing with it is practiced, research indicates that complete debiasing could occur [38].14

5

Trauma, Classifying Communities at Risk, and Peace Education

The fourth block to dialogue caused by group violence is trauma. Trauma is enormously complex. To try and examine the potential benefits of COI participation relative to the entire problem is a project for another day. However, narrowing

12

For more on bias see Staats [37]. Additional options include modeling unbiased treatment of community members. 14 Stichter’s work is on moral situationism, and he references many studies into debiasing. 13

204

J. B. Castleberry

in on trauma caused by or connected to group violence (i.e., acts of terror, gang violence, vigilantism, etc.) provides some indication of the effectiveness of the COI. I argue that P4C does not have the resources to respond to the difficulties posed by trauma and that because of P4C’s inability to cope with trauma, the program’s response to the violence problem fails. Despite the evidence outlined in Sect. 4.1 suggesting COI’s potential effectiveness in addressing the violence problem, trauma caused by group violence effectively undoes that support. For example, trauma can contribute to initial acts of violence, as research has shown a link between trauma experienced as a child and violent behaviors as an adult [39]. Further, in communities with unhealed trauma, the risk of violence is much higher [8, 9]. Trauma can also contribute to a need for retaliation, which the traumatized individual may not be able to rationalize or understand [8, 9]. In addition, biases caused by trauma are often entrenched in the mind without a traceable link to any sort of clear event or cause [40]. Sometimes this is because the person does not remember the traumatic event, sometimes it has no traceable link at all [39]. Effectively, trauma replicates the dialogue blocks of the violence problem while simultaneously changing the way these problems must be dealt with. Therefore, if P4C cannot resolve or alleviate the difficulties presented by trauma, its potential as a solution to the violence problem is low. The central point of difficulty lies in the fact that to resolve the other three elements of the violence problem, the COI must take on a structure that (1) focuses on topics relevant to violence, (2) encourages the facilitator to push participants to the roots of their thinking, and (3) aims to expose participants to perspectives that are not part of the dominant narrative. Given the unpredictability of trauma and the relatively minor cues that can trigger traumatic symptoms, I argue that all three of these structural requirements could send someone trying to heal from a traumatic experience into a psychologically damaging state, or worse, actually lead to violence. For example, a study into the reaction of traumatized individuals exposed to sounds related to the origin of the trauma found that the exposure triggered “intrusive memories of trauma” which correlated with increased levels of anxiety [41]. Another showed participants “trauma-relevant pictures” and tracked alterations in cardiac responses, which worsened at a similar rate to the severity of the trauma causing incident [42]. The participants in violence reduction COI are likely to experience similar reactions if the dialogue is centered around topics of relevance to violence, which I have argued is critical to the program’s success as a violence reduction pedagogy. Further, the increase in anxiety or heart rate are signs that a traumatized individual is not feeling safe, and when traumatized individuals do not feel safe, there is a risk that their body activates the “fight-flight-freeze” mechanism (FFF). Although this mechanism or system is only a scientific postulate, the practical outcomes being explained by the system are real [40, 43–46]. For example, if this system was activated during a COI, the individual could be at risk of lashing out at fellow participants, leaving the dialogue abruptly, or “disassociating” from the entire experience [40, 46]. None of these outcomes are conducive to the cultivation of reasonableness in the community and may actually decrease the effectiveness of

11

Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education

205

COI if they were to occur. Beyond the risk that the COI topic triggers this state in traumatized people, there is the added risk that being challenged in their thinking or being exposed to narratives that might be pro-violence triggers the activation of this system. To be clear, my argument is not that the COI will trigger this state, my argument is that there is good reason to assume it will in some people. Thus, what we as practitioners are facing is a moral dilemma: Is it ever justified to use COI as violence reduction pedagogy if there is a risk that the program harms a participant or counteracts its own aims? My answer: not without lowering the risk. In the next two sections I explore options for lowering the risk.

5.1

Identifying Communities at Risk

When it comes to trauma caused by group violence, P4C does not have the practical or theoretical resources to safely assist in the healing of that trauma. Thus, if practitioners are going to use the program to try and make a positive impact towards the other three facets of the violence problem (i.e., use COI as a way to challenge participants’ thinking, encourage a revaluation of their values, and as a potential debiasing tool) without doing more harm to victims of group violence, practitioners need to find a way to reduce the difficulty that trauma poses. There are surely many avenues worth exploring, but I only examine two here. First, using research into the factors that put communities at risk of violence, practitioners can deploy the program into communities as a preventative measure rather than a solution to trauma. By identifying what puts a community at risk of violence and utilizing the program in communities at risk where violence has not yet occurred, the probability that participants in COI are traumatized by group violence is significantly lower. Effectively, this decreases the risk that the program poses to traumatized victims and results in COI functioning as a potential preventative measure against trauma development in communities at risk of violence. Staub [8, 9] identifies five elements of a community that should be examined to determine a community’s risk of violence or conflict. These are (1) the difficulty of average life, (2) the kind of culture that is common, (3) the likelihood and potential prevalence of unhealed trauma, (4) whether the community is actively trying to improve, and (5) the personality traits of the common person. An example of a community at high risk of violence is one where everyday life is hard; the culture of the community is one that values traits like strength and aggression; the community has gone through recent hardship like a disease or natural disaster; community centers have shut down; and altruistic personalities are absent or in short supply. As communities get closer to this extreme example, the likelihood of violence increases. Most forms of group violence fit a description of self-help, so identifying conditions that might increase a group’s need to lash out is crucial to determining risk levels of violence. While I cannot explain all the ways that these elements can be or should be measured, practitioners considering the use of COI

206

J. B. Castleberry

as a form of violence reduction should examine communities for these factors to ensure that P4C would be beneficial to the community.

5.2

Peace Education

A second option available to practitioners to reduce the difficulty posed by trauma is to adopt elements of peace programs that make coping with trauma a central focus. For example, programs like the Public Conversations Project, which utilize “reflective structured dialogue” to help divided communities heal [46]. Founded in the late 1980s by Laura Chasin, a family therapist inspired by John Dewey, The Public Conversations Project has facilitated dialogues on homosexuality with the divided members of the Episcopal Church, on abortion between pro-life and pro-choice members of the same community, and helped to establish trust in the country of Burundi after a civil war [47]. There are four adjustments that a version of P4C could adopt from the Public Conversation Project (PCP) that they argue helps lower the risk of triggering the “fight-flight-freeze” system. First, I recommend that P4C adopt initial one-on-one meetings with potential participants. PCP recognizes that participating in a conflict resolution dialogue for the first time can cause a lot of anxiety and fear, especially if you believe yourself to represent a minority opinion or think you might experience a traumatic response in the dialogue itself [46]. Initial meetings between the facilitator and each participant allows the facilitator to explain to participants what a dialogue is like, gives the participants a chance to get to know the facilitator before the meeting, and provides each participant with the opportunity to formulate goals for the first session—as well as the entire program [48]. These three benefits are essential to any PCP session as it helps to increase the perception of safety, decrease fear, and build up a sense of comfort. The aim is to decrease the likelihood that a participant enters a state of fight, flight, or freeze [46]. Although the addition of these meetings increases the resources needed for a modified P4C to run, the benefits provided to community members outweigh the costs. Second, I recommend the use of non-dialogic activities prior to dialogues in order to increase comfort and feelings of safety. There are at least two ways for P4C to accomplish this, depending on the needs of the community. PCP sessions often get participants together to share a meal before meetings to create a sense of comfort in participants before they engage in a rigorous dialogue into their conflict. Further, the meal is an opportunity for participants to get to know each other, which can increase the willingness of the participants to try and understand each other’s perspectives during the dialogue [46]. This approach is more useful if participants are ideologically or culturally divided because it grants participants an opportunity to see the humanity of the “other.” Another option is for the group to develop some kind of community program where cooperation with each other is key to the program’s success. Hoffman recommends a community garden or humanitarian project that all the participants agree is needed in the community [7]. Working on a community project of this kind is actually useful for the healing of trauma

11

Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education

207

rather than just helping to prevent the symptoms from interfering with the project [8, 9]. The project acts as a way to bond participants, which increases the comfort felt by members of the community. The increase in comfort should culminate in a decrease in the likelihood of traumatized people entering FFF states. Thus, if participants decided on a humanitarian project for the community and P4C meetings always began with time dedicated to the project, engagement in COI could be made a lot safer for traumatized members of the community. Again though, adopting either of these options radically increases the workload and financial cost of deploying P4C. Third, P4C ought to increase the use of reflection in COI sessions. During a dialogue into a contentious issue (such as the kind of issue that would contribute to the violence risk if unresolved), tension between participants often increases as everyone fights to be heard. P4C utilizes reflection at the end of each COI in the form of metacognition. PCP asks participants to engage in guided personal reflection into their emotions, communication patterns, and bodies often in the middle of a dialogue [46]. Typically, this is done through writing as looking down at a paper can increase the feeling of solitude, which PCP practitioners claim increases the effectiveness of the reflection. The goal is to interrupt the buildup of tension and bring an awareness to participants of how they feel, how they are thinking, and the position of their bodies. By calling attention to how the heart, mind, and body are interacting, PCP hopes to increase self-awareness. With an increased self-awareness participants can protect themselves from entering an FFF state in the dialogue. Further, self-awareness or self-understanding is essential to understanding others and communicating effectively with them [46]. The process is similar to metacognition as the participants analyze themselves in search of things that might be causing problems or preventing the success of the dialogue. However, by adopting moments of personal reflection like those in PCP, P4C is made safer and healthier for communities. The final element of PCP that P4C ought to adopt when being used as a form of violence reduction pedagogy is the use of stories or personal experience at the start of the dialogue. In PCP, participants are asked to share a story that expresses their own relationship to the concept or topic [48]. The story telling increases comfort in the community as members are immediately exposed to detailed accounts of how fellow community members think and feel about a concept. P4C does not need to adopt as strong of a focus on the stories as some PCP practitioners do, but asking participants to give answers that convey how they see the world is useful. Hearing how everyone might answer the inquiry question on their own increases exposure to different ways of thinking and the feeling of safety as participants learn what kind of thinking to expect from each other. Although not present in the Lipman and Sharp approach officially, I have always done something similar when I facilitate P4C sessions. After the question is chosen, I ask everyone to think of their own initial answer. Once everyone is ready, everyone willing shares their answer as they originally thought it. I have found that this technique successfully opens up the inquiry as several unique perspectives are often presented to the group all at once. I also find that it increases the group’s knowledge of each other as well as produces a feeling of being heard in the participants, even within the first couple sessions.

208

6

J. B. Castleberry

Conclusion

Can P4C adopt these facets of PCP without sacrificing the aims of Lipman and Sharp? I argue it can. Lipman and Sharp saw P4C as a way to improve judgment, thinking, and the cultivation of reasonableness. Participants in the program achieve these aims through the COI. None of the adjustments I recommend are meant to significantly alter the original methodology. Rather, my goal is to increase the effectiveness of the method in communities suffering from the violence problem. Meeting with participants one-on-one before any COI occurs, aiding in the formation of humanitarian projects or providing meals prior to the COI, and asking members to give their initial answer to the inquiry question are all ways that traumatized people might be made safer and more comfortable in the COI. The introduction of a personal reflection break in the middle of the COI is likely to be controversial as time is highly valued in P4C sessions and the idea of adding a second time for reflection is likely to be seen as unnecessary by some. However, the version of P4C I am advocating for is meant for use with adults in at-risk communities, where session length can be adjusted to fit the needs of the group and community. One is not limited to the short block of time available during a school day. The violence problem is a threat to our communities because it blocks dialogue. Without dialogue, the virtues needed in a successful democracy, such as reasonableness, cannot be cultivated. Reasonableness is a virtue that encourages community members to be active, enables people to work together towards common goals, and recognizes the value of seeing other perspectives. The more reasonable our communities are, the less likely groups within those communities will feel the need for violence as their only means of self-help. Further, reasonable communities are less likely to endorse values like revenge or “street justice,” and less likely to exile members perceived as “other.” Democracy needs reasonable communities, and programs like Philosophy for Children are powerful tools for the cultivation of reasonable communities. My aim was to show that P4C has the potential to be a powerful form of violence reduction pedagogy, and to defend the claim that the program can contribute to making our communities reasonable, even in the face of violence. What emerged from this inquiry was a new problem; a moral dilemma about how to best serve communities that have already experienced violence. If P4C adopts the elements of PCP outlined above, the program can take steps to resolve this moral dilemma. However, this project is far from complete. Research studies are needed to test hypotheses, formulate a verifiable methodology for evaluating the violence risk of communities, and perform a zoomed-out analysis of the way trauma can impede the cultivation of reasonableness through dialogue. I believe that Lipman and Sharp’s Philosophy for Children pedagogy contains essential elements that are necessary for a meaningful life, especially for those living in a democratic society. I do not mean from just the student’s perspective. The teacher too needs what P4C offers. When facilitating a P4C session, one quickly loses the self-centered focus that is so common in everyday life. A facilitator

11

Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education

209

learns to see themselves as they really are—just a piece of the whole. Prejudices and biases fall away in favor of our commitment to the dialogue itself. I believe any good facilitator will reiterate this, for it is our desire to give to our students the experience we get to have when facilitating that psychologically commands us to keep doing it. I have seen this program change the lives of people from all over the world, and from very unique walks of life. While further science is needed to examine the empirical effectiveness of the program, those of us who have experience with this program know that we have an obligation to provide this program for anyone who is willing to participate. Reasonableness is a virtue that encourages community members to be active, enables people to work together towards common goals, and recognizes the value of seeing other perspectives. Jacob B. Castleberry

References 1. King Jr ML (1972) The quest for peace and justice, Martin Luther King, Nobel peace prize lecture, December 11, 1964. In: Haberman FW (ed) Nobel lectures, peace 1951–1970. Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam 2. Splitter LJ, Sharp AM (1995) Teaching better thinking: the classroom community of inquiry. Australian Center for Educational Research, Melbourne 3. Echeveria E, Hannam P (2017) The community of philosophical inquiry (p4c): a pedagogical proposal for advancing democracy. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York, pp 3–10 4. Lipman M (1998) The contributions of philosophy to deliberative democracy. In: Owens D, Kucuradi I (eds) Teaching philosophy on the eve of the twenty-first century. International Federation of Philosophical Societies, Anakara 5. Hawdon J (2014) On the forms and nature of group violence. In: Hawdon J, Ryan J, Lucht M (eds) The causes and consequences of group violence: from bullies to terrorists. Lexington Books, New York, pp 3–20 6. Hawdon J (2014) Group violence revisited. In: Hawdon J, Ryan J, Lucht M (eds) The causes and consequences of group violence: from bullies to terrorists. Lexington Books, New York, pp 241–254 7. Hoffman AJ (2017) Understanding conflict and the role of community development: is building a peaceful society within our reach? Aggress Violent Beh 37:63–70 8. Staub E (2013) A world without genocide: prevention, reconciliation, and the creation of peaceful societies. J Soc Issues 69(1):180–199 9. Staub E (2013) Building a peaceful society: origins, prevention, and reconciliation after genocide and other group violence. Am Psychol 68(7):576–589 10. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, New York 11. Daniel MF, Doudin PA, Pons F (2006) Children’s representations of violence: impacts of cognitive stimulation of a philosophical nature. J Peace Educ 3(2):209–234 12. Fletcher NM (2019) Destabilizing stereotyped concepts in childhood: some opportunities and risks of philosophy for children as an aid to PVE. Springer, Prospects 13. Murris K (2013) The epistemic challenge of hearing child’s voice. Stud Philos Educ 32(3):245–259

210

J. B. Castleberry

14. Lipman M, Sharp AM, Oscanyan FS (1980) Philosophy in the classroom. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 15. Gregory M (ed) (2008) Philosophy for children: practitioner handbook. Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, Montclair 16. Lipman M (1996) Natasha: Vygostkian dialogues. Teachers College Press, New York 17. Oyler J (2016) Philosophy with children: the Lipman-Sharp approach to philosophy for children. In: Peters MA (ed) The encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory. Springer Science, Singapore, pp 1–7 18. Reznitskaya A, Wilkinson I (2017) The most reasonable answer: helping students build better arguments together. Harvard Education Press, Cambridge 19. Castleberry JB, Clark KM (2020) Expanding the facilitator’s toolbox: Vygotskian mediation in philosophy for children. Anal Teach Philos Praxis 40(2):44–58 20. Pritchard M (1996) Reasonable children: moral education and moral learning. University Press of Kansas, Laurence 21. Pritchard M (2022) On becoming reasonable. Anthem Press, London 22. Rawls J (1993) Political liberalism. Columbia University Press, New York 23. Black M (1972) Reasonableness. In: Dearden RF, Hirst PH, Peters RS (eds) Education and the development of reason. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, pp 194–207 24. Sibley WH (1953) The rational and the reasonable. Philos Rev 62:554–560 25. Kennedy D, Kohan WO (2017) Childhood, education and philosophy: a matter of time. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York, pp 46–52 26. Green L (2017) Philosophy for children and developmental psychology: a historical review. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York, pp 37–45 27. Pape R (2005) Dying to win: the strategic logic of suicide terrorism. Random House, New York 28. Brym R, Araj B (2012) Are suicide bombers suicidal? Stud Conflict Terrorism 35:432–443 29. Anderson E (1999) Code of the street: decency, violence, and the moral life of the inner city. Norton, New York, W.W 30. Rosenbaum HJ, Sederberg P (1974) Vigilantism: an analysis of establishment violence. Comp Polit 6:541–570 31. Schwitzgebel E (2009) Do ethicists steal more books? Philos Psychol 22(6):711–725 32. Schwitzgebel E, Rust J (2014) The moral behavior of ethics professors: relationships among self-reported behavior, expressed normative attitude, and directly observed behavior. Philos Psychol 27(3):293–327 33. Schönegger P, Wagner J (2019) The moral behavior of ethics professors: a replicationextension in German-speaking countries. Philos Psychol 32(4):532–559 34. Reed-Sandoval A (2019) Can philosophy for children contribute to decolonization? Precollege Philos Public Pract 1:27–41 35. Leseigneur C (2021) Is there a form of citizenship specific to philosophy for children. Child Philos 17:1–18 36. Hjalmarsson R, Lopez M (2010) The voting behavior of young disenfranchised felons: would they vote if they could? Am Law Econ Rev 12(2):356–393 37. Staats C (2014) State of the science: implicit bias review 2014. Kirwan Institute 38. Stichter M (2018) The skillfulness of virtue: improving our moral and epistemic lives. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 39. Fivush R (2004) Reconciling trauma and the self: the role of narrative in coping with sexual abuse and terrorism. In: Benson BA, Poremski KM (eds) Roads to reconciliation: conflict and dialogue in the twenty-first century. Taylor & Francis, New York, pp 89–106 40. van der Kolk BA (2014) The body keeps the score: brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking, New York 41. Streb M, Conway MA, Michael T (2017) Conditioned responses to trauma reminders: how durable are they over time and does memory integration reduce them? Exp Psychiatry 57:88– 95

11

Reasonable Communities: P4C and Peace Education

211

42. Alves RdCS, Portugal LCL, Fernandes Jr. O, Mocaiber I, Souza GGL, David IdPA, Volchan E, Oliveira Ld, Pereira MG (2014) Exposure to trauma-relevant pictures is associated with tachycardia in victims who had experienced an intense peritraumatic defensive response: the tonic immobility. Front Psychol 5:1–7 43. Greenberg TM (2020) Treating complex trauma: combined theory and methods. Springer Nature, Cham, Switzerland 44. Thompson KL, Hannan SM, Miron LR (2014) Fight, flight, and freeze: threat sensitivity and emotion dysregulation in survivors of chronic childhood maltreatment. Pers Individ Differ 69:28–32 45. Katz RR, Fondacaro MR (2021) Fight, flight, and freewill: the effect of trauma informed psychoeducation on perceived culpability and punishment for juvenile and adult offenders. Behav Sci Law 39(6):708–730 46. Stains RR Jr (2012) Reflection for connection: deepening dialogue through reflective processes. Conflict Resolut Q 30(1):33–50 47. Essential Partners (2016) https://whatisessential.org. Accessed 20 Feb 2022 48. Apóstolo MVdA, Moscheta MdS, Souza LVe (2017) Discourse and positioning in a dialogue meeting on LGBT violence. Psicologia USP 28(2):266–275

Jacob B. Castleberry is an independent scholar in Philosophy, and a P4C practitioner. He received his training in P4C at the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) Summer Seminar in Mendham, NJ. Jacob has facilitated P4C sessions with children ages 4 and up, adults at the undergraduate level, and, most recently, with incarcerated individuals at a local correctional facility. He has also served as an educator of the program, offering training workshops to public and private K-12 school teachers, as well as undergraduate instructors.

Applying Philosophical Inquiry Method to Cultivate Reasonable Religious Understanding and Prevent Extremism Wan Mazwati Wan Yusoff

12

and Nadzrah Ahmad

Intellectual reasoning is a religious obligation. Since intellectual reasoning is a method of philosophy, the study of philosophy is also a religious obligation. Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate and hate leads to violence. This is the equation. [Ibn Rushd 1126–1198 C.E.]

Abstract

The leaders of many extremist groups use religious scripture to justify radical understandings of a religion’s teachings and behaviors. The Community of Philosophical Inquiry (COPI) method, through dialogic pedagogy, aims at the cultivation of reasonable judgment. As reasonable judgment is often contrary to extremist positions, COPI is an excellent method for helping Muslims ponder on elements of their faith, develop reasonable understanding, and limit the prevalence of religious extremism. This is especially true if Quranic verses are used as stimulus material for the philosophical inquiries and students begin by reading the literal translation of the verses in their own language from the Arabic language. Students are then encouraged to ask philosophical questions that the Quranic verses bring to mind. Through an inquiry into one of the questions, students are hopefully exposed to multiple perspectives about the meaning of

W. M. Wan Yusoff (B) · N. Ahmad AHAS Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia, 53100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia e-mail: [email protected] N. Ahmad e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_12

213

214

W. M. Wan Yusoff and N. Ahmad

these verses for both their faith and lived experience. The aim is then for students to be guided to accept the most reasonable understanding, that is, the kind of understanding which enriches the lives of the participants. This chapter elucidates how to use COPI in Islamic Studies for students of primary and secondary schools. Sample lesson plans with stimulus materials, which are the selected Quranic verses, discussion plans, and accompanying class activities are provided to clearly describe how COPI sessions can be conducted. Graphic Abstract

Community of philosophical inquiry and the Quranic verses for extremism prevention

Keywords

Philosophical inquiry · Islamic education · Quranic teaching · Dialogue Inquiry · Thinking questions · Discussion plan · Activities · Games

·

12

1

Applying Philosophical Inquiry Method to Cultivate Reasonable Religious …

215

Introduction

Studies had found that some Muslim groups used religion and Quranic verses to justify their violent extremism [1–3]. This Muslim extremist movement, also known as the Muslim fundamentalist, adopt a literalist reading of the Quran and Prophetic Traditions—the sunnah and hadith—by directly focusing to the context of seventh century Mecca and Medina [4]. Although this approach may seem similar to the Textualist approach in the interpretation of the Quran, the Muslim extremists’ tendency to hold on to the literal approach is higher. As the Textualist relies on literal interpretation of the text with minimal subordination towards the demand of the modern society [5, 6], the Muslim extremists tend to manipulate the text interpretation to further suit the objective of their movement. For example, they used Quranic verses, taken out of context, to claim that they are the chosen groups and only they hold the correct understanding of religious teachings [2]. These Muslim extremists practice literal interpretation of the religious text by abandoning the contextual, cultural, mystical, and historical dimensions carried by the text. Such an approach allows them to isolate themselves from the society and at the same time legitimize their perspective and protect them from any counternarratives [7]. This resulted in an uncompromising and inflexible ideology towards religion [8]. Ironically, these groups are adept at reworking their interpretations of the sacred texts to justify their changing orientations [9]. They practice cherry-picking over Islamic texts and make authoritative claims to justify their position under the guise of infallible divine teaching. Individual interpretation over Islamic text is hence rejected in this group as it may affect such ongoing objectives of the movement [7]. Manipulations over centuries-old jurisprudence are common in these movements to achieve political and ideological objectives [7]. Although this may seem to signify their identification with the divine instruction, such practice apparently indicates their deliberate ignorance of the sacred text and religious tenets [10]. This group commonly bind themselves to a certain perspective or belief dogmatically. They are best identified by behaviours, conducts, attitudes, and beliefs that are alien to the original teachings of the religion and its practices [11] and believe in moral and ethical superiority over those who do not adhere to their interpretations of the scripture [7]. A Malaysian expert in violent extremism, El-Muhammady, conducted profiling of Muslim extremists [1]. He found that the Muslim extremists he interviewed were weak in religious understanding and knowledge. Because of this weakness, they blindly accepted the teachings of their leaders without critical evaluation. Sardar agreed that lack in critical evaluation and judgment would result in blind adherence to the teachings of their “mentor, teacher, or spiritual leader. They considered their spiritual leader as always right even though he is blatantly in error” [12, p. 167]. In other words, they parrot their leaders in thinking and behaving. If their leader holds extreme religious understanding, so are they. Similarly, Schmid [13] listed five indicators of religious extremism, one of which was blind obedience

216

W. M. Wan Yusoff and N. Ahmad

to the group norms. Blind imitation would perpetuate the weakness in thinking and in making reasonable judgment. Ironically, the Quran contains hundreds of verses commanding Muslims to use their mind to think on their own. Then, why are the Muslims “like a stagnant lake, slowly but surely being acidified by blind imitation” [14, p. 6]? Some Muslim thinkers blamed traditional teacher-centred teaching method, especially in religious education, for the perpetuation of blind imitation. Students are not encouraged to ask provocative questions that could enhance their thinking skills. Consequently, students become passive recipients of information. Dialogue, discussion, and students’ participation in constructing their own meanings are almost non-existence. Eventually, students lost interest in discovering their own understanding in Islamic studies. Contrary to traditional chalk and talk teaching method, community of philosophical inquiry (COPI), founded on constructivist learning theory, involves students in teaching and learning process. Students construct their own understanding and knowledge. Philosophical inquiry was the method used in Philosophy for Children (P4C) program founded by Lipman [15] in the early 1970s at Montclair State University, New Jersey. COPI method is effective to improve critical, creative, and caring thinking skills of students. These skills are necessary for students to think on their own which would lessen blind adherence to others’ views. Therefore, reasonable religious understanding could be cultivated from young using COPI method. This would limit the prevalence of religious extremism. Moreover, Lipman observed significant correlations between critical thinking and reasonableness and critical thinking and democratic education. He argued that “critical thinking improves reasonableness” and “in a democratic society, there is a maximum premium of the cultivation of reasonableness. The goal of education should therefore be the development of reasonable individuals” [16, p. 244]. He viewed critical and creative thinking as main components of reasonableness.

2

Community of Philosophical Inquiry

A community is a group of people united by the common pursuit of interests. Inquiry is an investigation which is done to find answers to questions or to enlighten problems from various perspectives. Philosophical inquiry is an investigation conducted to answer philosophical questions which are questions on the most fundamental aspects of life [17]. Examples of such questions are: What is the nature of existence? Does God exist? Who am I? How do we know that something is true? How are we to live? What is good and what is bad? Do stateless children have the right to education? Concisely, Philosophical questions are questions on concepts and ideas that are common, central, and contestable. The essence of COPI is dialogue guided by ground rules to ensure freedom, equality, and safe environment in voicing out opinions and ideas. Dialogue differs from conversation or debate for dialogue is purposive. Unlike debate, which aims at winning an argument between two opposing parties, the purpose of dialogue

12

Applying Philosophical Inquiry Method to Cultivate Reasonable Religious …

217

is to reach an agreement or make judgment on certain topics or issues [17]. The people participated in a dialogue do it cooperatively and collaboratively without being competitive. Dialogue encompasses concerted effort to explore ideas and potentialities, examine thoroughly the reasonableness of held beliefs and current practices, speculate on unprecedented postulations and the future to experiment on new understanding which could possibly create new knowledge. Dialogue in COPI emulates Socrates’ practices where the following argument would depend on the previous one. It is a dialectical process of presenting a thesis which would elicit an antithesis and so on and so forth [15]. There are two aspects of COPI procedures or ground rules. Both are to ensure that the dialogue moves towards conclusion and judgment. The first aspect is the communication ethics to guide interactions of participants with each other. This interpersonal ethical aspect is important to build COPI environment that is safe for every participant to voice their ideas, opinions, and concerns without worrying about retributions. The ethical procedures are listening to each other attentively; arguing using respectful language; refraining from arguing against the person but always counter a claim with another claim; being open to criticisms and willing to self-correct when others’ opinions are more reasonable; willing to consider alternative views, ideas, and explanations; being honest and respectful towards others’ cultural differences; examining reasons for differences of ideas and opinions; agreeing to disagree; having sympathy and empathy; and standing for fairness to all [15]. The second aspect is the thinking behaviours that enable dialogue to move forward towards truth. Thinking behaviours are core-skills and subskills of critical, creative, and caring thinking. They are asking for conceptual clarification; giving and asking reasons for or against ideas and claims; identifying and examining claims made; giving examples and counterexamples; detecting inconsistencies and fallacies; evaluating the strength of evidence to support arguments; generalizing; making alternative hypotheses; examining underlying assumptions; deducing logical consequences of claims; and making judgment based on criteria [18].

3

COPI and Islamic Education

In many Muslim countries, P4C has been promoted by individual scholars who found the efficacy of P4C in developing both cognitive and non-cognitive skills in students. The main objective of the studies done in the Muslim world is to find out the impact of P4C on critical, creative, caring thinking and communication skills among students at both primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. In Malaysia, P4C was rebranded and named as Hikmah (wisdom) Pedagogy [19]. This is because philosophy is viewed with suspicion to the extent that some scholars banished philosophy from Muslim education. They blame philosophy for the rise of heresy and un-Islamic way of living among Muslims [20, 21]. However, many more Muslim scholars advocate the inclusion of philosophy in the curriculum of Muslim education. They assert that the banishment of philosophy has caused the Muslims to

218

W. M. Wan Yusoff and N. Ahmad

be intellectually stagnant which has led to the rise of blind imitation and ‘fanatic guru mentality’ [12, 22]. Contemporary Muslim scholars re-examine [12, 22–24] previous scholars’ corpuses and found that philosophy was an integral part of their learning. They regarded philosophy as a medium to exercise intellectual reasoning to move away from blind imitation [25–27]. In fact, prominent scholars like Tantawi [28] and AlZarnuji [29] wrote procedures of engaging in dialogue similar to COPI. Among the procedures are: trust and honesty to avoid suspiciousness and idle talking; focus on the discussion; present evidence clearly and logically; mutual cooperation to arrive at truth; humble and respectful; give equal opportunity for everyone to voice out their opinions; argue idea with idea and avoid commenting on others’ personality characteristics or physical appearances; use respectful and wise language and display good ethical behaviour; suspend judgment before listening to arguments from all perspectives; clarify conceptual confusions; and be transparent and sincere. In Malaysia, P4C was first employed to enhance primary school students’ reading and thinking skills [30, 31]. Rosnani used COPI as a method to teach Malay language. Out of many numbers of research done in Malaysia on COPI, only eight studies were exploring the impact of teaching Islamic education using COPI method on thinking and collaboration skills and deep understanding of primary and secondary school students [32–39]. The results of the studies were very encouraging. Students enjoyed COPI sessions compared to just listening to teachers’ talk and taking notes. They realised that they could construct and achieve deep understanding and knowledge through dialogue with their friends [40]. Students also reported that being able to really understand was an amazing feeling, feeling of liberation from ignorance and fully satisfied that words failed to describe the feelings [35]. Students also found that they were correcting their own misconceptions after listening to better arguments by their friends [38]. Because of these positive impacts, Rosnani and her team of researchers advocated the use of COPI to teach Islamic education at primary and secondary level [33]. Two studies were conducted in Malaysia to discover the impact of using COPI method on students’ understanding of the meanings of Quranic verses [38, 41]. One study used stories in the Quran as stimulus materials to understand the wisdom underpinning those stories to guide contemporary lifestyle [36]. The results of the studies were promising. Students were able to construct their own understanding of the Quranic verses through dialogic inquiry. Moreover, students enjoyed the process of discussion to grasp meanings of Quranic verses. They said that through the process of deliberation they were able to understand the verses in the Quran more comprehensively [38]. The students also commented that they corrected their own understanding based on reasonable evidence presented by members of COPI. Therefore, COPI is an effective method to arrive at a reasonable understanding of Quranic verses. The next section discusses the application of COPI method to arrive at reasonable understandings of Quranic verses.

12

Applying Philosophical Inquiry Method to Cultivate Reasonable Religious …

4

219

COPI with the Quran

Active participation in dialogic inquiry with the Quran takes place when students feel that they are in an intellectually safe environment. Some educators promoted blind acceptance and prohibition of asking many questions [42]. They also emphasised that unqualified persons are prohibited to interpret the meanings of the Quran even though the constructed meanings are correct. They substantiated their position based on Prophet Muhammad’s traditions which were categorised as weak [43]. Therefore, it is important to ensure that students are safe to ask questions and to offer their own understanding of the verses of the Quran. Intellectually safe environment is free from the feeling of guilt from committing sins (because of asking too many questions and constructing one’s own understandings). “In an intellectually safe place there are no put-downs and no comments intended to belittle, undermine, negate, devalue, or ridicule. Within this place, the group accepts virtually any question or comment, so long as it is respectful of other members.” [44, p. 6]. Intellectually safe environment can be promoted by arranging the students’ seats in a circle or U-shaped to promote active listening and effective communication with one another [45]. Moreover, students’ understandings of each other would increase when they could see one another’s gestures and body language [45]. Each of the students also should know that any disrespectful act that breached the safe environment would not be tolerated for the progress of COPI dialogue depends on the students feeling free to voice out their opinions, to ask questions and express their emotions. The facilitator may employ a six-step model to do COPI with the Quran. Jackson [44] named this model as “Plain Vanilla” where students participate in the following philosophical inquiry process: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Reading the stimulus material, which are selected verses of the Quran. Asking thinking questions based on the Quranic verses. Voting on the questions to discuss. Writing a response to the voted question. Providing the first response by the owner of the chosen question. Evaluating the inquiry process based on evaluation criteria.

4.1

Stimulus Materials

Since this COPI method is to be used in pondering the meanings of Quranic verses, therefore the stimulus materials comprise selected Quranic verses based on the curriculum of Islamic education; the videos on the explanation of meanings of Quranic verses by various scholars which can be easily found in YouTube; the

220

W. M. Wan Yusoff and N. Ahmad

interpretation of Quranic verses by selected scholars; historical records on the reasons for the revelation of specific Quranic verses; and stories written to model discussion by a group of people on the meaning of the Quran. Controversial statements about the verses of the Quran made by various individuals could also be used as stimulus materials.

4.2

Philosophical Questions

Thinking questions are questions that engage students in higher order thinking to answer the questions. Questions asked in COPI sessions are complex questions that require rigorous thinking which are called philosophical questions. According to Cam [46, p. 15]: “… philosophical questions are essentially contentious. They do not call for the correct answer. They demand further investigation and admit of different answers that may have one merit or another. They point to problems that cannot be solved by calculation, or consulting a book, or by remembering what the teacher has said. They require students to think for themselves”. With consistent participation in dialogic inquiry, students would become more skillful in asking philosophical questions.

4.3

Dialogue

Dialogue is the most important part of COPI where students are free to share their own perspectives, ideas, criticisms, and concerns. The main aim of dialogue is to arrive at the most reasonable understanding of the Quranic verses. Many Muslim children are taught religious knowledge through indoctrination, and they are threatened with God’s punishment if they ask too many questions and give wrong answers [39]. This method of education is still prevalent in many Muslim countries [33]. In contrast, dialogue provides opportunity for students to engage in critical questioning; clarifying meaning; giving and analysing justifications; probing and analysing assumptions; discovering new perspectives and alternative explanations; testing ideas; and evaluating consequences of beliefs and actions [17]. The emphasis of a philosophical inquiry is not on the end result but the process of good thinking. During dialogue, students discover new depth in understanding; faults in their own thinking which enable them to make self-correction; and form new perspectives [17]. Furthermore, students are able to arrive at reasonable understandings of concepts; analyse and formulate a clear problem; build on the ideas given by others and synthesize ideas which may result in creative innovation.

12

Applying Philosophical Inquiry Method to Cultivate Reasonable Religious …

221

To get the dialogue going, the facilitator could also use Socratic questioning [17]. Socratic Questioning comprises questions that are asked to seek conceptual clarification; to explore and uncover underlying assumptions; to seek reasons and justifications for offering an opinion; discover multiple perspectives; to consider possible logical consequences of claims and actions; and examine reasons for asking questions. Since the purpose of dialogic inquiry is to understand meanings of the communications in the Quran, therefore dialogue would be focusing on conceptual clarifications as the first step towards understanding the whole message. The responses by students could be scrutinized by asking probing questions to uncover assumptions underlying understandings. Furthermore, the facilitator may probe further to elicit explanation from diverse perspectives and to consider what logically follows from each postulated perspective.

5

Samples of Inquiry Plan

Below are examples of lesson plans which can be used to train students to ponder the meanings of Quranic verses using the philosophical inquiry method. Teachers do not have to spend much time searching for or write stories to be used as stimulus material, unlike Lipman’s method which uses stories or novels as stimulus materials. Since the purpose is to ponder on Quranic verses, therefore teachers can select specific Quranic verses and use them as stimuli. The crux of COPI is the questions raised based on the stimuli and the discussion that follows. A trained facilitator would be able to engage students in meaningful and lively discussion. Facilitator needs to prepare questions that are considered important based on the stimulus materials to guide the discussion. Worley called these questions as leading questions which the facilitator prepares beforehand [47] because students may not have experienced asking questions on Quranic verses. Thinking questions are crucial to provoke students to engage in meaningful discussion. Sample 1 Stimulus: Quranic Verse [48], Surah al-Baqarah, verse 164. Most surely in the creation of the heavens and the earth and in the alternation of the night and the day and the ships which sail through the sea with that profits men, and the water (rain) which Allah sends down from the sky, then gives life with it to the earth after its death and scatters in it all kinds of moving creatures and in the veering of the winds and the clouds made subservient between the sky and the earth, there are Signs for a people who use their understanding (reason—‘aql).

222

W. M. Wan Yusoff and N. Ahmad

Themes: Creations, signs, people who use their reason, human understanding Level: Lower secondary to tertiary Leading questions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

What is the meaning of a sign? Why are creations signs? What is the purpose of creations? What is understanding? How can humans understand?

Sample 2 Stimulus: Quranic verse [48], al-‘Alaq, verse 1–8 Read in the Name of your Lord Who Created. He created the human being from Alaq (leech like clot). Read, and your Lord is the Owner of the Greatest Honour. That He taught with a pen. Taught man that which he knew not. Nay, but verily man is rebellious. That he thinks that he is self-sufficient. Lo! Unto your lord is the return. Themes: Read, Lord Who Created, human, knowledge, pen, self-sufficient, life Level: Lower secondary to tertiary Leading questions 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

What is the meaning of read? Why did God introduce Himself as “Lord who Created”? What is the significance of a pen? What kind of knowledge does humans know that has not been taught by God? Why did humans think that they are self-sufficient? What conceptual changes do these verses mention?

Sample 3 Stimulus: Quranic verse [48], al-Baqarah, verse 30–31 And (remember) when your Lord said to the angels: “Verily, I am going to place on the earth a vicegerent (Caliph)”, they said: “Will you place therein those who will make mischief therein and shed blood and we glorify you with praises and sanctify You”? He said: “Surely I know what you do not know”. And He taught Adam all the names, then He showed them to the Angels and said: “Tell Me the names of these, if you are truthful”.

12

Applying Philosophical Inquiry Method to Cultivate Reasonable Religious …

223

Themes: Vicegerent, ‘aql—reason, human nature, names of things, knowledge, ethical behaviour Leading questions 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

6

Why did the angel ask questions? What is the meaning of caliph? Why did angels say that humans will shed blood? What is the difference between Adam and angel? Why did God teach Adam names of things? What names of things did God teach Adam? Why did God answer the angel’s question by teaching Adam names of things?

Discussion Plan

Discussion plan is different from the COPI discussion. It is a set of small plans to train students on understanding meanings of concepts which are contestable. This is important because discussion could not proceed meaningfully towards truth if concepts are not understood clearly. A complete meaningful sentence comprises a set of concepts organized in a meaningful sequence. Facilitator of COPI who is not trained in philosophy needs “models of doing philosophy that are clear, practical and specific” [49]. He needs to know the difference between concepts that are philosophical from non-philosophical concepts. The meanings of concepts which are not definite—the meanings that can be contested—are philosophical. However, what makes the meanings of concepts differ is not the concepts themselves but the context in which the concepts are used. For novice teachers of philosophy, to differentiate the philosophical and nonphilosophical concepts is difficult. Therefore, a discussion plan helps in providing the examples of how to do philosophy clearly. Discussion plan is a set of questions asked for the purpose of training students to form universal or general concepts using definition, criteria, arguments, and reasons [49]. Again, a discussion plan is a specific model of philosophy in practice. When students are involved in answering questions in a discussion plan, they are trained to practice philosophy which will help them greatly in COPI discussion. Discussion plan can be done before or after the COPI discussion. The set of questions can be about a concept, connection, or a problem. The questions can be around a concept viewed from multiple perspectives or built upon from the previous one. Below is an example of a discussion plan consisting of a set of questions around a concept taken from Verse 164 Chapter 2 of the Quran [48]. Facilitator can ask questions leading to a conclusion that the visible signs

224

W. M. Wan Yusoff and N. Ahmad

are indicators of something else which can be both visible and invisible and other conclusions on human learning and understanding the unknown from the known. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Is Is Is Is Is Is Is Is Is Is Is

a leaf falling from a tree branch a sign? an apple falling from an apple tree a sign? a penny falling from a man’s pocket a sign? a word written on a wall a sign? a picture of an arrow pointing to the right a sign? a carpet a sign? a dog a sign? waving leaves a sign? a tsunami a sign? everything a sign of something else? there a thing that is not a sign of something else?

The following questions are discussion plans which begin with a question and each subsequent question is built up from the previous one. These questions are built from the concept ‘read’ taken from Verse 1 Chapter 96 of the Quran [48]. 1. If you can make a sound of each letter correctly, are you reading? 2. If you can make the sound of a word written in letters correctly, are you reading? 3. If you can read the verses of the Quran with correct pronunciation, are you reading? 4. If someone reads the verses of the Quran with wrong pronunciation, is he reading? 5. If you observe cloud patterns in the sky which resemble a tree, are you reading? 6. If you observe someone’s behavior and you make a hypothesis of his behavior patterns, are you reading? 7. If you read a text without understanding, are you reading? 8. If you read a text and understand each word in the text but you do not understand the whole text, are you reading? 9. If you read the translation of the Quran, are you reading the Quran? 10. If someone reads you a book, are you reading? 11. If you listen to someone reading the Quran and you silently recite with him, are you reading? 12. If you listen to a scholar reading the interpretation of the Quran on YouTube, are you reading the Quran?

12

7

Applying Philosophical Inquiry Method to Cultivate Reasonable Religious …

225

Activities and Games

Activities and games are designed to enhance students’ thinking skills and promote sensitivity to subtle details and changes in reasoning. Activities can be in the form of thinking exercises given to students to strengthen their thinking skills and may include games as well. Game is different from activity because game involves rules to follow. Games are also designed to enhance thinking skills, judgments and decision making. Activity and game can be played after the COPI discussion if time permits. If time is limited, it can be played in the next session.

7.1

Exercise

Exercise is done to train students to be skillful in examining inferences and evidence; detecting inconsistencies in arguments and claims; evaluating criteria and reasons for judgements; and uncovering underlying assumptions. Below is an example of a set of exercises to train students to uncover an underlying assumption which is the premise or presupposition which is not stated. One way to weaken an argument is to prove the assumption is false. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

7.2

He uses hand sanitizer; he must be clean from germs. He is a fool, because he tried, and he failed. This cookie is homemade, it must be tasty. They must be Muslims because they believe that God is the creator. It must be true because it is in the Quran. Interpretation of the Quran is not necessarily accurate. Ricky is a Muslim; he is a fundamentalist. The street is wet; therefore, it was raining an hour ago. You are from Malaysia; you must be Malay. He reasons, therefore he must be good.

Philosophical Mind Map

To enhance skills in testing the fitness of a philosophical claim, students can practice making philosophical mind maps. Write a philosophical claim in the middle of a paper and think of the logical consequences of the claim—what logically follows from the claim. Figure 1 illustrates an example of a philosophical mind map. God Create is taken from Verse 1 Chapter 96 of the Quran [48].

226

W. M. Wan Yusoff and N. Ahmad

Fig. 1 Philosophical mind map

7.3

Truth-O-Meter

Truth-o-meter is adopted from Buckley [50]. The purpose of this activity is to train students in making decisions and in reasoning why they make the decision as such. Make a list of statements and claims and ask students to rank the most believable to the least believable statements. Discuss their reasons for ranking the statements as such. Below is an example of the list of statements for students to rank. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

It It It It It It It It It It

is is is is is is is is is is

true true true true true true true true true true

because because because because because because because because because because

my teacher says so. I saw it with my own eyes. it is consistent. it is in the textbooks. my leader says so. it is logical. my parents believe in that. the majority of people say so. it is in the Quran. it has been practiced since 100 years ago.

12

8

Applying Philosophical Inquiry Method to Cultivate Reasonable Religious …

227

Conclusion

Advancement in telecommunication technology made possible the sharing of information. It is an effective tool to spread and propagate an extreme idea that common people are not capable of understanding the messages in the Quran on their own. This idea becomes more and more concrete when teachers of Islamic education do not give the opportunity for students to ask questions and construct their own understanding. Teachers are seen as having the authority in Islamic knowledge and students are viewed as empty vessels who need to be filled with knowledge. The devastating result of this teaching method is students would not be able to think on their own. In addition, students would not be able to straighten the confusion that they might face in understanding the messages in the Quran. This would make them vulnerable to the teachings of extremist ideologies. Therefore, it is high time that teachers change their method of teaching the meanings of Quranic verses. Students should be empowered with thinking skills that would enable them to arrive at reasonable understanding of the Quranic verses. Studies have shown that the COPI method is effective to engage students actively in dialogic inquiry. This would enhance the students’ skills in making reasonable judgment. This chapter has described how to conduct COPI sessions with the Quran. It also has provided samples of inquiry plans with the accompanying discussion plans and activities and games. Discussion plan is aimed at enhancing students’ understanding of meanings of Quranic concepts that are contestable. Activities and games are important to train students in thinking skills. The authors affirm that the COPI method will promote reasonable religious understanding and prevent religious extremism. Discovering understanding on our own is emancipation of the mind from slave mentality and the feeling is like a bird fly freely in the sky. Wan Mazwati Wan Yusoff and Nadzrah Ahmad

References 1. El-Muhammady A (2021) Religious, political and health radicalization in the context of national security in Malaysia and public order. J Public Secur Saf 12(2):189–212 2. Boubekeur A (2004) The religious and ideological factors of violent extremism. Available via IEMed. https://www.iemed.org/publication/the-religious-and-ideological-factors-ofviolent-extremism/. Accessed 4 May 2022 3. Abdul Razak MA, Haneef SSS, Muhammad Shukri AS (2019) Muslim world in encountering the challenges of global extremism and terrorism. Paper presented at 8th Kuala Lumpur International Islamic Studies and Civilisations, Bandar Baru Bangi, 23–24 Feb 2019 4. Halimi MBH, Sudiman MSASB (2021) Religious Extremism: Challenging Extremist and Jihadist Propaganda. Counter Terrorist Trends Anal 13(1):112–117 5. Saeed A (2008) Some reflections on the contextualist approach to ethico-legal texts of the Quran. Bull Sch Orient Afr Stud. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X08000517 6. Ali A (2018) A brief review of classical and modern Tafsir trends and the role of modern Tafsir in contemporary Islamic thought. Aust J Islamic Stud 3(2):39–52

228

W. M. Wan Yusoff and N. Ahmad

7. Winter C, Hasan U (2016) The balanced nation: Islam and the challenges of extremism, fundamentalism, Islamism and Jihadism. Philosophia 44(3):667–688 8. Farmer BR (2008) Understanding radical Islam: medieval ideology in the twenty-first century. Peter Lang Publishing Inc., New York 9. Iannaccone LR, Berman E (2006) Religious extremism: the good, the bad, and the deadly. Public Choice 128(1/2):109–129 10. Iqbal MA, Abdul Mabud S (2019) Challenge of globalization to Muslim ummah. Strategic Studies 39(3):73–88 11. Yousafzai M (nd) Religion and religious extremism. Retrieved from https://malala.gwu.edu/ sites/g/files/zaxdzs1061/f/downloads/OVPR_1617_2_IamMalalaToolKit_4-Religion-and-Rel igious-Extremism_FINAL.pdf 12. Sardar Z (1988) Reformist ideas and Muslim intellectuals: the demand of the real world. In: Naseef AO (ed) Today’s problem tomorrow’s solutions: the future structure of Muslim societies. Mansell, London, pp 163–174 13. Schmid AP (2014) Violent and non-violent extremism: two sides of the same coin?. Research paper. International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, The Hague, The Netherlands 14. Sardar Z (1991) How we know: Ilm and the revival of knowledge. Grey Seal Books, London p, p 6 15. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 16. Lipman M (1991) Thinking in education. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 17. Wan Mazwati WY, Rosnani H (2022) Doing philosophy for wisdom in Islamic education. IIUM Press, Kuala Lumpur 18. Sharp AM (1993) The community of inquiry: Education for democracy. In: Lipman M (ed) Thinking children and education. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Iowa, pp 337–345 19. Rosnani H (2009) Philosophy in the Islamic tradition: implications for the philosophy for children program (P4C). In: Marsal E, Dobashi T, Weber B (eds) Children philosophize worldwide: theoretical and practical concepts. Peter Lang, Germany 20. Jaafari A (2004) No to philosophy. Retrieved 20 Jan 2006, from http://www.arabnews.com/ ?page=13§ion=0&article=37885&d=16&m=1&y=2004&pix=kingdom.jpg&category= Local%20Press 21. Ibn Khaldun (1967) The Muqaddimah: an introduction to history. (Franz Rosenthal & N. J. Dawood, Trans.). Princeton University Press, New Jersey 22. Manzoor P (1989) The crisis of Muslim thought and the future of the ummah. In: Sardar Z (ed) An early crescent: the future of knowledge and the environment in Islam. Mansell, London, pp 57–91 23. Nasr SH (1982) Philosophy, literature and fine arts. Hodder and Stoughton, Jeddah 24. Qadir CA (1991) Philosophy and science in the Islamic world. Routledge, London 25. Al-Ghazali (1962) The book of knowledge. (Nabih Amin Faris, Trans.). Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore 26. Ibn Rushd (1976) On the harmony between religion and philosophy (George Hourani, Trans.). Messrs Luzac and Co Ltd., London 27. Ibnu Qayyim (2006) Kunci surga: Mencari kebahagiaan dengan ilmu [Key to paradise: seeking happiness with knowledge]. (Abdul Matin & Salim Ruydi Cahyono, Trans.). Penerbit Tiga Serangkai, Solo 28. Tantawi MS (2008) Adab dialog dalam Islam [Ethics of dialogue in Islam]. Institut Terjemahan Negara Malaysia Berhad, Kuala Lumpur 29. Al-Zarnuji B (2001) Instruction of the student: the method of learning [Ta‘l¯ım al-muta‘allim t.ar¯ıq al-ta‘allum] (G. E. von Grunebaum & TM Abel, Trans.). Starlatch Press, USA 30. Rosnani H (2003) The teaching of thinking through philosophy for children approach in Malaysia. Unpublished Research Report, Research Center, International Islamic University Malaysia 31. Rosnani H (2005) Kemahiran berfikir, hikmah dan keperluan program pengajaran falsafah di sekolah [Thinking skills, wisdom and the necessity for teaching philosophy program in school] Jurnal Pendidikan Islam. 11(2):46–68

12

Applying Philosophical Inquiry Method to Cultivate Reasonable Religious …

229

32. Juhasni Adila J (2011) Philosophical inquiry in Islamic education and its effect in the development of questioning skills among secondary school students. Dissertation, International Islamic University Malaysia 33. Rosnani H, Suhailah H, Juhasni Adila J (2014) The hikmah (wisdom) program: a philosophical inquiry for the teaching of Islamic education in Malaysia. In: Buang S, Chew PG (eds) Muslim education in the 21st century: Asian perspectives. Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, pp 125–141 34. Wan Mazwati WY, Lina Mursyidah H (2016) Philosophical inquiry method for enhancing higher order thinking in teaching aqidah to form two students. In Pendidikan Islam & Cabaran Globalisasi: Siri Penerbitan Program Pendidikan Islam Akademi Pengajian Islam Universiti Malaya. Akademi Pengajian Islam, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, pp 303–331 35. Wan Mazwati WY, Preece AS, Lina Mursyidah H (2018) Students’ experiences in teaching and learning Islamic education using philosophical inquiry method. J Educ Learn 12(2):266–274 36. Rosnani H, Hendon A (2020) Teaching Thinking through Qur’anic Stories using the Hikmah Pedagogy of Philosophical Inquiry. IIUM J Educ Stud 8(1):89–111 37. Hafizhah Z, Nor Alniza A (2021) Understanding the needs of Hikmah (wisdom) pedagogy module in the field of Akhlak and Sirah of primary and secondary schools. Int J Innov Creativity Change 15(9):765–785 38. Suhailah H, Mohd. Kaziman AW, Rosnani H, (2021) Improving students’ inquiry skills in Islamic education through Hikmah pedagogy and community of inquiry. Malays J Learn Instr 18(2):189–214 39. Suhailah H (2022) Islamic religious education and multiculturalism in Malaysia: University students’ perspectives. In: Matemba YH, Collet BA (eds) The Bloomsbury handbook of religious education in the global south. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London 40. Wan Mazwati WY (2018) The impact philosophical inquiry method on classroom engagement and reasoning skills of low achievers. J Curriculum Teach 7(1):135–146 41. Rosnani H, Suhailah H, Madihah K, Wan Mazwati WY, Rosemaliza K, Hafizhah Z (2017) Laporan kajian rintis program pedagogi hikmah di sekolah terpilih Daerah Gombak [Pilot study on Hikmah pedagogy program at selected school in Gombak District]. Center for Teaching Thinking IIUM, Kuala Lumpur 42. Bakkah WR (2020) Etika murid kepada guru dalam Surah al-Kahfi ayat 65–70 dan implementasinya pada pendidikan moden (Sudents’ ethics towards teachers in Surah al-Kahfi verse 65–70 and its implementation in modern education). Jurnal Ilmiah Mahasiswa Raushan Fikr 9(1):93–108 43. Al-Tarmizi (2007) Jami At-Tirmidhi Chapter on Tafsir. Darussalam, Saudi Arabia 44. Jackson T (2001) The art and craft of “Gently Socratic” inquiry. In: Costa A (ed) Developing minds: a resource book for teaching thinking. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, VA 45. Makaiau AS, Miller C (2012) The philosopher’s pedagogy. Educ Perspect 44(1–2):8–19 46. Cam P (1995) Thinking together: philosophical inquiry for the classroom. Hale & Iremonger Pty Ltd., Sydney, Australia, p 15 47. Worley P (2019) The if machine: 30 lesson plans for teaching philosophy. Bloomsbury, London 48. Pickthall MM (2001) The meaning of the glorious Qur’an. Islamic Book Trust, Kuala Lumpur 49. Lipman M (1996) Philosophical discussion and exercises. Anal Teach Philos Praxis 16(2):64– 77 50. Buckley J (2012) Thinkers’ game: making thinking physical. One Slice Book Ltd., London

230

W. M. Wan Yusoff and N. Ahmad Wan Mazwati Wan Yusoff is a graduate of Eastern New Mexico University, USA in Accounting and MBA and received her Ph.D. in Education specializing in teaching thinking through philosophy from International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). She currently teaches creative thinking and Islamic worldview at the Department of Fundamental and Interdisciplinary Studies, Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, IIUM. She is a certified trainer for Philosophy for Children Program (P4C) awarded by Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, Montclair State University, New Jersey, in 2006 and now is attached to Center for Teaching Thinking, Kulliyyah of Education, IIUM, in promoting P4C to enhance excellent thinking among students and youth in Malaysia. Currently Wan Mazwati is active in conducting research in hadith for application in education, psychology and communication; and developing materials for teaching Islamic Education using philosophical inquiry method to enhance deep understanding and philosophical thinking skills among secondary school students. Nadzrah Ahmad is an Associate Professor of the Department of Quran and Sunnah Studies since February 2004. She received her Ph.D. in Quran and Sunnah Studies from the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). Her previous degrees were from IIUM, majoring in Interpretation of the Quran (exegetical studies) and minoring in Psychology. She currently runs projects on Gender Equality Model based on Quranic Perspective funded by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (MOHE). She is a member of Semantic Body of Knowledge Cluster (52/RU5) IIUM. Currently she is the Deputy Director of Centre for Islamisation (CENTRIS) IIUM.

The Principle of Relationality in a Culture-Enabling Approach to Philosophy for/with Children

13

Peter Paul E. Elicor

… the variety of thinking styles in the classroom, coupled with a variety of backgrounds, values and life experiences, can contribute significantly to the creation of a community of inquiry. [1, p. 86]

Abstract

In this chapter, I discuss relationality as a value principle that can be used to cultivate culture-enabling philosophical dialogues. A culture-enabling approach to Philosophy for/with Children aims to habituate children to critically appreciate their own and others’ cultures, articulate basic human values that cross cultural boundaries, and think through the conflicts and tensions that arise from cultural differences. This is a proactive response to the general observation that P4wC’s emphasis on western philosophical traditions and culture is too limiting. To complement Lipman’s criteria for thinking in the Community of Inquiry, relationality as a value principle expands the ways of articulating, acquiring, and validating knowledge that is more inclusive and congenial to children from other cultural backgrounds. It supports and enables children’s thinking abilities

P. P. E. Elicor (B) Kindergarten am See, Salzburg, Austria e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_13

231

232

P. P. E. Elicor

by infusing the criteria of interdependence, reflexivity, reciprocity, and empathy in dialoguing within a community of inquiry. Graphic Abstract

Building a Culture-enabling Dialogue through the Principle of Relationality

Keywords

Philosophy for/with children . Community of inquiry . Culture . Relationality . Indigenous knowledge

1

Introduction

Scholars and practitioners of Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) generally recognize the importance of appropriating the program in the local culture. For example, Thomas Jackson and his colleagues designed Philosophy for Children Hawaii (p4cHI) whose primary focus is on doing ‘little-p philosophy,’ maintaining the idea that philosophical worldviews are a result of our “situatedness in the world and our responses to them” [2, p. 5]. With this assumption, philosophizing

13 The Principle of Relationality in a Culture-Enabling Approach …

233

with children aims at cultivating culturally responsive communities of inquiry. The emphasis on cultural responsiveness was a reaction to Lipman’s program which is deemed “too limiting with its focus on Western philosophical traditions and culture” [2]. Makaiau, who is also a practitioner of p4cHI, emphasizes the necessity of establishing an “intellectually safe” community of inquiry (or COI) where “the participants’ cultures, languages, histories, socio-economic backgrounds, and other aspects of their identities are included and validated during the building of relationships and the co-construction of knowledge” [3, p. 99]. Such an approach is predicated on the premise that recognizing and valuing the various cultural differences that students and teachers bring to the classroom is essential for establishing a learning environment that adheres to the principles of social justice. The goal is not only to increase awareness and lessen the impact of socio-cultural inequalities but also to “change the conditions that create them” [3]. Moreover, Reed-Sandoval and Sykes argue that focusing solely on western onto-epistemological assumptions in practicing P4wC runs the risk of failing to recognize the role of positionality in philosophical dialogues [4]. Such failure could unintentionally reinforce epistemic marginalization, potentially resulting in epistemic injustice, despite a well-intended desire to expose children from non-western cultures to philosophy [5, 6]. Meanwhile, my experiences of facilitating philosophical dialogues with indigenous students in Mindanao, Philippines prompted me to develop a framework for understanding the relevance of culture in teaching philosophy to children, which I refer to as ‘culture-enabling’ [5]. In this chapter, I discuss relationality as a value principle that serves as a criterion for cultivating culture-enabling philosophical thinking among children from minority groups, such as indigenous communities. As a criterion for thinking, relationality maintains the inherent interconnectedness of the knower and the known, as well as the knower and other knowers and the world. It promotes thinking that is infused with interdependence, reflexivity, reciprocity, and empathy in the COI. It may be well to note, however, that the contribution of this chapter is not so much in proposing a new set of thinking patterns for the COI as it is in grounding P4wC’s existing qualities of thinking on a non-western framework. In other words, a culture-enabling approach affirms the fundamental aims of P4wC, but it anchors these aims on a worldview that is not “too western”. Therefore, it supports the teaching of philosophy to children without having to worry about the ‘epistemic baggage’ embedded in P4wC’s theoretical foundations.

2

A Culture-Enabling P4wC Approach

A culture-enabling P4wC approach is based on the premise that building a community of inquiry is a culturally-situated process. This process treats culture in general as an enabling condition that can evince children’s worldviews. Teaching philosophy to children, in this sense, entails making them aware of their cultural context and its influence on their thinking. It also seeks to foster not only a critical appreciation of their cultural perspectives, but also to promote the importance of

234

P. P. E. Elicor

intercultural communication and exchange. While this approach emphasizes the influence of one’s cultural upbringing on one’s thinking, it does not however idealize or romanticize specific culture(s). In other words, valuing culture does not imply that it should be regarded as fixed, pure, and unquestionable, but rather it acknowledges that “a culture is more than a monolithic entity to which one belongs or not” [7, p. 411]. Besides, certain beliefs and practices in some cultures are diametrically opposed to the goals of philosophical inquiry. In this regard, a culture-enabling P4wC examines the underlying assumptions of one’s culture, preventing a dialogue from degenerating into ethnocentric argumentation [5]. With these assumptions, a culture-enabling P4wC affirms P4wC’s fundamental commitments but expands on them, making its goals adaptable to non-western, third-world cultural contexts. It seeks to create the conditions necessary for children belonging to cultural minorities to engage in philosophical thinking based on their cultural backgrounds. Culture is understood here as a wellspring for philosophical thought, providing the content, context, meaning, and method for its acquisition and application. While this approach maintains the fundamental skills associated with philosophical thinking, it does so without ignoring the concrete and specific meanings that arise from one’s cultural resources. It therefore recognizes that a child’s ethnicity and language, among other categorizations for social differentiation, serve as necessary filters through which she acquires an understanding of the world. In other words, in philosophizing, children maintain the link between cognition and culture. A culture-enabling P4wC has four general intentions: (a) to make children recognize their inherent ability to think philosophically through their culture, ethnicity and language; (b) to make children see the importance of their unique cultural upbringing as integral in their epistemic views; (c) to encourage children to bring into the dialogue their unique cultural experiences, fostering intercultural understanding; and (d) to equip children with the skill to practice critical appreciation of their own culture, helping them determine the factors (e.g., assumptions, beliefs, practices, traditions) that either support or block a dialogue. In each of these intentions, a child’s culture is recognized as a legitimate reference that can be articulated, inquired, and expressed philosophically, thereby making it available for philosophical inquiry and dialogue. What this approach emphasizes therefore is the rootedness of philosophical thinking in and through culture, and that the relevant criteria for its articulation, production and validation should stem from it. In this sense, a culture-enabling P4wC avoids silencing the cultural orientations, perspectives, and thinking styles of ethnically different children. It recognizes the diversity of cultural resources that overlap in the COI while avoiding prioritizing a particular cultural standpoint. Thus, socio-cultural distance and differentiation are viewed as enabling conditions in philosophical thinking rather than barriers to be overcome.

13 The Principle of Relationality in a Culture-Enabling Approach …

3

235

Relationality of Knowledge

The current P4wC scholarship has plenty of examples in which its central tenets have been appropriated and localized in cultures outside the United States. However, in many of these initiatives, western philosophy remains the main point of reference and the source of many of its assumptions. To a certain extent, the understanding of ‘philosophy’ in the ‘Philosophy for/with Children’ is largely framed within western philosophical models and perspectives. According to UNESCO, the “historical and geographical origin, in relation to a precise discipline, gives the emergence of P4wC a particular cultural aspect: it is an innovation in a Western context” [8]. I argue that an essential part of contextualizing P4wC is the integration of some relevant local (e.g., indigenous) forms of knowledge within its theoretical assumptions [9]. Generally, indigenous knowledge refers to the unique, traditional, local ideas, beliefs, and practices existing within and developed around the specific conditions of people who are indigenous to a particular geographic area. Because of the diversity of indigenous cultures, no beliefs or traditions can be said to be shared by all indigenous peoples. However, many of them share some epistemological patterns in their ways of thinking, doing, and being. For example, indigenous knowledge emphasizes the interconnectedness of peoples and their land, highlighting the epistemological principle of relationality. This principle assumes that knowledge is inherently interconnected, not only with other thinking individuals, but also with the larger reality, which includes everything in the ecosystem and the cosmos. Martin notes that “we must recognize that within an indigenous worldview, all ‘things’ have agency and are interconnected through a system of relationality” [10]. In this sense, knowledge is not construed as an abstract property that one ‘takes’ or ‘captures’ by virtue of some right or merit. Rather, knowledge is also something that one receives [11]. This view stands in contrast to the notion of “individual” or “private” knowledge. An important implication of relationality of knowledge is the manner of its acquisition and generation. It presupposes that the knower and the object of knowledge are inseparable. The process of knowing necessitates lived and grounded ways of acquiring knowledge that carefully consider the knower’s socio-cultural position and relationship with the larger community. Indigenous peoples’ knowledge, according to Sam and Ktunaxa, is informed by their “processes of witnessing and living within their local context and place, and within their relationship to others” [12, p. 317]. This method avoids an “imaginary relationship” between the knower towards the object of knowledge. There is no dichotomy between epistemology and ontology because they both presuppose each other. In other words, knowing and being are inextricably linked [10, p. 4]. Moreover, ‘truth production’ is always a collaborative engagement with other knowers. It implies a communal cultural process as opposed to an isolated and detached exercise in abstract reasoning. As a result, knowing is inherently an act of relating to others for knowing and relating (or being) are two sides of the same

236

P. P. E. Elicor

coin. In what they call “Indigegogy,” Hill and Wilkinson point out that “indigenous knowledge is garnered through examining the relationships within the natural world and the web of connections of which we are inherently a part,” a manner that is at variance with the positivist methods of acquiring knowledge and with some western analytic ways of thinking [13, p. 178]. Furthermore, knowledge is intimately interwoven in the place/space where it arose. Salvador and Ibanez observe that indigenous people’s knowledge is locale-specific since it basically stems from their efforts to address “site-specific conditions” and therefore is “entangled with the unique socio-ecological contexts of the place” [14]. One implication of this observation is that indigenous knowledge is only useful when applied in the contexts where it originated and by the knowledge holders themselves [14]. This may seem like a dead end as it challenges the practice of extracting bits of indigenous knowledge and transposing it into other fields and domains. However, in a culture-enabling P4wC approach, the goal is not to use a particular indigenous knowledge and deploy it outside its context. Rather, it seeks to employ the epistemological assumptions underlying indigenous forms of knowledge, which, in this case, is the idea that knowledge is always entangled with a specific situation and context. Pedagogically, this supports “place-based” learning, which emphasizes the importance of making connections between learners’ specific contexts and the learning agenda [15].

4

Relationality as a Value Principle in P4wC

In this section, I explore relationality as a value principle for philosophical thinking in a culture-enabling P4wC. In Thinking and Education, Lipman refers to criteria as value principles that “enable us to make more or less reasonable and reliable judgments” [16, p. 231]. They serve as ‘benchmarks’ against which certain ideas, claims or arguments are evaluated and justified. Critical thinking, for example, is a reliable kind of thinking that leads to well-founded judgments because it is backed by validity, evidential warrant, and consistency [16]. The quality of thinking (or lack thereof) is revealed by its connection to and support of a set of relevant criteria. Without these, the reliability and substance of our conversations and inquiries would easily deteriorate. Thus, according to Lee, criteria function as a tool in “differentiating good and appropriate judgments from those that are not, as well as in identifying those dimensions that are being subjected to scrutiny or evaluation” [17, p. 52]. Relationality serves as a criterion for describing and distinguishing a kind of philosophical thinking fostered in a culture-enabling COI. As a value principle, it leads to a kind of thinking that highlights the interconnectedness of the knower and the known, the knower and other knowers, and the knower and the world. Such thinking is based on the assumption that everything in reality coheres in a continuum at the ontological and pre-conceptual levels, emphasizing the entanglement of being and knowing within a space–time context. In the context of P4wC, this means that in thinking for oneself and with others, the child discovers that agency

13 The Principle of Relationality in a Culture-Enabling Approach …

237

is not solely hers or tied to her, but is shared with her and the community. Looking closely, relationality supports a quality of thinking that contains the following characteristics: interdependence, reflexivity, reciprocity and empathy. These characteristics may also be construed as cognitive-affective postures or dispositions which amplify relationality in thinking. A brief explanation of each is in order.

4.1

Interdependence

A relational philosophical thinking gives value not only to the identity of things and ideas, but also to the various ways in which they are related and connected. While other modes of thinking (e.g., critical) help delineate differences and determine identities, relationality on the other hand helps establish, strengthen and sustain the interdependence between and among concepts. A philosophical dialogue increases its scope and depth when children in a COI are encouraged to discover how their individual experiences are interdependent with each other. For instance, when reading a story, it is important that children not only can relate to it but also acknowledge themselves to be part of an ongoing story of their culture, community, and society. Integral in this process is the capacity to situate one’s known cultural narratives within the narrative of others. Thinking interdependently eliminates the ‘us versus them’ mentality, thereby transforming “cultural borders into bridges” [Fornet-Betancourt, 1998, cited in 18]. In assessing a philosophical dialogue a facilitator may reflect on the following questions: Does a given cultural experience (story) show common features to other cultural experiences (stories)? Are the children willing to explore the connections of their individual stories and the stories of others? Does the community actively draw out connections between each other’s cultural narratives? One way to integrate interdependence in a COI is by seeking interrelated themes underlying the individual experiences shared in the dialogue (e.g., experience/concept map1 ) as well as recognizing and thinking about the tensions that arise between them. As a result, children and facilitators weave their stories together, drawing out and affirming the interconnections of their individual questions and ideas. As a characteristic of relationality, interdependence widens the scope of philosophical thinking in the COI by acknowledging the deep connections between peoples, cultures and ideas.

4.2

Reflexivity

Recognizing the interconnectedness of peoples, cultures and ideas presupposes reflexivity in which a knower, while perceiving something, recognizes that she is included in what is perceived. Reflexivity, as Tarrant and D’Olimpio explain,

1

The ‘Story Circle’ is an example of a practice in the COI that encourages young people to seek common themes in their experiences. See 36.

238

P. P. E. Elicor

“refers to the idea that we, as thinkers, play a part in determining the substantive thought—and the truths or knowledge—we arrive at” [19, p. 2]. This affirms that our identities, as epistemic subjects, play an important role in determining the types of knowledge we arrive at. Such a manner of thinking opposes viewing things from a neutral and decontextualized standpoint. In a culture-enabling approach, however, reflexivity includes locating the thinker’s own positionality in relation to the knowledge and truths privileged in a given society. What is implied here is that for some individuals and groups, especially those who are unfairly positioned in the society because of their cultural background, there are socially constructed knowledge and truths that are inaccessible, and oftentimes, systemically denied of them. Neglecting positionality in the process of arriving at or constructing knowledge inevitably rejects certain legitimate claims that come from marginalized cultures. In a culture-enabling approach, habituating children in reflexive thinking allows them to look inward and locate themselves within the web of conceptual and ontological connections that they are inherently part of. This can be an empowering experience because it emphasizes their own agencies, cultivating their ability to take responsibility for their thoughts. In the dialogue, the facilitator may be guided by these questions: Does the chosen stimulus (e.g., narrative) make explicit its cultural context? Do the children demonstrate the capacity to connect their current thoughts with their unique experiences in and through culture? Does the community exhibit a level of reflection about the role of culture in their thinking? As a characteristic of relationality, reflexivity strengthens the integrity of children’s thinking by constantly affirming the entanglement among knowers, and between knowers and the world.

4.3

Reciprocity

Reciprocity recognizes the two-way process constituting the ontological relationality between humanity and the world. A corollary to this reciprocal relationship is the epistemic responsibility to acknowledge, respect, preserve, and build upon the wealth of knowledge passed down from the past. Though there are several ways of interpreting the value of reciprocity, what is relevant in a culture-enabling P4wC is the responsibility of all knowers to give voice to their individual perspectives no matter how incomplete these may be. So long as this is done with the purpose of contributing to the ongoing interpretation and re-interpretation of worldviews, each partial view adds up to the process of constructing a broader picture of the world. In a COI, children enrich each other’s thinking through a reciprocity of questions, insights and experiences. The epistemic configuration that exists between and among members of a COI looks very much like a circle, just like the physical circular arrangement of a COI. This configuration features a give-and-take relationship between each idea, enabling diverse forms of knowledge (indigenous or non-indigenous) to complement one another’s strengths and fill in one another’s gaps in multicultural settings.

13 The Principle of Relationality in a Culture-Enabling Approach …

239

What supports reciprocity is the skill to ‘see things with two eyes’ or the capacity to synthesize the strengths of seemingly disparate ideas in order to arrive at a better understanding, not only for one’s benefit but for all [see 20]. ‘Two-eyed seeing’ in this context means recognizing the strengths of both western and indigenous ways of knowing, which entails a continuous process of co-learning from various sources of knowledge. These questions may serve as a guide for the facilitator during the discussion: Does the stimulus (e.g., a story) encourage exploration of ideas and experiences from diverse cultures? Do the children treat a given question or idea as a provocation to expand the topic? Does the community display readiness to compromise? In a multicultural class, reciprocity enables various forms of knowledge to complement each other’s strong points and fill each other’s gaps.

4.4

Empathy

Emotions are generally viewed as the polar opposite of reason, frequently associated with irrationality and unreasonableness. However, this view undermines the powerful role of emotions in the cognitive process, particularly in shaping and directing thoughts. Without emotions, according to Lipman, “thinking would be flat and uninteresting” [16, p. 262]. Emotions have an important function in our effort to understand ourselves and others. In connection, empathy is an affectivecognitive skill that involves a “process in which we vicariously experience others’ internal states as our own” [21, p. 386]. To understand the other, one must consider the emotions involved in the other’s situation. That is, by observing how the other perceives her situation as if she were that person, the empathizer gains insight into what it is like to be the other. In this sense, empathy recognizes the possibility of forging intersubjective relations between epistemic subjects. Empathy enables and reinforces mutual understanding. It performs cognitive operations, such as discovering causes, making connections, as well as evaluating similarities and differences between one’s standpoint and that of the other. In a culture-enabling approach, empathy reinforces positive regard towards different cultural identities, thereby correcting or preventing cultural discrimination, particularly against children belonging to cultural minorities. In a dialogue, the facilitator may use these questions as a guide: Does the stimulus provoke children to feel what it is like to see things from a different culture? Do the children demonstrate empathic response towards the emotions offered (or implied) in their views? Does the community show openness and vulnerability to express feelings? What underlies these operations is a basic predisposition to care for the questions, experiences and points of view of the other.

240

5

P. P. E. Elicor

Relationality in the Community of Inquiry

It is important to note that while these four characteristics of thinking are already embedded in the multidimensional thinking presupposed in P4wC, they are, in this case, rooted from a value principle that is not apparent in Lipman’s view. Of course, certain connections can be made between interdependence, reflexivity, reciprocity and empathy, on the one hand, and critical, caring and creative thinking, on the other. However, these two ‘sets of thinking’ stem from and are shaped by different frameworks, assumptions and criteria. Using a ‘map’ as a metaphor, these two analogous ways of thinking are like two ‘routes’ leading to the same destination from two different points of origin. To illustrate, in Lipman’s view, children exercise philosophical thinking in a COI (destination) that emphasizes critical, caring and creative thinking (route), which emanate from a representational view of knowledge and the world (origin). In this representational view, philosophical thinking consists in “appreciation of ideas, logical arguments, and conceptual systems” and also “a manifest facility in manipulating philosophical concepts” [22, p. 31]. The reasoning that takes place in the COI makes use of logical inferences to extend knowledge, applies reasons and arguments to defend knowledge, and employs critical analysis to coordinate knowledge. In other words, the understanding of knowledge in P4wC—in so far as Lipman is concerned—is primarily determined by the quality of reasoning and analysis that is devoted to it in the thinking process. In this sense, P4wC mainly adheres to representational epistemology, which maintains that truth is obtained through a reasoned representation of the world. Knowledge then is about the world, which can be represented by thoughts and ideas. Accordingly, this search for truth is executed and achieved through discursive reasoning and rational construction of ideas. On the other hand, in a culture-enabling P4wC, children exercise philosophical thinking in a COI (destination), but deploys interdependent, reflexive, reciprocal and empathic qualities of thinking (route), which proceed from a presentational view of knowledge and the world (origin). Such a view draws its inspiration from indigenous forms of knowledge about the world, which are essentially presentational [11]. Indigenous knowledge rests on the presence of the natural world and on the rich and varied experiences it offers. According to Whitt, “knowledge is located in the world as much as it is located in a people or a person; it is part of what relates the human and nonhuman” [11, p. 55]. Presentational thinking is characterized by representing wholes instead of parts. It aims at seeing things from a ‘bigger picture’ and situating things or concepts as always emerging from a context. In a COI, for instance, indigenous ways of thinking manifest through a collaborative effort to see reality along a spectrum rather than in conceptual hierarchies or categories. Rather than breaking a concept into its atomic parts, thinking is directed towards gathering seemingly disparate elements (ideas or experiences) and orienting them towards a possible balance and harmony. Accordingly, the wholeness of reality and the interdependent relationships between things and ideas are always presupposed in the philosophical dialogue.

13 The Principle of Relationality in a Culture-Enabling Approach …

241

Moving forward, it goes without saying that relationality is not the only standard against which thinking patterns are evaluated. There are various modes of philosophical thinking that do not necessarily proceed from the criterion of relationality. This follows that, like any criteria, relationality is open to challenge and is likely to be contested by other equally valid criteria. When there is a conflict of different criteria, what measurement is used to arbitrate? What standard should we appeal to when evaluating two competing criteria? This is where a ‘higher’ criteria or meta-criteria becomes important. In connection to relationality, I propose that its meta-criteria can be found in the concept of holism. As an onto-epistemological principle, holism denotes a non-fragmentary approach to reality, meaning and truth. This is an epistemological view that conceptualizes the world according to interdependent ‘systems.’ It therefore examines particular forms of beliefs, values or practices as constitutive components of a system, not as independent ‘units’ of knowledge. The meaning of a moral concept, for instance, is not culled in and of itself, but rather distilled from its relations with the other concepts related to its system, and in the larger system(s) within which the said precept is a part. It is from this viewpoint that the criterion of relationality and its four thinking qualities make sense. As a metacriterion for philosophical thinking, holism underscores a quality of thinking that demonstrates a “parallel reorientation in worldview”, as opposed to a mechanistic, reductive and linear orientation of the world [23, p. 21]. In connection to COI, each child’s view or question should be understood in relation to a system, or overlapping contexts, no matter how vague this may be to her or to the teacher. Figure 1 that illustrates some questions that can reveal relationality as a value principle through the qualities of interdependence, reflexivity, reciprocity and empathy. Facilitators may find it helpful in choosing the materials for a cultureenabling COI that can be used as stimuli (2nd column), and in identifying what to focus on during the dialogue (3rd and 4th columns) in order to elicit the desired qualities of thinking at both at the level of the child and community.

6

Challenging Dominant Assumptions in P4wC

In this final section, I examine the concepts of childhood, rationality, and language, which need to be problematized and reconsidered to ensure they are aligned with the assumptions of a culture-enabling P4wC approach. Uncritical acceptance of these concepts may jeopardize the approach’s goals.

6.1

Childhood

Several P4wC scholars have problematized the notion of a homogenous childhood [24, 25]. In a culture-enabling approach, the idea of a ‘universal childhood’ must likewise be challenged. Drawing from postcolonial studies, a context-less and time-less conception of childhood does not exist [26, 27]. People from various

242

Fig. 1 Relationality revealing questions

P. P. E. Elicor

13 The Principle of Relationality in a Culture-Enabling Approach …

243

societies have had different interpretations of what childhood means throughout history, including its nature, characteristics, rights, and responsibilities. Matthews opines that our idea of childhood is historically problematic insofar as it may be a modern invention [28, p. 8]. For this reason, it is necessary to examine how historical, cultural, geopolitical, economic, and other social forces interact in assigning interpretations of what it means to be a child in a given society. In order to theorize about childhood, it is necessary to contextualize it. It is misleading to assume that all children, regardless of culture, follow a single ‘template’ or pattern of childhood. Gupta asserts that the idea of “universal childhood is a myth”, not least because concrete circumstances, ranging from the differences in geographical locations to specific cultural practices, shape a society’s understanding of the nature of a child [26, p. 147]. In this regard, Nieuwenhuy fittingly uses the term childhoods instead of the singular ‘childhood’ in order to underline the multiplicity of notions and practices that surround it [27]. In short, childhood is always conditioned and shaped by the various cultures in various societies. Challenging the dominant interpretations of childhood has important implications in a culture-enabling approach as it demands a keen awareness of the contexts and positionalities of children. Thus, it is important that a practitioner should ask: What are the implicit and explicit socio-cultural forces that inform the interpretations of childhood in my context/community? How are these interpretations shaped by the larger society of which the community is a part? The answers to these questions provide a socially-situated and culturally-sensitive understanding concerning the ability of a certain group of children to think philosophically. These answers will also underline specific socio-cultural factors that are interlaced as preconditions for philosophical inquiry.

6.2

Rationality

Rationality is an important notion in P4wC. In Thinking in Education, Lipman asserts that “[c]hildren brought up in reasonable institutions are more likely to be reasonable than children raised under irrational circumstances. The latter, as we know, are more likely to be those who grow up irrational and raise their own children irrationally” [16, p. 11]. What does rationality mean? For Lipman, rationality is a quality of thinking, doing and being that is correct, true and valid. It is a criterion for reasonableness. In schools, for instance, rationality is an organizing principle that facilitates the education of young people to become “reasonable citizens, reasonable companions, and reasonable parents [16, p. 22].” Rationality, like childhood, should also be challenged to avoid uncritically ascribing to it a ‘homogenous’ and ‘universal’ interpretation that transcends history, time, and culture. For a facilitator, it is crucial to ask: Whose rationality? To what extent is my understanding of rationality anchored on a foreign (e.g., western) conception of reason? Whose/what criteria am I using to determine that something is rational? The assumption here is that, in any society, there are dominant and non-dominant forms of rationality. For instance, in most societies that

244

P. P. E. Elicor

have a colonial past, the dominant rationality is profoundly embedded in their history, culture and language. Such dominant rationality, which is a result of a prolonged ‘colonial programming,’ determines how a society and its various social institutions are organized, justified and maintained. The problem is that dominant rationalities perpetuate an exclusionary logic which epistemically excludes standpoints from subaltern groups. Certainly, it is difficult to understand how rationality could be an exclusionary criterion, since it is commonly assumed that rationality is a universal human characteristic. However, rationality, like freedom and equality, is inherently informed and determined by specific cultures that demand a kind of “cultural allegiance for them to be valid” [29, p. 17]. In other words, being rational is something that ought to be recognized and evaluated against specific cultural norms within which the subject is situated. In connection, a culturally-enabling P4wC pays attention to the subtle ways by which the dominant rationality excludes other forms of knowledge. Examining our conception of what it means to be rational is crucial in teaching philosophy to children, not least because we are teaching them how to think well. This necessitates adherence to certain criteria that distinguish between bad and good thinking. The point here is not to abandon a western conception of rationality. While it is desirable to maintain a rationality that prioritizes truthfulness, objectivity, and consistency in thinking, this should be supplemented with a rationality that promotes relationality expressed in interdependent, reflexive, reciprocal, and empathic qualities of thinking.

6.3

Language

According to Giroux and McLaren, language is “not a transparent window to the world but rather as a symbolic medium that actively shapes and transforms the world” [30, p. 12]. Language, in this sense, functions to mediate reality, and not merely serve as its reflection. This implies that meanings are created through language as it contributes to the social construction of reality. Consequently, imposing a language to be utilized in a dialogue other one’s own affects how she ascribes meaning to her own experiences, thereby affecting her perception of reality. Viruru notes that “language is deeply implicated in the continuing colonization of the world by Euro-Western ways of being and thinking” [31, p. 36]. Language could reproduce power structures and subtly maintain certain forms of domination. It distinguishes the literate from the illiterate and legitimizes certain modes of thought while invalidating others. This occurs, in my experience, when several students from minority groups with distinct language feel discouraged to engage in the dialogue because the majority uses a dominant language. It is a common classroom experience, particularly in the provinces, that students who speak the dominant language (Tagalog or English) are deemed more intelligent, advanced, and credible compared to those who can express their thoughts only through their mother tongue. Acknowledging that language (oral or written) is essential in P4wC, it

13 The Principle of Relationality in a Culture-Enabling Approach …

245

is crucial to raise the issue on how to employ language without making it an “instigator and purveyor of colonial power” [32, p. 142]. Moreover, the discursive nature of the philosophical dialogues in a COI could limit other possibilities of expressing an idea, experience or a question. My claim here is that the notion of ‘participation’ in the COI should not be limited to just verbal engagement. This is where alternative, non-discursive, and intuitive ways of motivating philosophical thinking become necessary. Creative expressions of an idea may not (yet) be considered philosophical, but these can motivate presentational thinking in which thoughts do not get stalled by syntactical rules and semantic structures. For instance, the activity called ‘music improvisation’ where children are encouraged to express their thoughts and emotions through sound nurtures spontaneity and harmony among children that can increase their bond with each other. A culture-enabling P4wC, therefore, explores other ways, or non-verbal languages (through art, music, body movements) that can inspire children to confidently express themselves. What this implies is that a sense of community is also fostered through the sharing of intuitive-creative expressions of one’s self.

7

Conclusion

The overarching theme in this chapter is the idea that philosophy and culture are intricately intertwined. Our philosophical perspectives are influenced by our cultural position, how we perceive it, and what we do with it. Since P4wC is a way of doing philosophy, the ‘P’ in P4wC should recognize and enable the cultural standpoints of the participants in the inquiry. In a culture-enabling P4wC, children are recognized as active bearers of culture. They should understand the role of cultures in shaping worldviews, relationships and societies. Concretely, this approach aims to enable children to not only critically appreciate their own and others’ cultures, but also articulate the values that cross cultural boundaries, and think through the conflicts and tensions that arise from cultural differences. It cannot be emphasized enough that children need cultural literacy as they grow up in societies where multiple cultures coexist. Moreover, a culture-enabling approach to P4wC seeks to empower children to think for themselves without being uprooted from their cultural identity not least because a dialogue that cuts off the “cultural continuity” in philosophical thinking perpetuates a kind of hegemony whereby a dominant culture is privileged at the cost of the non-dominant ones [33]. Hence, a culture-enabling P4wC opposes using philosophy to ‘epistemically colonize’ children, particularly those from less dominant cultures. Moreover, relationality as a value principle provides a necessary complement to Lipman’s analytic-representational bent. However, the emphasis on interdependence, reflexivity, reciprocity, and empathy does not imply cancelling out the importance of discursive and analytic reasoning. Rather, these qualities of thinking offer an expanded way of acquiring, determining and validating knowledge that is inclusive and more congenial to children from other non-dominant cultural backgrounds, thereby supporting and enabling—not alienating or disabling—their

246

P. P. E. Elicor

ideas, questions and experiences. For this reason, a culture-enabling approach aims at opening spaces for alternative philosophical frameworks to promote intellectual diversity and encourage collaboration between various epistemologies. For P4wC practitioners and scholars, one of the ways to concretize this is to make a conscious effort to diversify one’s philosophy canon. Diversification of sources boils down to the fundamental assumption that the more diversified (and not just diverse) one’s sources and criteria of knowledge are, the more capable one is to address questions, particularly those that are peculiar to one’s own context and culture. As Wong argues, the more worldviews we engage with and understand, the greater the possibilities we have to “encounter the ‘correct’ paradigm, come to the correct consensus after intra-paradigm comparison and weighing, and acquire the prerequisite knowledge to explain and defend our positions” [34]. Certainly, western philosophical traditions are essential in doing philosophy, however, these should be balanced with and supplemented by other philosophical frameworks, which are, unfortunately “still considered mere cosmovisions, or knowledge systems; not ‘real’ philosophy” [35, p. 3]. Thinking alongside indigenous forms of knowledge therefore demands an intellectual-ethical stance that suspends any type of prejudice against these less known and less recognized worldviews. A culture-enabling P4wC recognizes that a child’s ethnicity and language, among other categorizations for social differentiation, serve as necessary filters through which she acquires an understanding of the world. Peter Elicor

References 1. Lipman M, Sharp AM (1978) Some educational presuppositions of philosophy for children. Oxf Rev Educ 4(1):85–90 2. Jackson T (2012) Homegrown. Educ Perspect 44:3–7 3. Makaiau AS (2017) Philosophy for children Hawai’i a culturally responsive pedagogy for social justice education. In: Lin C-C, Sequeira L (eds) Inclusion, diversity, and intercultural dialogue in young people’s philosophical inquiry. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, pp 99–110 4. Reed-Sandoval A, Sykes A (2017) Who talks? Who listens? Taking ‘positionality’ seriously in philosophy for children. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, London, pp 219–226 5. Elicor PP (2021) I am keeping my cultural hat on: exploring a ‘culture-enabling’ philosophy for/with children practice. Child Philos 17:1–18. https://doi.org/10.12957/childphilo.2020. 54161 6. Elicor PP (2020b) Mapping identity prejudice: locations of epistemic injustice in philosophy for/with children. Child Philos 16:1–25. https://doi.org/10.12957/childphilo.2020.47899 7. Merriam S, Johnson-Bailey J, Lee M-Y, Kee Y, Ntseane G, Muhamad M (2001) Power and positionality: negotiating insider/outsider status within and across cultures. Int J Lifelong Educ 20(5):405–416 8. UNESCO (2007) Philosophy, a school of freedom, teaching philosophy and learning to philosophize: status and prospects. UNESCO Publishing, France

13 The Principle of Relationality in a Culture-Enabling Approach …

247

9. Elicor PP (2019) Philosophical inquiry with indigenous children: an attempt to integrate indigenous forms of knowledge in Philosophy for/with Children. Child Philos 15:1–22. https:/ /doi.org/10.12957/childphilo.2019.42659 10. Martin B (2017) Methodology is content: indigenous approaches to research and knowledge. Educ Philos Theory 49(14):1392–1400 11. Whitt L (2009) Science, colonialism, and indigenous peoples: the cultural politics of law and knowledge. Cambridge University Press, New York 12. Sam M, Ktunaxa, (2011) An indigenous knowledges perspective on valid meaning making: a commentary on research with the EDI and aboriginal communities. Soc Indic Res 103(2):315– 325 13. Hill G, Wilkinson A (2014) INDIGEGOGY: a transformative indigenous educational process. Can Soc Work Rev/Revue Can Serv Soc 31(2):175–193 14. Salvador D, Ibanez J (2017) Conserving raptors using culture-based approaches: the case of the Philippine eagle conservation program. Plenary talk presented during the 10th Asian raptor research and conservation network international symposium held at Ateneo de Davao University in Davao City, Philippines from Oct 19–20, 2017 15. Reed-Sandoval A (2014) The Oaxaca philosophy for children initiative as place-based philosophy: why context matters in philosophy for children. APA Newsl Hispanic/Latino Issues Philos 14(1):9–12 16. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education, 2nd edn. Cambridge, New York 17. Lee Z (2001) Language, categories, and social reality. Soc Scib Diliman 2(2):50–76 18. Oliverio S (2017) Intercultural philosophy and the community of philosophical inquiry as the embryonic cosmopolitan community. In: Lin C-C, Sequeira L (eds) Inclusion, diversity, and intercultural dialogue in young people’s philosophical inquiry. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, pp 3–14 19. Tarrant S, D’Olimpio L (2017) Philosophy in the (gender and the law) classroom. Anal Teach Philos Prax 38(1):1–16 20. Bartlett C, Marshall M, Marshall A (2012) Two-eyed seeing and other lessons learned within a co-learning journey of bringing together indigenous and mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing. J Environ Stud Sci 2(4):331–340 21. Strayer J, Roberts W (1997) Children’s personal distance and their empathy: indices of interpersonal closeness. Int J Behav Dev 20(3):385–403 22. Lipman M, Sharp AM, Oscanyan F (1980) Philosophy in the classroom, 2nd edn. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 23. Hammond D (2008) Philosophical and ethical foundations of systems thinking. tripleC 3(2):20–27 24. Kennedy D (2006) Changing conceptions of the child from the renaissance to post-modernity: a philosophy of childhood. Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston 25. Kohan W (2015) Childhood, education and philosophy: new ideas for an old relationship. Routledge, New York 26. Gupta A (2015) Using postcolonial theory to critically re-frame the child development narrative. In David T, Goouch K, Powell S (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophies and theories of early childhood education and care. Routledge, New York 27. Nieuwenhuy O (2013) Theorizing childhood(s): why we need postcolonial perspectives. Childhood 20(1):3–8 28. Matthews G (1994) Philosophy of childhood. Harvard University Press, London 29. Viruru R (2005) The impact of postcolonial theory on early childhood education. J Educ 35:7– 29 30. Giroux H, McLaren P (1992) Writing from the margins: geographies of identity, pedagogy, and power. J Educ 174(1):7–30 31. Viruru R (2001) Colonized through language: the case of early childhood education. Contemp Issues Early Child 2(1):31–47 32. Gandhi L (1998) Postcolonial theory: a critical introduction. Allen & Unwin, Australia

248

P. P. E. Elicor

33. Gay G (2000) Culturally responsive teaching: theory, research, and practice. Teacher College Press, New York 34. Wong B (2019) The epistemic case for the genuine diversification of academic philosophy. Blog of APA. https://blog.apaonline.org/2019/05/22/the-epistemic-case-for-the-genuinediversification-of-academic-philosophy/. Accessed 20 May 2020 35. Note N, Fornet-Betancourt R, Estermann J, Aerts D (2009) Worldview and cultures: philosophical reflections from an intercultural perspective: an Introduction. In: Note N, FornetBetancout R, Estermann J, Aerts D (eds) Worldviews and cultures. Springer, Belgium, pp 1–9 36. Fletcher N, Gregory MR, Shea P, Sykes A (2021) The story circle as a practice of democratic, critical Inquiry. Child Philos 17:1–42. https://doi.org/10.12957/childphilo.2021.53655

Peter Paul E. Elicor was assistant professor of Philosophy for ten years at Ateneo de Davao University, Philippines, before shifting to a career in early childhood education in Salzburg, Austria. He is now an assistant teacher in Kindergarten am See, St. Gilgen and continues to work as an independent researcher. His research interests are Philosophy of Childhood, Philosophy for/with Children, Epistemology, Indigenous Philosophy, and include topics such as epistemic injustice, culture, positionality, and indigenous issues. His work in these areas has been published in academic journals such as Educational Philosophy and Theory, Childhood and Philosophy, Philosophia International Journal of Philosophy, Kritike, and Journal of Human Values. He received his doctorate in Philosophy, magna cum laude, from the University of Santo Tomas, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Universität Salzburg under an Ernst Mach-worldwide grant.

Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful Co-existence in a Multicultural Society

14

Wan Mazwati Wan Yusoff , Lina Mursyidah Hamzah, and Mahinur Gulca Abudukerumu

All mankind is from Adam, and an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over a black nor does a black has any superiority over a white, except by the piety and good actions (The sermon on the last pilgrimage by Prophet Muhammad, Peace be upon him)

Abstract

Misunderstanding and prejudices could escalate to racism and unrest in a multicultural society. History informed us the devastating consequences of the racism and unrest among others were loss of life, properties and sanity. However, those with high cultural intelligence would be able to integrate and live harmoniously in a culturally diverse society. Cultural intelligence is a set of skills which can be developed in a democratic education through dialogic pedagogy. This chapter explains how dialogic pedagogy employed in a democratic classroom could enhance cultural intelligence of students at secondary and tertiary level. To this end, the chapter also explicates the relationship between P4C and democratic society, rationales for using CPI to enhance cultural intelligence, the

W. M. Wan Yusoff (B) · L. M. Hamzah · M. G. Abudukerumu AHAS Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia, 53100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia e-mail: [email protected] L. M. Hamzah e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_14

249

250

W. M. Wan Yusoff et al.

structure and procedures of a CPI session and this chapter also presents examples of inquiry plan to assist teachers in implementing effective CPI session. The sample lesson plans are suitable to be used in various subject matters such as in English language class, Moral education class, history and Civic education class. Graphic Abstract

Democratic Education for Peaceful Co-Existence. Keywords

P4C . CPI . Cultural intelligence . Democratic education . Creative thinking Critical thinking . Caring thinking . Collaborative deliberation . Inquiry plan

1

.

Introduction

The advancement of transportation and telecommunication technologies facilitate movement of people to every part of the world physically and virtually for various reasons including security, economics, political and religious. The consequence of this inter-country movement is the formation of multicultural communities especially in countries that appreciate cultural differences by allowing minority groups to retain their cultural identities and practices. However, cultural diversities pose challenges to unity and peaceful co-existence which would not only hinder

14

Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful …

251

progress but also threaten safety and security. Studies found that people who live in racially diverse communities tend to isolate themselves from activities that may reveal their identities and compromise their safety [1]. They have trust issues and are suspicious of others which result in low collaboration as well as rare friendship between racial groups. The world had witnessed the appalling consequences of multicultural conflicts such as racism, prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination in countries like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kosovo, Liberia, Palestine, Rwanda, Somalia, Sri Lanka, and Sudan which had killed millions of people, destroyed trillions of dollars of properties and delivered human to the abyss of psycho-spiritual torment [2–5]. Thus, progress and security in multicultural societies depended upon unity and peaceful coexistence among and between the members of the societies. The term “peaceful coexistence” is defined by the lack of violence and the presence of peaceful relationships. It is the recognition of the other group’s right to exist peacefully with its differences; and the acceptance of the other group as a valid and equal partner with whom problems must be addressed peacefully. Thus, peaceful coexistence indicates that, despite conflict and disagreement, the affected groups have rectified to discard violent methods of disagreement and want to live peacefully, meeting their needs in peace [6]. Effort towards peaceful coexistence begins with building a democratic community, even though culturally diverse but focuses on common good. Democracy, according to Dewey, is a method of living interdependently in a society where people recognize and acknowledge that their actions, in pursuit of their own interest and growth, depended on and affected other members of the society. Since living is interconnected, social growth and well-being—harmonious living because of equality and justice—can only be achieved by dialectic communication and collaboration among community members regardless of culture, racial and religious backgrounds. Dewey’s idea of a democratic society is a diverse society comprising people from different cultural backgrounds with a multitude of interests communicating and collaborating freely [7]. Thus, members in a community have to know who are from different cultural backgrounds to maintain good communication; to be aware of cultural sensitivity; and to be exposed to diversity in thoughts and lifestyles. This means that discrimination because of social status, race, religion and political affiliation is shattered, thus people are regarded and respected as equal members of a community. It can be said that the success of this community building depended so much on understanding cultural differences as well as having empathy and respect for cultural diversities which could promote positive contribution through meaningful conversation, by removing systems of domination to move towards justice, tolerance, and harmony. If democratic society is desirable, then it should be promoted. The best way to cultivate individuals, who are from diverse backgrounds, for democratic living is through education. Dewey [8] maintains the inseparable relationship between democracy and education. For the notion of democracy to thrive and develop, it needs education and for education to produce good members of a society who collaborate to create a harmonious living, it needs democracy. Therefore, Dewey

252

W. M. Wan Yusoff et al.

suggests democratic education where democracy is both the end and means of education. Democratic education is both an education to provide understanding and knowledge of the concept of democracy as well as a characteristic of education. The most important values of democracy to be inculcated are interdependency, equality and justice for all regardless of social status, racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds. In democratic education, students are given the awareness that they live not in isolation but in a society made of people from diverse educational, cultural, religious, and economic backgrounds who depended on each other for harmonious living. Therefore, democratic education instilled in students the understanding and knowledge that their individual decisions and actions to pursue their own personal growth both depended on and affected the growth of the community they are in. Justice is achieved when the impacts of individual actions bring peace and harmony in the community. This entails working for the common good. To this end, democratic education builds the moral character of students to be interested and involved in the society with sympathy and empathy which resulted from competency in social and cultural intelligence.

2

Social and Cultural Intelligence

A society comprises a group of people living and interacting in the same geographical area governed by the same administrative or political authority. The individuals within a society share a common understanding that enables them to communicate and interact. Effective interactions require a person to be socially intelligent. Social intelligence is defined as “the ability to understand men and women, boys and girls—to act wisely in human relations” [9, p. 228]. It comprises the necessary skills to function effectively during social interactions and the capability to act properly befitting the particular social interactions. The skills are both intrapersonal which is the ability to integrate, connect and organise new social information with prior knowledge; and interpersonal skills which is the ability to act appropriately during social interactions because of being sensitive to others’ feelings, behaviour and bodily gestures. In a multicultural community, it is imperative that each member of the community possesses the capability to perform well irrespective of cultural backgrounds. This capability is called cultural intelligence which is defined by Earley and Ang [10] as competency to identify and understand cultural prompts from diverse cultures so as to connect and act properly and effectively in multicultural contexts. Cultural intelligence is explained by four dimensions which are cognitive, meta-cognitive, motivational and behavioural. Cognitive dimension is one’s knowledge of customs, practices and rules of conduct of various cultures. Meta-cognitive dimension is cultural consciousness that one has and the processing of cultural information while interacting with people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Motivational dimension is the internal forces that push a person to know more about different cultures to function effectively

14

Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful …

253

in multicultural settings. Behavioural dimension is defined as a person’s capability to adapt and adjust readily his or her behaviour when interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds. This means that cultural intelligence is not only about having knowledge of diverse cultural norms and traditions but also the ability to use the knowledge so that one is aware of different cultural practices which is reflected in appropriate outward behaviour. This proper way of behaving is motivated by the urge to function effectively when interacting with people from different cultures. From the analysis of social intelligence, it can be concluded that cultural intelligence is a subset of social intelligence [11, 12]. The behaviour dimension of cultural intelligence is similar to the interpersonal skills of social intelligence. It can be deduced that the one who possesses social intelligence can function effectively in multicultural settings. Cultural intelligence is a learnable capability which could be enhanced through active participation in education, intercultural experiences and dialogues. Dialogue is one of the ways to get to know people from other cultures in a society. Nurturing the interracial or intercultural dialogues among the society might be uncomfortable, sensitive and risky [13] but worthwhile since cultural literacy and intelligence are vital for harmonious co-existence. Developing cultural intelligence through dialogue should begin from young. Dialogue is different from conversation for dialogue is purposive, that is, to arrive at the truth by asking and answering questions. It is the core philosophical skill used to propose, describe, explain and justify claims and ideas to reach understanding, appreciation, and consensus on particular issues. Dialogue assists young people to voice their own views, understanding and concerns; to listen to other’s perspectives; to recognize and appreciate differences; do their own thinking to arrive at reasonable conclusions and decisions. Dialogue engages people in mutual exploration of concepts and possible connections between concepts; investigation of propositions, norms and beliefs; and examination of what might be there to discover new ideas and understanding [14]. The good feature of a dialogue is it is done voluntarily and collaboratively without compulsion. A person who has high social and cultural intelligence is observant of subtle social and behavioural changes; thoughtful and empathic; and considers consequences of actions not only to her-himself but to others as well. According to Dewey, these qualities are necessary to form democratic society which is characterized by social justice and equality. These qualities could materialize when students gained good thinking and democratic mindset which can only be achieved by continuous practice. Therefore, students are required to be actively engaged in the real community’s problems of social justice. It is not necessary for students to jump into the real community settings, but students can be enlightened on and engaged in democracy through dialogue. The success of any dialogue lies in a classroom community which is tolerant and cooperative; has mutual trust and respect; recognizes human dignity; and respects human rights, freedom of expression and equality [15, 16]. Community of inquiry, which is the method used in the Philosophy for Children (P4C) program, is proven effective in engaging students to

254

W. M. Wan Yusoff et al.

discuss philosophical issues including real life moral dilemmas, justice and equality. Moreover, Dewey’s conception of democratic education guided Lipman [14] in the establishment of P4C.

3

P4C and Democratic Education

Lipman’s first P4C novel, “Harry Stottlemeyer’s Discovery”, was written for the purpose of developing excellent thinking among young people in the United States of America. Lipman’s intention was to make young people aware of their own thinking processes by making thinking visible. Excellent thinking, according to Lipman [14], is multidimensional and prerequisite for philosophical discussion and healthy engagement in democratic society. Theoretical foundation of P4C was drawn from Vygotsky’s social constructivist theory which explained that knowledge is socially constructed; Socratic method of teaching through questioning and answering (dialogue); and Dewey’s pragmatism philosophy which posit that knowledge claim is tentative because of possible error in inquiry process, therefore people need to constantly inquire for new understanding and knowledge as well as willing to self-correct consistent with the new findings. Based on these theories, Lipman developed a pedagogy called Community of Inquiry (COI) which is also known as Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI). The crux of CPI is discussion and dialogue as a tool to enlighten the inquiring community on central philosophical issues as well as to deliberate on practical problems of a democratic society. A vast number of empirical studies discovered relationships between P4C and critical and creative thinking, moral reasoning, empathy, communication skills, and self-confidence [17–20]. This means that CPI could prepare young people to participate actively in the building of a democratic community [21]. CPI could also be described as a model of democracy itself for its members are given freedom to debate openly in a plural setting, to do self-reflection and self-correction which warrant participation in and continuation of democracy [22, 23]. It is the avenue for students to experience extensive dialogue to inquire on central and contestable philosophical problems which contribute to deep understanding. Drawing from Dewey’s notion of democratic education, Lipman [14] and Sharp [24] explain that CPI is not only to educate for democracy but also a democratic education. It has a fixed aim of educating students on knowledge of democracy through dialogue; and it uses democratic education as a method to deliberate on problems in democratic society. When young people are actively engaged in democratic dialogue, they can deliberate and solve the problems related to democratic society. Through dialogue, students have the opportunity to discover and figure out the moral dilemma and reflect on them, which may assist them in developing their ethical understanding and worldview [22, 25, 26]. The approach of P4C offers students with real experience deliberating on real social issues. This is consistent with Dewey’s assertion that democratic education should challenge learners with real problems to practice

14

Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful …

255

democratic engagement in society. Besides, this approach could be described as “an atmosphere for philosophical inquiry and within this environment” [22, p. 93], students acquire their own experience. Students do their exploration about common problems in society and together examine the possible solution through CPI. Discussion in CPI is done respectfully by respecting others’ opinions and agreeing to disagree. Having mutual respect can also be a ‘tool’ to deal with sensitive issues and to resolve conflicts. In a nutshell, CPI is the platform to socially construct understanding and knowledge on and to practice engagement in democratic society through dialogue. Since democratic society comprises people from diverse racial, economic, religious and cultural backgrounds, who are interdependent on one another, to build a harmonious community through deliberative communication which requires individuals in the community to be culturally intelligent; and since CPI provides the opportunity to discuss and deliberate on issues pertaining to multicultural democratic society, then CPI is the best avenue to develop cultural intelligence.

4

Rationale for the Use of CPI to Develop Cultural Intelligence

Within the framework of democratic education, cultural intelligence could be inculcated through dialogue. In a multicultural society like Malaysia, the classroom comprises students from diverse racial, religious and cultural backgrounds. Dialogue is effective for students to engage in sharing of experiences, cultural identities, norms and traditions. When they listen attentively to their friend’s sharing of different cultural norms and practices respectfully without judging, for the purpose of understanding the reasons and justifications for such norms and practices, they learn to respect and accept the multiplicity of perspectives which made living in multicultural society colourful and unique [27, 28]. Furthermore, differences means more knowledge produced through the increase of possible synthesis, combination and connections between the new data and information gathered in sharing of the other cultural norms and traditions. This dialogue would enhance the cognitive dimension of cultural intelligence. Dewey [29] suggests that the best way to cultivate democratic living among students is to practice engagement in real issues of democratic society in the classroom. When students are challenged to deliberate on real issues through dialogue, they would be aware of a diversity of perspectives stemming from diversities of cultural backgrounds. This is because they have gained understanding and knowledge through sharing diverse cultural norms and practices in the CPI session. Thus, they would be able to process the cultural information which would lead to appropriate responses and behaviour [28]. This way students are trained to enhance the meta-cognitive dimension of cultural intelligence. Inquiry through dialogue increases curiosity to know the others to affect better participation in community building. Being inquisitive on norms and traditions of diverse cultures motivates a person to probe further to understand the cultural

256

W. M. Wan Yusoff et al.

diversities. This probing further can be done through dialogue in multicultural classroom settings. The genuineness to know the other cultures to impact effective interactions in multicultural society would encourage the others to share and discuss their own cultures without feeling inferior because of racial and religious backgrounds [30]. The safe environment of CPI enhances freedom of sharing unique and diverse cultural traditions. It can be concluded that dialogue and discussion would motivate students to share and know more about the other culture’s perspectives and styles of living. Therefore, CPI is an excellent platform to increase the motivational dimension of cultural intelligence. When students are motivated to learn more about different cultures and they gain understanding and knowledge of diverse cultural norms and practices through classroom dialogue, they would be able to integrate and process cultural information and cues during interactions in multicultural settings to make decisions on the most appropriate way to respond and to act. The behavioral dimension of cultural intelligence could be enhanced through regular deliberative communication in multicultural classrooms until the students have developed a habit of mind which is sensitive to diverse cultural cues, norms and practices. Therefore, dialogue in CPI sessions would enlighten the knowledge on diverse cultures as well as engage students in multicultural interactions effectively [28]. Furthermore, dialogue, guided by the ethical procedures, trains students to have mutual tolerance, respect, freedom to express views, trust, collaboration and genuineness in negotiating meanings which are foreign to one’s own cultural identities and backgrounds [31].

5

The CPI Session

To facilitate and promote discussion in CPI sessions, it is best that students are seated in a circle, semi-circle, or U-shaped. This way children can see each other so that they can be more attentive in listening to others’ ideas and opinions. Furthermore, students will be motivated to communicate their thinking when others are paying attention to what they have to say. For easy movement to the writing board, it is better to arrange students’ seats in U-shaped. Writing board is useful to write the questions asked by students, the main philosophical themes extracted from stimulus materials and to illustrate the relationship and connection between themes and ideas. To ensure that discussion progresses well, the students deliberate collaboratively to set up rules and procedures to follow. These procedures are the results of deliberating together in the CPI session. Through dialogue, students would argue and debate to decide on the most reasonable procedures to follow to ensure that every discussion is meaningful and enlightening. Some of the procedures are to listen attentively to others, to agree to disagree, be respectful to others’ ideas, to examine assumptions and disagreements, to avoid making fallacious argument, to accept criticism without being offended, to questions ideas and claims, to consider logical consequences of claims and actions, and so on. These procedures are the process of inquiry using good thinking.

14

Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful …

257

How CPI session is conducted evolves from strictly following the structure by Lipman to adapted structure practiced in the United Kingdom [32, 33], Hawaii [34] and other parts of the world. Basically, the structure of the CPI session is as follows. Step 1: Present stimulus material either by asking students to read together aloud, read in silence, or to examine the stimulus materials thoroughly if they are not in written form. If the students are small children who still cannot read, then the facilitator should read the stimulus material aloud or tell a story aided by visuals. Step 2: Allow some time for students to comprehend the stimulus materials and to come up with their first thoughts or impressions. Facilitator also could ask students to summarize the gist of text read or extract themes from the stimulus materials. This is done to assess the students’ comprehension of the stimulus materials. Step 3: Ask students to come up with philosophical or thinking questions based on the stimulus materials. Students could also write their questions on the board, one by one. To save time, insist on asking only thinking questions. Facilitators could explain at the beginning of P4C program question types to distinguish thinking or philosophical questions from other types. Write the students’ name at the end of their questions to motivate students and also to refer back to them for clarification. Worley [33] and Buckley [35] would prepare task questions based on the stimulus materials to save time. They argue that the purpose of CPI is to develop thinking through dialogue, thus it does not really matter who ask the first question. For Lipman, asking and answering questions is the pedagogy of Socrates and students should be trained to ask questions. Step 4: Give students some time to discuss the questions with their friends, in pairs or small groups. Ask them to group together questions with the same themes. If time is not a factor, the facilitator could ask students to choose which theme to deliberate first. However, if time is a constraint, the facilitator could choose the most important theme to discuss. This is because the crux of CPI is the philosophical discussion. Step 5: Hold a whole group discussion to deliberate and answer questions asked. Give the students assurance that they are safe and free to share their ideas and concerns without prejudice and retributions. However, students have to abide by the procedures that they have agreed upon. Facilitator can elicit more responses by using Socratic questioning. Step 6: End the CPI session by reflecting on the thinking processes that the students have employed during the discussion. This is significant to make thinking visible to students to enforce good and to detect errors in thinking. Equally important for students to grasp conceptual understanding and reasonings behind such understanding.

258

5.1

W. M. Wan Yusoff et al.

Stimulus Materials

Stimulus materials should not be confined to just reading stories or written communications. To develop cultural intelligence, awareness and knowledge of diverse cultures, stimulus materials should be on multiculturalism and social problems related to it. Short stories or novels about experiences on interactions and integration among and between diverse cultures could be used to stimulate discussion in CPI sessions. Suhailah [28] asked her undergraduate university students to share their experiences of multiculturalism at one community setting as stimulus material. Through discussion in CPI sessions, the students learned the importance of understanding other cultures to live harmoniously in a multicultural society and know how to behave appropriately in multicultural settings. News, videos and movies which feature multiculturalism and its social consequences could also be added to the list of stimulus materials to be used. In a project called “Dwelling Together in Diverse Spaces”, Chetty, Bentley and Ferner [30] presented a statement to adult participants to discuss their level of agreement with or objection against the statement. This statement is also a starting point for the participants to delve further into in-depth discussion on problems of multiculturalism. Such statements are: “Talking about racism can make people feel uncomfortable; Our attitude towards racism is shaped in our childhood; Black people cannot be objective about racism; White people cannot understand what it feels like to experience racism; It is important that we stay calm when discussing racism”.

5.2

Philosophical Questions

The answers to philosophical questions cannot be discovered through experimentation in a scientific laboratory, calculation or analysing books. The answer to our own philosophical questions can be found using our own higher level thinking. Probably it is difficult to arrive at a consensus but eliminating the unreasonable answers is also a significant finding. According to Lipman [14], a philosophical concept is a concept that is common, central and contestable. Therefore, questions on concepts that are common, central and contestable can be considered as philosophical questions. To promote multicultural intelligence, the facilitator elicits questions on common and central concepts but understood differently by individuals from different cultures. This way the students and facilitator could increase their multicultural knowledge base which could promote appreciation and understandings of various cultures that could result in appropriate behavioural responses. For example, for some cultures, maintaining eye contact while speaking is an indicator of attentive listening and respect to the speaker. But, for other cultures, maintaining eye contact is considered as rude and disrespectful [36]. Questions that are controversial and considered taboos should be confronted to gain understanding for appropriate behavioural responses.

14

5.3

Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful …

259

Dialogue

According to Meriam-Webster’s Dictionary, dialogue is a discussion done to find resolution to a conflict [37]. Lipman [14] asserts that dialogue is a conversation aimed at arriving at some kind of conclusion, however partial it is. Dialogue is central to CPI and it advances using dialectical inquiry by examining theses to come up with antitheses. The process of examining and interrogating claims or theses moves to the right direction with the help of Socratic questioning. Socratic questioning engages students in higher order thinking to ask and give explanation of conceptual controversies; to probe and uncover assumptions; to ask for and provide reasons and evidences to support claims made; to examine consequences of philosophical claims; to come up with explanation from multiple angles; and to examine why the questions are asked. Dialogue in CPI is an avenue for students to practice harmonious living in democratic society. CPI is a model representing how a democratic society should be in deliberating collaboratively on issues affecting the interest of all. Since actions of an individual member for his or her own self-development impacted and depended upon the conditions of the community, therefore the practice of how to live in a democratic community should be in all education institutions. The procedures to be followed in CPI dialogue are mutual tolerance and respect by listening attentively to understand and grasp meanings; freedom and equal opportunity to voice concerns without fear; collaboration in deliberating the best course of action for the good of all involved; empathy and trust. Therefore, dialogue is an effective method to know diverse others; to be conscious of others’ cultural practices; to be curious about the others; to pursue knowledge about others, and to behave appropriately consistent with the knowledge gained. The end result would be wise behaviour which is imperative in creating harmonious living in multicultural society. When this materialised, it fits the definition of CPI by SAPERE as “a group of people used to thinking together with a view to increase their understanding and appreciation of the world around them and each other” [27, p. 95].

5.4

Role of the Facilitator

The facilitator’s role is to guide students to progress in discussion by ensuring students to abide by CPI procedures and asking probing questions to guide students to arrive at conceptual understanding, to examine connections between ideas, to be conscious of the reasonableness of their conclusions and to assist them in making their thinking visible. Lipman [14] strongly advocates the facilitator to stay away from indoctrination, imposing his or her beliefs as well as biasness. He further suggests that the facilitator’s role is to ensure the discussion advances by asking students to explain their ideas clearly; explaining and paraphrasing students’ ideas to get clear understanding; identifying illogical connection and inferences in students’ claims; uncovering the hidden assumptions of students’ claims; pointing out

260

W. M. Wan Yusoff et al.

fallacies committed by students; and asking for evidence and justification for or against claims made. With respect to multiculturalism, the facilitator is the model of cultural intelligence by applying culturally responsive teaching (CRT). Culture is a way of living, behaving, communicating, and interacting influenced by beliefs, religion, values, customs, and knowledge which are shared and learned in a group of people who live in the same geographical area, speak the same language, come from similar social class, and share common history. However, culture is multi-layered and changing which means that there will be differences between individuals within the same cultural group. Culturally responsive teaching is about making use of the knowledge on students’ diverse cultures, languages, communication and interaction styles, and worldviews to develop curriculum and teaching strategies that are effective [38]. It is good for a facilitator to have a strong knowledge base on diverse cultures. However, students and facilitators could learn from each other about different cultures in inquiry sessions. What is more important is for the facilitator to create a classroom environment that is intellectually safe for the community to inquire, deliberate and discuss on pertinent cultural issues including controversial ones. Furthermore, facilitators should develop in students the habit of viewing and evaluating everything from multiple perspectives. Jackson [34] who established culturally responsive p4cHI, an adaptation of Lipman’s P4C, uses seven thinking toolkits to facilitate dialogue, deliberation and inquiry. They are asking for clarification, reasons, recognizing assumptions, making inferences, thinking on truth and its implications, providing evidence and examples, and giving counter-examples. The inquiry process can be structured according to the 6-step model. The success of the inquiry process depended on ethical procedures as well including being respectful, empathic and sensitive to others’ perspectives and cultures. CRT is not about ensuring that all ethnic, racial and religious groups are represented in the curriculum, text books and materials used during teaching and learning process. But CRT is about recognizing, acknowledging, and responding to diverse cultural customs and traditions as the results of having adequate knowledge on those cultural diversities [39, 40]. Because of this, teachers and students formed “caring and respectful relationships” which could foster trust and confidence in facing challenges of education and life. Within this healthy relationship and safe environment, students and teachers are confident not to make the mistakes of avoiding controversial issues such as racism, historical brutality inflicted on minority groups by dominant groups, political and cultural hegemony over minority groups [41]. However, questions and deliberations on controversial issues must be done caringly and respectfully; and unethical and disrespectful behaviour should not be tolerated. Culturally responsive teachers are caring, sensitive to students’ cultural identities, fair, empathic, dedicated to ensure that students participate in critical thinking and learning activities [42]. The main aim of CRT is to achieve equality and justice for all involved [43]. To this end, teachers endeavour to make each student aware of cultural diversities in their community to encourage collaboration in learning

14

Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful …

261

and community building. Moreover, culturally responsive teachers are aware that one’s worldview is not universal but is profoundly shaped by one’s life experiences, as mediated by a variety of factors, chief among them are race/ethnicity, social class and gender [43]. The following is an example of an inquiry about Rohingya refugees. The session began with reading a newspaper article about ten Rohingya children who were caught stealing money from the handbags of several ladies in an Eid gathering—a celebration to mark the end of fasting month. Majority of the students in the inquiry session were Malaysian Malays with several students from Indonesia, Thailand, and Bangladesh. At first, the students chose to deliberate on the question: Are they inherently bad that they were hated by their own countrymen so much that they were chased out from their own country? But after a short deliberation on human nature and the meaning of refugee using thinking toolkits, they realized the unreasonableness of the question; they were being insensitive, making unfounded assumptions and hasty generalization. Thus, they changed the question to: What are the reasons they run away from their country? Is it fair for the government to spend money on the refugees instead of on us, the citizens? They discussed lengthily on the topic of human and refugee rights; and institutions and agencies responsible to provide for the refugees. Towards the end of the inquiry, they started to reflect on themselves in relation to the refugee neighbourhood. Iman: There are some Rohingya refugees who live very near to my house. A landlord built a long house with many rooms and rented them to the Rohingyas. Even though they have been living in this area for many years, I have not once visited or talked to them. Teacher: Why? Iman: I don’t know why. Probably I was influenced by the talk on social media about the bad reputation of the Rohingyas. Come to think of it, I never had bad experience with the Rohingyas. In fact, I don’t know them. Danial: I think this problem is not just yours. What I mean is many just believe what the social media dictate. We rarely examine our own thinking, that is, if we don’t know someone, how can we make judgment on that someone. Based on what criteria do we evaluate? One more thing, we never accept the Rohingyas as part of our community. In fact, we have drawn an invisible demarcation line that separates us and them. I witnessed how they were not allowed to pray at the local mosque which forced them to build their own mosque. This is probably because we think we are better than them, at least from material perspectives…I think, one fine day, we should give them a visit to know them and their culture.

From this classroom dialogue, it is evident that the students were aware of their own ignorance of the other cultures; and they realized very early on their insensitivities by asking inappropriate questions. This indicated that the students were being empathic. They also applied critical thinking to detect the flaws in their own thinking when they stereotyped the Rohingyas based on unfounded assumptions. By applying meta-cognitive thinking, they realized that before any judgment can be made on others, they need to know the truth about the others first. Self-awareness of one’s own biases, of making judgment based on inadequate knowledge of

262

W. M. Wan Yusoff et al.

others, of the need to know from others, and the application of critical and reflective thinking are indicators that the students have reasonable skills of cultural intelligence.

5.5

Samples of Inquiry Plan

Lesson plan for the CPI session is simple. First, the facilitator needs to prepare or choose suitable stimulus materials which are consistent with the objectives of the school’s curriculum. To demonstrate the model of discussion in a democratic setting, facilitators could choose or write stories which model the democratic collaborative deliberation in a community of young people which is consistent with Lipman’s method. However, in a content heavy education system, time is the biggest constraint for teachers to write their own or search stories. In this situation, the teacher can just present a provocative philosophical claim as a stimulus for discussion. Second, based on the stimulus materials, the facilitator prepares a list of leading questions. Worley [33] uses the term leading questions for these questions would lead to other questions during the CPI discussion. Leading questions need to be prepared ahead of time to ensure that important questions which are congruent with the determined objectives of the school’s syllabus are asked during the CPI session. Moreover, students who are new with CPI discussion would find it difficult, at first, to ask thinking questions that could lead to meaningful collaborative deliberations. The following are examples of CPI lesson plans. Sample 1 Madam Loh is furious that her three children who were abducted 10 years ago by her ex-husband have been living as Muslims for the past 10 years. Her children aged from 12 to 16 years old are now under her custody. She contested the decision of her three children to be Muslims in a court of law on the ground that her children are still below 18 years old so they have to get her permission to change religion. The children who have been practicing Muslims refused the demand of their mother to change their religion in court. Themes: Religion, children’s rights, Mother’s rights, right age to make decision, happiness Leading Questions 1. Is it right for the mother to force their children to obey her decision regarding religion? 2. Why did the mother contested her children’s decision to be Muslims? 3. At what age can a child make decision about their own life? Why? 4. What rights do children have? 5. What are the rights of a mother?

14

Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful …

263

Sample 2 At a school sport event, some friends were having an intense arguments. Kannamah: You are very insensitive bunch of people! Shazlin: Why are you so angry? Everything was in order! Kannamah: For all people in the world, you should know better. You always talk and demand halal food for your own kind. But when it comes to our people, you are not sensitive at all. Shazlin: I don’t understand. Can you explain. Mohan: Okay. You have not prepared food for us, the Hindu and the Sikh. We don’t eat meat, we are vegetarian. Shazlin: I’m confused. All this while I always share my KFC bucket with my best friend Geeta. She said diet requirements is tradition, not religious practice. Kannamah: Tradition and religion is the same. First, it was religious teaching and then after years of practice, it becomes tradition. Mohan: Besides, you cannot generalize, and generalization is not a good method of knowing. There are many Muslims who don’t practice Islam. Shazlin: I’m sorry for my ignorance.

Themes: Cultural awareness, generalization, tradition versus religion, ignorance Leading questions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Why should we be sensitive to other’s religious practice? How to be always aware of diverse cultural practices? Why some people are not consistent with beliefs and practice? What is the difference between tradition and religion? How to know the tradition of certain people if not from observing their lifestyles? 6. In what situation we can appeal to ignorance? 7. What does Mohan mean by generalization is not a good way of knowing?

6

Conclusion

The world is rapidly globalizing and constantly witnessing the movement of people to various parts of the world for various reasons. The result of which is continuous growth of multicultural societies around the world. In addition, the virtual world is already here. People from around the world communicate freely through the social media and we have witnessed intense intercultural slurs, insults, bullying and terrorism which compromised peaceful co-existence. Therefore, education should emphasise the development of social and cultural intelligence in all students. Teaching should no longer be the traditional transmission of knowledge

264

W. M. Wan Yusoff et al.

from teachers into the mind of passive students. Classroom should be a model of democratic education where dialogue on real issues in multicultural society between teacher and students and students and students progresses to develop cultural intelligence in students. Through dialogue, the classroom is a place to practice skills necessary for effective collaborative communications in the future. It may be challenging for teachers to change their ingrained practices especially when dealing with the issue of racism and prejudice. Some teachers chose instead to avoid questions on racism and traditions because of not wanting to deliberate on sensitive issues. However, this would lead to negative consequences where students who are not culturally intelligent would not be able to effectively deal with problems in multicultural societies. The impact of which is peaceful co-existence will be difficult or almost impossible to achieve. Teachers should build classroom environments that are safe for students to freely voice out their concerns, opinions and questions without fear of retributions. This can be done effectively when teachers applied culturally responsive teaching while facilitating dialogues in CPI sessions. The success of CPI in promoting both cognitive and non-cognitive skills has been substantiated by a vast number of studies around the world. Among the skills are critical, creative and caring thinking, collaboration and communication, deliberation and decision making which are required skills to be effective in a democratic society. Regarding the skills necessary to ensure a safe and free environment for all involved to voice out their opinions with mutual tolerance, trust and respect, CPI procedures which emphasise the ethical conduct during discussion trained students to be competent in interpersonal interactions. With these skills, effective collaboration and communication to deliberate on issues for the growth and development of a multicultural community can be achieved. In a nutshell, CPI session is like students are doing a practicum of being active participants of a democratic society in a multicultural setting. Dialogic pedagogy in a multicultural classroom opens up the mind to new perspectives which promote generation of new ideas. The same concept discussed in two very different and diverse communities yielded different ideas which are mind blowing. Wan Mazwati Wan Yusoff, Lina Mursyidah Hamzah and Mahinur Gulca Abudukerumu

References 1. Putnam RD (2007) E Pluribus Unum: diversity and community in the twenty-first century the 2006 Johan Skytte prize lecture. Scand Polit Stud 30(2):137–174 2. Akubue FN (2011) Peace education and conflict resolution: issues and problems. Niger J Res Prod 18(2):1–8 3. Michalinos Z, Constadina C, Panayiota C, Panayiota K (2011) Promoting peaceful coexistence in conflict-ridden cyprus: teachers’ difficulties and emotions towards a new policy initiative. Teach Teach Educ 27:332–341

14

Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful …

265

4. Agnihotri S (2017) Critical reflection on the role of education as a catalyst of peace-building and peaceful coexistence. Univ J Educ Res 5(6):911–917 5. Ahmad Zulfadhli K, Afareez AB, Faizah I, Nik Ahmad Hisham I (2019) Challenges of offering peace education among educational leaders: a case study of Malaysian Public Primary School. Am J Qual Res 3(1):57–71 6. Kabuye US (2021) An Islamic perspective on peaceful coexistence. Eur J Theol Philos 1(5):29–43 7. Motherway G (2017) Democracy as becoming: a lived inquiry into teachers’ perspective of philosophy for/with children (P4C) practice in Irish educate together school. Dissertation, University of Plymouth 8. Dewey J (1946) Problem of men. Philosophical Library Inc., New York 9. Thorndike EL (1920) Intelligence and its uses. Harper’s Mag 140:227–235 10. Earley PC, Ang S (2003) Cultural intelligence: individual interactions across cultures. Stanford Business Books, Stanford, CA 11. Kumar N, Che Rose R, Subramaniam SR (2008) The bond between intelligences: cultural, emotional, and social. Perform Improv 47(10):42–48 12. Crowne KA (2009) The relationships among social intelligence, emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence. Organ Manage J 6:148–163 13. Suraya S, Azizan B, Khadijah MK (2012) Dialogue of life and its significance in inter-religious relation in Malaysia. Int J Islamic Thought 2:69–79 14. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 15. Alajlan MS (2015) Saudi female students’ perceptions of their democratic empowerment in the classroom at King Saud University. Dissertation, North Dakota State University of Agriculture and Applied Science 16. Lina Mursyidah H (2021) Empowering student through a democratic classroom: a case study in a Malaysian Public University. Dissertation, International Islamic University Malaysia 17. Wan Mazwati WY (2018) The impact of philosophical inquiry method on classroom engagement and reasoning skills of low achievers. J Curriculum Teach 7(1):135–146 18. Hafizhah Z, Rosnani H (2019) Moral reasoning stages through Hikmah (wisdom) pedagogy in moral education. Int J Acad Res Progressive Educ Dev 8(4):886–899 19. Norillah A (2009) Philosophy as a tool to enhance critical thinking among Muslim students. In: Suhailah H (ed) Selected readings in educational foundations: Ummatic ramifications. IIUM Press, Kuala Lumpur, pp 25–50 20. Wan Mazwati WY, Rosnani H, Suhailah H, Madihah K, Rosemaliza K (2018) The impact of Hikmah (wisdom) pedagogy on 21st century skills of selected primary and secondary school students in Gombak district. J Educ Learn 7(6):100–111 21. Echeverria E, Hannam P (2017) Philosophical inquiry (P4C): a pedagogical proposal for advancing democracy. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York, pp 3–10 22. Dombaycı MA (2014) Philosophy for children and social inquiry: an example of education for democratic citizenship through political philosophy. Cumhuriyet Int J Educ-CIJE 3(2):85–101 23. Striano M (2020) The Deweyan background in P4C. Anal Teach Philos Praxis 40(1):27–36 24. Sharp AM (1991) The community of inquiry: education for democracy. Thinking: J Philos Child 9(2):31–37 25. Bartels R, Onstenk J, Veugelers W (2018) Philosophical enquiry as part of democratic education. Curric Teach 33(1):23–38 26. Venter E, Higgs LG (2014) Philosophy for children in a democratic classroom. J Soc Sci 41(1):11–16 27. Belgeonne C (2016) P4C and education for diversity. In: Anderson B (ed) Philosophy for children: theories and praxis in teacher education. Routledge, New York, pp 93–103 28. Suhailah H (2022) Islamic religious education and multiculturalism in Malaysia: university students’ perspectives. In: Matemba YH, Collet BA (eds) The Bloomsbury handbook of religious education in the Global South. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London

266

W. M. Wan Yusoff et al.

29. Dewey J (1916) Democracy and education: an introduction to the philosophy of education. Macmillan, New York 30. Chetty D, Bentley A, Ferner A (2020) In philosophical conversation with: a diverse group of adults—“Dwelling Together in Diverse Spaces”. In: Fulford A, Lockrobin G, Smith R (eds) Philosophy and community: theories, practices and possibilities. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, London 31. Suhailah H, Rosnani H, Nazatul Akmar MM (2017) Hikmah pedagogy: promoting openmindedness, tolerance and respect for others’ religious views in classrooms. In Wielzen D, Avest IT (eds) Interfaith education for all: theoretical perspectives and best practices for transformative action. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam 32. The P4C Co-operative (n.d.) Teacher’s guide. https://p4c.com/about-p4c/teachers-guide 33. Worley P (2019) The if machine: 30 lesson plans for teaching philosophy. Bloomsbury, London 34. Jackson T (2001) The art and craft of ‘Gently Socratic’ inquiry. In Costa AL (ed) Developing minds: a resource book for teaching thinking. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, VA 35. Buckley J (2011) Pocket P4C: getting started with philosophy for children. One Slice Books Ltd., Chelmsford, UK 36. Makaiau AS, Leng L, Fukui S (2015) Journaling and self-study in an international research collective. Stud Teach Educ 11(1):64–80 37. Merriam-Webster (n.d.) Dialogue. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dialogue 38. Aceves TC, Orosco MJ (2014) Culturally responsive teaching (Document No. IC-2). Retrieved from University of Florida, collaboration for effective educator, development, accountability, and reform center website: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/tools/innovation-configurations/ 39. Hammond Z (2015) Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Thousand Oaks, California 40. Villegas AM, Lucas T (2002) Preparing culturally responsive teachers: rethinking the curriculum. J Teach Educ 53(1):20–32 41. Gay G (2002) Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. J Teach Educ 53(2):106–116 42. Rychly L, Graves E (2012) Teacher characteristics for culturally responsive pedagogy. Multicult Perspect 14(1):44–49 43. Sleeter C (2011) An Agenda to strengthen culturally responsive pedagogy. Engl Teach Pract Crit 10(2):7–23

Wan Mazwati Wan Yusoff is a graduate of Eastern New Mexico University, USA in Accounting and MBA and received her Ph.D. in Education specializing in teaching thinking through philosophy from International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). She currently teaches creative thinking and Islamic worldview at the Department of Fundamental and Interdisciplinary Studies, Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, IIUM. She is a certified trainer for Philosophy for Children Program (P4C) awarded by Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, Montclair State University, New Jersey, in 2006 and now is attached to Center for Teaching Thinking, Kulliyyah of Education, IIUM, in promoting P4C to enhance excellent thinking among students and youth in Malaysia. Currently Wan Mazwati is active in conducting research in hadith for application in education, psychology and communication; and developing materials for teaching Islamic Education using philosophical inquiry method to enhance deep understanding and philosophical thinking skills among secondary school students.

14

Developing Cultural Intelligence via Democratic Education for Peaceful …

267

Lina Mursyidah Hamzah is a graduate of International Islamic University Malaysia in Education. Her research interests are in democratic education, student empowerment, teaching thinking and counselling for educators. She obtained her Ph.D. in Education in 2021. She currently teaches History and Philosophy in Education, Introduction to Counselling at the Department of Foundation in Education, Faculty of Education, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. Currently, Lina Mursyidah is active in conducting research on thinking skills, motivation, and students’ empowerment.

Mahinur Gulca Abudukerumu is a graduate of Xianjiang University in Civil Engineering and Construction; and received her Master in Human Sciences specializing in TESL and PhD in Education specializing in Curriculum and Instructional Design from the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). Currently she works as Director of Austin Training and Management to enhance professionalism in education sector in Turkiye. She is a certified trainer in Wisdom Pedagogy which is the offshoot of P4C awarded by Centre for Teaching Thinking, Kulliyyah of Education, IIUM. She promotes culturally responsive teaching to enhance excellent communication, collaboration, and interaction among students from multicultural background in Malaysia and Turkiye. Currently, Dr. Mahinur is active in conducting professional development training online and conducting research on the integration of revealed knowledge and human sciences.

Part IV Reasonableness in Education Toward Nation-Building

P4wC Camps for National Identity and Value-Building Among Students: The Ukrainian Experience

15

Yuliia Kravchenko

The progress is not in the succession of studies but in the development of new attitudes towards and new interest in experience [1, pp. 232–233].

Abstract

This chapter describes how P4wC has been implemented in the program of extracurricular educational short-term camps, and how the methodology has been combined with different non-formal educational approaches. It focuses on events that were organized by the National Center “Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine” between 2016 and 2021. Each camp was named after the subject to which it was devoted: “Philosophy,” “Ukrainian Culture,” “Religion and Diplomacy,” and “Cultural Diplomacy.” As educational initiatives these camps proved to be attractive for teenagers and effective in obtaining educational results. They provided knowledge and trained skills which were lacking in the regular school curriculum. The camp’s program was always based on non-formal education principles and approaches. P4wC was at the core of each individual program, which included thematic interactive lectures and meetings with famous people, art sessions, excursions, museum visits, and workshops on the development of emotional intelligence, critical thinking, successful communication, creativity, design thinking, storytelling, and reflection. Value framework was developed thanks to the chosen camp’s topic on Ukrainian history and culture of the XVIIXX centuries. This topic features dignity, freedom and trust as main values. The Ukrainian school curriculum continues to be under Russian colonial rules

Y. Kravchenko (B) Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_15

271

272

Y. Kravchenko

on Ukrainian history and culture. It had a negative impact on the national identity formation of the Ukrainian young generation, after Independence of the nation was restored in 1991. The experience of using and adapting P4wC itself contributed to enriching this methodology’s world practices. Graphic Abstract

Educational Events for National Identity and Value-Building

Keywords

Philosophy for/with children Ukraine

1

.

National identity

.

Value-building

.

Camps

.

Introduction

Many of Dewey’s ideas were ahead of his time and today we are able to fully appreciate the farsightedness of his vision. The overall picture of educational practices in the contemporary world is extremely varied and continues to develop in a dynamic way. Unfortunately, the educational systems in many countries are still essentially guided by outdated models. This model is an indicator of knowledge transfer and other competencies to students per Paulo Freire’s “banking concept of education” [2, p. 201]. In this way such a system continues a tradition that developed in industrial societies more than two centuries ago. The quotation from

15

P4wC Camps for National Identity …

273

Dewey that is given above informs us that a person has to be capable of selfreflection concerning their own behavior and experiences. A “new attitude” and “new interest” can only appear as a result of an effective practice of reflection. In the current form of the educational system there is no time or place for reflection during the transfer of knowledge and other competencies. If it occurs, more often than not it is an exception. In the case of the Ukrainian school system the situation concerning the practice of forming habits of self-reflection and other competencies of critical thinking is additionally complicated by the continued existence of Soviet approaches to presenting information, despite the fact that an independent Ukrainian state has existed for thirty years. This is not to say that progressive and contemporary approaches toward teaching children—approaches that respond to today’s needs—are not being developed in Ukrainian education. They always existed in the past and they continue to exist today, but they have yet to become a part of mainstream education. The practice of helping children to apply effective habits of reflection is the prerogative of the private educational and of the extra-curricular sectors. Most private schools include in their programs, lessons on philosophy, logic, ethics, aesthetics, and the development of critical thinking. Providing these subjects can help children to formulate the question “Who am I?” and, in relation to their community, the question “Who are we?” In my mind this is one of the main tasks of education. A person who is able to pose these questions is always able to develop new intellectual attitudes and dispositions. The purpose of this chapter is to present the camps (short-term schools) for youth of the National Center “Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine” (JASU) in the period 2016–2021. These camps realized the task of formulating these questions, thanks to the innovative topics presented and the special design of the program. At that time I acted as the programmer. The experience of organizing these camps has demonstrated how P4wC principles can be spread across the whole educational process. The methodology governing overall program design in each case has certain general features. It makes sure that in the given learning space, pedagogical work is carried out in two directions: the training of soft skills and the formation of a student’s values. In the latter case the emphasis is on the formation of cultural competence. As a result of the learning process, changes occur in the worldview of students and these changes then affect their whole sense of Ukrainian national consciousness and identity. Thanks to the richness and variety of activities, children obtain results that differ from the results of usual school programs. For example, the Cultural Diplomacy Camp has successfully developed values and worldview competencies, as well as critical and creative thinking. In large part the concepts described in this chapter build on Dewey’s thesis, in so far as the projects that are realized in practice embody his idea of democratic education that is based on a society’s need to develop habits of communication.

274

2

Y. Kravchenko

Extracurricular Education: Case Studies

The Ukrainian system of education contains well-developed extracurricular programming, which aims to provide a powerful platform for in-depth knowledge and skills training with children. The JASU is the biggest institution in this field. This organization works with children aged 7–17 and covers sixty-four science fields. Among the JASU projects are a Philosophy Camp, Ukrainian Culture Camp, Religion Diplomacy Camp, Ecological Culture Camp, and Cultural Diplomacy Camp. From 2016 to 2021, 30 educational camps were based on the Philosophy for and with Children (P4wC) methodology, with the participation of approximately 400 students. The Ukrainian government consistently provided financial support for these camps. Each event took place in one location with the participation of 15–35 children from all parts of Ukraine. Full-time activities last from 4 to 7 full days. This allowed organizers to work with a complete program with a defined didactic purpose. The goal of the Philosophy Camp is to train thinking skills and the practice of self-reflection. The goal of the Ukrainian Culture Camp is to acquaint students with the Ukrainian cultural and historical context by teaching the life of prominent figures who contributed to the culture. By doing this, students learn about artistic styles and genres by studying examples from music, literature, architecture, art, theater, and cinema. For example, the aim of the school called “The Paths of Cossack Baroque” was to raise the level of awareness about this period in history (late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and artistic style, to learn about the historical background and the personalities that were creators in various spheres of culture and education. The goal of the Cultural Diplomacy Camp is to develop a range of personal competencies related to values and worldview. These competencies include critical and creative thinking; knowledge of the world’s cultural and artistic legacy; and habits of successful interpersonal communication, inter-cultural dialogue, including the ability to present, themselves, aspects of Ukrainian culture. (The school took place in Ukraine, Belgium and Poland.) The goal of the Religion Diplomacy Camp is to introduce religious figures who have played an important role in Ukrainian and world history, especially with reference to spreading peace and understanding in difficult and complex historical and political circumstances. The goal of the Ecological Culture Camp is to form an ecological awareness in children and to encourage cultural participation in the community life of their social group and wider society. All these schools have different themes, but the common camp goals are the following: . training thinking skills; . forming values; . developing soft skills;

15

P4wC Camps for National Identity …

275

. providing the experience of participatory democracy in the local community; and . creating a horizon of knowledge in the humanities. The successful accomplishment of these goals is attributable to the organizers’ ability (1) to provide an emotionally safe space during events and (2) to create a special design program for the camps.

3

P4wC as Personal Experience

The emotionally safe space was a part of the P4wC experience. The concept of caring thinking was a new one for me as a pedagogue and not easy to understand when I first became acquainted with P4wc. A fuller immersion in the methodology allowed me to discover the importance and usefulness that a cultivation of this ability to think caringly can bring. I found this approach personally fulfilling and later linked it to the Ukrainian philosophy of “cordocentrism”, which was first described in the eighteenth century by Hryhorii Skovoroda. In my personal experience caring thinking became a fundamental necessity for conducting the camp programs as an educational activity. I called the basic condition for camp work the creation of an emotionally safe space and reached the conclusion that before presenting valuable educational content one had to first pay attention to the atmosphere in which students were going to learn. What is an emotionally safe space? It is a space in which I am accepted; in which my talents are recognized; in which I am respected, treated with dignity, viewed as an equal; it is a place where I have an opportunity to speak and be heard, to express myself. I believe that this is also a necessary condition for the formation of a civil society. The factors that help form an emotionally safe space are (A) the absence of evaluative judgements and (B) the lack of barriers between children.

3.1

Absence of Evaluative Judgements

The absence of evaluative judgements can be understood as a lack of unsupported evaluations, which are frequently formed on the basis of stereotypes and prejudices; in short, by the need to express criticism. For example, it includes such expressions as “good,” “bad,” “correct,” “incorrect,” “a stupid question,” or “an excellent question.” They are a reaction to an action or a statement and are not supported by an argument. They do not include in themselves the evaluative criteria. Such expressions contribute to the creation of an emotionally insecure space, in which the child is afraid to ask, so as not to hear an unsupported evaluation in reply, such as: “what a superficial question” or “what a foolish answer.” There should be criticism, but it has to be based on a reasonable argument.

276

Y. Kravchenko

An environment without evaluative judgments was created in each of the camps. The idea of non-evaluative behavior, which is the basis principle in conducting P4wC activities, was transferred to the camp’s entire learning space and the space surrounding it from the first to final minute. The enthusiasm of children who spent time in this space was evident in the comments they gave when the camps were ending. In the feedback forms, it was found that the children were able to express their own opinions for the first time in their lives. Growing up in a judgmental environment forms a person who evaluates without providing arguments, expresses these evaluations before others and who himself or herself is afraid of making an erroneous judgment. This creates in society an emotionally insecure space. Viewed from a global perspective, a properly structured educational process can help to change this situation. An emotionally secure space allows children to be who they are in reality. Even one camp changes their lives and brings an awareness of personal responsibility for their own development. It helps them to discover new talents and capabilities. For example, some children started to write poems even after one five-day camp. They did not know that they possessed this ability before. Others clearly understood that they could no longer take piano lessons just because their parents wanted this or understood that their real dream was to take saxophone lessons. I believe that the individual who is to be educated is a social individual and that society is an organic union of individuals. If we eliminate the social factor from the child we are left only with an abstraction; if we eliminate the individual factor from society, we are left only with an inert and lifeless mass. Education, therefore, must begin with a psychological insight into the child’s capacities, interests, and habits. It must be controlled at every point by reference to these same considerations. These powers, interests, and habits must be continually interpreted—we must know what they mean. They must be translated into terms of their social equivalents—into terms of what they are capable of in the way of official service. [1, p. 229]

My practical conclusions strongly coordinate with this idea of J. Dewey.

3.2

Lack of Barriers Between Children

What creates barriers in human relations? In the first place, unfamiliarity with another person, fear, prejudices, stereotypes. Knowledge of another person involves learning their interests, needs, likings and tastes, hobbies, enthusiasms, personal history, talents, achievements. This knowledge provides confidence in a given sphere. For example, the zoologist or ornithologist feels confidence among his/her colleagues because they have an expert knowledge of their area of specialization. The same is true of society: the better I know each participant in the social group in which I find myself, the more confident I feel, and the less I know about the social group, the less confident I am about being sincere, open, empathetic. Not knowing other people gives rise to various fears. I am afraid that I will be ridiculed, considered stupid, ugly, unsuccessful, a loser, will not be accepted, will

15

P4wC Camps for National Identity …

277

not be included in the conversation. It is a normal psychological reaction to fear someone or something that I do not know. Lack of knowledge and fear produce the defensive reaction in the form of prejudices and stereotypes. The working of this mechanism prevents empathy. It usually has a ruinous effect on personal relations. When the barriers are removed this produces a proportionate expansion of the safe space created by trust among participants in a society. Trust is a basic necessity for a productive whole learning process as well as for democratic community. It helps to build horizontal networks and cooperation. Distrust is a characteristic vertical society relation, based on fear of power. It is a phenomenon of authoritarian society. That is way so important to create the culture of trust in learning space. The skills of a teacher, mentor, or trainer are measured by their ability to guarantee the conditions in which an emotionally safe space can be created. These individuals are the agents of this culture, out of which the concept of partnership arises organically, providing the main guarantor of democracy. Accordingly, another important principle of P4wC “respecting children as partners in inquiry” [3, p. 14] become part of the camp culture. To support this statement, I can quote a teacher who took part in the Ukrainian culture camp entitled, “Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky as Moral Authority, Spiritual Leader and Contemporary Thinker,” which took place in February 2019: “I value highly our partner relationship, which organizers of the school, instructor and participants succeeded in building. The children (like the adults) found this very attractive; they sensed their own importance, independence. It motivated them to be active, created an ease in communication.” Another important element in the creation of a safe space that allows making mistakes while learning. Unfortunately, the fear of making mistakes is deeply ingrained in the psychology of children and teachers as a result of the traditional educational practices. It blocks authentic individuality and frank self-expression. As the moderator of sessions during the camps I attempted as much as possible to lower the level of this fear of making mistakes. This involved repeated and focused activities throughout the entire project. In short, the basic principle in conducting any educational event should be an emotionally secure environment. Only then can one expect that it will be useful to all participants in the process. To me this conclusion also signifies that P4wc with its attention to caring thinking was at the foundation of all conducted camps. Reflections on this experience led to formulating the maxim “provide the child with an emotionally safe space and you will be able to teach her/him everything.”

278

4

Y. Kravchenko

Designing the Camp Programs

The second important component of a successful event is the well-constructed design of its learning space, use of time and organization of its program. Any learning process includes the following components and factors: . . . . . . . .

content (that is studied, habits that are practiced, competencies that are gained); time (when this takes place); attention; mood of presenters and receivers of the learning process; self-awareness of participants in the process; number of participants; teaching format; and teaching methods.

Each camp was organized in a way that allowed participants to live their life here and now, according to Dewey’s maxim: “school is a process of living and not a preparation for future living” [1, p. 230]. This was reflected in the smallest details, as, for example, in waiting for each student in the process of his or her thinking and expression, and not forcing them to hurry because of lack of time. After all, the speed with which presented information is assimilated and the reaction to this information are obviously different with each student. It is very important in forming a sense of community for the teacher to be sensitive to the dynamic of the group and the speed of each person in it. In time, the teacher will move to the average speed and will understand at what moment it is possible to move more quickly in a given group assignment, and when it is important to wait for each student to voice their opinion. By doing this the teacher is training the student in the group to be active listeners, to be caring thinkers, and to be empathetic. These all create trust as a mention before the essential component of a democratic society and constitute building blocks in the formation of an emotionally safe space. I should mention that ordinarily in schools it is difficult to realize this strategy because of the regimented planning of time, the organization of classes and the content that has to be covered by the students. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the strategy can be successfully employed by introducing P4wC into the curriculum and teaching methods and gradually changing school practices over time.

4.1

Camp’s Topic

Emotionally safe spaces allow us to learn, talk, and discuss all themes. The offered camps were about Ukrainian history and culture. They included discussion of difficult knowledge about the country’s past. Some of it was largely unknown because the Soviet Union had created and promoted false narratives about Ukraine and

15

P4wC Camps for National Identity …

279

Ukrainians for almost seventy years in the twentieth century. In two previous centuries the Russian Empire did the same. This information was published in official documents, books, and presented in movies. The Ukrainian nation and culture were diminished in these accounts, and presented as subspecies of the Russians. The Ukrainian language was called dialect. Those people who provided a different narrative were arrested, exiled, or killed. The educational situation could not be changed quickly after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990–1991. That is why during the 30 years of Ukraine’s independence people often continued to see themselves through the depictions in imperialistic narratives. The discovery of the repressed—but more accurate—portrayal of history was slow because many documents had remained in the secret and inaccessible sections of archives. At the same time Russia continued to control the media and to support pro-Russia candidates in government, especially after the year 2000, when Vladimir Putin came to power. The majority of people who had adopted this Soviet style of thinking cared little about their own identity and roots in Ukrainian culture and history. The culture still remained marginal. A real interest in it appeared and started to grow in 2014 after the Euromaidan, the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea, and the occupation of parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Unfortunately, the school programs during the period of independence often continued to follow Soviet narratives. For many young people their own history and culture were simply uninteresting. Without knowing one’s own culture, an individual is not a fully aware citizen of their country. The question of personal identity for most of the population prior to 2014 did not have a particularly strong significance. Therefore when I decided to lead the camps, my proposition was not seen as thematically interesting. My task was to create a camp that would motivate the children to become interested and to study their native culture, to understand how much there was to learn and why this was important to each of them. The themes covered in the camps dealt with such cultural and historical phenomena as the Coasack baroque, the executed renaissance (sometimes called the cultural renaissance), and the artistic legacy of the dissident movement of the 1960s. These are complex themes that cover many dramatic episodes and are important in the formation of the Ukrainian worldview, insofar as the representatives of these periods formed the cultural codes that have given Ukrainians a distinct presence on the European map and simultaneously have allowed them to make unique contributions to the cultural legacy of the world. Without this knowledge a Ukrainian citizen is spiritually impoverished, lacks a developed sense of the aesthetic that surrounds them, and does not comprehend some important ethical concepts. The ordinary school system presents these cultural phenomena in a formal manner without the required historical context. Because of this it misses the opportunity to explore the rich history that has strong potential for providing a moral and ethical education. The information is presented in a style that is contextual, lively and interactive. The best scholars are usually the camp’s speakers. They provide a democratic model of communication and are able to create an inspiring atmosphere. They are special meetings in children’s lives, often unforgettable. Relatives and friends

280

Y. Kravchenko

of dissidents are special speakers in the case of topics related to the dissident movement. These speakers have a unique effect on the audience, because they are witnesses of historic events and have lived through the history that is being discussed. When a trusting atmosphere is provided by organizers before the speakers visit, this helps children to be active participants of the meeting, and to freely ask questions and offer comments. But often Ukrainian children are too shy to ask the event guests or to make comments, especially if they are participating for the first time. In this case, as an organizer, I become the one who asks questions and does this sincerely. My guests have a teaching effect and children later mimic this way of posing questions. The meetings enrich the children’s horizon of knowledge, teach them to accept information critically and make their own decisions. The camp programs were structured in a way that made them interesting and presentations were delivered by experts in the chosen field, without any pressure being put on the students. Success was also achieved in part because of the alternation of the following formats: cooperation of participants among themselves, the inclusion of P4c sessions, interactive lectures, workshops in the development of soft skills, art sessions, excursions to museums, and a few moments of reflection every day.

5

Alternation of Cooperation Formats

During the day participants were required to work in various formats, for example in a circle, in small groups of three to six people, in couples, and individually. This allows the burden of communication to be shifted, to change the content of the work and the assignments, and in this way to keep the participants alert to lessen the level of tiredness, and to keep interest in and contact with the process. The circle is strategically important as a component of the learning space. It has its history and geographical reach in educational traditions. In the circle participants see one another’s eyes, demonstrate their mental openness to dialogue, to an exchange of opinions and thoughts, a readiness to listen attentively, to cooperate, and to help. The circle is one of the prerequisites, with the help of which the learning space of the team is created, its cooperative spirit and its lack of barriers. The circle instills a sense of the value of a community or group. The circle format is used throughout the school. It begins and ends each day. The circle as a way of communication just recently started to be used in daily schoolwork. For many children it was a new unusual, engaging and interesting format. Small groups complete tasks, generate ideas, and create projects. In this format there is an opportunity to become better acquainted with one another, to enjoy the pleasure of personal communication, to show and express oneself, to learn how to establish personal contacts. The work in groups should preferably be initiated every day, or several times. Working in couples is valuable because it establishes a direct emotional contact between participants, allows for a deeper understanding of one’s conversational partner through working on a task, develops empathy, and reduces barriers.

15

P4wC Camps for National Identity …

281

Individual work in completing a given task is useful for the development of an interior dialogue with oneself. This is a valuable experience, and it is important that organizers make sure it is included in the work and tasks. It takes place particularly during periods of reflection and when creative assignments are being accomplished in art sessions. The pertinent combinations of all kinds of cooperation provide each child with a rich experience for a short time. The individual child tests his or her private borders and can reflect on their feelings in the different communication groups. All this helps the child to discover himself or herself. The various cooperation formats are a quick and effective way of making friendly relations between camp participants.

6

Reflection

Reflection and value building are essential elements of the program. The goal of reflection is to train the habit of self-analysis when considering the day’s experiences. Participants are encouraged to consider their achievements and mistakes, and to examine their emotions. After five days this becomes for some students a habit that they continue to use in their daily lives after the school ends. In the evening reflection takes place in the discussion circle. The following questions are used for general orientation. What did I learn? What was new for me? What did I like, dislike? What makes me grateful for this day? The children first write answers to these questions in their exercise books and then each child in turn shares his/ her ideas with the others. Morning reflection is done individually in written form with the accompaniment of music (normally classical, but not necessarily so). The first morning reflection is difficult for children. However, after five or six days, progress can be seen, something that they themselves speak when they analyze their feelings at the end of the camp. The first stage in forming the habit of written reflection is description. Initially I proposed that children describe their own feelings, impressions, sensations, experiences, thoughts that have arisen from what they have heard or seen during the previous day. The second state (on the third, fourth day) the texts begin to show some critical thoughts, analysis, to develop conclusions. This is perhaps because a silent space has been created for reflection, or a stress on autonomy and individuality. Usually during these sessions, the children sit in a circle, but they can sit in any part of the auditorium or even go to the neighboring one if this is a possibility. Thanks to reflection children develop a greater ability to observe, to delve deeper into themselves, and to consider their own thoughts. Evidence for the usefulness and effectiveness of the camps can be supported by quotes from students who participated many times, such Mariia Panchenko (who attended fifteen camps). My question to her was “Do you think that the development of values was successful in the camp? If so, how and did this influence your view of the world?” Mariia’s answered:

282

Y. Kravchenko

Looking back at my experience attending several schools, I can point to the following values. Critical thinking. This means analysis, checking, doubting, searching. This was learned through personal reflection using P4c and by discussing events that had taken place during the day. It went beyond simply saying ‘I liked that’ and required a discussion of what, why and how exactly. Command assignment. This led from discussion to personal interaction and understanding one’s attitude to others. It is hard to do anything harmful to a person when the atmosphere around one is an understanding one. Competition was directed at achieving a result but not presented as a contest between individuals. Creativity. One can find a way out of every situation if one simply learns how to use the other half of one’s brain. Patriotic education. This is a pathos-filled phrase. I do not like it, but I cannot think of another. It is in fact the love for and experience of [historical] periods [which is achieved] through taking an individual approach. You were able to show the breadth of what can still be discovered. Individuality. Work in a way that suits you personally, a way that you enjoy. You have a right to this. Again, it is difficult to say how this was communicated, because it was part of the entire atmosphere, the whole space that was filled with these values. Of course, all the exercises contributed, the games, meaning the interaction with participants. But also, probably, your [the instructor’s] view of the world through the prism of these values. It was not just interaction but an attitude toward people.

7

Local Projects

It is well known that the best way to assimilate knowledge and intellectual habits, attitudes, dispositions, and values is through attempts to cultivate them. “An experience is educative when it is transformative, as it cultivates the person’s capacity to think by herself and with others, which is a condition for democratic agency and participation” [2, 4]. During the camps I tried to communicate the desire among participants to share the information and experiences they had gained. About thirty percent of participants completed local activities for their classmates or their schools. Participants made their own decisions concerning what they wished to discuss and how they wished to do this. The activities included art competitions, poetry readings, interactive lectures, quests, articles in local publications, and workshops. The program of each camp included a workshop on management and event organization. Sometimes campers cooperated in conducting interregional projects. This activity formulated in children a sense of responsibility toward their community, and a responsible civic stance. Along with knowledge the children demonstrated the ability to change something in their environment, to act autonomously, to solve problems and to influence their community. This stage was a meaningful end to participation in the camp.

15

8

P4wC Camps for National Identity …

283

Conclusion

The camps on topics “Philosophy,” “Ukrainian Culture,” “Religion and Diplomacy,” and “Cultural Diplomacy” created a specific curriculum of Liberal Arts programs in after-school education. They helped children to give form to their own views about historical truths and transformed them by allowing them to express their own sense of identity. Such a process demands self-awareness and critical thinking. The educational space and the camp programming are models of both learning and democratic behavior because educating for democracy is teaching the ability to hear the voice of difference and disagreement, to see its face, to live with it constructively. It means educating citizens who are prepared to act responsibly in the world and that means instilling the courage not just to speak but also to listen; the courage to act, and not defer; the courage to try and the courage to fail and to try again. As Thomas Huxley said: “The great end of life is not knowledge, but action” [5, 19]. The agent of a successful democratic society is a person who knows himself or herself and never stops the process of self-discovery, because they understand the basic principles of solidarity and creating a caring community. Yuliia Kravchenko

References 1. Dewey J (1998) My pedagogic creed. In: Hickman LA, Alexander TM (eds) The essential Dewey: pragmatism, education, democracy, vol 1. Indiana University Press, pp 229–235 2. Schweizer B (2014) Cultural literacy and core knowledge/skills. In: Encyclopedia of educational theory and philosophy, vol 1. Stanford University, Phillips, pp 200–203 3. Matthews GB (1994) The philosophy of childhood. Harvard University Press 4. Cammarano C (2021) On philosophizing as education. Precollege Philos Public Pract 3:5–15 5. Cole SA (2001) The civic responsibility of higher education. In: Proceeding, democracy and education. Kyiv

284

Y. Kravchenko Yuliia Kravchenko is Cofounder of the Educational Movement “SviTy” (Shine), a Trainer in the Program “Philosophy for Children” (P4C) developed by Matthew Lipman, a former Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the Department of Arts and Humanities, Teachers College, Columbia University 2021–2022; a Head of the Critical Thinking Development Lab in the National Center “Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine” (JASU). Since 2016 she has worked at the National Center JASU where she organized camps for teenagers (at the national and international levels) in the following subjects: “Philosophy,” “Ukrainian Culture,” “Religion and Diplomacy,” and “Cultural Diplomacy.” She is founder and organizer of “The 1960s and the Dissident Movement: A Festival for Young People” (2017–2022), an annual event that brings together students and teachers. She initiated and organized the Philosophy Education Project for Ukrainian children and teachers “Color of Peace” (March 2022–June 2023).

16

Cultivating Reasonableness Among Filipino Children Venus Ae Kaiel Basa, Marella Ada V. Mancenido-Bolaños , Prince Airick S. Gapo , and Raphaella Elaine Miranda

A colleague asked me some time ago for one word to describe what I think philosophy offers to children. My answer: hope. [1, p. 128]

Abstract

Children’s innate ability to reason is often unrecognized by adults. This is something common in the traditional practice in the Philippine educational system. Following the ideas of the founders of Philosophy for Children, we wish to argue that exposing children to philosophical inquiry is necessary in helping them further develop reasonableness. There are various reasons why it has been difficult to convince educators to integrate P4wC in their teaching practice, however, if we continue to create programs to train the teachers then we can help them realize the value of listening to their students’ ideas. If we continue to expose children to the practice P4wC then we can help them develop reasonableness. We have organized an online community of inquiry for children ages

V. A. K. Basa · M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños (B) · P. A. S. Gapo · R. E. Miranda University of Santo Tomas, España, Manila, Philippines e-mail: [email protected] V. A. K. Basa e-mail: [email protected] P. A. S. Gapo e-mail: [email protected] P. A. S. Gapo Fiat Lux Academe, Cavite, Philippines R. E. Miranda College of Saint Benilde, Taft, Manila, Philippines © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_16

285

286

V. A. K. Basa et al.

5–10. The online sessions lasted for four weeks per age group. During the sessions we noticed the progression of the children’s ideas and the development of the kind of questions they raised. In this paper, we will present how we organized the online COI sessions and our observations of the children’s dialogues. We also wish to present how these kinds of sessions can help in the improvement of children’s reasoning especially in cases where it is not effectively taught in schools. Graphic Abstract

Cultivating Reasonableness among Children (https://www.istockphoto.com/vec tor/kids-talk-gm629074238-111842991, https://www.canstockphoto.com/rightof-choice-9902460.html).

Keywords

Philosophy for children . Community of inquiry . Reasonableness . Children

1

Introduction

Philosophy for Children was introduced to Filipino scholars by Zosimo Lee in the 1990s. Since then, Lee and a group of faculty members from the University of the Philippines Diliman have continuously trained teachers to employ the community of inquiry (COI) as a teaching method in their classrooms. Convincing the heads of various educational institutions to integrate the method into their system was quite a challenge, as most of them have been very resistant to the idea. There may be teachers who are convinced that COI will help them in the delivery of their lessons, but the challenges that they are facing in managing their classroom discourage them from using it. The average class size in a typical Philippine public school is 50 students, making it more difficult for the teacher to manage the class using the COI as a teaching method. These are just some of the challenges faced by Filipino P4C scholars. Throughout the years, Filipino P4C scholars have been more engaged. It is worth noting that for the past decade, P4C has already been offered as a course at the University of the Philippines and the University of Santo Tomas.

16

Cultivating Reasonableness Among Filipino Children

287

Ranier Ibana used to organize the Karunungan Festival every year. Workshops on P4C are usually offered during this conference. Peter Paul Elicor was able to conduct P4C sessions with indigent children. Through the National Service Training Program, Leander Marquez and Cathlyne Alvarez trained students from the University of the Philippines Diliman to facilitate COI sessions with students from nearby elementary schools. Philosophy students from the University of Santo Tomas were also trained to facilitate an actual COI, and they organized COI sessions with students from the Juan Luna Elementary School in Sampaloc, Manila. Ibana, being the president of Philosophy with Children and Youth Network for Asia–Pacific (PCYNAP), and Elicor, being a member, organized an online COI with other scholars from Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, and Australia. Meanwhile, our group from the University of Santo Tomas was able to run a two-month online COI session with children ages 5–10. Scholars have come a long way already, but more can still be done. The online COI that we have initiated could be an alternative to formally using the pedagogy in the classrooms. The online COI that we conducted had given the children the experience of coming together in a dialogue. It is just one of the many ways to bring the practice closer to the teachers, parents, and children. In this chapter we will present the contextual tools that we used, what we have gone through in organizing the sessions, the actual COI with children, and feedback from parents and students. It is our hope that this chapter can encourage educators to include the method in their teaching practices.

2

Community of Inquiry

In the Philippines, the most common requirement for admission among schools for early childhood schooling is the capacity of the learner to read. A student may not be admitted in primary school if they cannot read upon reaching the first grade. Therefore, preparatory schools are concentrating on improving the pupil’s capacity to read. The common site of a traditional preparatory school is filled with armchairs, textbooks, and writing materials. What should have been a stage to prepare the child for formal learning and a lifelong love for learning and education became a rigid facility meant to produce mechanical readers. For Lipman [2], the educational aspect of schooling is a dreaded ordeal [2, p. 12]. Children’s first experience of schooling dispels the magic of their imagination and curiosity because of its structure and rigidity. The comfort of learning at home is replaced by schedules, uniformity, and indifference to the children’s context [2, p. 13]. What has been created is a frustrated learner who has a distaste for education and a distorted view of what schooling is about. The failure to recognize the richness of children’s creative capacities proves fatal in the formation

288

V. A. K. Basa et al.

of his judgment and reasonableness in so far as students find the learning experience monotonous and sometimes distant. Thinking in traditional primary schools is formulaic as teachers offer uniformed and systematized ways of thinking.1 A community of inquiry is a means to counter this rigidity and disenchantment. Through this project, we sought to introduce COI in Philippine schools to create alternative spaces to cultivate reasonableness. According to Kennedy and Kohan [3], schools today have adapted to global, neo-capitalistic societies and have come in the service of this hegemonic force. Contrary to this, Kennedy and Kohan [3] believe that schools should be spaces for deconstruction and de-formation. By this, they mean that schools should be spaces where children inquire and reflect on existing social structures. Following a platonic view of education, schooling today is hierarchically structured, where children “inherit” knowledge from “developed” members of society. Instead of being allowed to experience and understand the world in their own terms, children are treated as empty vessels ripe for accepting information. Proefriedt also pointed out that this hierarchy gives teachers the capacity to set the agenda in classrooms, which was based on their own intellectual baggage [4, p. 68]. The hierarchical school structure provides little room for children to be creative with their questions. Lipman proposed the model of a community of inquiry as a means to subvert this hierarchy. Following Dewey, Lipman opined that communal inquiry gives children an avenue to challenge their naive, unreflective judgments through genuine dialogue. In contrast to conversations, which are mainly characterized by the symmetrical relationship between speakers and its lack of movement, genuine dialogue is defined by a disequilibrium that propels its forward movement. Lipman describes the epistemological underpinning of this model as one of “reflexive equilibrium, [2, p. 197]” where the participants come to accept that their judgments are fallible. Because this mode of inquiry is governed by democratic principles, it creates conducive spaces for self-correction. These include exhibiting positive, and receptive attitudes such as compassion, sympathy, and open-mindedness. Within the community of inquiry, the participants relate their goals, purposes, and beliefs with others, and at the same time, maintain genuine receptiveness and the desire for self-correction. Children come to reflect not only about themselves but also on what ought to be, and in turn, think outside the bounds of social norms and even their own beliefs. They are able to do this through “[diminishing their] grasping [egos’] perpetual self-referencing and wanting [5, p. 50]” and subjecting their judgments to reevaluation. Letting go of their personal conviction in the name of genuine inquiry opens them up to diverse perspectives and alternative meanings.

1

There are various factors that contribute to this conundrum. One is how teachers are trained in early childhood education which makes most learning the result of teaching. Another would be how primary schools are compelled to follow a curriculum prescribed by the governing body in education. Traditional primary schools are insufficient in instruction because of its faithfulness to the curricular direction. No degree of curriculum design can encapsulate the fluidity of reasonableness that instead of providing a scaffolding for the development of thinking, it becomes a hindrance and becomes an instrument to stunt the multi-dimensional growth of thinking.

16

Cultivating Reasonableness Among Filipino Children

289

Lipman describes the community of inquiry as “learning together, and it is therefore an example of the value of shared experiences” [2, p. 93]. Children are introduced to the practice of learning with and from each other. The community is non-competitive as it fosters friendship and cooperation [2, p. 94]. It is considered as a process that “aims at producing a product…the process has a sense of direction, it moves where the argument takes it” [2, pp. 83–84]. It is not without structure because it has “procedural rules which follow logic” [2, p. 84]. We can find creativity, reasonableness, and care in a community of inquiry [2, p. 84]. We can find these in Lipman’s concept of multi-dimensional thinking which aims to create a balance “between the cognitive and affective, between the perceptual and conceptual, between the physical and the mental, the rule governed and non-rule governed” [2, p. 200]. Through genuine dialogue in the community of inquiry, children enter each other’s worlds. Expanding on Lipman’s model, Sharp argued that presenting one’s ideas requires the questioner to manifest courage to risk their own views and, consequently, open themselves to the possibility of self-transformation [5, p. 55]. According to her: “The assertion ‘I don’t know’, can be the beginning of a quest to understand thoroughly” [5, p. 51]. The self as a social construct, according to Sharp, means that it is a bundle of dynamic habits that are subjected to continuous change. She added that we project our self-concept through stories about ourselves and sharing them to others opens these bundles of habits to correction [5, p. 54]. Meanwhile, Kennedy and Kohan [3] presented a similar idea and argued that philosophical ideas stem from the simplest questions; questions, they opined, were midwives to difference [3, pp. 9–10]. Matthew Lipman proposed that philosophical inquiry be embedded in the traditional K-12 curriculum, whereas Gareth Matthews believed in the importance of engaging children in a philosophical inquiry by making use of it as a pedagogy which should not necessarily be part of the formal curriculum. He wanted to introduce philosophical dialogue to the children because for him “the impulse to philosophize is integral to our humanity, and begins in early childhood” [6, p. 1]. He wanted a shared space for children where they could ask and speculate and reason, where their voices can be heard [6, p. 1]. For Matthews, the aim was not to give them a curriculum or any specific text but to encourage those teachers to think, whatever they are teaching. They should be listening to the children and the children will have some really interesting things to say” [6, p. 13]. In addition, he also wants to create more settings where “amateur or professionals might engage in inquiry with young people of elementary school age [6, p. 18].” Matthews argued that those who are involved in the philosophical encounter must share the same sense of puzzlement by recognizing that the questions about life cannot be easily settled [6, p. 13]. This could mean that adults must meet children’s ideas and recognize the philosophical dimensions of their thoughts [6, p. 14]. He also emphasized that children could tackle basic questions in philosophy, however, these dissipates once they get socialized in school [6, p. 15]. This is evident in the online COI that we organized. Children ages 5–7 provided more philosophical questions and ideas, and children ages 8–10 gave questions which

290

V. A. K. Basa et al.

were patterned after the questions they encountered in their textbooks and worksheets. Interestingly, children who are not yet exposed to the rudiments of the school were able to leap beyond the story while school-age children were only able to ask within the context of the story. This is the same as Matthew’s observations. He mentioned that discussion in philosophy is not unusual to children between the ages of 3–7, but they become rare in older children [7, p. 10]. Matthews was deeply interested in the philosophical dimensions of children’s literature. In his article, “Philosophy in Children’s Literature” he expounded on the role of literature in the unpacking of children’s philosophical ideas. He argued that “what philosophers do is much closer than is usually appreciated to what at least children rather naturally do” [8, p. 22]. Similar to Gareth Matthew’s theories is that of Jana Mohr Lone’s; she holds that philosophical wondering begins in childhood [1, p. 4]. However, adults usually miss the children’s philosophical questions and musings because of their unfamiliarity with philosophy [1, p. 3]. She adds children do think of questions that bother adults—such as identity and the meaning of life and death. They sometimes feel uneasy about these questions, Lone then suggested that adults must think with the children. This way, adults unburden the children of the anxiety brought about by their questions [1, p. 10]. Lone also talked about why the development of philosophical self is important. For her, cultivating “childhood amazement and curiosity about life can give our children’s lives greater depth and meaning” [1, p. 11]. She added that it also “allowed children to recognize that there are different perspectives and ways to understand the world and enabled them to learn to examine critically their own views and the reasons they give them” [1, p. 11]. Lastly, she notes that reflective discussion can cultivate analytic and critical thinking capacities among children that are essential in contemporary life [1, p. 11]. We can infer that for Lone, development of children’s philosophical self means arming them with the capability of facing the world. By exposing children to philosophical dialogues, we are teaching them to think independently for themselves. Like Matthews, she believes that philosophical inquiry is not just limited to the classroom. This is evidenced by the work that she has done with children. Lone did not just provide a method but also an attitude that should model when we are dealing with children. She notes that in most cases we only half listen to children’s ideas not because they are uninteresting but because we are already formulating our replies in our heads. She encourages adults to respect children’s ideas. Adults must realize that the children’s attempt to “grapple with ideas and questions is in itself worthy of respect” [1, p. 126]. Children must be taken seriously as children. Lone opines that by encouraging children’s ideas, we are empowering them. It is interesting to note that for Lone, “not every child will embrace philosophy, but every child must be given the opportunity to engage in philosophical inquiry” [1, p. 127]. It is for this reason that taking philosophical inquiry outside the traditional classroom is important. To be able to bring the practice outside the traditional classroom means engaging more children to think philosophically.

16

3

Cultivating Reasonableness Among Filipino Children

291

Online Community of Inquiry: The Process and Notable Observations

Our project was conceived in a Philosophy for Children course that was offered in the first semester of academic year 2020–2021. Organizing an online COI was not part of the course plan, however, there was a growing curiosity among the students regarding how COIs are facilitated. This prompted our class to organize one session in November 2020. We originally planned to conduct one session over a single Saturday. However, when we posted our call for participants, 40 children submitted their expressions of interest. To accommodate interested parents and children, we grouped them by age and opened more schedules. We ended up organizing 2 sessions each day for two Saturdays. Some of the children and parents were pleased with the project and were very vocal in committing to attend more sessions if we organize again. One parent said she made the right decision in enlisting her children for the event. This prompted us to organize a series of online COI sessions during the summer of 2021. Following the same procedure, we posted the call for participants, once again gathering a good number of children coming from different regions of the country. The project lasted for 2 months with the first month dedicated to children ages 5–7 and the second month to children ages 8–10. Since we wanted to introduce Filipino stories to the children, we chose stories written and translated in Filipino. When we started the sessions, however, we realized that the children were more comfortable reading and speaking in English. We had to translate some of the stories written in Filipino and locate other stories which are appropriate for the group. We also included the parents in the program. We transcribed each session and sent them out to the parents for them to be able to observe their children’s progress. We also sent them guide questions that they can use if they wish to discuss the stories further. The following illustrates the children’s exchanges about the stories entitled, Si Hinlalaki [9] and Si Pagong at Si Matsing [10].

3.1

Community of Philosophical Inquiry on Si Hinlalaki

The story, Si Hinlalaki (The Thumb), is about discovery of one’s purpose and appreciation of the uniqueness of an individual. The mother is portrayed as Mother Hand with the fingers as her children. The siblings had distinct abilities that made them stand out from each other (Middle Finger Brother is the tallest and very good at basketball!) except for the poor thumb who does not have any distinct ability or characteristic aside from looking quite different from his siblings. One day, Mother Hand and the finger siblings try to lift a hammer. The four fingers are having a hard time lifting the heavy object, and it seems impossible to accomplish the task without the help of their brother Thumb. As Thumb sees his siblings struggling, he helps out and shows his strength, and together they are able to lift the hammer. And so, our good fellow Thumb has found his purpose and his siblings realized

292

V. A. K. Basa et al.

that there are tasks that they can only accomplish when they are together and with the help of their brother. There were 6 participants during this particular session and although it was only their third week of getting to know each other, they were comfortable enough to agree and disagree with each other on different points throughout the session. Prior to the presentation of the stimulus, they were able to share their feelings and impressions when other people agree or disagree with them. To begin the discussion, we asked them whether they knew what it meant to agree and disagree. Participant 1 said that: “Agreeing is saying yes and disagreeing is saying no. I (feel) sad when somebody disagrees with me.” Participant 2 added that: “Agreeing is if you approve with something and disagreeing is if you disapprove.” In this preliminary exchange, the participants were able to demonstrate a firm grasp on the principles of disagreement and consensus. Their responses portrayed how emotions are related to judgment as well. During the session, one of the initial questions that the children asked was “Why did the four fingers say that Thumb is useless?” Participant 3 responded that the thumb was not useless, it was just that they (the other fingers) did not know any better. Following Participant 3’s defense, Participant 1 responded that maybe the reason why they thought he was useless was because he was small. Participant 1’s remark prompted a lively dialogue among the children since the theme of smallness captured their interest. Participant 4: How is the Thumb strong even though the Middle finger is the one who is supposed to be strong? Participant 5: It is because he is fat. Participant 4: Yes, he is fat. That’s why he can lift anything. Participant 2: All the other fingers are helping Thumb at this point. Participant 6: It’s stronger because it’s smaller. Participant 3: Where’s the logic in that?

Participant 6’s remark disturbed the lively exchange. She is also the youngest and smallest among all participants and she usually rarely joins in the faster paced conversations of the older children. Participant 3, asking for clarifications (through the meeting’s chat box), signifies the children’s desire to “clarify ill-defined concepts” and “seek to uncover underlying assumptions.” These two desires are among what Lipman considers as skills and dispositions that signify critical thinking [2, pp. 169–171]. Participant 6 continued, “Nanay (my mother) is small but strong. It is possible that you are strong even if you are small.” From this analogy, they started talking about animals who are very small but very strong, too. One of their examples was the ant. Participant 5 mentioned that “Ants are stronger than elephants because they can lift things heavier than them.” After the exchange, Participant 3mentioned these ideas are more confusing than solving 2nd grade word problems. Eventually,

16

Cultivating Reasonableness Among Filipino Children

293

the Participant 3, who asked the question about Participant 4’s logic, changed his outlook based on the points raised throughout the discussion. The admission of fallibility offered by the participant who admitted that the process seems more confusing is a statement that could be counted as an opportunity to “rethink intellectual struggle” as mentioned by Margaret-Sharp in her work “The Community of Inquiry: Education for Democracy” [11]. Another instance of self-correction was observed in this situation. The participant who raised the second question seems to be displeased with what for him might seem like an absurd idea (Logic!). Through the process of self-correction, the participant experienced a revelation of the self to the self and how one cannot be right all the time. Moreover, the participants further displayed two more of Lipman’s criteria for signifying critical thinking, “offering appropriate analogies” and “supporting one’s opinions with convincing reasons [2, pp. 167–171].” The children were also able to leap out of the text in the most interesting way. The hand was called Mother Hand, and the children were asking where the father was in the story. Participant 4 jokingly responded that maybe the father is at the airport and has gone away on vacation. In this situation, we can see the connection between communal deliberation and how it is connected with personal history and experiences. The children were probably curious about the father because they were more familiar with family structures where both parents are present. Aside from the children’s questions, we also presented them with guide questions and asked them to freely answer any question that interests them. Among the questions chosen by the participants was “What is my purpose?” They had a variety of answers—from hobbies and careers (such as building things, storytelling, and drawing) to more complex social roles like caring for their family members. Participant 1’s answer stood out. He responded and said: “My purpose is to be a kid.” Participant 3 chose to answer the question, “Is being different a good thing?” The participant explained that “It is okay to be brown or black or white because being different means being unique and to be unique is to be special.” This answer led to the clarification of the term special. Another participant asked, “What makes a person special?” and Participant 1 responded by saying “A person becomes important or special if we love them.”

3.2

Community of Philosophical Inquiry on Si Pagong at Si Matsing

Another one of our chosen stimuli was, Si Pagong at Si Matsing (The Turtle and the Monkey), a classic Filipino fable. It tells a story of two friends amid a tale riddled with friendship, betrayal, revenge, and succeeding through one’s wits. When Pagong and Matsing were strolling in the riverbank, they chanced upon a floating banana tree in the water. They partitioned their loot equally with Matsing choosing the leaves and the upper part of the trunk (thinking that it is the “bountiful” part) and Pagong opting for the roots and the lower trunk of the tree. After some time,

294

V. A. K. Basa et al.

Matsing noticed that his part was withering while his friend’s part was thriving and even bearing fruits. Pagong enlisted the help of his friend to get the fruits in his now bountiful banana tree. Matsing, in a stroke of mischievousness, ate all the bananas atop Pagong’s tree. A battle of wits ensued with each protagonist trying to outsmart the other. Pagong emerged victorious in the end by tricking Matsing to throw him into the river by telling him that he is afraid of the water in fear that he might drown. The fable is a story of how your wits can save your skin and how being controlled by one’s emotions like jealousy and the thirst for retribution can lead to disaster. Participant 2 raised the question about why they are not friends in the beginning. Participant 3 corrected him by mentioning that Matsing (Monkey) and Pagong (Turtle) were friends in the beginning. After a couple of moments, Aldrich corrected himself and admitted his mistake. Participant 3 displayed a propensity to disagree without any inhibition related to stature or positionality. This showcased a sense of equality among participants of the community of inquiry and the capacity to reconcile ideas. The participants exhibit the capacity to self-correct. This action portrays practice of sound judgment based on inquiry. The capacity to take a stand of fallibility and rectify what is at fault showcases critical thinking as defined by Matthew Lipman. One participant asked why did Pagong bite Matsings’ tail? The participants responded that Pagong bit Matsing because they were fighting, and he wanted revenge. How did Pagong know that the root is better than the trunk? One of them responded that: “Even though Pagong has a small brain he is still smart.” The answer gives a faint connection with a discussion that occurred in the prior meeting when the participants were arguing about the correlation between size and strength. “I know the difference between a turtle and a tortoise.” A participant mentioned that Pagong is a tortoise leading to a lengthy discussion regarding the difference between a turtle and a tortoise. “Did you learn anything else after doing this?” “I learned to ask more questions.” “I learned to always share.” A participant, through her response, specified the difference between the community of inquiry and the traditional teachinglearning experience in schools with the community of inquiry focusing more on the capacity of children to formulate questions. As with the first story, the session on Si Pagong at si Matsing showcased the capacity of children to ask meaningful questions, self-correction, make connections and conceive philosophical questions. It was not difficult to establish a connection between the children, they were at ease during our COI despite the fact that they were all strangers to each other. They could build on each other’s thoughts, and they were comfortable even if they were stating their reasons why they disagree with the other children. Both sessions concluded with the children’s thoughts about the program. One of the participants said that he learned a lot during our session even if he was not stressed or tired, unlike in his regular school where he gets stressed and tired while learning. All the children said that they learned to ask more questions and share their ideas. We also did a post-even conference with the

16

Cultivating Reasonableness Among Filipino Children

295

parents. One parent noted that her child was already fond of asking. She noticed that after the sessions, her child is able to ask better questions. Another parent also shared that after each session, her child would tell them about the stories we discussed and initiate further discussion at home.

4

Reflections

The community of inquiry is characterized by “learning together, and it is therefore an example of a shared experience [2, p. 93].” It is also characterized by non-adversarial deliberations, shared cognitions, the cultivation of literary and philosophical imagination, the encouragement of deep reading and enjoyment of dialogical texts [2, p. 94].” The process of doing the community of inquiry online can be fashioned after this. The limitation of not being physically together during the conduct of the COI can then be an opportunity for the teacher’s creativity. The teacher can improvise new ways of facilitating a COI which still includes the presentation of the stimulus by taking turns in reading, positioning chairs in a circle, asking and answering questions, and picking up ideas from the dialogue and exploring them. One of the most important things to note in applying media and technology in education is relevance. The basic rule is “if it will not affect the teaching-learning experience and will only serve as a novelty, then do not use it.” In our current context brought about by the pandemic and the closure of schools, it seems like technology has become not just as an integral part of contemporary learning but has become the lifeblood of teaching. The Philippines, being one of the few countries that are yet to open schools, heavily relies on virtual learning as a mode of instruction. This may have resulted in a widening “learning gap” among learners, but it also offers a variety of new opportunities, particularly in pedagogy [12]. The speed of technological development has increased to the point that pedagogical innovation cannot cope. The added role of a teacher as a technologist is evidence of the changing role of a traditional teacher in an online environment [13, p. 36]. A traditional lecture delivered in an online class is categorically the same as watching an online video from a content creator with millions of upvotes. Online learning forces the hand of pedagogues to engage more in collaboration as students and teachers become both content consumers and creators in the virtual space; something that P4C, with its emphasis on equality, collaboration, and cooperation, thrives on. Our experience as facilitators offered us an opportunity to assess the limitations and possibilities of a community of inquiry in an online setting. The facilitators’ experiences in an online community of inquiry produced results that might answer whether P4C-COI has a virtual future. In a study conducted in a primary school in Singapore, the P4C scholars who led the research found out that students using smartphones coupled with P4C Pedagogy excelled in metrics measuring 21st-century skills [14, p. 33]. Traditional schooling gave us an image of the school shaped by order and uniformity, from how the armchairs are aligned to the precision of scheduled school

296

V. A. K. Basa et al.

day routines. For some children, especially those who are new to formal schooling, it is a setting that is worlds away from what they are used to in their own homes. For Matthew Lipman, the educational aspect of schooling is a dreaded ordeal. Children’s first schooling experience dispels the magic of their imagination and curiosity because of its structure and rigidity. The comfort of learning at home is replaced by strict schedules, uniformity, and indifference to the children’s context. This factor is taken out of the equation in our facilitation of COI in the online setting. The participants are in the comfort of their own homes, and the classroom is transformed into a virtual space within the four corners of the screen. This gave the children a feeling of homeliness. A comfortable child does not need to worry about acclimatizing herself to a strange environment which ultimately helps her freely express themself. In the course of the month-long initiative, the facilitators observed that even with the distance brought by the virtual divide, the participants exhibited conscious care for each other (with one participant narrating the story to a latecomer), took a stand of fallibility and self-correction (something that adults are somewhat incapable of in all internet “debates”), and lead hypothesis-guided discussions (“What about the father?” a participant asked in a story about Mother Hand and her Finger Children).2 Silence has always been a concerning issue in every classroom, more so in a virtual classroom. It is not easy for facilitators to observe and discern non-verbal cues from the participants because of the limitations of the virtual environment and a spell of silence may not just put the facilitators in a state of uneasiness but also the children. However, through the course of the initiative, the participants seem to be comfortable in silence. The only problem is that it is quite impossible to ascertain in the virtual setting what is the nature of the silence as it could be a sign that a child is intimidated, lacking in confidence, or even uninterested. For Reed-Sandoval and Sykes, there is a need to re-conceptualize silence as it can be considered as a valuable form of philosophical participation [15, p. 224]. There is much to learn about how the power of silence can be harnessed in the COI setting. Non-verbal forms of communication are easily discernible in the physical classroom where the facilitator can easily notice the twitching of fingers, the tenyard gaze at the window, and the silence that embraces someone who is deep in thought. The flatness of the screen somewhat limits the variety of possibilities that silence offers and the facilitators are left to infer from virtual cues and the uneasiness of staring at the screen devoid of an auditory response.

2

These notes and observations highlighted Lipman’s critical, creative, and caring thinking discussed in his work, Thinking in Education.

16

Cultivating Reasonableness Among Filipino Children

297

Through the course of the P4C-COI Initiative, we have found that children can rationalize beyond our expectations and our understanding of them. One would wonder how they could surface complex philosophical ideas with the dynamism of their language, which is most of the time inhibited by their exposure to traditional pedagogy and more surprisingly, on how the inquisitive nature of children flourished in a virtual medium conceived to be inferior to the traditional physical classroom.

5

Conclusion

The P4C-COI practice is a recognized method of education that is already practiced globally. It is guided by the belief that children are capable of thinking philosophically. Following Matthews and Lone, we would like to highlight that children, too, are capable thinkers, and perhaps, many of the questions adults and children raise are essentially the same, although expressed in different ways. Whether we admit it or not, an adult’s engagement with the text is usually formulaic, while the children’s interaction with the text surprises adults. Even with our older participants (7–10 year olds), we observed how their training in school has affected or narrowed down the way that they engage with the text. We had found that children ages 5–7 are able to ask questions beyond the basic content of the story, while children ages 7–10 asked very formulaic questions patterned after their school textbooks. They asked questions like, “Who is the main character?” and “What is the moral of the story?” While the younger children were able to raise more critical and creative questions. They asked questions whose answers were not found in the story. When we discussed the story “Si Hinlalaki” they asked why the shorter finger was stronger than the bigger finger and how this is possible in real life. In the same story, the children grew curious why the father was not mentioned in the story. Ultimately, the authors maintain that it is only through acknowledging the powerful being of children can we truly become effective facilitators of knowledge and good values. The project also aimed to get a feel of the overall readiness of the Filipino philosophical community in accepting that children are capable of multidimensional thinking and that they have an understanding of the world, more that we give them credit for. The P4C-COI employed by the researchers are guided by the theories of Lipman and Sharp, as well as the Philosophy of Childhood of Matthews, Kennedy, and Kohan. Through this activity we were able to prove that children are capable of reasoning. Children are already capable of searching for reason, asking for clarification, dealing with disagreements, and identifying cause and effect to name a few. These capabilities will help the children as they progress in school. These will help them understand more complex and interconnected ideas in various school subjects that they are to encounter in the future. It is for this reason that they have to be exposed to more opportunities where philosophical inquiry is possible.

298

V. A. K. Basa et al.

We may have had difficulty in introducing COI to educational institutions, but we believe that as long as programs like these are continuously offered in the country, there will be participants. Children will be willing to participate, in the same manner that there will be parents who are more than willing to support and watch their children as they grow into the process. Through activities like this, we can still cultivate children’s reasonableness. We may not be able to bring philosophy in the classroom, but we must continuously find ways to deliver it to more children. It is only through acknowledging the powerful being of children can we truly become effective facilitators of reason. Venus Basa, Marella Bolaños, Prince Gapo, and Raphaella Miranda

References 1. Lone J (2012) The philosophical child. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., UK 2. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 3. Kohan W, Kennedy D (2008) Aion, Kairos, and Chronos: fragments of an endless conversation on childhood, philosophy and education. Child Philos 4(8):6–22 4. Proefriedt WA (1984) Teaching philosophy and teaching philosophically. Clearing House 58(2):67–69 5. Sharp AM (1996) Self-transformation and the community of inquiry. Inquiry: Crit Thinking Across Disciplines 16(1):36–47. https://doi.org/10.5840/inquiryctnews199616129. Accessed 5 Feb 2022 6. Gregory M, Laverty M (2022) Gareth B. Matthews, the child’s philosopher. Routledge, New York 7. Matthews G (1994) The philosophy of childhood. Harvard University Press, USA 8. Matthews G (2022) Philosophy in children’s literature. In Gregory M, Laverty M (eds) Gareth B. Matthews, the child’s philosopher. Routledge, New York 9. Almario V (2018) Si hinlalaki. Adarna House Inc., Philippines 10. Almario V (2018) Si pagong at si matsing. Adarna House Inc., Philippines 11. Sharp AM (1991) The community of inquiry: education for democracy. Thinking: J Philos Child 9(2):31–37 12. Unicef.org (2022) Filipino children continue missing education opportunities in another year of school closure. [Online] Available at: https://www.unicef.org/philippines/press-releases/ filipino-children-continue-missing-education-opportunities-another-year-school. Accessed 5 Feb 2022 13. Rajcsányi-Molnár M, Bacsa-Bán A (2021) From the initial steps to the concept of online education—teacher experiences and development directions based on feedback from online education introduced during the pandemic. Cent Eur J Educ Res 3(11):33–48. https://doi.org/ 10.37441/cejer/2021/3/3/9612 14. Norris CA, Solloway E, Mingtan C, Looi CK (2013) Inquiry pedagogy and smartphones: enabling a change in school culture. Educ Technol 53(4):33–40 15. Reed-Sandoval A, Sykes AC (2017) Who talks? Who listens? Taking “positionality” seriously in philosophy for children. In: Gregory M, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York

16

Cultivating Reasonableness Among Filipino Children

299

Venus Ae Kaiel Basa is a graduate student of Philosophy writing her MA thesis on Philosophy for Children, Philosophy of Childhood, and Epistemic Injustice. She is currently a Content Consultant for various e-learning organizations and a Volunteer Instructor at Holy Rosary College Foundation where she handles philosophy and education courses. She is also a member of Women Doing Philosophy since 2020.

Marella Ada V. Mancenido-Bolaños teaches Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and the Graduate School of the University of Santo Tomas (UST). She obtained her MA and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Santo Tomas, Manila. She is currently the Chair of the UST Department of Philosophy.

Prince Airick S. Gapo is a college instructor at the University of Santo Tomas (UST). He obtained his master’s degree in education from Ateneo de Manila University and his Master of Arts in Philosophy at the University of Santo Tomas. His research interests in philosophy are philosophy for children, critical pedagogy, and Filipino Philosophy.

300

V. A. K. Basa et al. Raphaella Elaine Miranda is an instructor at the De La Salle College of St. Benilde. She is at the terminal phase of her Master of Arts in Philosophy degree at the University of Santo Tomas. Her research interests include critical theory, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of education.

A Philosophy for Children Inquiry with Prospective Teachers in South Africa Lena Green

17

and Janet Condy

Teaching children to respect one another in the face of disagreement is one of the more important civic virtues of any political system that puts respect at its core. [1]

Abstract

This chapter refers briefly to the role of education in developing future citizens of a democracy and explains the key aspects of Philosophy for Children (P4C). It then presents and discusses an analysis of one inquiry session with education students. Not long before the final class of the year, a series of #FeesMustFall student protests broke out across South Africa, including on our campus. Protest activity had started peaceably but on occasion became more violent. We suggested that our students, who had practiced inquiring as a community, might engage in an inquiry about the protests, and an agreement was negotiated. They chose to engage in dialogue about the question “Do you believe that free education in South Africa is realistic?” The transcript of the inquiry illustrates the development of dialogic reasoning, but this is not all that is required for democratic citizenship, nor all that Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) can teach. What became clear is that reasoning skills, trust and respect were beginning

L. Green (B) University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] J. Condy Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_17

301

302

L. Green and J. Condy

to develop within this community of students. Despite the uncertainty and fear associated with the situation a number of students felt safe enough, and brave enough, to express their thoughts. Graphic Abstract

Inquiring with Prospective Teachers in South Africa

Keywords

Citizenship . Community of inquiry . Dialogue . Democracy . Pedagogy . Philosophy for children . Reasonableness . Respect . South Africa . Teachers

1

Introduction

This chapter refers briefly to the role of education in developing future citizens of a democracy and explains the key aspects of Philosophy for Children (P4C). It then presents and discusses an analysis of one inquiry session with education students. The transcripts illustrate how students’ experiences of Philosophy for Children had begun to equip them with several of the cognitive and moral virtues associated with democratic citizenship.

17

2

A Philosophy for Children Inquiry with Prospective Teachers in South Africa

303

Education for Democracy

Education involves mediating to a new generation the knowledge and values considered important for the wellbeing of a particular society. In countries that consider themselves democratic (of which South Africa is one), certain ‘civic virtues’ are emphasized in the school curriculum. As explained in Green [2], civic virtues may be moral or cognitive in nature and, although many have been proposed, it is usually claimed that no definitive list of desirable qualities and dispositions is possible. Nevertheless, several educational interventions have been attempted, for example, ‘values clarification’, ‘character education’, ‘citizenship education’ or ‘democracy education’. Empirical evidence of their success is not easily obtained, owing in part to the difficulty of specifying and obtaining measurable outcomes. Moreover, significant differences of opinion regarding which virtues to foster make it difficult to agree upon civic virtues and moral curricula for schools. Dewey [3] proposed that education for democracy should not only tell students how to be good citizens but also provide them with the experience of democracy and the skills to engage democratically with others. Lipman, in a conversation with Brandt [4, p. 37], maintained that “If we feel that education for reasonableness is needed in order to preserve democracy, and that the alternatives to democracy are unacceptable, then we have a mandate to require that all children be educated for reasonableness.” , for Lipman, is not simply a matter of logical reasoning but a form of ethical thinking. Costa Carvalho and Mendonça cite his understanding of reasonableness as follows: Reasonableness … is built up, layer upon layer out of one’s efforts to be thoughtful, to be considerate, to seek integrity-preserving compromises, to be open to other points of view and other arguments, to seek appropriate means for the ends one has in view as well as appropriate ends for the means one finds at one’s disposal, and to seek solutions that take all interests into account. [5, p. 128]

Bruner strongly agreed that education in a democracy should encourage in future citizens a disposition to be reasonable, stating that “The possibility of nurturing the ‘reasonable person’ lies at the heart of education in a liberal democracy” [6, p. 78]. One important means to do so had already been developed in the late 1970s and 1980s in the form of the Philosophy for Children curriculum [7] and it was not long before adaptations of this approach, often referred to as Philosophy for/ with Children (P4wC), were introduced to suit conditions in different countries.

3

Philosophy for Children

Philosophy for Children proposes both the content of a possible school curriculum and a pedagogy to convey it. Lipman believed that children of all ages were capable of inquiring together about philosophical questions and that this activity was an ideal means of initiating children into democracy. The P4C curriculum consists

304

L. Green and J. Condy

of ‘stories’ (vignettes of school life in North America) that both suggest, but do not resolve, philosophical questions likely to interest schoolchildren, and model a classroom community of inquiry in action. In order to support teachers’ use of this curriculum, comprehensive manuals were created to accompany the story texts for each grade and teachers in several countries have been trained in their use [7– 10]. Practitioners of P4wC may adapt or even discard the original curriculum but usually retain the community of inquiry pedagogy central to Lipman’s programme. The community of inquiry pedagogy requires that the members of any school class develop into a collaborative, supportive community with the motivation and skills to inquire together regularly into questions of genuine interest to them. Lipman maintained that ‘philosophical’ questions are the most productive in developing reasonableness because certain philosophical issues are of perennial interest to everyone but remain contestable and difficult to resolve. In addition to being motivating, their exploration offers the opportunity to learn, within a respectful, caring context, to use the thinking moves that make reasoned dialogue possible. The teacher acts as facilitator and model, at times as puzzled about the subject of the inquiry as the students, who gradually acquire thinking moves and dispositions that enable more effective critical, creative, collaborative, and caring thinking. Such a classroom resembles that recommended by Baehr [11]. As Splitter and Sharp [12] point out, however, a classroom community of inquiry takes time to develop. It requires regular practice during which the teacher’s role of modelling the procedures of inquiry slowly becomes less important as the community internalizes a range of thinking moves. Philosophy for Children has been developed and adapted in various countries and is researched internationally. It has proved difficult to establish throughout state education systems but continues to flourish in certain areas and in our opinion is one of the better approaches to democracy education. Ideally a classroom community of inquiry models a democratic community. Even when this can only be partially achieved, the experience of acquiring a repertoire of thinking moves, and learning to use them respectfully, contributes to the development of reasonableness, which is a necessary, if not always a sufficient, condition for democratic engagement. Moreover, regular P4wC classes can develop schoolchildren as thinkers and, therefore, as more effective learners. Our experience has been that P4wC is equally valuable in teacher education. As Baumfield notes, the community of inquiry pedagogy makes “the interventions necessary for transformative professional learning manageable and productive” [13, p. 125]. In our work with education students at a higher education institution, we have taught for a number of years a brief module (consisting of four three-hour sessions), on Philosophy for Children. Students experienced for themselves the original Philosophy for Children materials and pedagogy and explored how they might implement the community of inquiry pedagogy in their own classrooms. Students watched videos of inquiries and engaged in a variety of inquiry formats using reasoning moves. They had chosen the agenda for their community of inquiry sessions, which gave them some autonomy. Our research findings have indicated that students perceived that they had benefited from the experience, not

17

A Philosophy for Children Inquiry with Prospective Teachers in South Africa

305

only as education professionals, but also in terms of personal development [14, 15]. Earlier studies, reported in Green [16], provided evidence that children in South Africa were capable of inquiring together respectfully after their teachers had taught them how to dialogue as a community of inquiry.

4

Context of the Inquiry

The inquiry we present below took place close to the end of an academic year, a few months after students had completed all but the final session of the Philosophy for Children module. At that time there were 76 students planning to qualify as teachers, aged between 21 and 52, with a female to male ratio of 80:20 and a racial mix of approximately 64% Coloured students, 21% African students, 11% White students and 2% Indian students. The institution’s language of instruction was English, although Afrikaans and isiXhosa were sometimes used by the students when working in their small groups. Not long before the final class of the year, a series of #FeesMustFall student protests broke out across South Africa, including on our campus. Protest activity had started peaceably but on occasion became more violent. For approximately ten days, all academic work on campus was disrupted and at the time of our final P4C class the situation was still tense. Many students had taken an active role in the protest, some chose to stay at home, while students who lived in the residences were forced to be part of the protest. Both students and staff present were uncertain about whether it would be possible to have classes as usual. The situation on campus on the day scheduled for our final class was quiet but unpredictable. Everyone was anxious and uncertain about whether or not to proceed with classes. This was a particularly important issue for our students, whose end of the year examinations would soon take place. We suggested that, while waiting for clarity about the situation, the students might engage in an inquiry about the protest, and an agreement was negotiated. This was an unexpected opportunity for the students to apply the inquiry skills they had practiced during the Philosophy for Children module in a tense, real life situation and would provide us with insights into the extent to which they were able to do so. Our transcripts show that the students were beginning to use the reasoning moves we had introduced in these lessons.

5

Getting Started

Once students had agreed to participate, the researchers reminded the students of the “rules of engagement” which they had chosen and which they had used during their previous inquiry experiences. These included: respect confidentiality, be open-minded, be compassionate, don’t be judgmental, no laughing at anyone’s contributions, and no cell phones.

306

L. Green and J. Condy

In small groups the students focused on developing one question per group that would help them to reflect on the protest. One lecturer reminded the students that the question should be “… a controversial question that cannot be easily answered by going to some facts”. They wrote their questions on a blackboard situated at the front of the classroom and chose the following question for inquiry. “Do you believe that free education in South Africa is realistic?” All the tables were then pushed to the side of the classroom (which was originally designed to seat only 45 students) and the chairs were arranged in one large circle. When there were no more chairs the students sat on the surrounding cupboards. We did not intervene to facilitate the inquiry but, with a few exceptions, left it to the students to manage the process themselves, and, with their permission, made an audio recording of the session. We present below three extracts from the inquiry transcript. For reasons of confidentiality names of students did not regularly appear on the transcript but male and female voices could be identified. Where names were mentioned by students these have been replaced by random letters of the alphabet. The lecturers are represented by L1 and L2. Dotted lines within or between quotations indicate that text was omitted to manage the length of the extract. The first brief extract (Getting started) illustrates students’ initial concerns and how we addressed them; the second extract (Inquiring together) illustrates, firstly, students’ use of a range of thinking moves and, secondly, their consideration for each other and their efforts to be respectful and avoid aggression. The final extract (Inquiring about a controversial issue) shows students collaborating in order to explore a genuinely difficult issue—the use of violent means in order to achieve morally desirable ends—and trusting their fellow students sufficiently to be relatively honest.

5.1

Getting Started

L1: … we’re going to run this like a Philosophy for Children experience… FEMALE: I would prefer not to take part in it. L1: You don’t want to take part, okay… [noise] L1: … I’m not sure that everybody is listening. Sorry, the ground rules need to be completely understood by everybody before we start, okay? … can you just repeat them please? MALE: Okay, you only speak when you’re given the fluffy teddy bear and you raise your hand if you want to comment and if the person who is speaking then chooses, you or whoever is going to speak next, you give them the fluffy teddy bear. What I do want to say is if there’s anybody here that feels that they’re not going to be able to respect the rules, please leave because we don’t need, like A is saying, if people are going to fight against each other, we don’t need that kind of attitude here. FEMALE: I’ll stay and I’ll listen but I don’t think that it’s fair to [set?] students against each other. I don’t like the idea of it. I just don’t like the idea of it, do you understand what I’m saying? L1: We’re not trying to get students to fight against each other.

17

A Philosophy for Children Inquiry with Prospective Teachers in South Africa

307

FEMALE: It’s going to happen though. L1: This is a philosophical inquiry. So it’s going to be very strictly controlled and you are going to control it. You know the rules … L2: Actually maybe some of you here can remember the rules that you already made yourselves? [Talking together]. FEMALE: … I would prefer not to take part, I don’t want you guys to take me wrong. [noise]. I just don’t want to feel like I’m now friends with B and now I’m disagreeing [with B] because of that. I don’t want that. [Talking together]. FEMALE: I think there’s one rule that, I think, especially now with what we’re going to discuss: be open-minded, very open-minded with whatever people are going to say. Understand where everybody comes and why they are saying what they are saying and how it affects them and it’s not a personal attack on anybody. FEMALE: I think that we’re entering this with a good spirit but I would like us to have some reservation if things do get out of hand because it’s still tentative and sensitive – nobody’s planning for that to happen but if it does, we can just call a timeout. [Talking together]. L2: … the purpose of an enquiry is simply to open up as many different perspectives as we can so that each of you can go away and decide what you think for yourself. It’s not a place to tell other people what to think … the whole purpose of doing it here is so that you will be able to think about how I can do this in a classroom - because you will have experiences of very difficult subjects coming up. And you don’t want to be the kind of teacher who thinks, oh well, we can’t talk about that because there’ll be trouble. You want to teach people a way in which they can share opinions and disagree without getting out the knives, as it were. So, let’s just do it once to remind you of how it works.

5.2

Inquiring Together

FEMALE: What must I say now? I believe that it is a realistic ideal or an expectation. Must I give a reason? Yes, I must give a reason. Because it’s viable because there is money available that’s why I believe it’s realistic. There is money for other things so why not spend it on education? FEMALE: Is it realistic? Yes, I think it is … So now politicians have so much power and they’re being paid over and above what they need. The amount of money that a politician makes can build houses, can feed children, can feed families, can pay, if it’s necessary for you to still pay for education. I know that what we’re asking if free education is realistic. I think yes, it is if the money put into all the unnecessary industries [sic], can be taken out, put into schools so that resources can be made available so that the children who really can’t afford it, don’t have to pay… FEMALE: You just said now that the children who can’t afford it don’t have to pay. That still means it’s not free to everyone, right? At the same time, as nice as it is because I know how it is to not have, [not] to be able to pay. At the same time, if everything was free there would be – like even us teachers, imagine if all the children in our classes never paid anything, where’s our salaries? … So, it’s realistic in a way but at the same time, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect everything for free, but I do believe that if those who really want to and they can’t afford it that they should be given the opportunity.

308

L. Green and J. Condy

MALE: I’m just kind of repeating something that somebody else said earlier but it’s basically – how do you determine who can’t afford it?… I was asked now [unclear], how do you determine who is poor? … look, in my opinion … it’s something that I believe is not realistic. What I do believe is education can be made affordable … if you achieve a certain level, if you achieve 80% and above in all your subjects, it means that you worked damn hard to get where you are. You then deserve to be rewarded by society or whatever the case may be, by the government with a free education, right? FEMALE: I agree with what C said, but also, what B said in that – we should, I mean if South Africa can afford our president to live in a R200 million house, I mean they should also fund students that actually do want to learn and actually do not have the funds to do that - actually study for free. So why not invest in education instead of a lifestyle? FEMALE: Okay, it is realistic I believe because our constitution demands that education is compulsory. You can’t make a rule and not have something to buffer that rule. So, for that reason you have to have something in place to support that free education… FEMALE: Okay, I’d just like to say that I agree with what you’re saying but then again, okay, like B said, you give the people the opportunity [those] who have worked hard for it, give them a free education, things like that. But then what happens to people who have barriers to learning or poor people who haven’t had the resources that other people have been given? So, there’s always going to be a fair and unfair – so you have to think of things from all aspects, okay? … I do agree that if someone’s really working hard and they need help, then help them because there is money to help them. FEMALE: I know I wasn’t going to say something, but I can see that this is going in a peaceful way and it’s not getting out of hand. But what I wanted to say was I’ve been listening to everyone’s responses, and it shocks me that people still feel that it’s not, not that it’s not realistic, but that it shouldn’t be in place. It should be in place. We deserve it as a country. Look at places like – okay I know it’s difficult to compare to Switzerland or to [unclear] and to those places because they obviously have maybe a better government in place and more funding and more tax. They pay more tax so that they are able to. If South African citizens were willing to pay maybe an alumnae tax so that means everybody who graduates from university pays an extra 2% on their salary, do you know that you can educate the whole of South Africa just with that, seriously. FEMALE: Like B said, you have to work towards something; it’s ethics. You have to work towards something. You have to know that what you’re doing is worth something. So maybe not free tertiary education but definitely primary and secondary school… FEMALE: Oh, I was actually going to say the same thing, so ja. FEMALE: Okay, I just have a question that I want to ask. If education is free how good would your education be?… FEMALE: Okay, yes, it is realistic. I will maintain that because you brought up a very salient point, A, when you spoke about how some people deserve merit, based on their pass rate [level]. FEMALE: I like the point where you said there’s a straight line and we all start on the straight line, and we go to the race. But my concern is that some people are walking; some people are in Ferraris and some people are in borrowed cars. And my concern for #FeesMustFall is, if we offer only a pre-tertiary opportunity, that is going to privatize tertiary education. FEMALE: I’m referring to C’s question. You say that if education is free - what will education be like? … I think it depends on the teacher because I personally know if you’re a good teacher then you will look at different strategies to teach that child because I know of

17

A Philosophy for Children Inquiry with Prospective Teachers in South Africa

309

teachers that have, like, all the resources and they are lazy. They don’t think. So, I personally think it depends on the teacher and not free education … MALE: I actually think that it is not realistic to have free education at tertiary level. The reason being … The infrastructures need to be paid for, like the buildings, the maintenance. The residences need to be cleaned, all of those. Are those - everything, is that supposed to be paid by the government? FEMALE: I believe that there can be free education but not at tertiary level. Maybe we start it at the primary school level, we have to take baby steps. But also saying that, what I’m thinking is okay, we have free education at primary school level, at high school level and if it goes further, how will the salaries of the people who are teaching be affected?… Not a lot of people will actually go into teaching because they see, look here, this is for free. I’m only going to get this salary for the rest of my life and how am I going to live with that forever and ever. I want to send my child to such a school. Okay it might be free but then that teacher is not going to give a damn about my child… FEMALE: That is why I say, or I mean, to go to university it should be free, like I said, so that everybody has that same opportunity. FEMALE: I agree with you D and I disagree. The reason is – I agree with the whole thing of incentives, right? [I disagree] because if it’s free, … all the kids from schools are going to come stand here. Some of them don’t even really want to study but it’s free, so let’s go… What about somebody who came from a really, really difficult life, wants to be here, can make it but even if they try really hard, they’re only getting like 60% because that’s the best they can do. Do you understand what I’m saying? I had a kid in my class who tried to work really hard, and she only got 60%. But she tried her best all the time; that was her best that she could do … So, there’s a lot of things that must be taken into consideration. It’s not as easy as just saying let’s give free for everyone. FEMALE: If it does become free, I highly doubt it’s going to be free at the teachers’ expense. Okay? Because at the end of the day we need to live. FEMALE: … We need to change our mind-sets. Maybe, I don’t want to say go down a communist route. I don’t want to go down that – I’m sounding like my grandfather. But maybe, maybe that’s the best. You don’t know, we’re all one salary, everybody. Everybody works hard, you know what I mean? I’m just saying, I’m not saying it’s going to happen, it’s an example. So, we just need to, we need to take away that individual - what do you say, that individualistic – I don’t want to say selfish because sometimes you can’t help it.

It became clear that the inquiry had covered not just the chosen question, but several other questions as well and that a new focus was required. The students selected the following question from the list they had generated: “Was the nature of the protest necessary?” The extract below shows the students growing in confidence and expressing themselves more fully, with greater trust in the community.

5.3

Inquiring About a Controversial Issue

MALE: Okay, many of us joined the protest and we marched with our fellow students, with our placards, singing our songs and I think that is effective. Everybody standing together marching to parliament, handing over memorandums. That I think was effective. But when

310

L. Green and J. Condy

you start vandalizing things that just throws everything out of control and it creates havoc, and I don’t think that was necessary. MALE: I think it was necessary. First of all, the government of South Africa, this is the only language that they understand … We must choose the right way for them to listen to us. If vandalism is the way, you must use [it] so that they can listen to us, and they must know that you are here. So, if you just march peacefully to parliament, they will just ignore us. If we break those windows in parliament, they will know that you are here… [Talking together, some laughter] FEMALE: It’s not funny. FEMALE: Imagine you are being beaten up for trying to protect something that is right, and you’re not supposed to respond in anger. Are you supposed to just sit there and say, no, it’s okay, I’m just going to take whatever you guys give me. No, they stood up for what they wanted. Yes, some of them did take it a bit overboard, I do agree with that. I definitely do, breaking into stores and stuff, that is not on … if you have a problem with parliament, you go and graffiti on their wall, #FeesMustFall, go make it known … Go and graffiti on his car. That car that could have paid for your university education … I understand the anger … FEMALE: I understand what he’s saying and what you’re saying because that is how it is here; they don’t take notice if you don’t act in a wild manner or whatever. But my thing is don’t vandalize my car if I have nothing to do with it … Go break their house, that is their problem because they need to listen. But don’t go into your students’, your own friends’ houses or into their stuff there … That is not right because they did nothing to you. So I just feel, yes, they must listen. Yes, do whatever you have to do because that’s how it is right here. But don’t do it to the people who don’t deserve it because tomorrow comes, she’s sitting with a broken car that can’t be fixed. MALE: But it’s sometimes just about what you value, what you think is right. FEMALE: … unfortunately, we live in a country where our leaders don’t listen to us, so we have to break stuff, like you said … I think we need to look at our own nature … and the nature that we are teaching our younger generation, [that] it’s okay to break something to be heard. It’s the state that we’re in now but is it where we should be in the next 20 years? We, as the up-coming, rising leaders in this nation, need to learn to listen to people better and change the nature of the conversation… They just wanted to be heard and I think we as teachers can be their voice. We can be the medium in which to help our younger generation we’re going to teach … You are the messenger. You are the change. It’s going to take two or three generations but hopefully in that change we’re not going to have people breaking stuff to be heard. They’re going to feel like their voice is valuable enough because we’ve taught them that. FEMALE: I must say I’m proud to be a part of this because it’s the first time – in the beginning of my first year, we were very apart from each other, and we were backstabbing [unclear] or what do you call it? Because of… like the last few weeks a lot of people had something bad to say on social media, on Facebook especially and in certain groups… And I’m glad this is happening now because we must stop complaining and stand up for what we believe … if you want to make a change we must stand up and stand together. FEMALE: I would say I agree with the whole process that #FeesMustFall but the vandalism for me was a bit – we are teachers, future teachers. What kind of a message are we sending, then, to people. And for me personally, it was really scary and what was shocking was how people would turn on each other like students turning against each other and missing the point that the person that they were supposed to vandalize – not that I’m saying it’s

17

A Philosophy for Children Inquiry with Prospective Teachers in South Africa

311

right - it’s the government … Our lives were also in danger at some point … I mean, was it necessary? FEMALE: I think that was my biggest fear. I’m not even in res [residence] but when that message came up on Facebook, my first thought was, those people are sitting there, like sitting ducks and they’re just going to be taken and I think when you take someone’s choice away that is where you’ve drawn the line too far… We shouldn’t fear each other. We shouldn’t turn on each other. So I totally agree with what you and you are saying and we need to do something about that. Change doesn’t mean taking everyone out that doesn’t agree with you. MALE: Okay, I also got the message late at night that students were going to come into our rooms and take us out of our rooms and stuff. I’m not really a scared guy, so I thought, they can come … I got the call in the morning; I must come remove my car because the protesters are going to come and they’re going to maybe vandalise cars … All right, we parked our cars. When we came back units were vandalized, sprayed with fire extinguishers and stuff … The students were running out of their rooms, they couldn’t breathe. But the way I felt was like there was a group there of maybe about 15 protesters, if I stand up, how am I going to know, is my friend going to support me to stop these guys? Everybody was afraid, just to – maybe protect themselves. Everybody was afraid because you weren’t sure if you’re going to have people that’s going to stand with you. FEMALE: … at the end, when I went back and sat still, I said to myself, a victory for one will be a victory for all. So, at the end of all of these things that were happening, [in] the past weeks, I’m looking at my children. … Some years from now, they will be sitting like us. They will be more privileged … There will be a brighter future for them actually - that was for me, actually an eye opener, that I have belief. I need to stand up for those beliefs. I’m [not] going to do it in the same way that others are doing it but I need to stand up for what I believe in.

6

Discussion

This was not a model inquiry but a work in progress. The questions that students raised in their dialogue were not always deeply philosophical, but they were often both of common concern and perplexing. Students made unsupported claims at times but, as Splitter and Sharp [12] and Daniel [17] argue, it takes considerable time for a skilled community of inquiry to develop. Our students had received only a relatively brief introduction to P4wC (four 3-h classes, as described earlier) before their class time was required for other curriculum content. Nevertheless, a few months later, when the above inquiry took place, we were able to observe that they had begun to internalize some basic reasoning moves, which they used when inquiring together about an issue that really mattered to them. Below are some examples of thinking moves used by our students as in Fig. 1. An utterance by one student combines several reasoning moves: I agree with you S3 and I disagree. The reason [I disagree] is … I agree with the whole thing of incentives, right? [I disagree] because if it’s free, … all the kids from schools are going to come stand here. Some of them don’t even really want to study but it’s free, so let’s go. The students sometimes struggled to express themselves, but by means of reasonable, respectful communication, they offered each member of the

312

L. Green and J. Condy

Fig. 1 Examples of students’ thinking moves

community, including those who did not speak, options to think in different and deeper ways about the issues raised by the protest. The students’ discourse provided evidence that they were developing as critical thinkers in the sense that they were making use of thinking moves, as illustrated above. Critical thinking is interpreted in different ways. A critical thinker may interrogate current socio-political reality with the intention of understanding what underlies problems and generating solutions. He or she might raise many questions and seek creative answers. The transcript shows students engaging in this form of critical thinking, although they seldom provided sufficient evidence to support their opinions. Critical thinking also means thinking according to criteria. Criteria (sometimes called standards) by which to evaluate quality are usually set by people who have expertise and experience in a particular domain. Some criteria for ‘good’ thinking which are commonly accepted by philosophers and other thinkers, and considered important in a community of inquiry, are: the provision of confirmable evidence (good reasons), a commitment to self-correction and sensitivity to context. Although there was little, if any, evidence that our students publicly questioned the validity of their own or others’ reasons, the inquiry suggested that they had begun to recognize the importance of providing reasons for their opinions and were at times sensitive to context. Moreover, they displayed some of the characteristics of reasonableness listed in the quotation from Lipman [4, 18] cited earlier, and they engaged in “reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding on what to believe and do”, which is how Ennis [19, p. 10] describes critical thinking.

17

A Philosophy for Children Inquiry with Prospective Teachers in South Africa

313

Becoming a critical thinker who can reason well and is disposed to do so is not only desirable to equip citizens for democratic participation. It also increases the likelihood of academic and workplace success, something that may indirectly influence citizenship. The transcript illustrates the development of dialogic reasoning, but this is not all that is required for democratic citizenship, nor all that P4wC can teach. What is clear from the above extracts is that trust, as well as a respect for reasoning, was beginning to develop within this community of students. Despite the uncertainty and fear associated with the situation a number of culturally diverse students felt safe enough, and brave enough, to express their thoughts, and in attempting to share them, opened up a safe space for inquiry. Even though at first, one student was concerned about possible negative effects on personal relationships, generally the students welcomed the process of the inquiry. We cannot know to what extent the students’ sense of community, which had both cognitive and emotional dimensions, had developed as a consequence of their previous community of inquiry sessions. It seems likely, however, that the P4wC sessions played a role. These sessions had given students practical opportunities to experiment with an alternative way of relating to each other and to knowledge. In a stressful context the students were prepared to listen to other positions and respond to them respectfully, and they remained open about their own positions. The community of inquiry is a context sometimes described as an educational space “grounded in collaboration, caring and intellectual partnership” [20, p. 12]. In a community engaging in collaborative inquiry, respect is accompanied by empathy and sensitivity to context. Respect for persons is as important as respect for the procedures of inquiry. Hannam [21] comments that, while it is desirable to emphasize reasoning, it is crucially important to emphasize reasoning in community with others. She writes: “Giving attention to the plurality of that community, and to the uniqueness of each one present in the community, is perhaps the most important aspect of our work” [21, p. 557]. Gardner [22] reminds us that reasoning together requires the commitment of all parties to a reasoning process—and an acceptance that this process is independent of their own opinions. This is something that might be slow to develop and require at least one inquiry about the meaning of reasonableness. She points out that when the aim is to come to an agreement, those committed to reason will wish others to agree only if they are genuinely convinced that the other’s perspective is the most reasonable one to adopt. “I want you to adopt what I believe to be the correct perspective only if and because you see that this is the most reasonable thing to do” [22, p. 85]. This sets high standards for the quality of reasoning by all parties, besides downplaying the possible influence of other, more personal considerations, depending on the contexts in which agreement is being sought. The students did not yet trust the process sufficiently to be able to stay with and explore disagreements. It seemed to be a common assumption that disagreement was something to be avoided because it was likely to lead to heated argument and possible humiliation and might destroy a friendship. As one student said, ‘I just don’t want to feel like I’m now friends with A and now I’m disagreeing [with A]’.

314

L. Green and J. Condy

If this view is the norm in the various communities the students inhabit, it is not surprising that disagreement is anxiety-provoking and tends to be avoided unless one is looking for a fight. Several students were, however, prepared to disagree openly, although we did not record any students engaging in further dialogue in order to explore their differences and the reasons for them. We have noted avoidance of disagreement in other inquiries, and it seems likely that another reason is the growing tendency, at least among young people in South Africa, to believe that respect for everyone’s right to have an opinion implies that all opinions are of equal value and to consider it disrespectful to disagree or ask for reasons. Persons may be of equal value, but opinions can be evaluated. To avoid inadvertently nurturing a relativist position, Lipman recommended in an interview [4] that, in addition to asking procedural and substantive questions, teachers or other facilitators should offer their own opinions and reasons at times, although bearing in mind the risk, in unequal power situations such as school classrooms, of unintentionally indoctrinating others. Makaiau has proposed that, “Instead of recreating democratic life as it is, educators are in the privileged position to create opportunities for students to experience democratic life as it could be …” [23, p. 25]. This may be true occasionally, but it is more common for formal education to be structured hierarchically. Contexts influence the extent to which it is possible to model ideal democratic practice, which is very different from conditions in most democracies. In our institution we were never in a position to be completely democratic and, indeed, were expected by students to structure activities and set boundaries. Although we offered students choices, we were limited by the role prescribed for us and by the expectations of students themselves. When facilitating inquiries we took responsibility for monitoring procedure, as is common in the early stages of the development of any inquiring community but welcomed attempts by students to take on this role. We chose not to actively facilitate the process, but our presence alone was likely to limit student engagement.

7

Conclusion

We agree with Edenberg [1, p. 2], who suggests that “What is needed is a form of civic education that can teach children to respectfully engage with those with whom they disagree.” If, however, the goal is not just to disagree peaceably but to arrive at some form of agreement, this seems to require that respect for reasoned dialogue and a commitment to collaboration become the norm in human communities. Reasoning in isolation is not the same as reasoning in community. Considering one’s own advantage is not the same as deliberating about the wellbeing of society, where differing perspectives are offered, often with considerable vehemence. Schools are the obvious setting in which to nurture respectful reasoning in community and Philosophy for/with Children is a promising means by which children and young people might acquire over time habits of collaboration. It is claimed that Philosophy for Children has the potential to change entire societies

17

A Philosophy for Children Inquiry with Prospective Teachers in South Africa

315

by changing the nature of schooling. If, however, teachers have little experience of respectful, reasoned dialogue, it will be difficult for them to develop in their students the attitudes and skills of the ideal citizen of a democracy. Moreover, if adult society generally does not appear to value such behaviour, a new generation is unlikely to take it seriously, either in South Africa or elsewhere. … when the above inquiry took place, we were able to observe that they [our students] had begun to internalize some basic reasoning moves … Lena Green and Janet Condy

Acknowledgements The inquiry reported in this chapter was part of a research project funded by Stellenbosch University’s Institute for Advanced Study, which took place between 2014 and 2017. We gratefully acknowledge this support and thank the pre-service education students involved for giving us permission to record their experience and use it for research purposes.

References 1. Edenberg E (2018) Cultivating reasonableness in future citizens. On Educ: J Res Debate 1(1) 2. Green L (2004) Nurturing democratic virtues: educators’ perspectives. S Afr J Educ 24(2):108–113 3. Dewey J (1916) Democracy and education. Macmillan, New York 4. Brandt R (1988) On philosophy in the curriculum: a conversation with Matthew Lipman. Educ Leadersh 46(1):34–37 5. Costa-Carvalho C, Mendonça D (2017) Thinking as a community: reasonableness and emotions. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, London, pp 127–134 6. Bruner J (1997) The culture of education. Harvard University Press, Boston 7. Lipman M (1988) Philosophy goes to school. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 8. Lipman M (1987) Preparing teachers to teach for thinking. Philos Today 31(1):90–96 9. Lipman M (2009) Philosophy for children: some assumptions and implications. In: Marsal E, Dobashi T, Weber TB (eds) Children philosophize worldwide. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 10. Lipman M, Sharp AM, Oscanyan FS (1980) Philosophy in the classroom. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 11. Baehr J (2015) Cultivating good minds. https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/549 63921/cultivating-good-minds 12. Splitter L, Sharp AM (1995) Teaching for better thinking: the classroom community of inquiry. Australian Council for Educational Research Ltd, Melbourne 13. Baumfield V (2017) Changing minds. The professional learning of teachers in a classroom community of inquiry. In: Gregory M, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York, pp 119–126 14. Green L, Condy J, Chigona A (2012) Developing the language of thinking within a classroom community of inquiry: pre-service teachers’ experiences. S Afr J Educ 32(3):319–330 15. Green L, Condy J (2016) Philosophical inquiry as a pedagogical tool to implement the CAPS curriculum: final year teachers’ perceptions. S Afr J Educ 36(1):1–8 16. Green L (2009) Education for democracy: using the classroom community of inquiry to develop habits of reflective judgement in South African schools. Thinking Skills and Creativity 4(3):178–184 17. Daniel MF (2021) In the footsteps of Matthew Lipman: dialogue among peers and dialogical thinking. Anal Teach Philos Praxis 41(1):62–79

316

L. Green and J. Condy

18. Lipman M (1991) Thinking in education. Cambridge University Press, New York 19. Ennis RH (1987) A taxonomy of critical thinking dispositions and abilities. In: Boykoff Baron J, Sternberg RJ (eds) Teaching thinking skills: theory and practice. Freeman, New York 20. Lane JM, Burrows MD (2016) Philosophy in education. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham 21. Hannam P (2018) Does it matter how freedom is conceptualized in the community of philosophical inquiry in the Lipman tradition? In: Duthie E, Moriyon FG, Loro RR (eds) Family resemblances. Anaya, Madrid, pp 554–561 22. Gardner ST (2012) Love them or leave them? Respect requires neither. In: Marsal E, Weber B, Gardner ST (eds) Respect: how do we get there? Volume 19 of philosophy in schools. Litverlag, Vienna 23. Makaiau AS (2017) A citizen’s education. The philosophy for children Hawai’i approach to deliberative pedagogy. In: Gregory MR, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, London, pp 19–26

Lena Green has retired as Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of the Western Cape but remains an Extraordinary Professor in the Faculty of Education. She previously taught both early years and matriculation level school children and, as a registered Educational Psychologist, was involved at the University in the development and supervision of both teachers and educational psychologists. Her research interest is in the teaching of thinking, and she is qualified to practice and train in Philosophy for Children and Thinking Maps and to practice Instrumental Enrichment. She has published a number of journal articles and chapters in books and edited “Schools as Thinking Communities”, published in 2014.

Janet Condy was the Director of the Literacy Development Research Unit at CPUT. She has been teaching for the past 41 years; 19 years in mainstream schools and a Special School and for the past 24 years she has been developing teachers at the Education Faculty of CPUT. She graduated with her Doctoral degree in 2006 and in 2019 was inaugurated as a Full Professor. Her teaching and research focus has been primarily on Literacy, including Inclusive Education, Digital Storytelling, and Philosophy for Children. She has published over 60 articles, supervised 3 Doctoral students and 13 Masters students.

Part V Philosophical Inquiry and Reasonableness for Global Citizenship

The Subversive Potential of the P4C-COI Pedagogy

18

Venus Ae Kaiel Basa

Because human beings are capable of becoming active agents on their world, their interaction with nature can make a difference. Persons have the power to humanize nature itself. [1, p. 41]

Abstract

This chapter aims to highlight the subversive potential of the P4C-COI pedagogy against the contemporary oppressive world order. This chapter will discuss how the tradition of the Philosophy of Childhood, along with the practices of the Community of Inquiry, can create interruptions to the networks of this world order. The author provides a closer look at multidimensional thinking, dialogue self-correction, and how these elements are emancipatory in nature especially under the domain of P4C-COI. This pedagogy, if envisioned as the master educational program in society, will produce multidimensional thinkers V. A. K. Basa (B) University of Santo Tomas, España, Manila, Philippines e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_18

319

320

V. A. K. Basa

whose values are inevitably conscious of the human other, thereby achieving a society of genuine freedom (or at least as close to it as possible). Graphic Abstract

P4C-COI as a Potentially Subversive Pedagogy

Keywords

Emancipatory . Education inquiry . Dialogue

1

.

Multidimensional thinking

.

Community of

Introduction

It is a common conception that education is emancipatory, but what kind of education possesses this emancipatory potential in its highest degree? What kind of education could possibly be resistant to the influences of the Empire? In this paper, I argue that the Community of Inquiry Pedagogy, rooted on the principles of Philosophy for Children and Philosophy of Childhood, contains in it the necessary elements to interrupt the subtle oppressive world order we are all trapped within. The author assumes that the claim of Negri and Hardt, that a new world order is upon us, is true.1 The Empire is a contemporary world political order. It is a network of power centers throughout the globe, all functioning together to determine the trajectories of economies and human life. Unfortunately, the educational

1

We shall not be discussing particular aspects of the Empire in this chapter.

18 The Subversive Potential of the P4C-COI Pedagogy

321

system has evolved to be just one of the many networks and tools of the Empire in continuing its reign in the globalized world.2 In response to the developments of the world, the educational system has adopted a form of pedagogy that is motivated by fear. Arie Kizel conceptualizes how the system has created students who are passive and dependent upon external disciplinary sources [2, p. 31]. This Pedagogy of Fear also hinders a young person’s essential and what-could-be robust educational growth. Kizel says that an education based on fear pathologizes children and childhood [2, p. 31]. This pedagogy is rooted from the educational system’s perception on how challenging the world has become, thus producing programs with slogans like, “No child left behind.” But this pedagogy achieves the opposite of those programs because it keeps on relying on measuring students with ‘yardsticks.’ Children are further objectified depending on their “accomplishments” and “abilities” [2, p. 31]. As a result, children (and parents) develop a kind of consciousness on how they view themselves and they are pathologized in a sense that one also measures oneself according to how society expects them to be. Kizel advances Philosophy for/with Children as an antidote to this pedagogy since it is through P4wC and CoI do children get the chance to challenge themselves and confront new and fresh questions that lead towards self-correction, without the fear of not living up to the standards set for them. This Pedagogy of Fear has been passed over and over through generations. It is evident in the structured assessments that society has put into place all around us. It also manifests when the child enters the school and eventually graduates, and even beyond in the form of continual re-licensing and other mechanisms in place which make sure that everyone participating in society is “fit” and “up to standards.” As Kizel further elaborates, society has been so focused on repairing and fulfilling the “deficiencies” of children that we have forgotten to instead support and build upon their innate capacities and strengths [2, p. 33].

2

Philosophy of Childhood What do you want to be when you grow up?

Children are trained to have an answer to this question at an early age. Most often, they are trained not to be encouraged or inspired, but to promote a sense of destination. It is as if the attainment of a child’s ambition of a future profession would deliver satisfaction to the society around him. It does not end here. Children are encouraged, and even coerced, to think and aim for professions which would bring social prestige and economic advantage.

2

Particularly in the Philippines wherein the goal of education is to produce resources for the economy.

322

V. A. K. Basa

In various contexts, especially in Asia, this culture of manipulation runs deep. It begins from the family, extends to the child’s relatives and immediate community, and is solidified by the institutions surrounding the child. A physically “beautiful” child is likened to celebrities and entered into the show-business industry; a curious and inquisitive child will be proclaimed a future lawyer; a scientifically inclined child will be a doctor, and one of our worst (and funny) preconceptions: a tall child must get into sports, particularly basketball. This is how society views the nature of a child. She is a potential adult, “an unfinished being” whose value can only be ascertained in reference to what she will become someday [3, p. 7]. The child is also overly objectified or depersonalized as an object of hard sciences [4]. Not that there is anything wrong with the desire to gain mastery of the physiological well-being of the child, but the problem of society is its hyperfocus on the child’s scientific growth—as if she is a mere science experiment that we need to track how much it grows in length and weight. For David Kennedy [4], there must be a decentering from the standard normative account on childhood [4, p. 1]. It is only through this that other perspectives can interact, and we can begin to ask the important questions of “how and why children have meant, mean, and might mean for the world” [4, p. 3]. Matthews, in an essay “A Philosophy of Childhood,” advances a conception of childhood different from the deficiency models our society is used to [3]. He calls it a mirror-image model wherein “the strengths of childhood tend to be the weaknesses of adulthood, and vice versa [3, p. 14].” What one might appreciate in this model is it negates the perception of the child as a potential adult. It brings back the child’s inherent value as a person without relying on the possibilities in front of the child. He writes, “there are some things that children may do better, while they are still children, than they will ever do as adults [3, p. 8].” This is the first acknowledgement that there is something present in childhood which properly belongs only to the child. It is an acknowledgement that a child is a being in itself with unique qualities and abilities, but Matthew’s position does not stop here. As mentioned, his conception of childhood is based on a mirror-image model wherein the child’s unique abilities are recognized as strengths, while the adult lacks these abilities. For example, children can recognize complex patterns in spaces where the adult, burdened by all the baggage of the world, can no longer see these patterns. Another example is the well-known illustration of a boa constrictor which swallowed an elephant from the book Le Petit Prince [5]. Adults quickly dismiss the illustration as a drawing of a hat, but the child sees something else. Matthews says: Children have fresh eyes to see what most of us adults no longer see, curiosity to understand what we take for granted, and minds that detect puzzles, incongruities, and perplexities that we have, most of us, long ago become inured to. [3, p. 14]

The child also possesses this immense capacity for challenging established structures and collective prejudices. The child does not usually perceive the biases

18 The Subversive Potential of the P4C-COI Pedagogy

323

already ingrained in the cognitive schema of an adult. She tends not to just overlook, but in the first place, not even detect differences. On the other hand, adults are loaded with information, skills, and practical knowledge on how to navigate society. Matthews’ conception of childhood advances that child rearing and education must do their best to help children “gain some of our adult advantages without losing as many childhood advantages most of us adults have already lost” [3, p. 14]. In a way, the objective is to progress not immediately, but gradually— maybe as slow as the growth of a child. The aim here, then, is to make tomorrow a little bit better than today. In his book, The Well of Being, Kennedy also elaborates on how society has been perceiving childhood [4]. In the Western rationalist tradition, Plato and Aristotle strongly associated children with the appetitive nature [4, p. 8]. They are beings with incomplete qualities, they cannot exercise restraint and discipline when it comes to their passions and wants. Today, the sciences also fall guilty of objectifying children in the attempt to know them. Kennedy counters that children actually possess “a transgressive wisdom, the wisdom of the liminal and the marginalized, of reversal and play and subversion of conventional norms and understanding [4, p. 8]”. In a dialogue between David Kennedy and Walter Kohan, they regarded the capacity of a child as a powerful being, more powerful than any other being [6, p. 7]. This is in relation to aion, a time word which “designates the intensity of time in human life—a destiny, a duration, an unnumbered movement, not successive, but intense [7, p. 45].” Reinforcing the movement against a deficient model of understanding children, childhood in this sense is a mode or a way of being rather than simply a phase of being that must be outgrown. Childhood is seen as powerful because it contains an immense intensity of being. It is therefore a “specific form of experience in life” [6, p. 7]. And it is in this thought that this chapter maintains that any form of authentic revolution in the society must begin with the child. For the experiences of the child are not mere activities to pass time by—the experiences and thoughts of the child might just be the most powerful moments of a person’s life. Moments which are capable of revolutionizing the future, of shaping the world for genuine liberty.

3

The Community of Inquiry as Pedagogy

There is this saying, “the blind cannot lead the blind.”3 This assumption is usually accepted, and as a consequence, the idea that those who are in the same level of epistemic knowledge must seek the help of those who are more experienced, more knowledgeable, and therefore wiser to make sense of the world. In our context, it reinforces that children must look up to adults when trying to know and understand the world they are living in. Maybe this is also why the idea of a Community of

3

For the original source of this adage, see Matthew 15:14 (KJV).

324

V. A. K. Basa

Inquiry of children sounds preposterous at first. What can children possibly know on their own aside from trivial and insignificant little facts here and there? Matthew Lipman, recognized as the founder of Philosophy for Children, acknowledges that the notion of a Community of Inquiry as pedagogy is a surprising one, because the elements inside of it are not normally juxtaposed. He says that “all inquiry may be predicated upon community, but it does not follow that all community is predicated upon inquiry [8, p. 83].” Lipman maintains that inquiry is generally communal because it is always based on some sort of “foundation of language, of scientific operations, of symbolic systems, of measurements and so on, all of which are uncompromisingly social [8, p. 83].” To further understand how the Community of Inquiry can become a master educational paradigm, Lipman elaborates on the five features of the COI: it is not aimless; its direction is where the argument takes it; the process is dialogical; it must be considered in light of reasonableness, creativity, and care; and lastly, it must operationalize and implement the definitions of critical, creative, and caring thinking, i.e. multidimensional thinking [8, p. 83]. In conceptualizing the aim of the Community of Inquiry, Lipman draws from Justus Buchler a very important attitude when speaking of aims and conclusions [8]. Buchler emphasizes that what is important is a sense of intellectual motion— just a bit of progress [8, p. 86]. The aim of a community of inquiry is not to come up with finalized conclusions and foundations. The aim is as simple as a tentative or partial settlement or judgment. In here, there is no obsession with finding the absolute truth. It follows the argument where it leads, but this does not make it aimless. Its aim is significantly different from the traditional aim of education which is to pass on information or canon which should not be questioned. It is this foundation that enables the Community of Inquiry to gracefully flow from any form of discourse. It is what gives COI a kind of inclusivity which runs deeper than merely respecting and tolerating other people’s beliefs and perspectives. The chapter will also discuss the dialogical process of COI in a later section. For now, we shall see the “kind” of thinking that COI employs and develops when the participants think in a community.

4

The Kind of Thinking in COI

In understanding critical thinking, Lipman begins with the acknowledgment that the way we consume knowledge has significantly evolved along with society and technology. Our quest for wisdom has not been as remote as it is now and traditional logic “fits imperfectly in our everyday language and the world that surrounds us” [8, p. 206]. Lipman claims that as a society, we are also now more conscious of the gap or ‘abyss’ separating the kind of thinking we learn from our educational system and the actual decisions and judgments we have to make in everyday

18 The Subversive Potential of the P4C-COI Pedagogy

325

life. He proceeds to endorse the use of standards and criteria in order to qualify what can be considered as “critical thinking”. Now, the mention of standards (and criteria) might be alarming in the beginning, for “standards” usually translate to formulas and the search for absolute answers. As mentioned earlier, this is not the case for COI. In the context of the COI, standards and criteria also emanate from the participants of the inquiry. Generally, these usually are validity, evidential warrant, and consistency. For Lipman, the establishment of standards and criteria within an inquiring community develops cognitive accountability and intellectual responsibility [8, p. 214]. We shall not dive into the discussion of these two concepts. We will, however, emphasize how these two concepts reinforce the self-corrective characteristic of critical thinking. This chapter maintains that the openness to self-correction, the conscious effort to discover one’s own weaknesses and rectify what is at fault, is the most important contribution of critical thinking, and self-correction is not possible without having standards to compare and contrast with. Another important characteristic which we must highlight is critical thinking’s sensitivity to context, i.e., particularities and uniqueness. In a COI, the community examines specific situations with the use of criteria also emanating from the community’s unique experiences and understanding of the world. In the end, what matters most in COI is the reasonableness of judgments made, however tentative and partial they may be.

4.1

Creative Thinking

An indispensable aspect of the community of inquiry is its space for each individual’s expression of herself/himself. Creative thinking, Lipman qualifies, is that “minimal element of idiosyncratic judgment in every artist’s work [8, p. 249].” It is also that element which triggers approaching the topic with a freshness that promotes the creation of a problematique. In the context of a community of inquiry, creative thinking finds a special place, because in inquiry, doubting what is conventionally accepted, challenging what is usually the norm, and questioning common beliefs, are some of the very foundations of inquiring together. Creative thinking thrives in the problematic, and it is this characteristic, which aids the dialogue to move forward (or in case of the creative, any direction is possible). Creative thinking holds a special role in the subservient characteristic of the P4C-COI Pedagogy. Lipman talks about three kinds of creative thinking: amplificative, subservient, and maieutic. Of these, we shall consider especially subservient and maieutic thinking. These two kinds of creative thinking, naturally occurring in the COI dialogue, allow learners to bravely interpret the rules and standards already established around them either by themselves or by the society. Creative thinking allows a person to “bend the rules” as much as possible, in the name of freshness and individual/group expression.

326

4.2

V. A. K. Basa

Caring Thinking

The affective aspect of the human person has been greatly taken for granted throughout the history of philosophizing. Of course, critical thinking has always taken primacy in philosophy—the rational is king. And while creativity can be viewed as aiding the critical, the affective is left for women and children, who are seen as weak and incapable of critical thinking because their emotions usually get the better of them. In the community of inquiry, all these prejudices are eradicated through the cultivation of genuine caring thinking. Caring thinking is the translation of emotions or feelings of a person into a choice, a decision, or a judgment [9, p. 554]. And because it is ever-present in the COI, participants are allowed to open themselves and be vulnerable. This vulnerability can be seen as a “willingness to be transformed by the other—to be affected by the other” [10, p. 242]. Caring, in the community of inquiry, is a kind of thinking that detects ways on how to build and rebuild connections and relationships. It scans approaches on how to further discover the other, it assesses differences and yet respects them. Moreover, caring, in its very nature, “obliterates distinctions and rankings when they threaten to become invidious and, thereby, outlive their usefulness” [8, p. 264]. In other words, caring thinking re-prioritizes the way we see the world. It reminds us that the persons in the community are more important than the inquiry. It humanizes our criticality and creativity. Without emotion, thinking would be flat and uninteresting. Not even the dramatic imagination of the artist would stir us. To care is to focus on that which we respect, to appreciate its worth, to value its value. [8, p. 262]

If earlier, we have established that creative thinking enables one to bravely bend the rules, caring thinking empowers a person to throw them out altogether once the rules threaten what is most important, i.e., persons. As Ann Margaret Sharp puts it, “What we care about is the source of the criteria we use to evaluate ideas, ideals, persons, events, things, and their importance in our lives. And it is these criteria that determine the judgments we make in our everyday lives” [11, p. 209]. It is because of this that caring thinking can be seen as even more powerful and more subservient than critical and creative thinking. And this is why the immersion of participants of COI makes them dangerous to the cold, uncaring world perpetuated by today’s world order. Now, the egalitarian play between the three makes multidimensional thinking. Lipman maintains that thinking entails that there is a certain form of interpenetration and interbreeding between different forms of mental behavior, i.e., reasonableness, creativity, and care. When one thinks, there might not be conscious distinctions among the three, the same way that when we are doing something, our hands naturally supplement each other. The same way goes for thinking and its three dimensions. There is a seamless dialogue, a dynamic relationship among

18 The Subversive Potential of the P4C-COI Pedagogy

327

the three which, when successfully, although subtly, developed makes for multidimensional thinking - the thinking that we aim to germinate in a community of inquiry.4 As mentioned, all of these are dialogical. Multidimensional thinking strives to have a sort of balance between cognitive and affective, between perceptual and conceptual, and so on. This balance, this certain equilibrium, is only possible through dialogue among the three dimensions. And this dialogue is not limited to the internal workings of one participant’s thinking process. This kind of dialogue is both immanent and transcendent in the very spirit of the practice of the Community of Inquiry.

5

The Dialogical Spirit of COI

The power of dialogue is not new in philosophy. In the practice of a community of inquiry, the dialogical process is at the spirit of everything involved. The multidimensional thinking process must be dialogical in itself—a dynamic play among reasonableness, creativity, and caring. Now, when a participant begins to interact with the rest of the community, the interaction, too, is dialogical. In Lipman’s book, one chapter is specifically named “Thinking in Community” [8]. One might wonder why “in” was used rather than thinking with the community. The chapter advances that in the community of inquiry, one is inquiring with the community by thinking in the community. The kind of participation required by COI, according to Sharp, is not simply for the multiplication of intelligence, it is, more importantly, for the “creation of new knowledge and practical judgments in the exchange of perspectives and opinion, the sharing of experiences and the questioning of assumptions” [10, p. 246]. In other words, the participation required is a dialogue with the rest of the community. But it is not limited to that for there is a third kind of dialogue found in the COI. It is the dialogue with the self (through exposure from the community), that makes self-correction possible. Let us further analyze the characteristics of dialogue as it should be for a working community of inquiry. A conversation is an exchange: of feelings, of thoughts, of information, of understanding. A dialogue is a mutual exploration, an investigation, an inquiry. [8, p. 87]

The dialogue in CoI begins with a conversation. Here, Lipman borrows the characterizations made by Saw [12]. In a conversation, there is a rational partnership of freedom and equality among those who converse. Lipman says that for “those who engage in conversation may introduce revelations by which they surprise and delight one another [8, p. 89].” In other words, there is the element of spontaneity

4

I use here the term ‘germinate’ because in a community of inquiry, one doesn’t simply impose how the participants must think. The process is a slow development, like the growth of a seed to a mighty tree.

328

V. A. K. Basa

and guilelessness. For Saw, the essence of a conversation is “its innocence of any ulterior purpose [8, p. 89].” They naturally flow with such authenticity with the persons involved that one opens herself up to be in communication with someone. Moreover, because of the establishment of this openness with each other, the persons involved also feel the responsibility to contribute to the conversation. Thus, once engaged in this authentic communication, one is provoked to think independently. Now, this kind of conversation, once established in the Community of Inquiry, moves to a dialogue.5 If Saw is correct, that the essence of conversation lies in its being nonpurposive, nonmanipulative discourse, then the other end of the discourse spectrum would be occupied by the persuasive arts that are the subject matter of rhetoric. Dialogue evidently lies some where between the two, for it is not wholly free from purpose, and it may well involve arguments whose purpose is to persuade. Dialogue, unlike conversation, is a form of inquiry, and since we follow inquiry wherever it leads, our dialogical behavior cannot be said to be nonpurposive. Nor do the participants in dialogue necessarily refrain from fashioning arguments to persuade other participants of the rightness of their convictions. [8, p. 91]

According to Lipman, aside from qualifying that dialogue, unlike conversation, is not entirely non-purposive, it is important to highlight where dialogue is placed in the discourse spectrum [8]. In the COI dialogue, as established earlier, there is an aim or a goal which the community strives to achieve. But in trying to achieve these provisional judgments, the community is very careful not to allow “monologues” in which a participant dominates the whole discussion and simply tries to persuade the rest of the group without the openness for other inputs or even self-correction. As Sharp puts it, “They are not only conscious of their own thinking but begin examining and correcting each other’s methods and procedures… Participants do not talk about themselves but rather offer meanings to which others may make a response [10, p. 243–244].” In other words, a participant must not be trapped inside one’s own head, i.e., keeping her thoughts to herself, and at the same time, one must also not be domineering during the dialogue wherein others are robbed off the space to respond. These are important qualifications for us to understand what Lipman refers to as the logic of conversational discourse, “The logic of dialogue has its roots in the logic of conversation… a logic that becomes progressively more pronounced as it moves from conversation to dialogue” [8, p. 88]. Having established that a conversation must be the starting point of dialogue, we can now proceed to understanding the COI dialogue itself. Here, Lipman gives what this chapter assumes is the most important qualification of the COI dialogue—that it is a dialogue disciplined by logic [8, p. 92].

5

It must be noted here that we must now depart from Saw’s interpretation of dialogue. For Saw, dialogue involves some kind of manipulation to exact a result. Which we will see is different from the dialogue required in the COI.

18 The Subversive Potential of the P4C-COI Pedagogy

329

As mentioned earlier, the second feature of COI is that it follows where the arguments take it. These arguments, however, cannot advance without reasons. In participating in a community of inquiry, “one must reason in order to follow what is going on in them [8, p. 92].” This is what Lipman means when saying that the COI dialogue is disciplined by logic. Now, this reasonableness, brought by logic, should not be understood in the light of rigid Aristotelian deductive reasoning. The reasoning of the community of inquiry comes from the members of the community itself. In other words, everything begins with the particularities already known by the community. The community establishes criteria to guide it in its inquiry, brings forward initial assumptions, challenges and questions these assumptions, and inquires together on implications and consequences. Finally, the community arrives at provisional judgments based on the members’ dialogue with each other. In an article by Reed-Sandoval and Sykes [13], they emphasize the importance of considering one’s positionality in doing COI. To reinforce our discussion in this chapter, the author would like to highlight how significantly different this approach is from the traditional educational models currently enforced in learning institutions. In the COI, after being presented with a stimulus, the participants raise questions which implicitly indicate the community’s current priorities and interests. From here, the dialogue within the community logically moves “back and forth between a narrower and wider framework [10, p. 245].” This happens because as the community makes claims and further deliberates these claims, it compels the participants to discover evidence that would support the claims made. Thus, the logical and reasoned nature of the COI dialogue emerges. Now, another requirement comes to light. It is the necessity for each member to further deliberate internally, allowing each member to learn from the experiences of others. This sounds almost impossible in our current society.

6

Emancipatory Elements in COI

In recent years, epistemic injustice has been gaining attention as an important aspect of social and political injustice. Epistemic injustice is the idea that we can be unfairly discriminated against in our capacity as a knower based on prejudices about the speaker, such as gender, social background, ethnicity, race, sexuality, tone of voice, accent, and so on [14, p. 1]. As philosophy gets a better understanding of epistemic injustice, we also gain a better understanding of its roots and how to counter or prevent it from happening. For Miranda Fricker, the obliteration of epistemic injustice produces an ideal scenario wherein everyone has the opportunity to communicate, and be heard, what she deems relevant to the situation without any kind of prejudice.

330

V. A. K. Basa

Such a situation would be one in which speakers could be confident they would encounter no testimonial injustice. Not only would hearers be intellectually and emotionally open (critically open, as I have put it) to the content of what is said, but they would also be open (“lovingly attentive,” to use Murdoch’s phrase) to the person of the speaker. [15, p. 304]

For the sake of this chapter, we shall not go into depth into the many factors and elements considering epistemic injustice. We will rather focus on how the Community of Inquiry Pedagogy, grounded on a Philosophy of Childhood, has the ability to obliterate epistemic injustice perpetuated by the empire’s networks. The community of inquiry guarantees that Fricker’s ideal scenario is possible. Take for example a scenario illustrated by Lipman, wherein he imagines a girl named Joan: In the lecture courses she attends, she is normally a detached observer. The lecturers impress her with their erudition, and she is seldom so troubled by what any of them say as to think of asking a question, let alone making a comment or developing a thesis. But now she attends a seminar in which the instructor acts only as a facilitator of the dialogue, although at times she pauses to press individual students about what they may be taking for granted in their comments. And now the dialogue intensifies, and Joan comes to realize that there is another side to the issue that she had formerly understood from just a single point of view. And still the dialogue continues to intensify; soon Joan realizes there may be many sides, not just one or two. She leans forward, listening intently, and suddenly there bursts from her a comment that surprises her as much as it does the others. It does not settle the discussion, which sweeps on to the end of the period. Perhaps it made an important contribution; perhaps it made only a minor one. But as Joan goes home, what she takes with her and dwells upon is the comment she made, how she might have made it better, and how wonderful it was that she made it at all. She had been swept up in the dialogue, had overcome her normal reticence and self-consciousness, and had been brought to utterance. And it was she who spoke, she herself, in the first person; nor did it escape her, as she spoke, that the others were listening raptly to her – an intoxicating experience for one who has never had it before. She told them her thoughts and she made them think – this is what goes through her mind as she walks along, still trying to figure out what happened to have so intensely moved her. Once again she rehearses what she said and savors it, even while reproaching herself for not having made the comment still more trenchantly. But as to how it happened, all she knows is that it – the situation – drew her utterance out of her. It did not teach her what to say, but it created an environment in which she found it important to say what she wanted to say. To do so, she had to teach herself how to speak as it were for the first time. [8, p. 256]

Like the described scenario, Joan was only able to articulate herself because the community provides a sense of security. The cognitive movement that happened here was only possible precisely because prejudice was not in the picture, as Fricker imagines. Further, effective dialogue not only draws the person ‘out’ but it also ignites a creative cognitive movement inside the person which encourages her to continue the dialogue internally. It promotes this exhilarating reflexivity that one cannot simply forego what has occurred. Now, we try to imagine if in a political tone, this is the kind of attitude that citizens carry with them. There will always be a constant renewal and reconstruction of thoughts, regulations, or even institutions because the dialogue never ends.

18 The Subversive Potential of the P4C-COI Pedagogy

6.1

331

An Interruption in the Empire

Restricted and regulated by bureaucratic rationality, the current educational system is ironically a major barrier in the advancement of democratic educational reforms. Gilbert Burgh [16] argues that given our reality, less radical, bottom-up reforms are more practical means to undermine social, economic, and political agenda. This way, reform is regarded as a social process wherein people are provided with the opportunity to participate in the creation of educational policy. Burgh further argues that this kind of approach is a realistic way of bringing philosophy to educational institutions [16]. In a study by Kim et al. [17], they discovered that simply providing inquiry-based curriculum falls short in evoking higher order questioning from students. Inquiry skills, then, and we assume multidimensional thinking, will only authentically develop in a community with a teacher-facilitator who possesses training and knowledge in the Community of Inquiry pedagogy properly anchored in Philosophy for Children. This reinforces Burgh’s claim that educational reforms must take on a bottom-up approach, rather than the institutionalization of new directives. In the COI, participants themselves determine the questions to be asked (and maybe answered), and this practice generates a kind of movement that is even more important than the actual questions being asked [6, p. 6]. The questioner and the questioned enter into a dialogue. They begin from a state of equilibrium (fixed belief) and move to a disequilibrium (genuine doubt). This creates a tension between the two contradictory experiences, which is then regulated by the community of inquirers [17, p. 250]. Tension, of course, is dangerous for the established networks of the empire. This tension brought by disequilibrium sparks further criticality, creativity, and most importantly, care. The COI pedagogy not only safeguards its participants’ consciousness of each other, it also ensures that these multidimensional thinkers can critically and creatively examine and reexamine the world around them. This tension that emanates from the participants of the COI interrupts the pathological control of the empire. Moreover, because participants of the COI are authentically open for selfcorrection, they are also resistant to being subsumed by the empire’s disguised developments and progression. The empire might reconstruct itself again and again, “adapting” to seem organic and genuine in its efforts, but the multidimensional thinkers of COI will not be deceived, for aside from their propensity for self-correction, they also know that the state of things is always temporary and provisional. The multidimensional thinkers of COI will never stop striving for a better tomorrow, because the dialogue, too, never stops.

332

7

V. A. K. Basa

Conclusion

Our contemporary world is governed by non-democratic, supra-national institutions. These power centers, driven by wealth and power, dictate our economies and even the most intimate details of our human lives. Unfortunately, the educational systems currently in place have evolved into machines for the Empire’s networks. They use a Pedagogy of Fear masked with educational standards and the supposed universalizability of learning in which no one must be left behind. The tradition of Philosophy of Childhood recognizes the forgotten strengths of childhood, strengths which society made us believe as weaknesses to overcome. Together with the practices of the Community of Inquiry, we are able to utilize these strengths and produce citizens who are resistant to the oppressive influences of the Empire. The P4C-COI, within its domain, cultivates subversive elements that have the capacity to interrupt the contemporary world order. The author believes that the multidimensional thinkers produced by the P4C-COI Pedagogy, who are not afraid of dialogue and tension, but at the same time prioritizes the human-other and self-correction, are capable of making tomorrow a little bit better. The multidimensional thinkers of COI will never stop striving for a better tomorrow, because the dialogue, too, never stops. Venus Ae Kaiel Basa

References 1. Sharp AM (1987) What is a ‘community of inquiry’? J Moral Educ 16(1):37–45 2. Kizel A (2016) Pedagogy out of fear of philosophy as a way of pathologizing children. J Unschooling Altern Learn 10(20):28–47 3. Matthews G (2006) A philosophy of childhood, the ethics and politics of childhood. Indiana University 4. Kennedy D (2006) The well of being: childhood, subjectivity, and education. New York Press, Albany 5. de Saint-Exupery A (2018) The little prince (trans: Testot-Ferry I). Wordsworth Collector’s Editions. Wordsworth Editions, England 6. Kohan W, Kennedy D (2008) Aion, kairos, and chronos: fragments of an endless conversation on childhood, philosophy and education. Child Philos 4(8):6–22 7. Liddell H, Scott R (1966) A Greek English lexicon. Clarendon Press, Oxford 8. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 9. Bacanli H, Dombayci MA, Demir M, Tarhan S (2011) Quadruple thinking: creative thinking. Procedia—Soc Behav Sci 12:536–544 10. Sharp AM (2018) The community of inquiry: education for democracy. In: Gregory M, Laverty M (eds) Community of inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp: childhood, philosophy and education. Routledge, New York 11. Sharp AM (2018) The other dimension of caring thinking. In: In community of inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp. pp 209–214 12. Saw R (1962) Conversation and communication. Thinking: J Philos Child 2(1):55–64

18 The Subversive Potential of the P4C-COI Pedagogy

333

13. Reed-Sandoval A, Sykes A (2017) Who talks? Who listens? Taking ‘positionality’ seriously in philosophy for children. In: Gregory M, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York 14. Byskov MF (2020) What makes epistemic injustice an ‘injustice’? J Soc Philos 1–18 15. Miranda F (2012) Silence and institutional prejudice. In: Crasnow D, Superson AM (eds) Out from the shadows: analytical feminist contributions to traditional philosophy. Oxford Scholarship Online. pp 287–306 16. Burgh G (2014) Democractic pedagogy. J Philos Schools 1(1):22–44 17. Kim N, Burgh G, Fynes-Clinton L (2017) Reconstruction of thinking across the curriculum through the community of inquiry. In: Gregory M, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, New York

Venus Ae Kaiel Basa is a graduate student of Philosophy writing her MA thesis on Philosophy for Children, Philosophy of Childhood, and Epistemic Injustice. She is currently a Content Consultant for various e-learning organizations and a Volunteer Instructor at Holy Rosary College Foundation where she handles philosophy and education courses. She is also a member of Women Doing Philosophy since 2020.

Wising up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges”: Using Complex Collaborative Projects from Philocreation to Support Youth Agency

19

Natalie M. Fletcher

A mental act is an achievement, a performance. One can feel oneself moving toward the making of a decision and then making it…A mental act is therefore like a tiny work of art. [1, p. 143]

Abstract

Is philosophical dialogue sufficient to fostering autonomous thought and action in youth as emerging agents? This chapter will consider the possibility that creative projects may not only be fun and enriching additions to philosophical dialogues within the Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) program, but also be necessary complements that can enable experimentations with various forms of agency in childhood and adolescence. By providing youth with meaningful opportunities to theoretically and practically grapple with the concepts that matter to them, such philosophy-infused projects can help bolster youth’s sense of themselves as actors with the power to affect their social contexts. Drawing on examples from Brila’s Philocreation® approach, this chapter will explore why and how complex team creative projects—or “Owl Challenges”—can be integrated into P4wC practices in ways that honour the model’s core principles and aims. It will also consider some possible challenges and how they might be addressed. And to recognise youth as considerate thinkers with ideas worth sharing, the chapter will include perspectives from Brila participants, both in their

N. M. Fletcher (B) Université de Montréal and Brila.Org, Montréal, Canada e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_19

335

336

N. M. Fletcher

own words and in response to some of their favourite philocreation facilitation techniques. Graphic Abstract

Brila’s Philocreation® : Owl Challenges

Keywords

Philosophy for/with Children . Community of philosophical inquiry . Creative experimentation . Responsible autonomy . Philosophical quality . Dialogue . Youth agency

19 Wising up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges”: Using Complex …

1

337

Introduction

“I know we didn’t talk about this during our philosophy dialogue, but I don’t think we should have a prison in our ideal community,” declares an eight-year old to her teammates, who are sitting cross-legged on a table, around their halffinished cardboard diorama. They are deep into a creative project as a part of a summer philosophy camp run by Brila, an educational charity based in Montreal, Canada.1 Their current mission? Constructing sustainable homes for a bunch of very demanding elves who wish to adopt a more ecological lifestyle. Earlier in the day, during their philosophical dialogue, the team had agreed that an ideal community should have a code of law in order to protect its citizens, especially from environmentally harmful behaviour, because it could help ensure fairness and sustainability. But they had not imagined the implications in detail until now, faced with the possibilities staring back at them from their more concretised hypothesis. “Then what do we do with the elves who break the law?” asks another teammate, dangling a small paper box that could become the elf village’s penitentiary. And with that, their philosophical exchange is launched anew, the team hesitating their way toward a more nuanced perspective: perhaps it would be better for the community to help the elf citizens want to live ecologically—through education and public outreach—rather than compel them to do so with the threat of prison time. Years later, the then third-grader, now a teenager, reminisces about this early philosophical experience: “At that age, I was fidgety and it was really hard for me to sit still. I had so many ideas but I wouldn’t have been able to think so hard and so long on such a big, abstract question without that hands-on creative work.”2 For her, philosophy had to leap from her head to her hands, from abstract to concrete, from thought to action. What might such experiences suggest about the power—and the limits—of philosophical dialogue with youth? Some critics have dismissed the Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) educational model and its Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI) method as a series of mere mental exercises with only sporadic

1

Founded in 2007, Brila is a registered Canadian charity and non-profit organisation, as well as an affiliate centre of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children. It specialises in immersive philosophical experiences for youth and communities, notably in the form of camps and intensive workshops, but its service offerings also include comprehensive trainings and coaching, as well as what it calls “conceptual consultancy” for artist collectives and businesses seeking support in defining the concepts that guide their work. Brila’s mission is articulated through the three imperatives “think, create, engage.” By “think,” it means youth participants are able to explore and analyse their perspectives in a supportive atmosphere that emphasises the process not just the results. By “create,” it means participants are able to quench the performance pressures associated with creative projects, connecting to their sense of playfulness and quieting their self-censorship. By “engage,” it means participants are able to face the serious, perplexing challenges of their day with strong reasoning skills and genuine empathy. For details, please visit www.brila.org/about. 2 The quotations in this chapter result from interviews conducted as part of longitudinal studies with youth who have spent multiple years across their childhood participating in Brila’s programs. Names have been omitted to protect the participants’ identities.

338

N. M. Fletcher

applicability to real life: youth get a chance to think together about significant questions but not to test or apply their ideas beyond their dialogue. As this chapter will endeavour to show, this critique may be unfair given that P4wC’s co-founders Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp clearly valued the importance of the CPI’s last stage of “further responses” as a means of helping youth extend their thinking through metacognitive assessments and artistic expression [2, p. 163]. Yet in practice, due to constraints of time and facilitation training, the emphasis placed on philosophical dialogues tends to leave little room for the kinds of non-dialogical inquiry facilitated through creative experimentation, which might jeopardise invaluable opportunities for youth to further ingrain, evaluate and expand the existential meanings and real-world potential of their perspectives. Returning to the introductory scenario, it stands to reason that the team’s realisations about their ideal community might not have reached the same depths without the creative project to provoke them further. If P4wC—and the practices it has inspired—seek to foster responsible autonomy in youth, is philosophical dialogue enough? Or could philosophical thinking be cultivated by other complementary creative processes as well? This chapter will consider the possibility that creative projects may not only be fun and enriching additions to CPI-style philosophical dialogues, but also necessary complements that can enable experimentations with various forms of agency in childhood and adolescence. Indeed, by providing youth with meaningful opportunities to theoretically and practically grapple with the concepts that matter to them, such philosophy-infused projects can help bolster youth’s sense of themselves as actors with the power to affect their social contexts. Drawing on examples from Brila’s trademarked Philocreation® approach,3 this chapter will explore why and how complex team creative projects—or “Owl Challenges”—can be integrated into P4wC practices in ways that honour the model’s core principles and aims [3]. It will also consider some possible challenges and how they might be addressed. And to recognise youth as considerate thinkers with ideas worth sharing, the chapter will include perspectives from Brila participants, both in their own words and in response to some of their favourite philocreation facilitation techniques.

2

A Call for Philocreation

Brila was founded in response to a shortage of opportunities for youth to explore life’s big questions both philosophically and creatively. In its early years, the charity worked primarily alongside Indigenous communities, gravitating toward transformative projects where philosophy could be of service through the curation of safe dialogical spaces for youth to explore for themselves the issues affecting

3

Philocreation® is a registered and internationally trademarked approach developed by Brila over the last 15 years. For the purpose of this chapter, it will be referred to simply as philocreation.

19 Wising up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges”: Using Complex …

339

them most, thereby building resilience in the face of multifaceted adversity. In these inaugural programs, young thinkers from various First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities came together from across a handful of Canadian provinces to dialogue about concepts of their choosing, like violence, culture, agency and inclusion—topics that revealed the troubling ongoing challenges of postcolonial impacts. From the start, it seemed clear that if youth were to benefit from this consonance of minds, they would need something tangible to show for their genuine efforts, so they could first concretise the ephemeral and then emerge with the sense they had agency over their situation, even if only by virtue of being able to see it differently and position themselves accordingly. The need for a creative outlet became all the more evident as Brila’s charitable activities diversified in terms of demographics—age, ethnicity, socio-economic background, neurodiversity—as well as in terms of settings, from classroom programs to extra-curricular workshops to affiliations with community organisations ranging from art galleries to youth theatres and science centres. How could the integrity of the P4wC model be respected while offering philosophical experiences that were flexible enough to adapt to any audience or context? Brila’s philocreation approach has striven to bridge this gap between abstraction and application by fusing philosophical inquiry with deliberative imaginative engagement in ways that recognise and reinforce youth’s emerging agency, especially in the face of underestimation by adults. The charity views this fusion as significant since it perceives youth as having fewer (though no less meaningful) experiences on which to draw when reflecting on what seems worth valuing—in themselves, in others and in the world—both for their present and their future. Deliberate moral imagining may enable them to actively envisage circumstances that they have not yet encountered from multiple frames of reference—creating a space in time to enrich the mental landscape that will inform how they approach and assess their experiences moving forward, which is important preparation for autonomous thought and action in real-world settings [4, p. 6]. So, within philocreation, creativity becomes the vehicle for enabling deep philosophical reflection in youth because of its accessibility to them: imaginative engagement is readily within reach in the mind’s eye and can be activated in applied projects that vary widely from artistic to activistic pursuits. This interplay between philosophy and creativity can be deemed a crucial stand-in for the lived encounters that youth have yet to face, enriching the repertoire of meanings they can evoke as they grow in their capacity to think and act autonomously. Plus, since Brila participants publish their ideas in their own philosophical magazines— or “philozines”—they get to enrich each other’s mental landscapes as well as share their conceptual perspectives with others. In the words of one Brila participant: “To understand a new philosophical concept, you have to ‘interact’ with it to be able to truly seize all the ideas around it. You have to experiment with it so you can put it into context. Philocreation is such easy and fun way to do that, and it permits us to think about the meaning of the concepts that are affecting us right now.” Indeed, conceptual play is a prominent dimension of philocreation, which involves half a dozen specific dialogue types designed to diversify philosophical

340

N. M. Fletcher

thinking, from thought experiments to story circles to strategic inquiries. While each dialogue type adheres to CPI principles, they have distinct objectives in order to enable facilitators and youth alike to work on particular combinations of thinking tools and reflective dispositions, thereby accessing and honing concept development from separate but mutually supportive avenues. For instance, the dialogue type Taktikou and the Concept City camp program invite participants to deliberately imagine concepts as if they were living, breathing creatures, each with their own thoughts, feelings and motivations.4 This enables even very young inquirers to start to understand their significance, making otherwise abstract, even alienating notions appear relatable and relevant. Through this imaginative process, youth can become aware of how they intuitively personify concepts based on their own experiences, revealing important assumptions that require more robust definitions to overcome their narrow scope. In philocreation, this process is referred to as destabilising “stereotyped concepts”—the idea being that it is possible to typecast a concept just as easily as a person or group, by assigning it a simplistic meaning (however inadvertently) that robs it of nuance and thus of its potential power as a life guide. In turn, this tendency to stereotype concepts risks impoverishing reasoning by generating problematic, biased views that may restrict what is considered worthy of valuing, possibly resulting in epistemic rigidity and negatively affecting responsible autonomy [5, p. 70]. For example, during an after-school workshop with at-risk youth, the group realised that their spontaneous characterisation of intelligence unveiled their apprehensions about it: they personified the concept as a somewhat aloof and arrogant creature who tended not to be very kind or open-minded with its friends, and did not get along well with other concepts like error and humility. They had been unknowingly perceiving intelligence as elitist—reducing it to the results of IQ tests and thus attainable by only a select minority—whereas their Owl Challenge project allowed for a new lens: intelligence as multiple rather than singular, as a refinable ability rather than an innate or fixed trait, as discernment rather than genius. It seems plausible that such a definitional shift could have major implications for how these children relate to intelligence moving forward, not least by suddenly making the concept feel within their reach. At Brila, immersive creative experiments like Owl Challenges are considered aspirational yet playful, in that they challenge youth to surpass their own expectations by taking on projects that are a bit harder—but likely also more whimsical—than what they might normally do. At first glance, this emphasis on “going beyond” could seem symptomatic of toxic productivity [6] or a byproduct of the internalised capitalism [7, p. 105] that seems to operate in many contemporary cultures.5 However, here again the concern is over autonomy: if youth

4

For more information about philocreation dialogue types and the charity’s flagship workshop series, please visit www.brila.org/philocreation. 5 The recent term “toxic productivity” refers to an action bias that values accomplishment and being productive above personal welfare, which can lead (among other things) to unrealistic expectations about one’s capacities. The term “internalised capitalism” encapsulates such nefarious

19 Wising up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges”: Using Complex …

341

get the chance to consistently witness themselves thinking and creating in ways they did not think possible, it may just change their perceptions of themselves as emerging agents. This in turn may contribute to countering the underestimation by adults that P4wC theorists and philosophers of childhood associate with “adultism”—or the ageist tendency to disrespect young people by categorising them as inferior [8, p. 63].6 In recognition of philosophy’s tough but fulfilling nature, such philocreation projets have inspired Brila’s motto to “keep the kook alive,” or nurture that inner creative spirit—a symbol of self-correction—that celebrates the joy of wonder and honours the process of deep reflection, without taking itself too seriously. And that wonder is contagious, spurring participants to want to share their insights by empathically engaging with others who might not have ruminated on the concepts and questions that are enlivening them. For instance, one favourite philocreation technique is to imagine a curious alien—often portrayed by one of Brila’s puppets—who is eager to learn more about humanity but needs help from his earthling friends to understand life on the blue planet… which he finds very confusing though intriguing! Teachers trained in philocreation have consistently noted how the curious alien figure results in a willingness on the part of even their most timid and quiet students to offer detailed explanations in an effort to assist their otherworldly friend in his understanding. Suddenly, unlike with other school subjects, they are placed in the unique position as children of being the experts, able to share their knowledge and experience with an interested (if also ignorant) outsider. So how might Brila kids explain philocreation to this inquisitive stranger? When interviewed for this chapter, a group of participants explained that although they cannot be sure philosophy exists in the alien’s galaxy, they believe he already has the main disposition needed to appreciate their thinking adventures: curiosity. So here is what they thought of saying: Hey alien friend, you know how sometimes there are big ideas that are hard to wrap your head around—maybe you have more than one head! – much less put into words? Well, this seems to happen to humans a lot: We have these things called concepts that we use to name what we perceive, sense, think and experience, but sometimes the more we think about them, the more complicated they seem. So we try to find original ways to make sense of them by getting the process of philosophy to team up with creativity: together, we think up some promising ideas then bring them into existence somehow—probably like how you dreamed up spaceships with your friends then designed them in real life. A lot of humans do this naturally without realising it, but we want to do it on purpose, and we call that

attitudes towards productivity, and is rooted in the idea that “capitalism is more than an economic system…[it] shapes our relationships with others, our sense of ourselves and our capacities, practices, and actions in the material world.”. 6 For instance, David Kennedy defines “adultism” as follows: “Like racism, ethnocentrism and sexism, adultism is based on what appear to be empirical differences—in anatomy, neural development, ego-structure, psychoculture, size, and physical strength….[which] very often lead to ‘subspeciation,’ or the tendency to regard and treat certain human others implicitly as if they were members of a separate species.”.

342

N. M. Fletcher

philocreation. Sometimes, when we want to get really wise about a concept, we do these big philocreative projects for hours on end… and those we call “Owl Challenges.”

3

Owl Challenges, Deconstructed

The point of Owl Challenges is not to overshadow the power of philosophical dialogues, but to enhance and extend it, through carefully designed projects that enable youth to think through a real-world problem together as they build toward a tangible solution—philosophy they can see and touch, then probe and polish. These complex team projects are considered by many Brila participants to be the soul of philocreation since they culminate an immersive program, chaperoning youth through their philosophical questioning to their position-taking and theory building, and then to their practical application, all the while offering new conceptual vantage points to consider. From a P4C perspective, Owl Challenges strive to fulfill the fifth stage of the CPI—“the further responses” that Lipman describes as various “forms of cognitive expressions” aimed at “recognising the synthesis of the critical and the creative with the individual and the communal” and “celebrating the deepened sense of meaning that comes with strengthened judgment” [1, p. 103]. The projects also offer a dash of whimsy by incorporating a kooky twist into the creative missions. For example, in a program on the morality of artificial intelligence, the corresponding Owl Challenge might be to devise a humane robot who can help humanity… but in return may be worthy of certain rights and privileges. In past projects, participants have asked themselves questions varying from the empirical to the ethical: How might robots make us better humans? If robots can learn from us, what should we teach them? How should we treat robots? If we hurt a robot, is it violence? During one summer camp, the teams’ Owl Challenges even resulted in a robot manifesto that specified how robots would help humans and what would go against their code of conduct—if they could experience suffering, they should be protected against mistreatment, despite not being “alive” in the classic sense. Alternatively, in a program on epistemic justice, an Owl Challenge might be to design a learning labyrinth that symbolises how humans struggle to gain, express, share… and even control knowledge. Though it may seem far-fetched to explore an intricate notion like tacit knowing with preschoolers, thanks to the accessible nature of these collaborative projects, Brila’s facilitators have playfully made such attempts. For starters, they have invited participants to consider what kinds of things they have learnt in their lives so far, how they have come to know these things, and how they have used the resulting knowledge. The kids have then been tasked with explaining how to ride a bicycle to a facilitator dressed as a clown… only to realise that providing specific sequential instructions regarding a skill that now comes naturally to them due to muscle memory and practice is

19 Wising up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges”: Using Complex …

343

difficult to put into words—even though they may be very confident cyclists!— resulting in the facilitator falling, flailing and otherwise failing to orchestrate all the movements correctly. Though certainly a kooky tactic, the theatrical parametres of such Owl Challenges have ethical implications for considering youth as epistemic agents since they can become aware that they might “know” a lot more than they can describe, yet their tacit knowing risks being unfairly neglected in adult contexts where formal, propositional knowledge is usually privileged [9, p. 16]. So philocreation experiences strive to help them name the concepts that they may know tacitly—from injustice and indignation to power and authenticity—but have not yet learnt to formalise enough to share with others. In a similar vein, to tackle questions around education, youth may be invited to envision the perfect school, a topic that is popular with Brila participants given the very high percentage of their lives spent in classrooms. If they could learn exactly what they wanted on their own terms, what kind of school would they want to design and why? How different might it look from their current school—would there still be traditional subjects, grades, homework, teachers? Such projects have sparked captivating though contentious philosophical dialogues around questions like: Who should decide what we learn? If teachers mistreat students, should they be fired? Are there things that are not worth learning and should even be unlearnt? In constructing their maquettes of the perfect school, they have gotten to think through every element of their own schooling, thereby growing in their awareness of what it should mean to be educated, and reflecting on whether their experience so far has measured up to the criteria they have now made explicit for each other through collaborative inquiry. As a last illustrative example, to address the ambivalence of identity, participants may fabricate “shoulder spirits” to help them navigate the intricate process of character building. In this Owl Challenge, teams get to think up a duo of creatures who could be symbolic representations of two vital aspects of themselves that are opposites but must stay in tension to maintain inner balance. These shoulder spirits are just large enough to sit on each shoulder and whisper guiding words… but they are still poles apart in terms of their ideas. Though they offer clashing advice about how to live best, both of their types of wisdom are needed to feel whole. In past projects, participants have worked together to determine what issues their shoulder spirits could illuminate—from social and environmental issues to personal problems—and consider how to juggle their contrary perspectives. They decided on symbols that could best represent the spirits’ personality, values and perspectives on life, then eagerly constructed them out of recycled materials, as they tackled emerging questions like: What is advice, exactly? What leads to wisdom? Can there be two totally different but equally valuable types of wisdom? Can something seem wise for one person and misguided for another? Through such complex team projects, youth get to experiment with different forms of agency—as designers, decision-makers, inventors, leaders, etc.—in a curated educational space where the stakes are not so high, so they can safely practice embodying their own values and commitments. Further, if through these

344

N. M. Fletcher

applied efforts they are able to self-identify as emerging agents capable of effecting change, they may be likelier to want to engage in similar pursuits again in and beyond the philocreation realm, as suggested by preliminary data from Brila’s longitudinal studies. Of note, these findings suggest that participants who have been involved in philocreation programs over numerous years self-identify as more capable of engaging in higher-order thinking, perspective-taking and collaborative work with others, than children with no exposure to creative philosophy.7 According to another empirical analysis, long-standing participants may exhibit a more consistent propensity for comfort with uncertainty and doubt, demonstrating intellectual humility 10 times more often than their rookie peers [10]. A further study found that philocreation programs equipped participants with the dispositions to navigate heated problems inherent to democratic life through productive dialogues, successfully managing 89% of the disagreements about complex issues in which they engaged [11]. What seems particular to Owl Challenges is the duration of philosophical engagement: because the creative dimension can maintain their concentration for longer stretches, they have more chances to inquire together both in formal and informal dialogic exchanges, and thus to practice autonomous thinking as emerging agents. In terms of sequence, Owl Challenges begin with a philosophical dialogue to familiarise participants with the concept in question, then the group is divided into small teams to begin their ideation with respect to the real-world problem they will be exploring through their collaborative construction, which usually takes the form of a three-dimensional model or installation art. Though these projects can also include other modes of expression like performances, collaborative fiction, multimedia productions and activist initiatives, the diorama approach epitomises the philocreation commitment to making abstract thinking more accessible by transforming it into a literal, tangible structure that participants can sit around and build together—an apt metaphor for the CPI circle of children co-constructing their ideas. Everyone in the program, regardless of age or experience, gets to tackle the same project, creating the feeling of a giant CPI working towards possible solutions that can be compared and contrasted as the teams progress. In anticipation of an Owl Challenge, each participant receives a journal page the evening before with a mission to bring home so they can interview their families about the concept they will be exploring the following day. Then, during the initial brainstorming, each team completes a pre-established worksheet to guide

7

Though Brila’s youth programming has been the object of numerous empirical studies, this particular data is drawn from a longitudinal study entitled “Thinking and Creating Together: Lessons from Youths’ Collaborative Philosophical Experience,” conducted under Concordia University’s Human Research Ethics Committee (Montreal, Canada), as part of an interdisciplinary research project in the education department. For this study, data has been collected in the form of transcripts of CPI dialogues, semi-formal interviews with participants and parents, creative works like writing, illustrations, photography and multimedia (notably from Brila’s “philozines” or philosophical publications), as well as metacognitive activities like body mapping and Brila’s “philosograms” that help participants map out their phenomenological experiences of CPI dialogues.

19 Wising up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges”: Using Complex …

345

their reflection, and incorporates the ideas of their family members to extend their own. As one participant explains, “this plan helps you make sure the project is properly aligned with the concept and that your creation can be beneficial to the world.” The team’s choices cannot be arbitrary or a mere manifestation of personal preferences: participants have to clearly articulate their reasoning, with the help of adult facilitators who scaffold every stage of the process. Yet to activate deliberate imaginative engagement in youth, the adults are not just “facilitating” in the etymological sense of making things easier, they are also complicating perspectives and procedures—a strategy called “difficultating” within philocreation [5, p. 68]. Indeed, if teams propose ideas that are overly simplistic or if their conceptualisations lack subtlety, they are gently pushed to consider the possible ramifications: on their own lives, on how others are treated, or on what they claim to know about the world. Once the construction has started, the teams take turns visiting the Owl’s Den, or the set of tables where all the available project supplies are displayed, including a huge assortment of recycled materials to encourage eco-friendly creations. Yet these materials will only be released by the “Owls”—namely, the designated adult or teen facilitators—in exchange for good reasons, suitable examples and relevant consequences. In the words of one participant: “You still need to be thinking clearly, because every time you go to get supplies, you have to explain why you need the material you’re asking for, so you have to be ready to justify your point of view.” This construction phase can take place over a series of hours or days, depending on the project’s complexity, thereby extending the philosophical inquiry over a much greater time period than might be possible in a typical CPI dialogue. The process also involves built-in opportunities for philocreative “meta moments,” or chances for participants to analyse and assess their philosophical thinking and suggest strategies for improvement, in terms of both their theory building and their community engagement. Have they progressed with their understanding of the key concept? Have they been able to disagree respectfully? What have been some highlights, challenges, lessons and gratitude moments from their Owl Challenge experience? When the projects are completed, the teams present their creative masterpieces to one another, sharing their philosophical perspectives in a kind of thinking dress rehearsal before hosting an exhibition for family and friends. Unlike a science fair or ethics bowl, the goal is not to win or stand out—though prizes for kookiness have been known to happen!—but rather to learn to express ideas in front of an audience that may ask questions to better understand their thought process. In welcoming other interpretations, participants get to practice what Sharp called the “other dimension” of caring thinking: though everyone gets the same philocreative mission and thus has a common value orientation with respect to the topic, their proposed solutions may differ, so it can be ontologically powerful to see dozens of projects in response to the same prompt—and thus witness multiple ways of valuing the same concept—not to mention enriching to receive positive feedback across age groups. According to one participant, “It’s like if our thoughts came to

346

N. M. Fletcher

life through the process of thinking about the issue—we can see all the ideas that were once in their heads. And isn’t that what philosophy should be about?”.

4

In the Service of Philosophical Quality

Part of what makes Owl Challenges philocreative is they invite youth to explain and justify their creative choices in the same way they would their philosophical positions during CPI dialogues, thus applying the rigour, collaborative spirit and willingness to self-correct to a distinct but complementary participatory creation that encourages them to test and expand their theoretical claims. Accordingly, participants get to mobilise the thinking skills and inquiry dispositions that they have been honing inside a formal dialogical setting and transfer them to a more concrete problem-solving initiative inspired by a current societal issue. This practice in knowledge and skills transfer is significant, not least because of the demanding nature of philosophical thinking. Indeed, as years of training have demonstrated, it is clear that with beginner groups being facilitated by adult novices, a CPI dialogue resembles more of an enthusiastic if messy brainstorming session than real inquiry, in that it tends to be generative without necessarily being evaluative. For instance, in answering a definitional question like “What is friendship?”, a group might generate dozens of possible criteria—from shared interests and secret-keeping to respect and trust— and feel satisfied by the quantity of ideas put forth. Yet the session could end without any of these criteria being intentionally evaluated using philosophical procedures in order to determine what seems most promising in terms of the emerging conceptualisation. Within Brila’s facilitation techniques, procedures like meta-evaluation criteria require that the group considers the importance, even the necessity (or sufficiency, in some cases) of a suggested criterion, as well as its potential universality, to see what it can really bring to their understanding of the concept of friendship. And so, out of a commitment to cultivating philosophical quality, philocreation projects strive to ensure the philosophical in both content and procedures, so that what happens during dialogues and in creative experimentation enables collective theory building around a few promising philosophical positions [12, p. 93].8 Following the principles of classic pragmatism underlying P4wC, these positions must be purposefully appraised by the group, with the help of targeted facilitation prompts, so that participants may arrive at assertions that are provisional but still warranted, until life complicates their perspectives and renews the cycle of inquiry [13, p. 15].9 In doing so, participants have reported feeling a real sense of

8

Philosophical quality” is the focus of Brila’s intermediate trainings in philocreation facilitation. Recent empirical findings suggest that “lengthy argument threads [in inquiry dialogues] appeared to be an indicator of argumentation quality” since they entail “fewer argument thread shifts” and “see everyone directing their efforts toward a common task—answering the big question. 9 This process refers to the notion of “warranted assertibility” as defined by John Dewey.

19 Wising up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges”: Using Complex …

347

progress, since the process of nurturing ideas through evaluation enables them to refine their positions. Yet until it becomes habit, this process can be taxing—for youth and adult trainees alike—so it is helpful not only for the various philocreation dialogue types but also for complex team projects like Owl Challenges to embed these evaluative modes directly into their instructions, so the activity itself takes care of the facilitation and can drive the group’s thinking further.10 Besides becoming more adept at using thinking tools, participants involved in CPI dialogues as well as Owl Challenges get to experiment more broadly with a posture of “epistemological flexibility,” characterised by intellectual humility, comfort with uncertainty and disagreement, and an openness to complexity and ambiguity [4, p. 220]. With these reflective dispositions, participants can learn to resist the kind of dogmatic thinking that could lead to extremism, even violence, and thereby impede emerging agency. What’s more, in learning to engage in such thinking among themselves not only in dialogic encounters but creative ones too, they get to practice enacting their autonomy in responsible ways since, to borrow from P4wC theorist Maughn Gregory, they must make themselves “accountable to a community of peers who have challenged [their] ideas” [14, p. 215]. What matters is not their artistic or technical prowess or even their final product, but their commitment to the collaborative thinking process, which can be as hard as it is rewarding. As one participant put it: “It really made me appreciate working in teams where we talked about our different ideas to finally come up with something that everyone was proud of. That was also the most frustrating part, because sometimes you didn’t necessarily agree with someone and you had to learn to compromise, and maybe even to let go of your own ideas, which was a challenge for me. It was also very exciting to finally be able to present your finished Owl Challenge because it was something you worked hard on.” This exercise in selfrestraint recalls what David Kennedy describes as accepting “the little death of [one’s] own contribution” [15, p. 217], in part thanks to heightened intersubjective trust. This confrontation of human values—and with it, the growing capacity to manage competing considerations—could have potential benefits no matter the educational context, even in a classroom of over thirty students, which is representative of most of Brila’s in-school projects and also of the “microcosm of democracy” often cited by P4wC scholars [16, p. 14]. Yet philosophical inquiry in such large groups is also a true exercise in patience, especially for young inquirers, who have reported finding it difficult to wait their turn when their ideas are stewing and begging to be heard. In contrast, Owl Challenges allow them to quite literally manipulate their ideas as they sit in small groups with their teammates and take in each other’s suggestions: they cannot check out since they have to decide together, and the reward is their common vision materialising before their

10

In other words, even if adult facilitators are not yet comfortable with prompting for philosophical quality on their own, the steps in the workshop plan incorporate these elements so that by following the sequence, the group will automatically get to evaluate and diversify their ideas.

348

N. M. Fletcher

eyes—theory-building come to life. Brila’s youngest participants have shared that this process is what makes philosophy feel real and relatable to them: they can dance between dialogic and creative modes, and call to mind their constructed model when the abstract thinking in a CPI becomes tougher to access. Teams have even started asking for particular philocreation dialogue types to help them deal with an obstacle they are facing in their Owl Challenge construction—“We need a Categorilo dialogue… we need some categories!”—indicating their increasing awareness of how thinking tools work together to form and strengthen arguments. Of course, such comprehensive projects have their share of difficulties and hurdles as well—they are called “challenges” for a reason. In the case of the ideal community project described above, participants must not only conceptualise the notion of “community” for themselves as a group during their philosophical dialogues, but also keep track of a set of criteria provided by their elf clients as they design their diorama. What do these creatures need to live more sustainably? How might their homes and villages be respectful of nature? How could their values and world views conflict?11 No matter how thorough their inquiry, what the teams agree to in principle might change once applied—this tension between theory and application can require negotiation among teammates, with some dominant voices eclipsing more timid ones, and valuable ideas getting lost in the shuffle. Moreover, the same worries over reasonableness that plague P4wC dialogues can apply to philocreative projects: participant teams that are not heterogenous enough to recognise their ideas may be exclusionary might devise solutions in their Owl Challenges that reinforce problematic power structures and are not representative in terms of social justice. As Darren Chetty has deftly highlighted when describing the CPI as a gated community, “possibilities for coming to know the world—and for challenging white ignorance and its political consequences—might be limited by an emphasis on a procedural notion of reasonableness that forecloses opportunities for inquiry and for knowing” [17, p. 13]. For example, in the Owl Challenge about sustainable community living, if the team of young inquirers questioning the need for a prison system naively decided it would be better (and most reasonable) to create a school that could reform lawbreakers by removing them from their cultural environment so they could learn the “right” way to live together, then the outcome would be clearly problematic, not to mention an alarming mirror of Canada’s dark past with residential schooling for Indigenous children. However, one could argue that such projects can be useful because they bring to light these thinking errors, fallacies and biases, so a careful facilitator who diagnoses them can prompt the group toward more discerning perspectives and prepare supportive pedagogical materials to enrich their mental landscape with knowledge they have not acquired because of their context or background—in this case, historical and sociological details about the formation of human communities. Further,

11

For a free copy of the full lesson plan for this Owl Challenge on envisioning an ideal ecological community, please email [email protected].

19 Wising up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges”: Using Complex …

349

by intentionally favouring inclusion when supporting teamwork, adult facilitators can curate space for minority voices to express what they feel as intuitively compelling but may never have a chance to share during a CPI dialogue, thus opening up possibilities for the “unreasonable disruptions” that Chetty recommends [17, pp. 12, 13].12 Still, in exceptional situations, power dynamics might make teamwork impossible, even with careful facilitation, resulting in youth feeling truly embodied experiences of frustration, which can warrant open discussions about the somatic dimensions of doing collaborative philosophy. This is critical if philosophical pedagogies are to take social justice seriously, since it is often through corporeal reactions that participants can learn to identify their unease toward certain lines of inquiry or resulting positions, and become more attuned to how visceral concepts affect the group at the phenomenological level. From a feminist perspective, Iris Young has argued that to prevent “powerful silencers of speech” in deliberative democracy models that privilege some “strong” voices at the expense of other “weak” ones, it is necessary to expand what counts as valuable communication forms beyond argumentation to include speech characterised by figurative language, emotion, humour and camaraderie, like rhetoric and storytelling [18, p. 120]. Building on this idea, the collaborative crafting of Owl Challenges offers another stimulus for communication without insisting only on the dialogic form, which risks also excluding and alienating certain participants, notably neurodivergent inquirers. On the upside, such sensorially rich encounters can also elucidate youth’s aforementioned tacit knowing by helping them to name the fuzzy but existentially significant aspects of their phenomenological experiences. For example, by both philosophising about injustice and feeling through it, they can work out their own impressions and get curious about the way the concept may operate in their own life moving forward. According to one participant, “It makes your thinking bigger. With the power of all your creativity, you can suddenly see more than what your eyes show you every day.”

5

Convincing the Cynics

Admittedly, educators who are accustomed to the first few phases of the CPI (sharing a stimulus, formulating philosophical questions and dialoguing toward possible answers) may find the proposal of Owl Challenges interesting but unnecessary, citing a lack of time and resources as reasons to focus on the dialogic component alone. While this is understandable, they may be missing valuable opportunities to foster multidimensional thinking in youth and incorporate autonomy-facilitating philosophical practices that strive for inclusion by appealing to different types of

12

As Chetty notes with the example of the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign at Oxford University, “We might reflect on how starting in a place that appears at first unreasonable might help us to perceive the historical and social processes that contribute to our conception of reasonableness.”.

350

N. M. Fletcher

thinkers. Many educators initially trained in “pure vanilla” CPI facilitation confessed to being skeptical of philocreation dialogues and projects at first, notably one teacher who had been practising classic P4wC for over 15 years before starting Owl Challenges: What I love about philocreation is how the activities work on multiple levels: they are simple enough for my stagiaire to do without having any P4wC training. And she still gets great results because the steps guide the students! But they also give me sophisticated ways to go further with my more advanced groups, and they get to see their theories develop within our circle and in their missions. The creative aspect gets everyone involved—even my shy student who never talks can interact with the visual and tactile aids, and share his ideas through his drawings. My class never wants to skip philocreation projects! They could keep talking and talking.

Pending the formalised findings of empirical studies, how could Brila participants convince a cynic of the philosophical merit of Owl Challenges? Another technique in the philocreation toolbox is to imagine how it might be possible to convince a skeptical outsider to consider a perspective that seems promising to the group. When given the task, a group of youth who have grown up with philocreation envisioned chatting with their past selves about how these experiences shaped them, in an effort to inspire P4wC practitioners to see the value of creative projects as necessary complements to philosophical dialogues. They explored the counterfactual reality: “If Owl Challenges did not exist, then…”. . … their ideas might be more limited, suggested a participant who was initially very timid as a philosophical inquirer when she began over 10 years ago. “These projects allowed me to keep dreaming and think outside of the box, especially in school, where everything is so constricted. It was such a refreshing change to reflect on important topics through a fun, interactive method. The Owl Challenges have taught me that there are always other perspectives, and they may go together better than you think, which could create something new and unexpected.” . … they may have a fear of failure, offered a teenaged staff member who worked many years as a junior facilitator supporting groups of younger participants with their collaborative projects. “Truly expressing yourself for the first time in front of other kids can be a nerve-wracking experience as in can be associated with judgement, being wrong, and not saying the right thing. What is incredible about Owl Challenges is that, eventually, we all end up agreeing, and often come up with our own solutions to our frustrations.” . … their particular learning styles and needs might not be acknowledged, proposed another participant who identifies as introverted and neurodivergent, and found it difficult to process disagreement during initial philosophical experiences as an upper primary student. “A lot of kids may have a harder time sharing their ideas, as not all kids express themselves best in words. Owl Challenges are all about showing rather than telling. These projects let them explore their ideas in a more active way.”

19 Wising up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges”: Using Complex …

351

. … they may have never experienced philosophy, said a teenaged staff member who engaged in philocreation for eight years before being introduced to its more formal equivalent in classes at secondary school. “There are so many stereotypes about philosophy, like that kids can’t do it or it’s just for Socrates. The people who believe that kind of stereotype would probably be skeptical about Owl Challenges being ‘real’ philosophy, but honestly, I see them as just another form of thinking. Putting our ideas into practice, like you test a theory in science. They are super creative and have a complex though process behind them! There is no reason to think philosophy can’t be fun.” . … they might be different people altogether, considered a participant who started philocreation programs within a few months of arriving to Canada as a refugee. “Since I’ve been participating in Owl Challenges for more half of my life, I think I can say they’ve really impacted me as a person. I think they’ve sharpened my thinking and analysing, and have just broadened my horizons. Thanks to them, I always try to think of things from different perspectives and I’ve learnt to place myself in other people’s shoes. Remembering the Owl Challenges from my first few years at Brila almost brought me to tears. Sometimes, you don’t realise how much an experience has meant to you until you look back on it.”

6

Valuing Creativity in Philosophical Inquiry

On its own, philosophical dialogue is already powerful, providing youth with unique experiences to co-construct meaning around the concepts that are most alive for them in their current realities, while also building thinking skills and reflective dispositions that can accompany them for life. But if the aim is to cultivate responsibly autonomous thought and action in children and adolescents, philosophical dialogue alone may not be enough. This hypothesis is not meant as a critique but as a call for complementarity: as this chapter has endeavoured to show, philosophical dialogue and creative experimentation have the potential to be wonderful allies in helping youth experience valuable ways to expand and enrich their evolving autonomy. Philocreation strives to support this alliance by enabling participants to experiment with various forms of agency through complex team projects that can bolster their sense of themselves as actors with the power to effect change as they grow up. Case in point: The participants quoted in the introduction to this chapter are now adolescents who have become junior members of Brila’s facilitation team not least because their philosophical endurance is nothing short of astonishing. Whereas as kindergarteners they contended with the understandable struggles (and body fidgets!) of persisting with the deep thinking required for more classic CPI dialogues—preferring the Owl Challenges for their more hands-on, creative and experimental character—as adolescents, they exhibit impressive stamina for collaborative inquiry in the face of complexity, ambiguity and confusion, and can translate their perspectives into highly nuanced and original creative projects.

352

N. M. Fletcher

When invited as special guests to philosophise in university P4wC classes or media interviews with public intellectuals, they have left the adults in the room panting for breath.13 Their dialogues now last for many consecutive hours, with only the increasing pressures of physical needs—like hunger pangs or washroom breaks—ultimately breaking their concentration. For these young thinkers, philosophy and creativity have joined forces throughout their childhood to support their burgeoning autonomy, and they describe the impact of these ongoing philocreation adventures as profound for their sense of self-efficacy, contributing to their perception of themselves as future artists, scientists, filmmakers, architects and environmental lawyers, to name but a few.14 In their view, creativity has the power to make philosophy more accessible and more rigorous for young people, by giving it more roles to play, including the possibility of testing and expanding their ideas in non-dialogical settings. It is their hope that this chapter can inspire philosophical facilitators who share a commitment to supporting youth agency to expand their practice of CPI dialogues by including deliberate imaginative engagement through collaborative creative projects. By providing youth with meaningful opportunities to theoretically and practically grapple with the concepts that matter to them, such philosophy-infused creative projects can help bolster youth’s sense of themselves as actors with the power to affect their social contexts. Natalie Fletcher

References 1. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2. Gregory MR (2007) Normative dialogue types in philosophy for children. Gift Educ Int 22(1):160–171 3. Fletcher NM (2020) Underestimated no more. In: Katz C (ed) Growing up with philosophy camp. Rowman and Littlefield, London 4. Fletcher NM (2018) Envisioning valuable lives: moral imagining, autonomy and philosophy in childhood. Doctoral dissertation, Concordia University 5. Fletcher NM (2019) Destabilising stereotyped concepts in childhood. Prospects: Comparative Journal of Curriculum Learning and Assessment 48:61–78 6. Coffey S (2022) The psychology of toxic productivity. University Times, Ireland 7. Cole A (2018) How capitalism forms our lives. J Cult Res 22(2):105–112 8. Kennedy D (2006) The well of being: childhood, subjectivity, and education. SUNY Press, Albany, NY

13

For example, these young philosophers have participated in CPI sessions as part of the undergraduate P4wC courses taught by the author in the philosophy department at Université de Montréal, and were the main cast of the podcast “Les jeunes sages” (which translates to “Wise Youth”) on Radio Canada, the country’s francophone public broadcaster. 14 Preliminary results from research interviews conducted with youth participants during Brila’s summer philocreation programming in August 2021 at the University of Montreal.

19 Wising up to What Matters with “Owl Challenges”: Using Complex …

353

9. Fletcher NM (2021) Imagining the ineffable: elucidating tacit knowing through deliberate imagining. Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis 41(2):1–18 10. Reid M (2021) Navigating diverse perspectives: the longitudinal development of children’s intellectual humility in philosophical dialogues. Masters thesis, Concordia University 11. Roucau B (2022) Navigating disagreement in democratic education: the potential of the community of philosophical inquiry. Doctoral dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington 12. Oyler J (2015) Expert teacher contributions to argumentation quality during inquiry dialogue. Doctoral dissertation, Montclair State University 13. Boydston JA (1990) The collected works of John Dewey: early, middle and late works. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale 14. Gregory MR (2011) Philosophy for children and its critics: a Mendham dialogue. Journal of Philosophy of Education 45(2) 15. Kennedy D (2010) Philosophical dialogue with children: essays on theory and practice. The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston 16. Granger D, Gregory MR (eds) (2012) John Dewey and the child as philosopher. Education and Culture: The Journal of the John Dewey Society 28(2) 17. Chetty D (2018) Racism as ‘reasonableness’: philosophy for children and the gated community. Ethics and Education 13(1):39–54 18. Young I (1996) Communication and the other: beyond deliberative democracy. In: Benhabib S (ed) Democracy and difference. Princeton University Press, Princeton

Natalie M. Fletcher is an interdisciplinary researcher and philosophical practitioner based in Montreal, Canada. She is an affiliate professor of philosophy at Université de Montréal where she runs the Institute of Philosophy, Citizenship and Youth. Natalie holds a doctorate in philosophy and pedagogy, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on philosophy as a form of youth activism. Natalie is the founding director of the educational charity Brila which has—for 15 years now—sought to develop critical thinking, social responsibility and self-efficacy in young people from preschool to college through the fusion of philosophical dialogues and creative projects, or its trademarked Philocreation® approach. She runs international trainings at all levels, has served on the executive committees of various P4wC organizations, and has published widely in the field, including an ICPICaward winning essay. Natalie considers the young philosophers with whom she works not merely as adults in the making, but as agents of change in their own right.

20

Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal for Philosophical Pedagogy for the Sake of Inclusivity Leander Penaso Marquez

and Kimberly Panganiban Florendo

The true teacher defends his students against his own personal influence. [1]

Abstract

Values education and, in many countries, religious and moral education are considered as essential aspects of a complete basic education curriculum. Accordingly, these areas are fraught with issues and concerns relating to the manner of teaching and learning, indoctrination, assessment and evaluation, student profile, secularism, and religious plurality, to name a few. While scholars, academics, philosophers, and policymakers are still debating and might be decades away from settling these issues, the reality on the ground is that religion, moral, and values education are being taught in numerous basic education institutions. In the course of this practice, many are left behind. There are students who belong in sectarian schools that are not members of the sect followed by the institution. There are also teachers that are asked to handle religion and values education subjects who have little to no background in these subject areas. In this light, this chapter considers the teaching of religion, morals, and values as an issue of inclusivity. Further, it looks at religion and values education from two points of view—the teacher’s and the student’s—and determines the aspects in which the current setup fails to be inclusive. Ultimately, as a response to this, this essay proposes the use of philosophical pedagogy L. P. Marquez (B) College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines e-mail: [email protected] K. P. Florendo College of Education, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_20

355

356

L. P. Marquez and K. P. Florendo

as a promising alternative to arrive at a more inclusive values, religious, and moral education in basic education institutions, and offers Philosophy for/with Children as an example. Graphic Abstract

Philosophical Pedagogy for an Inclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education

Keywords

Philosophical pedagogy . Values . Religious . Moral education . Inclusivity Indoctrination . Community of inquiry . Philosophy for/with Children

1

.

Introduction

Should religion, morals, and/or values education be included in the basic education (primary and lower secondary education) curriculum? This question, in various formulations, stands at the center of a debate that has been raging on for decades [2]. The last century saw a rise of sentiments favoring education that is “valuefree” [3]. In the past decade, however, various thinkers are pushing for the teaching of religion in schools as an important facet of human education [4]; or arguing that whether values should be taught is the wrong question, but how values should be taught [5]; or that there is no such thing as a value-free education [6]. This led to the teaching of values and religion in schools as the norm. Despite the norm of values, morals, and religious education in schools, there are still concerns regarding the teaching of these subjects as a form of indoctrination [7, 8]. On the one hand, there are concerns that in the course of teaching, one religion (e.g., Christianity) becomes the “model” by which other religions are compared, while on the other hand, “other” religions are discussed through stereotyped conceptions [9]. Both concerns can be described as an issue of inclusivity. In this regard, there has been the lingering question about how religion and values can be taught without indoctrination. One suggested approach was values clarification, wherein, according to practitioners, values are not taught, rather, the values

20

Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal …

357

held by students are clarified [10]. Another is by building a community of reflective teachers that would subject students to constant reflective activities [8]. Others argue, however, that indoctrination is not something that must be feared or vilified because it plays a role in proper education [11]; for instance, indoctrination can help in shaping a person’s identity and sense of belongingness in relation to one’s collective cultures, traditions, and values. Presently, there are available literatures that discuss the importance of religion, moral, and values education without indoctrination. Similarly, there are also published texts that focus on arguing for the position that religion, morals, and values can be taught sans indoctrination. This, somehow, gives the impression that there is a movement, though unofficial and perhaps unorganized, that advocates for religion, morals, and values education without indoctrination. Evidently, such a movement can be supported by publishing resources that detail how indoctrination can be avoided by educators when discussing values, morals, and religion. We wish to contribute to this front since it might serve the best interest of educators to be introduced to a pedagogy that greatly reduces, if not eliminate, the possibility of indoctrination in values, moral, and religious education, while promoting inclusivity. In accordance with the prevalent stand on the aforementioned debate—that religion, moral, and/or values education should be included in the basic education curriculum—this chapter will explore a number of questions that are focal to the effective teaching of religion, morals, and values. Is religious, moral, and values education indoctrination? Can values be taught? What is the proper way to teach religion? Accordingly, this paper will also propose an inclusive pedagogy that can be effectively utilized by teachers of religion, morals, and values without the dangers of being accused of indoctrination. It is worth noting that in the course of the discussion, the terms “values”, “religion”, and “morals” will be used very closely and, at times, interchangeably.

2

The Problem of Inclusivity in Religious, Moral, and Values Education

Although values (as well as religion and morals) education is considered essential in the basic education curriculum, there is a risk for education to deteriorate into indoctrination; thus, education ceases to be open, inviting, and inclusive. In relation to this, the problem of inclusivity in religion, moral, and values education, in terms of teaching and learning, takes at least two forms: (1) students who do not subscribe to the same belief/value system are being left behind (excluded); and (2) teachers who are forced to teach, but are not equipped to teach religion, moral, and values education are also being left behind (excluded).

358

2.1

L. P. Marquez and K. P. Florendo

Teaching Religion, Morals, and Values: Education or Indoctrination?

Worries about indoctrination have long been regarded as a problem for moral education [12]. In a traditional teacher-centered instruction, teaching has been equated to ordering the students what they ought to do without question, and thus, teachers would always have the upper hand—similar to the banking concept of education wherein “knowledge is considered as a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing” [13, p. 72]. Traditional teaching in education often entails the lack of student participation and inquiry in the classroom. Additionally, in a traditional classroom, students become passive learners. Students are put in the position of simply receiving knowledge and information from teachers while they have no control over their own learning. Teachers make all the decisions on all matters, namely, the curriculum, teaching methods, and the various forms of assessment [14]. Further, there are many terminologies in education that are understood in similar ways as teaching, and it has become quite an issue as to whether the activities related to it ought to be implemented in school [15]. A pedagogy that revolves around the teacher alone as well as the consistent misapprehension about what teaching is are problematic to numerous subject areas in education, more so if they involve religion and/or values education due to concerns about indoctrination. Indoctrination is described as “the exploitation of a cognitive-cum-epistemological vulnerability” [16, p. 104]; a “paralysis of one’s intellectual imagination where that mind becomes closed on those issues which are fundamentally open, and the capacity for imaginative enterprise is severely diminished” [17, p. 1]; or simply exemplified by “a person coming to hold a belief unintelligently, that is, without evidence” [18, p. 177]. Thus, indoctrination is unacceptable in the teaching and learning environment due to its exploitative nature and is detrimental to the aim of education to form students to become critical and analytic thinkers. In its incipient phase, indoctrination is characterized by introducing codified beliefs into one’s mind. Eventually, this evolves into drilling and repetition. Hence, with indoctrination, the understanding of education became so restricted as to become nothing more than doctrinal implantation [19]. Indoctrination is not authentic education, and it cannot serve as a substitute by any means, because the “purpose of education has always been to everyone, in essence, the same—to give the young, the things they need in order to develop in an orderly, sequential way into members of society” [20, par. 1]. It must raise questions, urge all involved to look for answers, and furthermore, to come up and suggest viable solutions [21]. To reiterate the essence of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed [13], educators who embody their profession must condemn the banking model of education [22] that is often used to indoctrinate. With this, it cannot be helped that indoctrination is the usual label given to subjects like values and religious education because the mode of instruction used for teaching these subjects often resembles the banking model.

20

Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal …

359

With indoctrination, learning becomes dangerously passive and one-way, which should never be the case, for learning is an inherently voluntary act that one cannot force [23]. Contrary to indoctrination, the approach that must be considered in teaching inclusive religion and/or values education is hermeneutical, thereby “bringing reliable information into relationship with knowledge and experience of pupils and teacher through active learning, including dialogue” [24]. The dissatisfaction with the traditional teacher-centered learning akin to indoctrination has become helpful and eventually led to the pursuit of exploring a new pedagogy for a more effective teaching that is different from “a coercive type of education” [19, p. 8]. Religion and values educators continue to seek a more constructive educational setup, methodology, and pedagogy for improving the teaching and learning environment since moral education cannot be properly carried out unless there is a wider and deeper meaning for teaching than providing explanations to children [25]. Lovat and Toomey [26] claims that student achievement is more assured when the values of care, respect, and trust that underpin the learning relationship are made explicit in all aspects of teaching and schooling, including the curriculum. More importantly, if moral education is to be appropriately taught, one must know its two crucial aims: (1) to teach people to practice a [moral] way of life and (2) to teach people to understand [morality] [25]. In secular institutions, there is always the abundant presence of core values, which stand as the representation or identity of the school as well as its members and stakeholders. From the mission and vision of the school to the school hymn and chants, these core values are ever present and integrated. Such schools are known for having Christian Living or Theology subjects as part of their curriculum or even as core subjects while Values/Moral/Citizenship Education can be considered as its counterpart in public schools. Members of these learning institutions adhere to the core values upheld by their respective schools. Ideally, this adherence is not and should never be blind obedience caused by indoctrination, but rather a choice and commitment to a way of life. In doing so, religious believers, members of religious denominations, as well as non-religious individuals, are not only able to act on their school’s “autonomy via faith” [27] or values, but come to faith or values via autonomy, as choices concerning how to act are influenced by those beliefs [28]. This goes to show that when it comes to religion, moral, and values education, whether it will appear as legitimate education or mere indoctrination depends on how the teaching of these subjects is conducted. Thus, in all subjects, most especially, in religious, moral, and values education, learning needs to be reframed as something that has a greater impact on students’ abilities, encouraging its use “in the service of, and often in the midst of, action” [29]; not simply relaying religious or social teachings, doctrines, or values through word of mouth, memorization, and repetition, which are often exclusive and divisive due to the tension between the thoughts that morality must be learned, on the one hand, and that it is controversial, on the other [30]. The fact is that any approach to teaching religion, morals, and values can never qualify nor even be near to becoming educative if it does not first address the problem of inclusivity in teaching and learning.

360

2.2

L. P. Marquez and K. P. Florendo

Out-of-Field Teaching

Teachers who handle religious, morals, and values subjects in educational institutions should ideally have a definite and clear set of qualifications set by the institution. This is one way of ensuring the effectiveness of teaching in relation to the outcomes of quality education [31]. The institution should be the first to set the standards for who they wish to employ to teach such essential core subjects. Moreover, the excellence and fullness of the profession is in vain if all are based on theory alone and paired with a shambolic pedagogy. This means that prospective educators must properly and fully equip themselves before crossing the threshold into the profession of teaching. For educators to be truly effective, their teacher education must enable them to master certain things, namely, content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, curriculum knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge of learners and their characteristics, and knowledge of educational contexts and of pedagogical ends, purposes, and values [32, 33]. Institutions could make use of similar standards to improve teacher quality that may be contingent upon the systemic values and beliefs that guide the teacher’s practice [31]. Unfortunately, despite meeting all these aforementioned criteria, due to various unescapable problems in the field of education and circumstances of the teachers and the institution, there are times when teachers (not only of religion, morals, and values education) are not adept with handling the subjects that were assigned to them because they specialize in another field [34, 35]. This practice, referred to as out-of-field teaching, is a serious concern not just for students, but to a large extent, for struggling teachers who are being left behind. The problem of failing to achieve the crucial aims of religion and values education greatly lies on the lack of inclusivity in terms of educators who are not equipped to teach such subjects. Quality teaching involves making decisions about the effectiveness of pedagogical approaches in specific circumstances [31] and this is a heavy burden for a teacher who is being left behind due to the disparity of their professional upbringing as it clashes with the epistemological and pedagogical demands of the moral education subjects that they are tasked to handle. There are numerous reasons why educational institutions practice out-of-field teaching as well as why educators settle with teaching subjects that they did not specialize in. One obvious reason is the prevalent shortage of educators because of the insufficient numbers entering teacher education programs [36]. A probable solution to this lack of workforce is to bring new people into the field of education [37]. Another reason is the general lack of respect for the complexity and importance of the teaching profession [38]. This problem is more difficult to resolve. Religion, moral, and values educators are comparable to multi-art performers since mastering the art of managing a classroom composed of multi-belief and muti-culture students cannot be attained through a single training or one-way formation. One does not become an excellent religion and values educator overnight. In contrast to teaching other subjects, such as science or mathematics, for instance,

20

Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal …

361

whose central concepts can be taught to students regardless of their cultural or religious backgrounds, teaching religion and values education subjects require more than knowledge transmission and drilling of know-how to students, for it demands educators to be sensitive and to practice caring thinking. Absent this, the teaching of religion, morals, and values will likely devolve into indoctrination wherein teachers only parrot what they can find in textbooks without any real hope for the development of moral thinking skills as well as moral appreciation and understanding to happen. This does not produce anything good in teachers especially if they do not experience fulfillment in what they are doing. Worse is, if students feel that their teachers do not know what they are teaching, which could lead the learners to doubt their so-called educators’ credibility to handle and facilitate learning in religion, moral, and values education. This, evidently, does not help students in any way as well.

2.3

No One Must Be Left Behind

There is a need to maintain a healthy relationship and ambiance in the overall teaching and learning space. To gain the trust of the other is crucial. Through the educator’s proficiency in both theory and practice, students must feel that they belong and that their needs are heard and met even amid an array of varied views and opinions when it comes to discussions on religion or values—a complexity in education that is apparent with the students and the teachers [31]. Thus, it is important for teachers to assure the learners that they would be well taken care of and efficiently facilitated in the classroom despite their differences. For this reason, educational institutions and teachers must work together to ensure quality education to protect the trust that learners have put in them. A comparative research conducted between novice and experienced teachers reveals that educators who took professional education units are more inclined to perform teaching with a sense of inclusivity and educators who have undergone pre-service teaching during their teacher formation pine for an inclusive education fitting the needs of their learners [39]. The findings also suggest that teachers with a background in education are a distinct group in terms of their attitudes and beliefs [39]. Such educators are likely to take into consideration the individualities of students who they engage with in the classroom. Values and morals are expressed in the way that teachers organize and manage the teaching and learning ambiance. This includes the way that educators present, value, and choose educational content, as well as in what they choose to permit or encourage in the classroom. It is observable in the educator’s pedagogy, disciplinary procedures, attitudes, treatment of the students, and in how they implement school rules. If the values that these educators teach do not align with their way of living and being, then in that specific environment, such educators are inexperienced [40]. Moral educators today are often considered as sacred healers of a complex reality and global ecology that is under constant threat [41]. For this reason, religion, moral, and values educators must be inclusive in the classroom. The

362

L. P. Marquez and K. P. Florendo

challenge to teachers, therefore, would be to work on efficient and fitting teaching and learning strategies and activities for a more inclusive religious, moral, and values learning, for the sake of their students. Inclusive religion and values education is not a meager nor simplistic job for anyone, especially, if one would need to focus on catering to the complexity of every student. Values and religion could not be taught efficiently without first ratifying the utmost value of the teacher’s suitability and adequacy to the role. The teaching of religion and values education would cease to be relevant and would not flourish if the educators mechanically “pass down” their own beliefs and values to the students without drawing from moral-philosophical, moral-psychological, or moral-educational theories [42]. Falling back to such “indoctrination techniques” in the teaching of religion and values diminishes the chances of making these subjects inclusive for a group of multi-belief and multi-cultural students. Authentic values, moral, and religion educators must strive to refer and relate to theories in philosophy, psychology, sociology, education, or other academic disciplines as they discuss various belief systems and introduce texts. Religious texts and teachings on values exist in relation to a faith or societal tradition, and though religion may not be subscribed to by all, it could become a means for dialogue, such as with the learner’s lived and living experiences [43]. This translation is essential; for what is the aim of teaching these subjects? We argue that teaching morals, values, and religion requires going back to their foundations, as exhibited by texts and practices, so that learners may be able to appreciate, understand, and learn that our world is a place where differences in views and convictions abound. The inclusion of values, religious, and moral education in the curriculum should not have been done merely as an act to advance the ideals of an institution, but to develop the learners into becoming good members of society. Society has given teaching professionals the mandate to provide education to its citizens and the teacher’s task is to carry out this mandate in the best way possible [39]. Passion for teaching paired with inclusive teaching strategies can lessen inequalities and provide a more meaningful learning experience to students and teachers alike. Putting the needs of students first, educators must see themselves as facilitators who guide learners through a thinking process. Teachers must find ways to invite learners to understand how religious, moral, value systems and beliefs could become sources of connection and insight into society and the reality of their dayto-day lives. Through this, the individuality of students who have different sets of values or belief systems than others are not marginalized while also giving everyone a chance to appreciate the complexity of the subjects of religion and values. Through this collaborative approach, independence from diverse needs and preferences may lead to increased innovation and productivity [44] in the teaching and learning environment of religion, moral, and values education. This can, ultimately, be attained if a conducive pedagogy can be utilized to facilitate inclusive and collaborative religion, moral, and values learning.

20

3

Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal …

363

Teaching Religion, Morals, and Values Through Philosophical Pedagogy

Given the exclusivity and divisiveness that several of the current approaches to teaching religion, morals, and values education may bring to the classroom, we propose philosophy as a promising and capable pedagogy that offers inclusivity in teaching and learning these subjects. As an example, the dialogical inquiry approach of Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) is presented as it is proven to be effective in covering the vital facets required of religion, moral, and values education sans the dangers of falling into the traps of indoctrination. The following sections present why philosophy as a pedagogy is an inclusive pedagogy and how Philosophy for/with Children can be an inclusive approach to teaching religion, morals, and values.

3.1

Philosophical Pedagogy as an Inclusive Pedagogy

Philosophy may be regarded as the ultimate foundation of education. Leagard [45] illustrates in his taxonomic map of philosophy how philosophy permeates and links every academic discipline, area, topic, and subject-matter imaginable. In other words, one cannot go about one’s education without having anything to do with philosophy, in one way or another. By virtue of the fact that philosophy is at the heart of education, we argue that an inclusive approach to teaching religion, morals, and values must be, ultimately, based on philosophy—a philosophical pedagogy. Philosophy, by virtue of its very nature to question, also questions itself. For this reason, it cannot be precisely defined. Nonetheless, etymologically, from philosophia, philosophy is characterized as the love of wisdom—comprehensiveness and emancipation [46]. In addition, philosophy can be understood in three different conceptions—intellectual presupposition, reflection, and reconstruction [47]. It is understandable if one finds it difficult to understand philosophy despite being familiar with these conceptions. It may be useful, however, to try another approach at analyzing this evasive concept. Hospers [48] attempted to describe philosophy through the notion of via negative—the negative way—that is, by looking at what philosophy is not. In particular, he initially asked what are not considered philosophical questions; afterwards, he described what philosophy is based on the questions that were left to answer. First, Hospers [48] identified statements regarding ordinary perception cannot be answers to philosophical questions. Statements, for instance, like “The candy is sweet” or “The ball is red” are not the responses that a philosophical question would seek. Questions such as “What does the candy taste like?” or “What is the color of the ball?” which can be answered by appealing to ordinary perception cannot be considered philosophical questions. Second, philosophical questions are not questions that can be answered by appealing to the sciences [48]. For this reason, any question that can be answered through empirical experimentation, such

364

L. P. Marquez and K. P. Florendo

as “Is the piece of rock magnetic?” or “Is this material elastic?” do not qualify as philosophical questions. Simply put, questions raised in the empirical sciences, i.e., physics, chemistry, biology, etc., are not philosophical. Third, questions relating to history are not philosophical questions as well as those questions about the future [48]. Historical questions can be answered through archival research, such as, “When was the Philippines colonized?” or “When did Mount Pinatubo erupt?” do not qualify as philosophical questions. The same can be said about questions like “Will it rain tomorrow?” or “When is the next full moon?” that asks about future events because they can be answered by empirical means. Fourth, questions regarding mathematics are not philosophical questions [48]. Obviously, questions such as “What is seven multiplied by three?” or “How many percent of a hundred is twelve?” cannot be mistaken to be philosophical questions. In this light, answering philosophical questions does not involve calculation. Given this, what then is left for philosophy to answer? Apparently, these kinds of questions are not empirical, scientific, historical, or mathematical. Interestingly enough, philosophy in asking its questions also touches areas that concern perception, science, history, and mathematics. First, philosophy is the study of reality that is outside the realm of scientific reality [48]. By virtue of this, philosophy would raise questions such as “Does God exist?” or “What is a person?” or perhaps even “Is this world real?” and would tirelessly search for their answers. These questions, though concerning reality, are kinds of inquiries that cannot be answered by the sciences and their experiments as well as mathematics or history. Second, philosophy is the study of how claims are justified [48]. If one proclaims that God exists, philosophy will ask, “How do you know?” It would ask the sciences, “How do you know that your processes are reliable?” In fact, philosophy even asks, “Are humans really capable of acquiring knowledge?” Philosophy challenges the most basic foundations of the claims that people make. Finally, philosophy is concerned with conceptual analysis. A lot of people hold onto concepts that they believe to be true, such as, goodness, equality, respect, fairness, and so forth. However, it may be a common occurrence for people to hold on to these concepts without really understanding what they mean. In this regard, philosophy would ask, “What is goodness?” or “What is equality?” and perhaps “What differentiates respect from fairness?” The clarification and understanding of these concepts are essential to philosophy since it is the business of philosophy to analyze concepts. To this end, philosophy even asks itself, “What is philosophy?”. Meanwhile, pedagogy—from paidag¯ogos, meaning to lead a child—can simply be understood as an approach to teaching. Hinchliffe [49] defines it as “learning oriented towards social goals” (p. 31). It can also be described as “any conscious activity by one person designed to enhance learning in another” [50, p. 3]. More deeply, it is a field of study that focuses on teaching styles, techniques, and methodologies. Pedagogy, the theory of teaching, is the study of teaching methods and the aims or ends of education. Comprising an extensive range of interests, ideas, and questions, pedagogy combines the philosophy of education and the psychology of education. The activity of a

20

Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal …

365

teacher is directed toward the positive modification of a learner’s knowledge and behaviour. As such, pedagogy also involves the complex relationship between philosophical concepts and practical actions. [51, p. 261]

Child Australia [52] brings together various definitions of pedagogy that cover theory, practice, relationships, research, politics, and reflections, among others. This implies that there is no singular definition of what pedagogy is. Simply put, pedagogy “is an encompassing term concerned with what a teacher does to influence learning in others” [52, p. 1]. In relation to this, there are at least four kinds of pedagogical models—transmission, student-centered, critical, and dialogic. The transmission model pertains to the lecture approach that focuses on the transmission of information from the teacher to the student. Recently, it has gained a reputation of being “highly ineffective for teaching twenty-first century competencies and skills” [53, p. 1]. Meanwhile, progressive educators (e.g., Montessori approach, Waldorf education, etc.) wherein students take a lead role in their learning often employ the studentcentered model. “In a student-centered class, students don’t depend on their teacher all the time … but look at each other and communicate with each other … It’s a place where we consider the needs of the students, as a group and as individuals, and encourage them to participate in the learning process all the time. The teacher’s role is more that of a facilitator … than instructor; the students are active participants in the learning process” [54, p. 2]. The critical pedagogy model, on the other hand, recognizes that classrooms are political spaces, and that education should focus on empowering students to become transformative citizens. “The critical teacher understands her/his responsibility of preparing the pupil/student for more than the profession she/he is going to exercise. She/he equips them with the capacity to transform society” [55, p. 5]. Finally, the dialogic model prioritizes dialogue in the learning process. It is “characterized by the use of dialogue between the teacher and the students and among the students to achieve some particular intellectual curricular endpoints pre-set by the teacher. Dialogue here is a pedagogical method (e.g., Socratic Method) or an instructional strategy …” [56, p. 7]. From these descriptions, a philosophical pedagogy can be described as a combination of the last three pedagogies (four, if one is to interpret transmission as modelling) with a focus on using the tools of philosophy to examine intellectual presuppositions, encourage reflection, and reconstruct beliefs (and belief systems). Taken together, a philosophical pedagogy can be described as a method of teaching using wisdom. Thus, it entails teaching students by training them to be comprehensive in their outlook and to emancipate from the tyranny of the norm, as Russell [46] would put it, as well as to exercise good judgment, according to Lipman [57]. “Philosophical pedagogy is unusual in that the learner is being encouraged by the teacher to think for themselves and develop critical skills rather than absorb a certain concept or datum” [58, par. 1]. Furthermore, our argument for the use of philosophical pedagogy in religious, values, and moral education is supported by centuries’ worth of evidence that

366

L. P. Marquez and K. P. Florendo

exhibits its victories in arriving at an unbiased education. One of the earliest forms of philosophical pedagogy is the Socratic Method wherein participants clarify ideas by exchanging questions and opposing ideas similar to that of a dialogue. Another example is Heidegger’s pedagogy that “attempt[s] to lead students in taking their own leap across the ontological difference” [59, p. 573]. The most recent version of philosophical pedagogy is Philosophy for/with Children that employs the community of philosophical inquiry. Clearly, throughout the history of philosophy and that of education, there are varying practices of philosophical pedagogy. Nevertheless, there are several factors that can be considered as characteristics of a pedagogy being philosophical. In adopting the philosopher’s pedagogy in our classrooms, we have found that it requires a set of six interconnected educational commitments. The first is that the teacher must live an examined life. Secondly, the teacher must see education as a shared activity between teacher and student. Thirdly, the teacher and students must re-conceptualize the “content” of the discipline as a reflection of the interaction between the classroom participant’s beliefs and experiences and the subject matter being taught. This connects with the fourth commitment: that the teacher must hold … the view that philosophy is “the general theory of education.” Fifth, teachers, and students, must make philosophy a living classroom practice. And finally, teachers must be willing to challenge contemporary measures for classroom assessment. [60, p. 11]

Accordingly, UNESCO, in its global study on the state of teaching philosophy, has found similar descriptions regarding philosophical instruction. For a discussion to be philosophically instructive, a number of conditions must be met. These conditions include establishing a cooperative community of enquiry, which implies a discourse ethics based on ‘communicative action’ … and an authentic desire to establish shared truth, in addition to encouraging rational thought processes. [61, p. 10]

From this, it can be gleaned that a philosophical pedagogy is a teaching approach that values egalitarian cooperation between teacher and student; adheres to rationality, reasonableness, reflection, and self-examination; makes the pursuit of shared truth alive and of utmost priority inside and outside the classroom; and upholds the practice of challenging existing knowledge, beliefs, processes, and measures. Thus, clearly distinct from the prevailing traditional didactic pedagogy, a philosophical pedagogy puts to the fore the values of reflection and reasonableness more than mere compliance and rote memorization. To put it simply, a philosophical pedagogy is: … an eminently practical pedagogy that incorporates a philosophical spirit and that is directed to encouraging classroom practices that engage students in reflection on important issues. It was born as a solution to deficiencies that we experienced as classroom teachers, and it has evolved in ways that are sensitive to our students’ needs and abilities, in addition to our different needs and abilities as teachers. Over time, the philosopher’s pedagogy has grown from a series of activities into a belief system that concerns the practice of philosophy in the school classroom. [60, p. 17]

20

Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal …

367

This shows the inherent inclusive nature of a philosophical pedagogy. The only requirements are the abilities to think, reflect, and express one’s thoughts—abilities which are present in most human beings regardless of moral, values, or religious orientation; it is also sensitive to the needs and abilities of both teachers and learners and not keen on merely relaying doctrines. Through this, different moral and religious outlooks or value systems can be effectively appreciated. As a philosophical pedagogy, such is the nature of Philosophy for/with Children. “Philosophy for Children encourages children to think for themselves at the same time that it encourages them to think with others” [62]. This inclusive characteristic of P4wC allows it to be a potent tool for religion, moral, and values education to be taught without the dangers of prejudice and indoctrination. Thus, given the inclusive nature of philosophical pedagogy, it is best for the purposes of appreciating the benefits of employing a philosophical pedagogy in religion, moral, and values education to look at how P4wC can be used in the classroom.

3.2

Philosophy for/with Children in Values, Moral, and Religious Education

Values and religious education, which usually fall under the category of moral education, frequently focus on cultivating specific skills, attitudes, or dispositions. Often, some of these are more highlighted than others. Accordingly, teaching strategies must be tailored to maximize the likelihood that these skills, attitudes, or dispositions will be developed in students. Some studies [on teaching strategies for moral education] accentuate the importance of stimulating skills like critical thinking, moral decision making and moral reasoning. A number of these also emphasize the affective and relational aspects of moral development. Other studies focus in particular on a specific set of values, such as trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, honesty, justice and fairness, as the main goal of moral education ... A problem-based approach to instruction, co-operative learning and dialogic learning (discussion) are the most commonly suggested teaching strategies. Underlying these strategies is the assumption that learning must be made meaningful to students. Moreover, students should be able to direct their own learning process and be actively involved in knowledge building. More specifically, we encountered teaching methods involving the use of drama and literature, and service learning. Although one of the objectives of moral education frequently mentioned in the literature is to teach students how to deal with cultural diversity, studies that take social differences between students into account are scarce. [63, p. 23]

Lipman [64] argues that all these important facets of moral education can be covered by the narrative-and-discussion based doing of philosophy in P4wC. Through the community of inquiry (COI)—or more precisely, the community of philosophical inquiry (CPI)—moral questions are regarded as problems to be solved through collaborative dialogue. Since the members of the CPI direct the pace and direction of the dialogue, learning becomes more meaningful and engaging to students. More importantly, the CPI values the diversity (cultural, religious, gender, etc.) of its members since this contributes to the strengthening of the community by giving

368

L. P. Marquez and K. P. Florendo

each member a more holistic perspective on the question being tackled by drawing from the unique thoughts and experiences of each individual inquirer. It is important to note, however, that the success of the CPI relies greatly on the introduction of a “value- or doctrine-neutral” stimulus. This means that the stimulus should not endorse any preferred value or doctrine but must be open to the appreciation of and dialogue about various values and doctrines by regarding them on the same level. It is worth noting that the stimuli are not confined to written texts but can be through other media. Some examples of these stimuli that P4wC practitioners use to inquire into concepts related to moral education are The Ring of Gyges [65], Lisa [66], Nous [67], The Cat Painter [68], and The Egg [69], among others. The Ring of Gyges, a story told by Plato in the Republic [65], presents a dilemma—would one still do what is good, right, and just if one has the power to become invisible, that is, to hide oneself from the consequences of one’s actions? Lipman’s novel, Lisa [66], shows how Lisa engages in philosophical dialogue with her classmates on various notions such as justice, fairness, sexism, death, animal rights, and perfection, to name a few as they experience them in the course of their daily lives. Weir’s short story, The Egg [69], presents numerous values and religious concepts including God, reincarnation, kindness, karma, humanity, suffering, death, and the afterlife. In contrast to studying religious texts such as the Bible, the Quran, or the Vedas or poring over values education textbooks, all of which endorse a specified values or religious framework, belief, or moral system to be accepted and followed, the former group of (neutral) texts present the same concepts that are endorsed by the latter group as something to be discussed, understood, and determined to be acceptable or not. Rather than conditioning the minds of students to believe in such values, the texts used in P4wC allow students to appreciate and consider these values first—to the extent of their abilities—before deciding to accept them “for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits” [70, p. 4]. In this light, one may begin to see how students from different sects, culture, religion, race, and value or belief systems can learn from and with each other. By building communities of inquiry through philosophical dialogue, values, moral, and religious education become more inclusive since it would be able to embrace diversity. Rather than excluding students who do not hold similar beliefs, the P4wC approach embraces these differing views and uses them to build and strengthen the community through reasonable thinking. This, arguably, must be one of the central priorities of education. Education is the act of coming together through liberation from ignorance and bias. Teachers who are also forced to teach values and religion classes despite not having the required expertise will fare much better insofar as they can facilitate a community of philosophical inquiry. This, of course, requires training and practice, which may be more accessible than going back to school to develop expertise in values, moral, and religious education. Murris [71],

20

Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal …

369

however, warns that rigorous training in P4wC can never replace the philosophical knowledge and experience that can be gained through studying philosophy in universities. The same can be said for moral, values, and religious education. In other words, P4wC is not a panacea—a magical cure-all—that would make an ill-prepared teacher an expert in handling religion, moral, and values education classes through philosophical dialogue. Preparation is a vital part of the process. Ultimately, employing P4wC in values, religious, and moral education is a better and a more promising and inclusive alternative than having out-of-field teachers who parrot what they read in a book to their students—that would be immoral.

4

Conclusion

We raised three questions at the beginning of this chapter. Is religious, moral, and values education indoctrination? Can values be taught? What is the proper way to teach religion? In the preceding discussions, it was determined that values, moral, and religious education per se do not necessarily translate to indoctrination. However, it can be a form of indoctrination if students are merely expected to accept, believe, and abide by what was taught to them. Religion, moral, and values educators who teach through indoctrination could be seen as dictators who can never be wrong as they run the class with an iron fist. Hence, what matters is not what is being taught but the way they are taught. Accordingly, values, morals, and religion can be taught as “facts” and “principles” that need to be abided by if the teacher follows the path of indoctrination. Meanwhile, if teachers are to teach values and religion sans indoctrination—the proper way that they should be treated—then values, morals, and religion are not taught, rather, they are problematized, discussed through dialogue, and accepted if deemed acceptable. Dictating what should be learned and accepted in the classroom without justification is not ideal. Religion, morals, and values education do not and should not be taught through indoctrination. Accordingly, we argued that philosophical pedagogy should be employed in values, religion, or moral education classes to avoid falling into the trap of indoctrination. Further, we proposed Philosophy for/with Children as an example. Through P4wC, students from different religious and cultural backgrounds as well as teachers who have little training in teaching values, moral, and religious education subjects will be able to collaborate with each other to reasonably consider the numerous concepts related to morals, values, and religion that they encounter in the texts (or stimuli) that they use while drawing from their respective personal experiences during their everyday lives. This allows for an inclusive education that is not permissible when using an approach that favors one religious-, moral- or valuesystem over another. Ultimately, we maintain that values, morals, and religion educators (and by extension recommend that teacher-training institutions) should consider the benefits of employing philosophical pedagogy, particularly P4wC, in moral education classes because it prioritizes the development of thinking (e.g.,

370

L. P. Marquez and K. P. Florendo

critical thinking, moral reasoning) skills that affect behavior through collaborative—i.e., inclusive—thinking over mere assimilation of concepts and drilling (as though a taskmaster) for compliance. Education is the act of coming together through liberation from ignorance and bias. Leander Marquez and Kimberly Florendo

References 1. Alcott AB (1960) Essays on education. Gainesville, Florida: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprint 2. Genç MF (2018) Values education or religious education? An alternative view of religious education in the secular age, the case of turkey. Education Sciences 8(4):220. https://www. researchgate.net/publication/329791419_Values_Education_or_Religious_Education_An_Alt ernative_View_of_Religious_Education_in_the_Secular_Age_the_Case_of_Turkey 3. Carbone PJ (1991) Perspectives on values education. The Clearing House 64(5). https://www. jstor.org/stable/30188619?seq=1 4. Niculescu RM, Nore, M (2013) Religious education, an important dimension of human’s education. Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 93:338–342. https://core.ac.uk/download/ pdf/82675877.pdf 5. Sari N (2013) The importance of teaching moral values to the students. Journal of English and Education 1(1):154–162. https://media.neliti.com/media/publications/192566-EN-the-import ance-of-teaching-moral-values.pdf 6. Sutrop M (2015) Can values be taught? The myth of value-free education. TRAMES 19(69/ 64):189–202. https://kirj.ee/public/trames_pdf/2015/issue_2/Trames-2015-2-189-202.pdf 7. Tan C (2008) Religious education and indoctrination. https://www.researchgate.net/public ation/281202113_Religious_education_and_indoctrination 8. Tan C (2008) Teaching without Indoctrination: implications for Values Education. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam 9. Alberts W (2019) Religious education as small ‘i’ indoctrination: how European countries struggle with a secular approach to religion in schools. Center for Educational Policy Studies Journal 9(4):53–72. https://ojs.cepsj.si/index.php/cepsj/article/view/688/380 10. Baer RJ (1982) Teaching values in the schools—clarification or indoctrination. Principal 61(3):17–21, 36. https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.cornell.edu/dist/1/3928/files/2020/04/ Teaching_Values_in_the_Schools.pdf 11. Lopez ME (2013) The nature of indoctrination and its role in a proper education. Dissertation, Los Angeles: University of California. https://escholarship.org/content/qt5w43z8cw/qt5 w43z8cw_noSplash_0f8ed805b826fab30cae6967cf75f986.pdf 12. Copp D (2016) Moral education versus indoctrination. Theory Res Educ 14(2):149–167. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477878516656563 13. Freire P (2005) Pedagogy of the oppressed, 30th anniversary edition. New York & London: Continuum. https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-opp ressed.pdf 14. Ahmed K (2013) Teacher-centered versus learner-centered teaching style. Journal of Global Business Management 22–34 15. Hirst P (1971) What is teaching? J Curric Stud 3(1):5–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/002202771 0030102 16. Raimondi ESL (2021) An epistemological account of indoctrination. Thesis. https://discov ery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10124702/1/Elena%20Raimondi%20-%20MPhil%20Thesis%20-% 20An%20Epistemological%20Account%20of%20Indoctrination.pdf

20

Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal …

371

17. Tan C (2004) Indoctrination, imagination and moral education. Conference paper. https:// www.researchgate.net/publication/254573021_Indoctrination_Imagination_and_Moral_Edu cation 18. White J (2010) Indoctrination. In: Peters RS (ed) The concept of education, vol 17. International Library of the Philosophy of Education, Routledge 19. Snook I (2010) Concepts of indoctrination, vol 20. International Library of the Philosophy of Education, Routledge 20. Dewey J (1934) Individual psychology and education. The Philosopher 12. http://www.the-phi losopher.co.uk/2016/08/individual-psychology-and-education-1934.html 21. Wood K (2012) Education: the basics. Taylor & Francis 22. Alam M (2013) Banking model of education in teacher-centered class: a critical assessment. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences, 27–31 23. Singham M (2010) Away from the authoritarian classroom. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 51–57 24. Jackson R (2004) Rethinking religious education and plurality: issues in diversity and pedagogy. Psychology Press, Warwickshire 25. Harris M, Moran G (1998) Reshaping religious education: conversations on contemporary practice. Westminster Johnknox Press, Kentucky 26. Lovat T, Toomey R (2009) Values education and quality teaching the double helix effect. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht 27. McLaughlin TH (1984) Parental rights and the religious upbringing of children. J Philos Educ 18(1):75–83 28. Pike M (2010) Christianity and character education: faith in core values? Journal of Beliefs & Values 311–321 29. Raelin JA (2009) The practice turn-away: forty years of spoon-feeding in management education. Manag Learn 40:401–410 30. Hand M (2014) Towards a theory of moral education. Journal of Philosophy of Education 48(4):519–532. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268691542_Towards_a_The ory_of_Moral_Education 31. Churchward P, Willis J (2018) The pursuit of teacher quality: identifying some of the multiple discourses of quality that impact the work of teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education 251–264 32. Shulman LS (1987) Knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review 1–22 33. Ben-Peretz M (2011) Teacher knowledge: what is it? How do we uncover it? What are its implications for schooling? Teaching and Teacher Education 3–9 34. Ingersoll R (1999) The problem of underqualified teachers in American secondary schools. https://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/139 35. Du Plessis A, Carroll A, Gillies R (2017) The meaning of out-of-field teaching for educational leadership. Int J Leadersh Educ 20(1):87–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603124.2014.962618 36. UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) (2016) The world needs almost 69 million new teachers to reach the 2030 education goals. UIS Fact Sheet, No. 39. http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/ files/documents/fs39-the-world-needs-almost-69-million-new-teachers-to-reach-the-2030-edu cation-goals-2016-en.pdf 37. Steadman S, Simmons J (2007) Teachers not certified by universities burden our best teachers. The Education Digest 19–24 38. Ingersoll R (1998) The problem of out-of-field teaching. Kappan Professional Journal. https:/ /teaching-point.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Problem-of-Out-of-Field-Teaching.pdf 39. Caspersen J (2013) The valuation of knowledge and normative reflection in teacher qualification: a comparison of teacher educators, novice and experienced teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education 109–119 40. Goldhaber D, Krieg JM, Theobald R (2017) Does the match matter? Exploring whether student teaching experiences affect teacher effectiveness. Am Educ Res J 54(2):325–359. https://doi. org/10.3102/0002831217690516

372

L. P. Marquez and K. P. Florendo

41. Baker D, Reyes P (2019) Religious educators are the future. Religious Education 1–9 42. Thornberg R (2008) The lack of professional knowledge in values education. Teach Teach Educ 24(7):1791–1798. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2008.04.004 43. Taube S (2015) Open minds, devoted hearts: portraits of adult religious educators. Wipf and Stock Publishers, Oregon 44. Navarro SB, Zervas P, Gesa RF, Sampson D (2016) Developing teachers’ competences for designing inclusive learning experiences. Educational Technology & Society 17–27 45. Leagard V (2016) Map of the taxonomy of philosophy. A Taxonomic Map of Philosophy by Justin W. http://dailynous.com/2016/06/28/a-taxonomic-map-of-philosophy 46. Russell B (2009) Knowledge and wisdom. In: Pepa R, Guevarra D (eds) Sophophilia: critical readings in academic philosophy (with logic). Trinity University of Asia, Quezon City 47. Bonifacio A (n.d.) Three concepts of philosophy. https://www.scribd.com/doc/129403249/ Three-Concepts-of-Philosophy 48. Hospers J (1997) An introduction to philosophical analysis. Routledge, London 49. Hinchliffe G (2001) Education or pedagogy? Journal of Philosophy of Education 35(1) 50. Watkins C, Mortimore P (1999) Pedagogy: what do we know? In: Mortimore P (ed) Understanding pedagogy and its impact on learning. Paul Chapman Publishing Ltd., London 51. Wang TJ, Huang KH (2018) Pedagogy, philosophy, and the question of creativity. Teach High Educ 23(2):261–273 52. Child Australia (2017). What is pedagogy? How does it influence our practice? https://childa ustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CA-Statement-Pedagogy.pdf 53. Scott C (2015) The futures of learning 3: what kind of pedagogies for the 21st century? UNESCO Education Research and Foresight, Paris 54. Jones L (2007) The student-centered classroom. Cambridge University Press, New York 55. Abraham G (2014) Critical pedagogy: origin, vision, action & consequences. https://www. researchgate.net/publication/281293493_Critical_Pedagogy_Origin_Vision_Action_Conseq uences 56. Matusov E, Miyazaki K (2014) Dialogue in dialogic pedagogy. Dialogic Pedagogy: An Online International Journal 2. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1148755.pdf 57. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education. Cambridge University Press, New York 58. Farrow R (2011) Philosophical pedagogy: Wittgenstein. https://philosopher1978.wordpress. com/2011/08/31/philosophical-pedagogy-wittgenstein/ 59. Quay J (2012) Ehrmantraut, M. Hiedegger’s philosophic pedagogy. Educational Philosophy and Theory 44(5) 60. Makaiau A, Miller C (2012) The philosopher’s pedagogy. Educational Perspectives 44(1&2):8–18 61. UNESCO Social and Human Sciences Sector (2007) Philosophy: a school of freedom. UNESCO Publishing, Paris 62. Pritchard M (2018) Philosophy for children. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/children/ 63. Schuitema JA, ten Dam GTM, Veugelers WMMH (2003) Teaching strategies for moral education: a review. In: Mason L, Andreuzza S, Arfè B, Del Favero L (eds) Abstracts of the 10th biennial meeting of the European association for research on learning and instruction. Cooperativa Libraria Editrice Università di Padova. https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/3566219/26469_121 279y.pdf 64. Lipman M (1995) Moral education higher-order thinking and philosophy for children. Early Child Dev Care 107(1):61–70 65. Plato (1968) The Republic of Plato, 2nd ed. In Bloom (Trans). BasicBooks, USA 66. Lipman M (1976) Lisa: reasoning in ethics. Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, New Jersey 67. Lipman M (1996) Nous: reasoning about ethics. Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, New Jersey 68. Bravo B (2006) The cat painter. Adarna House, Philippines 69. Weir A (2009) The egg. http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

20

Exclusive Values, Religious, and Moral Education: An Appeal …

373

70. Aristotle (1999) Nicomachean ethics. In: Ross WD (Trans). Batoche Books, Kitchener. https:/ /socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/aristotle/Ethics.pdf 71. Murris K (2016) The philosophy for children curriculum: resisting ‘teacher proof’ texts and the formation of the ideal philosopher child. Stud Philos Educ 35:63–78

Leander Penaso Marquez teaches philosophy, educational foundations, and values education courses at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He has published several articles in local and international journals in addition to having presented some of his research in various local and international conferences. Leander sits as Co-chair of the Working Group on Bioethics of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities Global Health Program (APRU-GHP) and serves as Junior Ambassador to the Philippines for the Universal Scientific Education and Research Network (USERN). He was first introduced to P4wC in 2014 and received training from the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) in 2017. He has facilitated various training and workshops on teaching philosophy and P4wC. His research interests include Ethics, Epistemology, Bioethics, Research Ethics, Education Policy, Philosophy for Children, Philosophy of Education, and Philosophy and Popular Culture. Leander has published a textbook for Filipino students that is based on the P4wC framework titled, Trends, Networks, and Critical Thinking in the 21st Century Culture (2018). Kimberly P. Florendo is a licensed professional values educator teaching theology, ethics, and morality to senior high school students at San Beda University Manila. She graduated, Bachelor of Secondary Education major in Religious Education in the University of Santo Tomas and finished Cum Laude. Currently, she is a graduate student at the University of the Philippines Diliman, writing her MA thesis on Values Integration, under the program Master of Arts in Education major in Philosophy of Education. She is also a member of the Philippine Association for Teachers & Educators (PAFTE) Inc. and the Religious Educators Association of the Philippines (REAP).

Philosophical Practice as a Way of Employee Education and Business Consulting

21

Yosuke Horikoshi

“[D]emocracy as a way of life is controlled by personal faith in personal day-by-day working together with others.” [1, p. 228]

Abstract

Philosophical Practice as a form of business consulting has been conducted mainly in the U.S. and Europe, and its theory has been developed in these areas to a certain extent. On the other hand, except for a few cases, neither the theory nor the practice has yet been widely recognized in Asia. For example, the role of philosophers in the business sphere in Japan has been limited to participating in the creation of ethics codes for companies and organizations for a long time. However, this chapter clarifies P4wC (Philosophy for/with Children) as a means of employee education and business consulting. It introduces its trends, methods, and potential in terms of practices in Japan. These practices can be distinguished into three types: first, building/reconstructing corporate visions and mission statements through philosophical texts and philosophical dialogues; second, conducting employee training with P4wC for the purpose of cultivating critical/creative thinking skills, presentation skills, and to improve a company’s work environment through team building; third, conducting P4wC after giving lectures and writing reports from a philosophical perspective on the concepts that inform the mission statement and daily workings of a company. This study does not use statistical data to describe these methods and outcomes but aims

Y. Horikoshi (B) The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_21

375

376

Y. Horikoshi

to introduce and analyze those practices in business settings with reference to theoretical studies on P4wC. Graphic Abstract

P4wC for Employee Education and Business Consulting

Keywords

Philosophical practice . Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) . Philosophical consulting . Philosophy education . Philosophy in business . Employee education

1

Introduction: From P4wC as a Pedagogy in Schools to a Method in the Business Field

It need hardly be said that Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) has established its place as a pedagogy of reasonableness in schools around the world. It has also been discussed in connection with citizenship education in terms of practices that

21

Philosophical Practice as a Way of Employee Education and Business …

377

foster dialogic inquiry, critical thinking, and democratic characteristics that deepen one’s understanding with others.1 This connection between citizenship education and philosophy is not limited to P4wC alone. There have been several recommendations and reports that refer to the relationship between philosophy and citizenship education in a broad sense, and the former’s potential impact on the latter. For example, UNESCO has organized conferences on philosophy education, prepared reports on the state of philosophy education around the world, and compiled recommendations. The Paris Declaration for Philosophy [2] is representative of the results of these efforts, stating that “the development of philosophical debate in education and in cultural life makes a major contribution to the training of citizens, by exercising their capacity for judgment, which is fundamental in any democracy” [2, p. 15]. The UNESCO Intersectoral Strategy on Philosophy [3] says as follows: The teaching of philosophy contributes to the development of free citizens. It “encourages one to judge for oneself, to confront all sorts of arguments, to respect what others have to say, and to submit only to the authority of reason”. In other words, the teaching of philosophy is highly relevant to understanding the world-views and philosophical foundations of human rights, and contributes to building the capacity for individuals to have genuine freedom of thought, freedom from dogmas and unquestioned “wisdom”. It also fosters the ability for a human being to make judgements concerning his/her situation. This is inevitably linked to the possibility for evaluation, critique and choice for action or non-action. [3, p. 12]

These recommendations and reports argue that philosophical methods of thinking/ discussion develop the capacity for “reasonableness” or “judgment” suggesting that they are the foundation of freedom and democracy. Philosophy: A School of Freedom [4] goes further than previous recommendations by emphasizing the role of philosophy education in the development of citizens as bearers of democracy. In the first chapter of that report, which is concerned with early childhood and primary education, a reasonable amount of space is devoted to the theory and practice of P4C (PwC) [4, pp. 1–45]. From this, it can be seen that in recent years, pedagogy using philosophical dialogue/inquiry such as P4wC has been widely recognized, and its role in the context of citizenship education/philosophy education has been particularly singled out and evaluated highly. However, it is very important to note that various doubts and even outright objections have been raised against the argument that P4wC fosters civic virtues, reasonableness, and democracy.2 This chapter, on the other hand, does not enter into the debate of what conceptions of reasonableness and citizenship P4wC supports, or how the pedagogy can be legitimized. The purpose of this chapter is to focus on the fact that, based on some increasingly widespread assumptions about the pedagogy’s ability to cultivate these attributes, P4wC has recently begun to be

1 2

See Hannam and Echeverria [22], Makaiau [27]. See Biesta [20], Vansieleghem and Kennedy [29].

378

Y. Horikoshi

incorporated in business and corporate settings as a means of conducting philosophical consulting and employee training. We discuss the implications of these efforts by providing an overview and suggestions on how to conduct them. In other words, this chapter explores one way in which the idea of “democracy as a way of life” mentioned in the epigraph to this paper by Dewey can be more fully realized: namely, by taking P4wC beyond the context of education in schools and incorporating it into everyday life for businesspersons as well. It could be said “Philosophy for/with Children” is now becoming “Philosophy for/with Everyone” as it continues to bring democracy closer to us in the workplace.

2

The Expansion of Philosophical Consulting in Business Settings

Some might imagine that philosophy and business are like water and oil. In general, one might have the impression that business pursues financial profit in a practical and rational manner, while philosophy is unrealistic, deskbound theory. However, there is now a growing interest in the relationship between these and a noticeable movement to utilize philosophy in business settings. As Horikoshi and Kono have pointed out, philosophical consulting as business consultancy has been practiced in Western countries (especially in the Netherlands, Germany and the United States) for many years, and has in the past few years been continuing to develop in other countries as well [5]. One of the most successful philosophical consultants in the business field is Peter Koestenbaum. He has been dealing with companies like “the Ford Motor Company, Citibank, Electronic Data Systems, Exxon/Mobil, Ciba Geigy, American Medical International, Volvo and many of the city managers in the United States” [6, p. 427], He describes his theory in a series of books. Lou Marinoff, the author of “Plato, Not Prozac”, is also a well-known philosophical practitioner for businesspersons. He describes that “the main features of philosophical consulting to organizations” can be broken down into several intelligible categories, which include building mission statements, inculcating virtues, formulating and implementing codes of ethics, achieving ethics compliance, coaching and providing similar motivational interventions, resolving intra-organizational conflicts, facilitating shortened Socratic dialogues, imparting leadership and governance skills, and delivering all the above services in-house, on a regular basis” [5, 7, p. 154]. In this vein, the recent hiring of full-time “in-house-philosophers” at Google and Apple has been reported by leading business journals and newspapers. It seems that there are opportunities for philosophers to demonstrate their strength and to contribute to companies that lead the world. For example, Apple made headlines when they hired a political philosopher, Joshua Cohen who is an ex-professor at Stanford university full-time [8]. Interestingly, a technology company like Apple hired not only a great engineer, but also a political philosopher who specializes in the theory of democracy. He has

21

Philosophical Practice as a Way of Employee Education and Business …

379

been assigned to an internal training institute called “Apple University”. While his work there is tightly guarded and not known, his contribution is not likely to be directly useful in product development. However, the fact that he is employed by the Apple’s employee training institute is proof that philosophical insights and ways of thinking are essential for a world-leading company, and the importance of having employees receive such training. According to another article in The Daily Northwestern, Google also made headlines for hiring a philosopher, Damon Horowitz [9]. In contrast to Cohen, he is an expert in philosophy related to cognition and language, a figure that could easily be superimposed on Google’s image as an IT company. As an in-house philosopher, he also seems to play a major role in bringing diverse perspectives into the company. C. Voegtlin at the Audencia Business School, speaking to Forbes, elaborated on the employment situation of philosophers in Silicon Valley, noting that not only CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) but also CPOs (Chief Philosophy Officers) have been hired by many large tech companies. He says “the job role appears to be a mixture of consultant, life coach and strategist … CPOs can be important mediators who help overburdened managers or entrepreneurs to put things into perspective and take a step back from daily business so that they can see the bigger picture” [10]. Nevertheless, such positions are still limited to a few select cases because of the many potential difficulties involved in hiring a philosopher on a full-time basis. How can they justify the position to the board of directors? What job description and goals should be assigned to such positions? How should they allocate budget for these new positions? Currently, the most common practice is to outsource the work to a philosophy consultant. In addition to hiring philosophers full time, other possible forms of outsourcing include hiring university faculty, setting up contracts with philosophy consulting firms, and hiring freelance philosophy consultants with degrees in philosophy on a project basis. Considering the characteristics of modern society, it is becoming increasingly apparent that a forest of diverse values is growing amid rapid globalization, and that advances in science and technology, including AI, are creating new ethical issues. In such an environment, companies are expected to confront seemingly unanswerable questions that cannot be resolved by data-based analysis alone, and to proactively put forward their own worldviews. This is precisely where the insights of philosophers, which necessarily do not rely on data but on analyzing concepts, come in handy. In this context, philosophers are beginning to find opportunities to work as consultants in the business field.

380

3

Y. Horikoshi

Philosophical Consulting and Employee Education in Japan

When it comes to philosophical practice in business settings, Japan has been very far behind the countries mentioned above. According to Kono et al., however, there are some exceptions [11]. Kono and Terada have been involved in philosophical dialogue for businesspersons with Felix-Partners Co. since 2014. They claim that “Felix-Partners intended to build up a training program for businesspersons which aims at the development of reflective, flexible and resourceful thinking, and they find philosophical dialogue suitable for their aim” [11, p. 1937]. They also added the following two reasons why businesspersons feel the need for philosophical dialogue in the workplace: One is that they always face various questions in their work which cannot be solved by existing methods or skills but require critical and creative thinking. Another is that they know that they want a better culture of communication in their workplace. They are aware that it is owing to the poor communication between superiors and the subordinates and among equals that the efficiency at their workplace is falling. [11, p. 1937]

They provide training for middle managers of leading companies in a variety of fields, primarily think tanks and transportation companies. The method of philosophical dialogue here is much the same as P4wC: it consists of “sitting in a circle, presenting questions, choosing one question, and thinking about it together. Just three simple rules are set: to listen to each other carefully, to speak with one’s own words, and to enjoy changing one’s ideas through dialogue” [11, p. 1937]. According to Terada and Kono, there is a gradually increasing demand for these training sessions. They are pioneering practitioners of philosophical practice in the Japanese business scene and have paved the way for others wishing to pursue this path, although they continue to feel that “[t]he greatest challenge is to visualize the desirable effect of philosophical dialogue in the business world” [11, p. 1937]. Horikoshi is also a philosophical consultant/practitioner who has been dealing with Japanese companies for years. As Horikoshi and Kono have pointed out, he was one of the directors who launched the first Japanese philosophical consulting company, Cross Philosophies Ltd., in 2017 and he is now an associate fellow of the company, conducting research on philosophical consulting in Japanese business settings [5]. Cross Philosophies Ltd. is currently the only company in Japan that offers philosophical consulting as a main service with an academic background. Since 2017 when Horikoshi and his colleagues launched the company, they have done business with more than 50 Japanese companies, corporations, and organizations. He also works as a sole proprietor/freelancer now and has dealt with the following corporations and institutions: a bank, a medical corporation, an educational consulting corporation, a manufacturing company, a digital marketing company, several nonprofit organizations dealing with employment support and childcare, a business consulting corporation, a company providing job-change support services,

21

Philosophical Practice as a Way of Employee Education and Business …

381

a PC software company, a sports management company, a newspaper, and a real estate agency, among others. The services he offers can be divided roughly into 3 categories: 1. Building or reconstructing codes of ethics and/or mission statements for the company. 2. Employee training through philosophical inquiry, as defined in the contexts of P4wC or neo-Socratic dialogue (NSD). 3. Giving philosophical lectures and/or reports which analyze concepts relevant to the company. Due to contractual confidentiality obligations with these companies, details regarding the kinds of services offered in any given company cannot be divulged. What follows are some model cases of his work in each of these three categories.

4

Building or Reconstructing Codes of Ethics and/ or Mission Statements

It might be relatively easy to imagine how to get involved in making codes of ethics at corporate consulting. Indeed, philosophers with backgrounds in ethics have been working to discuss and construct codes of ethics in companies, organizations, public institutions, or governments for a long time. Needless to say, companies have a responsibility to check their operations for ethical and legal problems and to determine their policies accordingly. Philosophers have long been active in these situations because they can, if asked for counsel, offer advice based on their expertise in ethics. According to Marinoff, In this domain, philosophical consulting is congruent with business and professional ethics of the kind that has been practiced since the 1970s. Applied ethics preceded philosophical practice, and to certain extents prepared the ground for it. Applied ethicists initially functioned somewhat reactively, ensconced in the academy, awaiting some incident, scandal, or disaster on which to base a lecture, a publication, or a conference. Soon applied ethicists began to function more proactively, building consulting practices, cultivating contacts, and developing methodologies. Ethics code-building is a prime example of philosophical fieldwork, because it entails more than a theoretical matching of concepts to professions, or ordinances to organizations. [12, p. 161]

Today, the diversification of occupations, consumer needs and the development of technology have given rise to a great variety of innovative businesses, and with this development comes a growing awareness of the need to pursue business practices that protect human rights. Corporations are, now more than ever, under pressure to rapidly update and expand their awareness of their ethical responsibilities. In this context, it is a matter of life and death for a company to ensure that its ethical and legal guidelines are firmly in place. These guidelines include conducting free and

382

Y. Horikoshi

fair trade, preventing political corruption and bribery, eliminating child labor, discrimination and harassment, and the proper management of information, to name a few. Nevertheless, as already noted, it is widely known that philosophers have traditionally been involved in such work. What this chapter is more concerned to note is that researchers in the field of philosophy can be actively involved in creating and reinforcing corporate mission statements/visions in terms of their knowledge of philosophy. It is worth noting that in recent years there has been a demand for the work of philosophy consultants from this point of view. A philosophy consultant will need to clarify what the company in question is trying to achieve through its business. In other words, the consultant works together with the company to deepen an ideal that they wish to present or realize. The goal is to verbalize or reconstruct the company’s vision. In many cases, this primarily happens in a philosophical dialogue between the philosophy consultant and the client, but in some cases, other employees may be included in the process to deepen it and to provide them with the opportunity to collaboratively rework it.3 The philosopher’s job here is to elicit from the client, through dialogue, the concepts that are key to the project’s purpose, and to bring them into sharper focus. The consultant and the client collaboratively, critically, and creatively construct and verbalize these concepts. In this process, the philosophy consultant can provide the client with knowledge of philosophy to reinforce them. He also has the task of mediating and introducing, if necessary, other researchers with diverse specialties so that he can work together with clients on corporate missions in areas outside of his own expertise and can develop philosophically informed passages that reflect those missions. He makes what was simply the expression of one manager’s policies into a more compelling statement, informed by a variety of vantage points and augmented by philosophical texts. In this way, the management philosophy and corporate vision receive academic support based on the meticulous research results accumulated by the researchers. Through the specialized knowledge and methodology of philosophy, policies and mission statements that had previously been little more than vague words with little conceptual basis can be enhanced to something more elaborate and persuasive. Exposure to philosophical insights will deepen the corporate vision/mission into something more refined, thoughtful, and universal. Its overall effect is not just to reinforce corporate branding/marketing but also to clarify corporate social responsibility. In this way, there is certainly a demand for the help of philosophical researchers and the introduction of classical knowledge in constructing and updating these mission statements. These researchers not only have an active role in the business field as consultants but may also have a positive social impact by pressing for changes in corporate policies and principles that benefit society as a whole.

3

This partially overlaps with the employee training discussed in the next part of this paper.

21

5

Philosophical Practice as a Way of Employee Education and Business …

383

P4wC as a Means of Employee Education

While some companies reach out for services described above, Horikoshi is contracted to implement services falling into categories two and three above more often. Conducting workshops for employee training through P4wC/NSD is perhaps the most popular style of philosophical consulting. One of the reasons for this is that companies tend to have a certain portion of their budget allocated for educating their employees and are willing to use some of those funds to get useful perspectives for their business. P4wC as an employee training program in companies serves a great variety of purposes. Examples include team building, motivational interviewing, improving communication skills, consensus building, and nurturing leadership skills. One of the most common requests is to cultivate critical and creative thinking skills among employees. He offers roughly three kinds of sessions as employee education: 1. Icebreaking questions, in which participants are asked something easy/personal to ease their minds. 2. P4wC-style inquiries and dialogues, which help participants learn how to think philosophically. 3. Sessions devoted to verbalizing the results of inquiry in the form of brief statements (as in the last step of NSD). The more time and resources available, the more he tries to reach step 3. The first step is to use icebreakers to help participants create an environment where thoughts and feelings can be shared, and gently ease them into questioning. Icebreakers may not necessarily affect the content of the inquiry per se, but they are always effective to incorporate, even if only for 10 min. Asking questions such as “what did you dislike when you were a child?” is always effective to ease minds, and if a topic is “growth” we ask, “when do you think you have grown up?” This is because saying even a single word, no matter how trivial, at the outset fosters participation and commitment to the community by all participants. It allows them to enter into communication with ease and feel that they are part of the community of inquiry. In particular, the fact that the ice-breaker question is personal and something that anyone can talk about makes it easier for all to speak up and to ease into the second step of P4wC-style inquiries and dialogues. This idea of “community” is inspired by the idea of “p4c Hawaii” which will be discussed later. The second step is the most essential one, for it is in this step that participants talk over things to make their work and teams better. In this step, one specific question is always established at the beginning, which is determined according to the purpose of the training. Through preliminary consultation with the client, the question is often selected based on a problem that the company is facing, or an issue related to its business. For example, “What is good communication?” “What does it mean to grow up?” or “What is the meaning of work?” The number of

384

Y. Horikoshi

participants is generally 10–15 per group, and each session lasts about one hour. Before beginning, it is vital to talk to the participants about the following mindset: 1. The workshop space is a place where people are free to talk about all kinds of things, including things that they would not normally be able to talk about. 2. Speak with an awareness of the difference between “conversation” and “dialogue” as defined by Lipman [13]. 3. Be aware of the changes in your opinions and positions, rather than sticking to consistency. 4. After you have spoken, if possible, ask a question that paraphrases the content of your idea and listen to the opinions of others. 5. Speak and think from your own experience rather than from hearsay, as the truth of the latter cannot be verified on the spot. Items (1) and (2) are particularly important and shall be discussed in detail. Item (1) concerns what Jackson [13] calls “intellectual safety”. According to him, this concept implies that “[a]ll participants in the community are free to ask virtually any question or state any view so long as respect for all is honored” [14, p. 102]. With this idea guiding each session, the goal is to build an environment in which resistance to speaking one’s mind in front of others is reduced. The characteristic of “p4c Hawaii” is that it fosters a “community of inquiry” in which P4wC is conducted from a long-term perspective, rather than an ad hoc community. Based on the above, a “community ball” is used in the employee training. The ball is used to help facilitate dialogue and has the following roles: “the person with the ball is the speaker of the moment. That person, when finished, may pass the ball to whomever he or she wishes”. And “[i]f one receives the ball, one always has the right to pass” [14, p. 102 and 15, p. 6]. It works not just to clarify who has the right to talk at present but also to ease participants into talking, while also reassuring participants that you do not have to talk when you don’t feel like it. Meanwhile, item (2) is based on M. Lipman’s distinction between “conversation” and “dialogue” [13, p. 87]. For him conversation is “a process in which the personal note is strong, but the logical thread is weak, whereas in dialogue just the reverse in the case”. He also says that “conversation involves stability while dialogue involves instability”, insofar as “in dialogue … disequilibrium is enforced in order to compel forward movement”. This disequilibrium comes from challenging ideas and arguments: “in a dialogue, each argument evokes a counterargument that pushes itself beyond the other” [13, p. 87]. A dialogue must begin with a conversation, but while the latter is just an “exchange”, the former is an “inquiry,” which means that there is a clear difference between them. In this sense, we have to keep “disequilibrium” in a dialogue. As S. Gardner argues, an inquiry is not mere chatter or conversation and needs to be facilitated [15].

21

Philosophical Practice as a Way of Employee Education and Business …

385

In order for participants to achieve the mindset and understand the ideas outlined above, Horikoshi does the following six things during facilitation [16]. These are also inspired by and modified from p4c Hawaii’s “The Good Thinkers Toolkit” [13]: . Begin with concrete examples and consider whether there is anything that can be understood through their counterexamples or analogies. . Identify the meaning and essence of each statement, argument and word. . Distinguish between concepts, facts and values, and compare how they differ and relate to each other. . Identify the extent to which one’s opinion can be generalized. . Question the assumptions behind and reasons for current forms of discourse and norms. . Propose thought experiments that explore extreme or simplified situations to clarify arguments. Under such facilitation, we may proceed as in NSD, confirming some degree of commonality and agreement, or we may proceed by clarifying the issues and encompassing as many viewpoints as possible, as in P4wC. This is determined on a case-by-case basis, depending on the participants, their level of proficiency, and the purpose of the training. When it appears that some degree of consensus or common understanding can be formed, the results of inquiry may be summarized in a sentence/passage, as mentioned in the third step above. In this way, if necessary, the objectives of more rigorous linguistic exploration and consensus building can be achieved. This is heavily influenced by the practice of NSD4 [17, 18]. To the extent that this requires a more precise examination, it also requires that someone write down the results of inquiry, it also allows participants to discuss the nuances of language.

4

This chapter cannot explain NSD in detail, but the paper “Defining futile life-prolonging treatments through Neo-Socratic Dialogue” [18] is helpful for giving a brief summary of the method. According to the study: “NSD promotes philosophical dialogue among small groups of approximately seven people. This method was formulated by Leonard Nelson (1882–1927), and is presently used in Germany, England, and Holland for philosophical training, dialogue-based education, problem discovery, and for establishing consensus. In 1999, the method was introduced in Japan and has been in use ever since. Recent attempts have been made to apply NSD to ethical and social discussions spanning the medical and healthcare fields. NSD typically starts with a general question. Each participant then provides relevant case studies, and one is selected for further investigation and discussion. Participants corroborate judgments and actions taken by those involved in the selected case study, and abstract the underlying principles and values. Finally, a consensus is formulated around the initial question. To ensure the success of any given dialogue, participants are asked to conform to specific rules, which include speaking clearly and listening carefully to other participants. Participants are also provided with appropriate standards to help select a case study suitable for dialogue” [18, 2].

386

6

Y. Horikoshi

Combining P4wC with Lectures and the Teaching of Knowledge

In addition to conducting P4wC as an employee training program as outlined above, a lecture may be given prior to its implementation to provide philosophical insights that are useful for the company’s business and issues. In other words, there is an option to combine the lecture with philosophical inquiry training. This combination allows the company to have an opportunity for employees to think about the necessary findings in the context of their own work and experience, rather than simply providing a lecture where they only have to sit and listen. There are a variety of possible examples of this work. For instance, as Horikoshi and Kono have pointed out, a company that handles marketing asked Horikoshi to give a philosophical lecture on the concept of value due to the nature of their business [5]. To best respond to the needs of the company, he first elicited from the clients what they would like to know about value specifically, because it seemed unclear just being told that they need to know something about value. Then, he decided to set up a lecture based on the Theory of Valuation by John Dewey5 [19], a book that considers how people recognize something as valuable, which was exactly what this company needed to reflect on in conducting their business. Finally, as only giving a lecture seemed to be not just non-interactive but also inappropriate for encouraging them to think it over by themselves, he offered to hold a joint session of a P4wC style of inquiry for them, conducted in the manner discussed earlier. The topic of the lecture can be anything that is useful to the company. For example, a company can improve its governance by having a philosophy consultant provide philosophical insights into organizational management and leadership. In this case, the philosophy consultant carefully listens to the client’s wishes and desires, and then compiles and delivers the necessary philosophical expertise and theories. In addition to lecturing to the client and conducting P4wC, we can add a more creative way of giving philosophical expertise. After the lecture, a philosophical inquiry is held to discuss whether there are other perspectives on the input, whether it can be thought of differently, or how it relates to their work. Here, it would be

5

According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Dewey’s metaethics of value judgement is summarized as follows: “Dewey held that value judgments guide conduct by way of propositions subject to empirical testing. Value judgments can be both action-guiding and empirically warranted because they have an instrumental form. They say that if something were done, then certain consequences would follow, which would be valued. The point of asserting such propositions is to intelligently guide the design and selection of a course of action that will solve a problem, where the assertion is part of the means by which the action is brought about (LJP 16–17). Value judgments figure in Dewey’s psychology in relation to the distinction between valuing and evaluation, and Dewey’s notions of desire, taste, and interest” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dewey-moral/#:~:text=Dewey%20held%20that%20value% 20judgments,follow%2C%20which%20would%20be%20valued. Accessed 15 Mar 2022).

21

Philosophical Practice as a Way of Employee Education and Business …

387

effective to include not only the content of the lectures but also the content of the discussion in a written report. This allows them to not only learn philosophical insights from the lecture but also to receive it as something designed and reconstructed for them. Offering a full package of philosophical consulting, including consultation with the client, training in philosophical dialogue, and lectures, with the goal of preparing the report, would help to elicit results more efficiently.

7

Conclusion: Achievements and Challenges

In the first half of this chapter, we discussed the important role of philosophers in philosophical consulting, especially when getting involved in the creation and refashioning of codes of ethics, mission statements, and corporate visions based on a knowledge of Philosophy. We implied that it leads to better corporate branding/ marketing and corporate social responsibility. Meanwhile, in the second half of the chapter, we suggested some benefits of developing P4wC, which has traditionally been evaluated as a pedagogy and means of citizenship education in schools, into a method of employee education in corporations. The more we have implemented P4wC in this area, the more we have found that the needs of companies are much greater than we had imagined, so that we are now convinced that it is possible to develop it further in the future. Finally, while avoiding easy quantification of the results, we would like to briefly describe the responses of the participants in order to analyze the achievements. As we saw earlier, when P4wC is conducted as an employee training program, it is expected not only to cultivate critical/creative thinking but also to deepen mutual understanding among employees through a dialogue that they do not normally engage in. As for the results of the program, some of the participants commented that they were able to learn about the values and norms of others that they would not have known through daily communication, and that they now pay more attention to the opinions and ideas of their colleagues and superiors than ever before. These results can be summarized as the improvement of communication and the work environment, as well as the recognition of various perspectives. Second, conducting P4wC has been seen to help improve employees’ ability to express and clarify their ideas. Some of the participants say they now have a better understanding of how to organize and convey technical points during a presentation, and that they now know that carefully distinguishing concepts makes it easier to convey what they intend. They seem to feel that the philosophy training works to improve how they express themselves in the presence of others. Third, as Horikoshi and Kono have pointed out, some of the participants feel that “they can find what they really want to do in the business settings or even in a private way so that the human resources department can transfer them to the proper department in the company, or they can come up with changing their jobs after all” [5, p. 24]. This type of response suggests that thinking/verbalizing in a philosophically informed way can be used to deal with HR issues or in finding fulfilling work and interests both in and outside the business field.

388

Y. Horikoshi

Like any other program, this has its challenges as well. The first one seems to be a lack of awareness regarding the importance of providing such training and consulting in both the academic field and the business field. While companies are always looking for training program to improve employee’s thinking, expression, communication, and presentation skills, they are usually unaware that philosophy is one of the ways to fulfill this purpose. In addition, researchers may also not believe that they can conduct themselves in the way that this study has presented given that they have no work experience in a business setting, even though philosophical practice is beginning to be recognized on a global scale. Thus, it will be necessary to provide information more actively about the practice of philosophy consulting and its results to both people in the business field and in the academic field. In this regard, this chapter will play no small role. Second, philosophy researchers who are willing to get involved in philosophical consulting need to be familiar with the various circumstances, issues, and trends of the corporate field. Alternatively, they need to have contacts with companies that have such issues and who are able to mediate. It may be hard to be well versed in these areas in parallel with research and educational activities. However, such efforts will become one powerful way to link research results with social good and to express the social significance of research results. In the long run, they may well open a way for philosophy researchers working outside universities or research institutions, as well as for those with a degree in philosophy. Acknowledgment I am grateful to Ryan D. Fleming for carefully proofreading the manuscript. This work was supported by Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellow No. 20J11469 and No. 22J00700. Also, this work was inspired by/developed from Horikoshi (2022).

References 1. Dewey J (1976) Creative democracy—the task before us. In: Boydston JA (ed) The later works, vol 14. Sothern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville 2. Roger-Pol D (1995) Philosophy and democracy in the world—a UNESCO Survey. UNESCO Publishing 3. UNESCO (2006) Intersectoral strategy on Philosophy. UNESCO Publishing 4. UNESCO (2007) Philosophy: a school of freedom—Teaching philosophy and learning to philosophize: status and prospects. UNESCO Publishing 5. Horikoshi Y, Kono T (2020) Philosophical practices in Japan from school to business consultancy. Philos Pract Couns 1(10):5–33 6. Koestenbaum P (2002) The philosophic consultant: revolutionizing organizations with ideas. John Wiley & Sons 7. Marinoff L (2001) Philosophical practice. Academic Press, San Diego, CA 8. Goldhill O (2019) Apple employs an in-house philosopher but won’t let him talk to the press. Quartz. https://qz.com/1600358/apple-wont-let-its-in-house-philosopher-talk-to-the-press/. Accessed 15 Mar 2022 9. Ramsey L (2013) Google’s in-house philosopher talks technology. The Daily Northwestern. https://dailynorthwestern.com/2013/04/30/campus/googles-in-house-philosopher-talks-tec hnology/. Accessed 15 Mar 2022 10. Percy S (2018) Why your board needs a chief philosophy officer. Forbes. https://www.forbes. com/sites/sallypercy/2018/03/09/why-your-board-needs-a-chief-philosophy-officer/?sh=68e e37b342e3. Accessed 15 Mar 2022

21

Philosophical Practice as a Way of Employee Education and Business …

389

11. Kono T, Murase T, Terada T, Tsuchiya Y (2017) Recent development of philosophical practice in Japan. J APPA 12(2):1935–1946 12. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education (second edn). Cambridge University Press 13. Jackson T (2013) Philosophical rules of engagement. In: Goering S, Shudak N, Wartenberg N (eds) Philosophy in schools: an introduction for philosophers and teachers. Routledge, New York, pp 99–109 14. Jackson T (2004) Philosophy for children Hawaiian style. Thinking: the journal of philosophy for children 17(1&2):3–7 15. Gardner S (1995) Inquiry is no mere conversation (or discussion or dialogue): facilitation of inquiry is hard work! Anal Teach Philos Prax 16(2):102–111 16. Horikoshi Y (2020) Tetsugakuwa koutsukau [How philosophy works]. Jitsugyono nihonsha Publisher, Tokyo (in Japanese) 17. Littig B (2004) The neo-Socratic dialogue: a method of teaching the ethics of sustainable development. In: Galea C (ed) Teaching business sustainability, vol 1. Routledge, pp 240–252 18. Aizawa K, Asai A, Bito S (2013) Defining futile life-prolonging treatments through NeoSocratic dialogue. BMC Med Ethics 14:51 19. Dewey J (1991) Theory of valuation. In: Boydston JA (eds) The later works, vol 13. Sothern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville

Other Sources 20. Biesta G (2011) Philosophy, exposure, and children: how to resist the instrumentalization of Philosophy in Education. J Philos Educ 45(2):305–319 21. Hannam P, Echeverria E (2017) The community of philosophical inquiry (P4C): a pedagogical proposal for advancing democracy. In: Gregory M, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) International handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, pp 3–10 22. Horikoshi Y (2021) Cultivando al público filosófico en la era de la pandemia del COVID-19: una revisión de la democracia deweyiana a través de la práctica filosófica. In: Sumiacher D (ed) Filosofía y nuevas normalidades: Perspectivas para un mundo en y post-covid, pp 205–214 23. Horikoshi Y (2022) Tetsugakude kaigyosuru: Tetsugaku practice gahiraku tetsugakuto shigotonoiki [Practicing Philosophy: Making Philosophy work outside the academic realm]. Gendai Shiso 50(9):98–107 (in Japanese) 24. Koestenbaum P (1991) Leadership: the inner side of greatness. Jossey-Bass 25. Kono T (2016) Philosophical practice in Japan. In: Fati´c A, Amir L (eds) Practicing philosophy. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, UK, pp 182–202 26. Makaiau A (2017) A citizen’s education: the philosophy for children Hawai‘i approach to deliberative pedagogy. In: Gregory M, Haynes J, Murris K (eds) International handbook of philosophy for children. Routledge, pp 19–26 27. Marinoff L (2000) Plato, not Prozac! Applying eternal wisdom to everyday problems. Harper Perennial, New York 28. Schuessler J (2018) A wall street giant makes a $75 million bet on academic philosophy. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/arts/bill-miller-75-million-gift-philos ophy-johns-hopkins.html. Accessed 15 Mar 2022 29. Vansieleghem N, Kennedy D (2011) What is philosophy for children, what is philosophy with children—after Matthew Lipman? J Philos Educ 45(2):171–182

390

Y. Horikoshi Yosuke Horikoshi is a research fellow at the University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy (UTCP) and at the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS), Japan. He is also a visiting fellow at Sophia University Institute of Global Concern and at Meiji University. He holds a Ph.D. in Education and specializes in the areas of Philosophy of education, philosophical practice, and John Dewey’s Philosophy. He cofounded Cross Philosophies Ltd., a philosophical consulting firm in Japan and is now an associate fellow consulting at tens of companies in Japan. He has also been teaching at several high schools to conduct P4wC sessions as a visiting lecturer for more than 10 years. His current works include How Philosophy Works (2020) (in Japanese), “Philosophical Practices in Japan from School to Business Consultancy” (2020) co-authored with Tetsuya Kono, and “Cultivando al público filosófico en la era de la pandemia del COVID19: una revisión de la democracia deweyiana a través de la práctica filosófica (2021).

Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research Leander Penaso Marquez

22

and Rola Palalon Ombao

“Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.” [1]

Abstract

Bioethics, which was previously confined in the related studies of philosophy, ethics, biology, and medicine is a growing field of study that has broadened to include public health, law, technology, and globalization, among others. This has made the teaching of bioethics and bioethics research education increasingly significant. In this light, this chapter discusses how bioethics and bioethics research can be taught using an inquiry-based pedagogy, particularly, through building a community of inquiry. The succeeding discussions detail each aspect of the Lipman-Sharp five-point approach to building a community of inquiry. The method is then applied to several concepts and issues in bioethics and bioethics research. Since there is a clear distinction between bioethics education and bioethics research education, several concepts and issues are presented to cover both areas of investigation. These concepts and issues serve as examples to illustrate how bioethics education can be done using the Lipman-Sharp approach. The result of this application is an inquiry-based pedagogical approach to teaching bioethics and bioethics research. Adopting

L. P. Marquez (B) · R. P. Ombao College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines e-mail: [email protected] R. P. Ombao e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8_22

391

392

L. P. Marquez and R. P. Ombao

the recommendations of this essay by educational institutions and organization that are concerned with bioethics education can help improve how bioethics and bioethics research are taught and practiced in many parts of the world. Graphic Abstract

Using Philosophy for/with Children for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research

Keywords

Bioethics . Bioethics research . Dialogic inquiry . Education . Philosophy for/ with Children

1

Introduction

Advances in science and technology have affected life in more ways than one. It can be argued that many of the inventions, discoveries, research works, and innovations that exist today are meant to improve the quality of human life. To

22

Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research

393

achieve this, other forms of life have been affected; some of them destroyed. Natural resources are slowly being depleted, biodiversity is affected, plant and animal species get extinct. The culprit is the desire to improve human life. This is one of the reasons why bioethics, both as a field of study and an area of practice, has become increasingly important and indispensable. Bioethics education has become an integral part of higher education in many parts of the world [2]. There are even those who argue that bioethics education should be a part of all undergraduate programs [3]. Needless to say, the need and demand for bioethics education has implications to how bioethics is taught in schools. Further, there is also the question whether teaching bioethics must be different from teaching bioethics research as they may have different aspects. Understandably, one may argue that the lecture type approach can be used to teach bioethics and bioethics research. Nonetheless, this chapter aims to present a viable alternative to teaching bioethics using dialogic inquiry and inspire educators to employ inquiry-based pedagogy in the form of communities of philosophical inquiry (CPI) in bioethics or, perhaps, communities of bioethical inquiry to make their respective classes more engaging, interactive, and meaningful. To accomplish our objective, we shall first highlight the importance of bioethics and bioethics research vis-à-vis the emerging importance of effectively teaching them in schools. In the course of doing this, we will differentiate between bioethics and bioethics research—two areas that are the “subject-matter” of the teaching activity, as far as this essay is concerned. Second, we shall discuss traditional teaching vis-à-vis Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC). One can surmise that several traditional approaches to teaching are likely being employed to teach bioethics and bioethics research; these approaches are the “go-to” pedagogy by virtue of their being traditional while P4wC is the pedagogy that we are advocating in this chapter. Accordingly, as the third and final step, we shall describe how bioethics and bioethics research can be “taught” using an inquiry-based pedagogy—Philosophy for/with Children—a promising alternative to traditional teaching approaches. As a final introductory note, we decided to write this chapter, in the way and sequence that we have written it for two reasons: first, bioethics is not widely taught using the P4wC approach and this is an invitation for bioethics educators to try out this approach; second, while seasoned P4wC practitioners may find this chapter to be offering little new information, this can be a treasure trove for beginning-practitioners, casual readers, and most importantly, educators who are simply looking for other alternatives to teach bioethics. We hope that we have done justice to these reasons.

2

Bioethics and Bioethics Research

Reverence for life is achievable through a reflective appreciation of what it means to live. The field of bioethics has become increasingly important because of unethical research practices in the life sciences where a great majority of research

394

L. P. Marquez and R. P. Ombao

involves human experimentation or human research participants. Bioethics, which was previously confined in the related studies of philosophy, ethics, biology, and medicine is a growing field of study that has broadened to include public health, law, technology, and globalization, among others. This has made the teaching of bioethics and bioethics research education increasingly significant. Bioethics is currently being offered in higher education, either as a course or as a degree program, but there are those who believe that it should be part of any undergraduate degree program [3]. Nonetheless, there is a clear distinction between bioethics education and bioethics research education. Bioethics is applied philosophy. Despite the involvement of other fields such as law, medicine, anthropology, and technology, among others, the foundational discipline remains to be philosophy, particularly, ethics. Bioethics can be crudely defined as the application of ethical theories to life sciences and related fields. Thus, the teaching of bioethics involves two aspects, namely theory and practice. In terms of theory, bioethics teaching covers various ethical theories as well as bioethical principles that are derived from these theories. In terms of practice, it tackles intersections between ethics and law, medicine, and biotechnology, to name a few, as well as practical applications of ethical theories on different fields that result to interdisciplinary areas such as medical ethics, environmental ethics, and public health ethics, among others. In the last few decades, bioethics has rapidly expanded, and more scholars have engaged themselves in the discipline. Ironically, there have been significant changes in how the term is now being defined [4]. To be more specific: … the meaning of the term has deviated from the broader vision he had proposed. Bioethics had become redefined and restricted to ‘medical bioethics,’ focusing on ethical issues concerning individuals and relations between individuals, and neglecting ecological, population, and social problems. In this narrow vision, bioethics debates are addressing short-term issues rather than the continued existence of the human species. It therefore continues examining the old problems such as abortion and euthanasia instead of analyzing problems that really matter for the survival of humankind [5, p. 1].

Additionally, Downie and Macnaughton [6] both maintained that “Bioethics— health-care ethics, medical ethics (we shall use the terms interchangeably)—is now mainly concerned with the business of the regulation of professional practice, whether medical, nursing or related professional activity. The core of professional regulation is in medical law, and medical ethics represents an attempt to regulate those aspects of professional practice which are too detailed for the broad brush of the law” [6, p. 1]. This only confirms the initial observation of both Potter [4] and ten Have [5] that the definition of bioethics has already changed overtime to refer more to the field of healthcare and medicine only, as opposed to the original idea of discussing broader ideas and concepts that relate to the overall idea of human survival and continued existence which include factors that are not necessarily found only in the healthcare and medical department. Consequently, Potter argues that in contrary to the trend that bioethics has been taking, the discipline is more about having wider perspectives than just short-term

22

Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research

395

ethics; hence, the term global ethics was introduced [7]. Further, ten Have [5] even argues that according to Dwyer [8] and Gruen and Ruddick [9], there has been an increasing attention to global issues “such as global health, global justice, poverty, inequality, and vulnerability. More scholars are arguing that medical, social, and ecological issues are closely connected, for example in the phenomena of climate change and environmental degradation, so that bioethics will necessarily include environmental ethics and social ethics, as advocated by Potter” [5, p. 2]. Furthermore, ten Have also clarified that the term global in ‘global ethics’ takes two distinct definitions: worldwide and comprehensive. Both definitions are clearly reflected in the present conduct and process of bioethics education [5]. Tracing back the history of bioethics, Bartz [10] mentioned that “[m]ost work on ancient Greek medical ethics written by bioethicists focuses on the Hippocratic Oath or selections from the Hippocratic corpus with explicit ethical content. This leads to the general conclusion that early Greek medical ethics began where codes of professional behaviour were developed by Hippocrates or a group of physicians carrying the banner of Hippocrates” [10, p. 3]. This is to say that bioethicists, to some extent, derive their ethical principles from such codes and, in particular, make use of them to try to come up with solutions to moral dilemmas. Additionally, Downie and Macnaughton [6] introduced the term “medical humanities”. According to them, arts and humanities have certain effects or influences on the field of health care and healthcare ethics. To be more specific, there are at least three senses of the term medical humanities. First is ‘the arts as therapy’. This is probably the oldest strand among the three. It basically focuses on the therapeutic functions and uses of arts. The second one is ‘arts in health’. This particular sense does not just deal with the community settings, but more importantly, institutional settings. And unlike the first sense, artists in the second sense do not see themselves as therapists. The effects of what they do in either the community or institutional setting is a product of their interaction with patients or community members. The third and last sense is the particular use of arts and humanities in medical education. This includes the education of medical and nursing students, for instance [6]. As far as this chapter is concerned, the third sense of “medical humanities” will be the focus. Such a term is traditionally called biomedical ethics. As mentioned by Beauchamp and Childress [11], when they first started in the field, biomedical ethics was a relatively new field in the mid-1970s which practically did not have any literature then. However, due to developments in the field and its interactions with other disciplines, biomedical ethics evolved to what is now known as bioethics. Accordingly, bioethics research, as we treat it in this chapter, refers to the study of how to conduct research in different areas related to bioethics. This may include creating research proposals, drafting protocols, standard operating procedures for applying and securing review board approval, and so forth. Bioethics research, in general, touch on health-related research and social science research; oftentimes more of the former than the latter. In terms of health-related research, bioethics is concerned with ethical research practices and protocols as well as issues in

396

L. P. Marquez and R. P. Ombao

emerging sciences and biotechnology. As for social science research, bioethics is concerned with areas that involve interactions between bioethics-related research and social science disciplines, like for instance, when bioethics research involves society, such as health research on vulnerable and special populations or research on the environment or public health. Both areas of research, however, require most research proposals to go through an ethics review board. Given these distinctions, one can see that though bioethics is the central focus, there are differences between teaching bioethics and teaching bioethics research. This highlights the emerging importance of how bioethics and bioethics research can be effectively taught to students. Further, it underscores the importance of having a pedagogy that can transcend these differences by focusing on aspects that are central to both bioethics and bioethics research without shortchanging these areas. Moving forward, it is helpful to look at traditional approaches to teaching, which are currently being used to teach bioethics, as well as the P4wC approach that we argue to be a better alternative.

3

On Traditional Teaching and Philosophy for/ with Children

Ideally, the aim of education is to improve learners. However, how teachers plan to achieve such an improvement is not the same for all. While there may still be others who think that there is only one formula to making a successful classroom environment, many educators reject the notion of one size fits all when it comes to effective teaching. “Rejecting the notion that there is only one way to teach … explores some of the many strategies available to teachers, as well as the patterns of classroom organisation which best assist pupil learning” [12, p. vii]. Furthermore, the kind of improvement a teacher wants to achieve in a learner also varies across time and culture. “‘Success’ may be defined in many ways. For some it is seen purely in test scores, for others it is a broader issue, involving the whole [person]” [12, p. vii]. Hence, there is also a rich array of assessment tools and strategies employed by teachers to know whether students are successful in their task. Experience tells us that there are different reasons why learners go to school; also, not everyone enjoys going. While some genuinely appreciate and enjoy studying, some are forced to do so because of their parents who constantly remind them of the importance of finishing school and acquiring a diploma. There are learners who love to take lessons, but there are also learners who only come to school because it is where they get to see their friends and enjoy playing with them. Given the learner’s natural tendency to be curious, why does such a difference in motivations exist? “Education is an inquiry. Teachers must be able to present a problem to the students rather than immediately offer them solutions they do not understand. The reason why students are not motivated enough is because they do not experience the process of discovering the solution. Therefore, the whole process becomes less fulfilling for them” [13, p. 141]. This dilemma emphasizes the importance of studying and analyzing the different teaching methods and/or

22

Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research

397

strategies employed in schools and classrooms, and of knowing how exactly they affect the learner both in short and long terms. It is through this analysis that one gets to understand the effects of the different teaching methodologies in the overall being and competence of a learner. There are several approaches to teaching. Since they are traditional, any one of these are currently being used to teach bioethics and bioethics research. The first approach is authoritarian. This type of approach is usually viewed as ‘harsh’ and ‘unkind’. Since the underlying philosophy is authoritarianism, the teacher is expected to strongly “… establish and maintain order within a school” [14, p. 15]. Consequently, teachers in this type of approach also expect to be always obeyed. The traditional view on authoritarianism pushes teachers to have complete control over the behavior and learning of their students. In the past, teachers who used this approach made use of punishment to discourage bad behaviors. The second approach is democratic. This type of approach is usually seen as the opposite of the authoritarian approach. The two are also usually contrasted because they possess qualities that, often, run contrary with one another. The democratic approach, if to be compared to the authoritarian approach, elicits a more positive reaction from people. This is because, people often regard democracy as the type of approach that any civilized person should endorse or at least permit as it allows for growth and development of autonomy. In a democratic setting, learners are expected to think and make their own decisions as autonomous beings. This usually takes the form of having the learners’ voices heard and considered inside the classroom. Hence, people tend to favor democracy. On the contrary, the authoritarian view restricts and controls people—things that many believe to hinder growth and autonomy [14]. The third approach is behavior modification. This approach is based on the studies of Skinner [15] and his associates. According to them, students learn best through positive reinforcement. Such positive reinforcement is commonly in the form of reward or recognition. If a parent wants her child to learn a positive behavior, she ought to reinforce her by giving her a reward or recognition every time she performs that behavior. It is said that students who are being “told off” are even more encouraged to misbehave and seek more attention. Thus, the objective of the teacher inside the classroom is to help learners develop socially admirable behaviors. The fourth approach is interpersonal relationships. The general idea of this approach is that a positive relationship between a teacher and her students foster learning. The interpersonal relationships approach proposes that learning automatically thrives when the teacher can develop a healthy classroom environment. This humanistic approach is also based on a study by Rogers and Freiberg [16]. The fifth approach is scientific. Wragg [14] argues that teaching is both a science and an art. Hence, teaching can both be studied and analyzed. He further believes that behavior can be predicted if people know enough. Hence, it is important to be knowledgeable and acquire enough information about something. Likewise, if people know enough, then strategies can be identified to address certain issues in behavior.

398

L. P. Marquez and R. P. Ombao

The sixth approach is social systems. This approach believes that people in school are part of a subsystem, which in turn, is part of a bigger social system where several influences are at work. To be more specific, the interplay of the political, social, financial, emotional, and psychological, among others, should be understood by the teacher if she wants to work effectively in school. “Failure to understand these processes, it is said, will inhibit the teacher’s ability to work effectively in a school, although learning itself is seen as an individual process [14, p. 21]. The seventh and last approach is folklore. This approach refers to the set of “tricks of the trade” [14, p. 21] that have been built up by teachers over the years. These strategies depend on the folklore provided and circulated. These may range from being well organized and anticipating problems to being firm with respect to guidelines, and letting learners know the boundaries and limitations [14]. Depending on the teacher, she may have different tricks up her sleeve. It is important to note that these approaches can be used simultaneously inside the classroom but there is one approach that often dominates or is preferred by the teacher. Thus, an authoritarian teacher may also use a behavior modification approach while another teacher may maximize the advantages of an interpersonal relationships approach to make a democratic classroom more inclusive. Traditional teaching, however, is likely to be dominated by the authoritarian approach given that the teacher, in the traditional sense, is considered by default as the sole authority of knowledge in the classroom. Teachers in the traditional setup view teaching as an activity that they need to do to their students. They, often, resist change because they think that they have been teaching for thinking and need to change nothing at all [17]. Further, teachers in this type of setting do not recognize the need to teach for judgment. Instead, they focus on simply passing on knowledge to students [13, p. 142]. Additionally, students here are given limited options since teachers get to decide everything inside the classroom and students are merely seen as “subjects” that need to be improved. They are not seen as partners but as people of lower level than teachers. This is due to the notion that students know less than their teachers. Such a notion stems from the distinction inside the classroom between those who know and those who do not—the difference between the teacher and students [17]. Nevertheless, even if the traditional teacher wants the lessons to be perfectly managed, go according to plan, or to be on top of everything inside the classroom, it is not possible all the time for no one can ever foresee everything. Teachers can only do so much and can only prepare things within their capability. It is for this reason that teachers cannot always expect everything to go smoothly inside the classroom. “Teaching consists of dozens of favoured strategies that become embedded in deep structures, for there is no time to re-think every single move in a busy classroom. Many decisions are made by teachers in less than a second, so once these deep structures have been laid down, they are not always amenable to change, even if a school has a well-developed professional development programme” [12, p. vii]. Thus, even traditional teachers should also be appreciated for their task is not simple at all.

22

Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research

399

Meanwhile, teachers in the non-traditional setting look at teaching as something that needs to be carried out with their students. Such a notion in the non-traditional setup is focused on helping one another. Pupils are seen as partners of teachers and not merely as passive recipients of lessons given or followers of a plan. Canuto [18] argues that “to develop the kind of thinking that is disciplined and critical, [students] need to be exposed to a variety of factors. Most educators agree that the kind of environment most conducive for [students] to develop their thinking skills is one where there is a caring adult who assists in the students’ thinking processes and who models thinking behaviors and attitudes such as curiosity, open-mindedness and logicality” [18, p. 429]. This is where an inquiry-based pedagogy, such as P4wC, has an advantage. Since an inquiry-based pedagogy focuses more on questions and the processes involved in answering these questions rather than instruction or transfer of information, it can be used to develop the thinking skills of students in diverse fields of study. Furthermore, inquiry-based pedagogy is something that teachers can do with their students. This is at the core of the P4wC approach. Philosophy for/with Children is an alternative pedagogical method conceptualized by Matthew Lipman, the founder of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC), which he developed alongside his colleague, Ann Margaret Sharp. Generally, P4wC is a reaction to the traditional pedagogical method that is being used inside the classroom. To be more specific, in the traditional kind, students experience the same schedule and the same routine every day in school. They attend classes, listen to lectures, take down notes, review for exams, submit requirements, listen to some more lectures, take down some more notes, and then move on to the next level if and when they successfully complete and pass their current level; whereas “Philosophy for Children is an attempt to reconstruct and present the history of philosophy in such a way that [learners] can appropriate it for themselves so as to reason well in a self-correcting manner” [19, p. xiii]. Rather than focusing on routinary tasks, P4wC focuses on the development of reason through thinking and self-correction. Lipman describes the nature and conduct of the traditional classroom as a “schooling without thinking” [17, p. 12]. The traditional classroom setup produces unmotivated learners because it does not give students the space to freely investigate, explore, and be creative in their thoughts; the traditional setup further asks students to perform regular tasks in a structured environment that does not encourage them to be innovative, which in one way or another, leads them to lose their natural thirst for learning [9]. As a result, learners no longer see the school and learning as an enjoyable place and ideal activity, but only as something that needs to be attended and fulfilled if one wants to have a “good” life during adulthood— a requirement to be “successful”. Paraphrasing Lipman [17], Mancenido-Bolaños [13] points out that a “normal practice can be characterized as customary, habitual, traditional, or unreflective, while a critical practice is the opposite. What is normal can be turned into a critical practice through the following: (1) criticism of the practice of one’s colleagues, (2) self-criticism, (3) correction of others, and

400

L. P. Marquez and R. P. Ombao

(4) self-correction. Reflection upon a practice includes inquiry into it, while an effective inquiry includes appropriate intervention” [13, p. 141]. Inside a traditional classroom setup, or what Mancenido-Bolaños [13] called the normal practice, teachers are seen as authorities who have monopoly of power and knowledge. Such an environment forces learners to think of teachers as infallible individuals, and therefore should be followed all the time. Due to such a mentality, students are under the assumption that everything that the teacher tells them is correct and should be regarded as knowledge that cannot be questioned. In other words, the classroom environment does not encourage questioning from learners, which then results to their diminished inquisitiveness. “The teacher therefore takes the most active role in the classroom, and students are required to listen, take notes, memorize, and be able to demonstrate their knowledge by filling in the proper blanks or choosing the appropriate alternative on the test” [20, p. 64]. Not only that, students in this type of setup are not expected to participate actively. Instead, they are only expected to accept and understand what is being taught; like sponges, they are there to simply absorb everything that the teacher tells them to. Ultimately, the traditional setup teaches students to be passive learners rather than active participants. “The problem of method in forming habits of reflective thought is the problem of establishing conditions that will arouse and guide curiosity; of setting up connections in the things experienced that will on later occasions promote flow of suggestions, create problems and purposes that will favor consecutiveness in the succession of ideas” [17, p. 2]. Such an environment also does not foster a close relationship between the teacher and students as there is a clear divide between them—the one who knows and the ones who do not. In a Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI), however, the problem is addressed by the dynamics of the community. The CPI creates an atmosphere—conditions— that encourages inquiry, respectful dialogue, openness, acceptance, thinking, and collaboration, among other things by making the teacher a co-inquirer with the learners. This bridges the divide between teacher and students that exists in the traditional classroom. The kind of training that students experience inside the traditional classroom causes the gradual disappearance of their lively, curious, imaginative, and inquisitive traits – the start of their being passive learners. For many learners, being together with their peers is the only saving grace of schooling [17]. Due to the unenjoyable and sometimes harsh environment in school, students develop a certain level of fear in the overall idea of learning. This leads learners to see education as a “… dreaded ordeal” [17, p. 12]. Furthermore, the main purpose of traditional education is “… transmission of “knowledge” or “information” from the teacher to the student. The young person’s mind is regarded as a largely empty vessel that will soon be filled with beliefs about the world, and it is the teacher’s responsibility to ensure that these will be true and important beliefs-that they will accurately represent the world as it is” [20, p. 64]. Such a view undermines the capabilities of students to think for themselves and come up with ideas that can contribute to the process of knowledge formation. Additionally, such an objective robs learners of their chance to showcase their

22

Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research

401

rational and emotional capabilities because all they are expected to do is to rely completely on their teachers who are there to provide them with everything that they need. To contextualize further, students stay and learn from their parents during the first four (4) or five (5) years of their lives where they are allowed to exercise being lively, curious, imaginative, and inquisitive. Inversely, the moment they step into the school, they slowly lose their admirable traits of being curious and inquisitive. “How are we to explain why the [learner’s] intellectual alertness is not extinguished in the often adverse circumstances of family … life, while it is all too frequently damped down in the often congenial circumstances of the classroom?” [17, p. 12]. This hints that the problem may not be inside the home, but inside the school instead. What people often fail to see is that “… the home environment contains so much to be learned, so much to be experienced, that it represents a constant challenge to the … learner” [17, p. 13]. This is in opposition to the traditional setup where students are simply asked to memorize and listen. Such an environment leaves students with no room to be challenged, curious, and reflective. The approach of schooling without thinking [17], or at least, minimal thinking is likely to produce individuals who find it hard to argue properly and give sufficient and necessary reasons for their claims due to the lack of atmosphere that fosters thinking. This is the result of the kind of training that only equips students with skills to answer questions that have direct answers, but not those that require them to reflect, analyze, introspect, and infer, among others [17]. On the contrary, Philosophy for/with Children aims to teach for thinking. Accordingly, we believe that thinking is something that is central to both bioethics and bioethics research despite their differences. Since thinking is a human activity, it cannot be limited by differences between areas and disciplines, rather, thinking is applied to all areas and disciplines. Thus, P4wC is exactly the pedagogy that transcends the differences between bioethics and bioethics research by focusing on the central aspect of thinking without shortchanging these areas. In this light, we describe in the succeeding discussions how an inquiry-based pedagogy, particularly Philosophy for/with Children, can be used to promote thinking in the field of bioethics and bioethics research.

4

Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research Through Philosophy for/with Children

As part of the evolving scope of bioethics—from discussing the broader problems of human survival to more specific ones like in the medical field—the number of schools and universities that are offering bioethics either as a course or as part of their curriculum whether in the undergraduate or graduate level has increased significantly [5]. This only shows how much bioethics has gained traction since its earlier days. At present, it has become a welcoming sight for students to be taking bioethics classes or teachers offering bioethics courses as more and more people are getting acquainted and interested in the field. In line with the obvious

402

L. P. Marquez and R. P. Ombao

global effect of bioethics education in terms of its course offerings and inclusion in the curriculum, ten Have [5] suggests that bioethics education has a particularly worldwide scope, and this is in virtue of at least six reasons. According to ten Have [5], the first reason is the increase in the international exchanges between medical schools and health professional training programs. According to the data of the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations [21], around 15,000 students actively participate in exchanges every year. The second reason is the health professionals’ international migration [5]. This international migration is in terms of education and practice. For instance, more and more doctors in the U.S. and the U.K. have been trained in other countries. Also, there have been an increasing number of doctors and nurses practicing their profession in countries other than their homeland. The third reason is health tourism. This one is a relatively new phenomenon [5]. Health tourism refers to the new trend where patients go to another country to seek medical interventions like surgeries or implants. For the fourth reason, ten Have [5] mentions the growing international cooperation in research and healthcare. There has been a significant and rapid expansion in global health research. The fifth reason is about the production of health resources like drugs in devices. Such health resources are being produced elsewhere [5]. Because of this, there have been concerns about safety, quality assurance, misjudgments, mistakes, and even fraud. The sixth and final reason is related to the nature of contemporary bioethics problems [5]. Clearly, bioethics is no longer just about topics like abortion or reproductive technologies; it has rapidly expanded to global issues like pandemics, climate change, and disasters and human relief, to name a few. In a nutshell, ten Have [5] believes that these six factors are vital because they present novel challenges not just to bioethics, but to bioethics education. Arguably, these reasons have made effective bioethics education very crucial and important. This, as a result, puts to the fore questions on how bioethics education can be conducted and how effective these methods can be. One approach is the traditional one, which is predominantly didactic and lecture-heavy; another is a more reflective one, which follows the dialogical inquiry framework of P4wC. Interestingly, Downie and Macnaughton [6] suggest that “… ‘the arts and humanities can perform both a critical and a supplementary function in the ethical education of at least some health professionals’. Philosophy sharpens critical perceptions and literature and other arts supplement by maturing attitudes. In this way the arts and humanities are relevant to making difficult judgements and to developing a broader perspective on human illness and suffering than can be offered by ethical regulation” [6, ix]. They tried to show how bioethics can be broadened by humanities—philosophy, literature, creative writing, and medical history. Furthermore, they wanted to illustrate how such a move can affect doctors’ attitudes toward patients, and the overall perception to medicine, health, and disease. Accordingly, we maintain that bioethics and bioethics research can be taught using an inquiry-based pedagogy, particularly, through building a community of philosophical inquiry. As mentioned earlier, the process of building this philosophical community in bioethics draws from the theories and practices developed by

22

Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research

403

Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp—pioneers and founders of the Philosophy for Children approach. It is an inquiry-based pedagogy that employs philosophical tools to facilitate questioning, thinking, dialogue, judgment, and reasonableness. It has been around for over half a century and is gaining popularity as an approach to teaching in many parts of the world. Despite its name, P4wC is not used exclusively for children because the process involved transcends age limits. Thus, while originally designed for children and beginner-thinkers, it can be employed for the education of adults and professionals. What follows is a step-by-step guide on how to create a community of philosophical inquiry in bioethics.

4.1

Bioethics Education Through the Lipman-Sharp Approach to Community of Inquiry

The Lipman-Sharp approach to building a community of philosophical inquiry inside the classroom is comprised of five steps, namely, stimulus, agendasetting, dialogue, evaluation, and enrichment. Through this five-point approach, the Community of Inquiry focuses on the development of the three aspects of multidimensional thinking [17]—critical, creative, and caring thinking—in students. Multidimensional thinking (or significantly improved thinking) “aims at a balance between the cognitive and the affective, between the perceptual and the conceptual, between the physical and the mental, the rule-governed and the nonrule-governed [17, pp. 199–200]. Further, since the students think in a community and as a community, their collaborative thinking skills are also developed. The stimulus functions to introduce the topic of the dialogue. It allows students to familiarize themselves with the topic at hand. The stimulus is followed by defining the agenda. The agenda-setting determines the focus of the dialogue; it allows the community to think and decide what they want to focus on in relation to the given stimulus. In this step, the members of the community formulate questions that they want the community to answer. Only when the agenda has been set comes the dialogue, which is the heart of the community of inquiry. During the dialogue, the members of the community answer the questions that were raised. In answering the questions, they are expected to offer an idea or an answer, raise clarifications whenever necessary, and give direct responses to the ideas offered by others, wherein such responses are intended to be something that would strengthen or challenge the idea being responded to. Notice here that the ideas are the ones being challenged and not the person who raised the idea. It is important in the CPI approach to remember that once an idea has been offered, the idea ceases to be owned by the person who offered it, rather, becomes the idea of the community. Through the CPI, the members are expected to reach certain judgments that would allow for the dialogue to move forward. What others may consider as dialogue, Lipman would merely consider as a conversation if (1) it is not a form of inquiry and (2) fails to lead the participants to follow the inquiry where it leads by performing several logical moves [17].

404

L. P. Marquez and R. P. Ombao

Using these criteria, we may realize that what happens in the traditional classroom resembles a conversation, which is nonpurposive (done for its own sake or one’s own sake) than a genuine dialogue, which is purposive (done for the sake of judgments) [17]. After the dialogue, an evaluation of the inquiry and the community happens. This does not entail a numerical assessment, rather it is descriptive and constructive. The purpose of the evaluation is to develop awareness about what transpired during the dialogue and how it can be improved by looking inwardly at one’s participation in the inquiry and how one’s thinking can be improved to better contribute to the community in the future. Finally, enrichment activities are given to students for them to do outside of the dialogue. The activity can take various forms, like a reflection paper, a poem, or even a painting, among others. This allows the members of the community to be able to follow up on and go back to what they learned in the CPI. An important thing to remember when starting a community of philosophical inquiry is to choose an effective stimulus. In a P4wC session, there are several different kinds of stimulus that a community may use and while Lipman has his personal favorites, it can be argued that the other types can still be as effective as those that were personally supported by Lipman. Alternatively, there are also available stimuli that are not as effective compared to those that are specifically designed to be used inside a community of inquiry. Ultimately, the decision to label a particular stimulus as effective or not in achieving the goals of a community depends on whether it possesses the prescribed characteristics as described mostly by Lipman [17], Fisher [22], and Sharp and Reed [19]. A good stimulus is that which allows for the attainment of goals in the community. This indicates, therefore, that not everything can pass as a good stimulus in a community of inquiry. What can be used inside the community should possess certain characteristics for them to effectively serve their purpose, that is, to stimulate the minds of learners and allow them to actively participate in the exchange of ideas by generating their own sets of insights and perspectives, and most importantly, philosophize. In line with this, Fisher [22] listed several characteristics that a stimulus should possess for it to be declared suitable for philosophical inquiry. These characteristics are affective meaning and intellectual sympathy, not everything is transparent, capable of posing a problem, literary, psychological, and intellectual acceptability, open to interpretation, provides a mental space to think, contains no pictures, and non-authoritarian and anti-indoctrination [22]. Similarly, Sharp and Reed [19] also talked about similar characteristics in their book, Studies in Philosophy for Children: Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery. With this in mind, to exemplify how the Lipman-Sharp approach can be used to teach bioethics and bioethics research, we would like to present a couple of examples. One focuses on teaching a bioethics principle, while the other illustrates a case study.

22

4.2

Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research

405

Illustrating How to Start Building a Community of Philosophical Inquiry in Bioethics

Let us take the bioethics principle of justice as our first example. In the traditional approach, the principle of justice will often be introduced through a lecture. In the beginning, the teacher may ask the class what their understanding of justice is, but in the end, it is the teacher who would put down the definition of justice, according to some source. To somehow clarify this definition, the teacher might use several examples to illustrate the concept of justice. Accordingly, the students are expected to understand what justice is based on what the teacher gave through the lectures as well as the enumerated examples. The teacher may assess how much the students have learned by asking them to give examples of justice, but these examples are expected to be patterned after what has already been established in class. Meanwhile in the community of inquiry approach, students are given time to think about their understanding of justice and raise questions about the concept. There can be several things to think about regarding justice that are not immediately transparent and are open to interpretation. For instance, the meaning of justice, the sources of justice, and the duty to be just, to name a few. They can ask questions such as, “Is justice fairness?” or “Does equality mean justice?” or perhaps “Is a person just if he gives another person what is due to him?” and so forth. Once the questions have been gathered, students decide which ones they want to answer first, then second, and so on. In trying to answer the questions that they raised, students are encouraged to draw, not only from their understanding, but more importantly from their experiences of justice to concretize the potentially different understanding of the notion of justice among students. Consequently, due to the dialogue, which involves challenging the ideas of others or building on top of them, students can revise or strengthen their ideas of what justice is. How they relate to the ideas given by others also plays an important role in this process of meaning-making. Meaning-making, after all, is a communal activity, which learners internalize as they build on each other’s ideas in the course of the dialogic inquiry of the CPI [23]. Another example is informed consent. When research involves human participants, it is paramount that researchers secure the informed consent of these individuals. In the traditional approach to teaching, the teacher will highly likely enumerate the reasons why getting informed consent is important. For instance, it is because it is prescribed in the Belmont Report [24] and in the CIOMS-WHO Guidelines [25] or that getting informed consent shows that the researcher respects the autonomy of the participants, and so forth. This, however, does not contribute to the development of thinking because it merely passes information. In the community of inquiry, the teacher would encourage the students to think about reasons why informed consent is important. Informed consent is problematized and focusing on these problems encourages deeper thinking and intellectual and affective appreciation. Depending on the responses of the students, the dialogue can branch out to other things such as the meaning of authentic informed consent, who has the right to give informed consent, and when is informed consent valid, among others. Although the teacher can just directly give information about these topics,

406

L. P. Marquez and R. P. Ombao

the difference in the community of inquiry is that the students take charge of their learning and they contribute to it, thus, they are able to make it as their own. Ownership of learning is vital not only because students are able to take charge of their education but also because it helps them to develop into becoming independent learners, which is a very important life skill. To illustrate further, let us take abortion as the example for our case study. Possible cases about this focus on a wide variety of topics ranging from the legality of abortion to the ethical conduct of abortion-related health research. In the traditional approach, the teacher will often present a case and ask the students to jump right into analyzing it. Guide questions are used to help in the analysis, but students are expected to use what they learned from previous lectures in their respective analyses. It may be the case that the students are required to do this individually. Afterwards, the teacher serves as the “adjudicator” who decides whether the students got the analysis correctly or not. This is different from a CPI, which is more organic and free-flowing because it follows the inquiry and the argument where they lead. In a community of inquiry, the teacher introduces the case, but instead of giving questions, the teacher asks the students to formulate their own questions about the case. It may also be a scenario wherein that the teacher would not introduce the case at the beginning but utilize a thought experiment. For instance, a useful thought experiment on abortion that can be used is called “The Violinist” [26]. The case or the thought experiment, therefore, serves as the stimulus. Once the questions about the stimulus have been raised, students begin to answer these questions. Since the questions were not part of the teacher’s so-called lesson plan, students are likely to explore concepts that have not yet been previously talked about in their previous classroom discussions. It is expected that the dialogue is not perfect, but since students are collaborating, they are able to correct each other as well as themselves. The teacher can also participate, but only as a collaborator and not an authority figure. Enrichment activities can be given afterwards so that the students can have the opportunity to investigate the case deeper as well as the bioethics principles related to it at their own time. Some examples of enrichment activities that a teacher can ask students to do is to write a reflection paper, compose a song or a poem, create an illustration, or come up with an artwork, to name a few. What is important is that these enrichment activities encourage further thinking and reflection among students. From these examples, one can see that through the community of inquiry approach, the students are given the opportunity to investigate bioethics concepts, principles, and applications by thinking together rather than merely taking information from textbooks and classroom lectures. This allows for critical, creative, and caring thinking to be exercised more often during their bioethics education. More importantly, this can help build a community of bioethical inquiry inside the classroom.

22

5

Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research

407

Conclusion

Using a dialogic inquiry approach, particularly P4wC, can help bioethics education to become a more immersive, reflective, and critical experience for students of all ages. It is important to underscore, however, that using this approach is not meant to undermine the strengths and usefulness of the traditional approach to bioethics education. The traditional didactic teaching is important in providing information that may not come up during the CPI. In this sense, the traditional lecture-type approach must be done after the CPI as a complement to what transpired during the dialogue as well as an extension for additional dialogic inquiry. A more extensive discussion on how this is done can be found in another chapter (explaining how to integrate dialogic inquiry in lesson plans) of this book. What we have presented above is meant to offer an alternative to teaching bioethics and bioethics research that has the potential to be more stimulating, engaging, reflective, and collaborative. In a technologically connected world where information can be accessed almost instantaneously, there are inherent advantages to thinking in a community of philosophical inquiry in bioethics rather than being spoon-fed with information. We believe that the advantages that the CPI offers can be beneficial to the teaching of bioethics and bioethics research. Ultimately, teaching bioethics and bioethics research through the community of philosophical inquiry approach is relatively new and largely unexplored since its context, especially the background of those who teach it is diverse. Thus, there are numerous opportunities for bioethics educators to conduct research on the topic. We invite you, dear reader, to look into this and consider it as viable addition to the tools that you use in teaching your respective bioethics classes. Reverence for life is achievable through a reflective appreciation of what it means to live. Leander Penaso Marquez and Rola Palalon Ombao

References 1. Schweitzer A (1946) Civilization and ethics. Adam & Charles Black, London. https://archive. org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.533087/page/n1/mode/2up 2. ten Have HAMJ (2014) Bioethics education. In: ten Have HAMJ, Gordijn B. (eds) Handbook of global bioethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2512-6_96 3. Morales-González JÁ, Tirado-Lule JM, Alejandro González-Cisneros A, López-De-León EO, Sanchez-Morales A, Manzanilla-Granados HM (2018) Bioethics in education. In: MoralesGonzález JA, Nájera MEA (eds) Reflections on bioethics. IntechOpen. https://doi.org/10.5772/ intechopen.74519 4. Potter VR (1975) Humility with responsibility—a bioethic for oncologists: presidential address. Can Res 35:2297–2306 5. Ten Have HAMJ (ed) (2015) Bioethics education in a global perspective: challenges in global bioethics. Advancing Global Bioethics (4). Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht, New York, London

408

L. P. Marquez and R. P. Ombao

6. Downie RS, Macnaughton J (2007) Bioethics and the humanities: attitudes and perceptions. Routledge-Cavendish, Abingdon, Oxon. Taylor & Francis Group. 7. Potter VR (1988) Global bioethics: building on the leopold legacy. Michigan State University Press, East Lansing 8. Dwyer J (2009) How to connect bioethics and environmental ethics: health, sustainability, and justice. Bioethics 23(9):497–502 9. Gruen L, Ruddick W (2009) Biomedical and environmental ethics alliance: common causes and grounds. Bioethical Inquiry 6:457–466 10. Bartz R (2000) Remembering the hippocratics: knoweldge, practice, and ethos of ancient greek physician-healers. In Kuczewski MG, Polansky R (eds) Bioethics: ancient themes in contemporary issues. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp 3–30 11. Beauchamp TL, Childress JF (2019) Principles of biomedical ethics (8th ed). Oxford University Press 12. Wragg E, Brown G (2001) Explaining in the primary school. RoutledgeFalmer, London and New York 13. Mancenido-Bolaños MAV (2018) Narrowing the gap between theory and practice: community of inquiry and its state in the Philippines. Kritike 12(2):140–156. https://www.kritike.org/jou rnal/issue_23/mancenido-bolanos_december2018.pdf 14. Wragg E (2001) Class management in the primary school. RoutledgeFalmer, London and New York 15. Skinner BF (1968) The technology of teaching. Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York 16. Rogers CR, Freiberg HJ (1994) Freedom to learn. Macmillan, New York 17. Lipman M (2003) Thinking in education, 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press 18. Canuto AT (2018) Developing children’s reasoning and inquiry, concept analysis, and meaning-making skills through the community of inquiry. Child Philos 14(30):427–452 (Rio De Janeiro) 19. Sharp A, Reed R (eds) (1992) With sources and references by Matthew Lipman. Studies in philosophy for children: Harry Stottlemeier’s discovery. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 20. Benjamin M, Echeverria E (1992) Knowledge and the classroom. In: Sharp A, Reed R (eds) Studies in philosophy for children: Harry stottlemeier’s discovery. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 21. International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (2013). https://ifmsa.org/studentexchange-program/ 22. Fisher R (2000) Teaching thinking: philosophical enquiry in the classroom. Continuum, London and New York 23. Canuto ATO (2018) Developing children’s reasoning and inquiry, concept analysis, and meaning-making skills through the community of inquiry. Child Philos 14(30). https://doi.org/ 10.12957/childphilo.2018.28144 24. The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1979) The belmont report: ethical principles and guidelines for the protection of human subjects of research, 1st edn. U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/read-the-belmont-report/ index.html 25. Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) (2016) International ethical guidelines for health-related research involving humans, 4th edn. Geneva: Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS). https://cioms.ch/wp-content/upl oads/2017/01/WEB-CIOMS-EthicalGuidelines.pdf 26. Thomson JJ (1971) A defense of abortion. https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil215/Tho mson.pdf

22

Using Inquiry-Based Pedagogy for Teaching Bioethics and Bioethics Research

409

Leander Penaso Marquez teaches philosophy, educational foundations, and values education courses at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He has published several articles in local and international journals in addition to having presented some of his research in various local and international conferences. Leander sits as Co-chair of the Working Group on Bioethics of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities Global Health Program (APRU-GHP) and serves as Junior Ambassador to the Philippines for the Universal Scientific Education and Research Network (USERN). He was first introduced to P4wC in 2014 and received training from the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) in 2017. He has facilitated various training and workshops on teaching philosophy and P4wC. His research interests include Ethics, Epistemology, Bioethics, Research Ethics, Education Policy, Philosophy for Children, Philosophy of Education, and Philosophy and Popular Culture. Leander has published a textbook for Filipino students that is based on the P4wC framework titled, Trends, Networks, and Critical Thinking in the 21st Century Culture (2018). Rola Palalon Ombao is a graduate student of the Department of Philosophy, College of Social Sciences, University of the Philippines Diliman. Before this, she used to teach Philosophy at the same department, and she also served as head of the Office of Student Affairs of her college. Rola is writing her master’s thesis on teaching bioethics through the dialogic inquiry approach of Philosophy for Children. Her research interests include health, women, and education.

Index

A Agenda-setting, 166, 167, 169, 403 Agonism, 13, 14, 21, 23, 24, 27–30, 32, 34 Assessment, 79, 83, 85–87, 89, 91, 92, 96, 97, 102, 107, 111, 120, 122, 130–133, 149, 166–169, 188, 321, 338, 355, 358, 366, 396, 404 Australia, 129, 188, 287, 365

114, 122, 138, 139, 141–144, 149, 151, 163, 184–186, 188, 189, 193, 194, 196, 198, 199, 201–203, 216, 231, 233, 234, 237–240, 243–245, 256, 257, 261, 262, 273–277, 279–283, 285–294, 296–298, 303, 305, 307, 311, 314, 321–324, 326, 340, 341, 344, 348, 351, 359, 403 Citizenship, 11, 23, 29, 57, 58, 61, 70, 130, 301, 302, 313

B Basic education, 6, 11, 15, 157–160, 162, 164, 168, 355–357 Bioethics, 391–397, 401–407 Bioethics research, 391–397, 401, 402, 404, 407 Brazil, 95, 97 Brila, 335, 337–344, 346–348, 350–352 Business consulting, 375, 376, 380

C Camps, 144, 271, 273–283, 337, 342 Canada, 337, 344, 348, 351, 352 Care, 65, 67–69, 79, 88, 90, 99, 137, 140–146, 149–153, 198, 239, 289, 296, 324, 326, 331, 347, 359, 361 Caring thinking, 26, 66, 67, 69, 70, 84, 87–90, 137, 138, 140, 142, 144–146, 148–152, 216, 217, 264, 275, 277, 296, 304, 324, 326, 345, 361, 403, 406 Childhood, 15, 182, 184, 189, 199, 241, 243, 258, 287–290, 297, 319–323, 332, 335, 337, 338, 352, 377 Children, 4, 8, 10–12, 15, 17, 27, 29, 31, 34, 41, 50, 57, 62, 64, 77, 80, 86, 87, 95, 97–99, 101–104, 106–111, 113,

Citizenship education, 14, 303, 359, 376, 377, 387 Collaborative deliberation, 262 Collaborative thinking, 69, 70, 146, 172, 173, 347, 403 Community Of Inquiry (COI), 33, 40, 43, 44, 48–50, 58–62, 65, 69, 70, 84, 87, 89–91, 97, 99, 101, 106, 119, 120, 122, 123, 128–130, 132, 133, 140, 142–144, 146, 148, 149, 151, 159–161, 166, 167, 170, 172, 184–188, 196, 198, 201, 203–205, 207, 208, 231–234, 236–238, 240, 241, 245, 253, 254, 286–289, 291, 293–297, 304, 311–313, 319, 320, 324–332, 367, 383, 384, 391, 403–406 Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI)/ (COPI), 21, 23, 26–34, 47, 48, 137, 142, 159–161, 167, 169, 171, 172, 213, 214, 216–221, 223, 225, 227, 249, 250, 254–259, 262, 264, 291, 293, 337, 338, 340, 342, 344–349, 351, 352, 366–368, 393, 400, 402–404, 406, 407 Concept map, 237

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. A. V. Mancenido-Bolaños et al. (eds.), Cultivating Reasonableness in Education, Integrated Science 17, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4198-8

411

412 Conflict, 12–14, 16, 21, 23–25, 32, 33, 87, 111, 128, 199, 205, 206, 231, 241, 245, 251, 255, 259, 348, 378 Consensus, 12, 14, 17, 23, 27, 28, 31, 42, 52, 246, 253, 258, 292, 383, 385 Creative experimentation, 338, 346, 351 Creative thinking, 6, 16, 89, 131, 142, 146, 216, 240, 254, 273, 274, 325, 326, 375, 380, 383, 387 Critical education, 4 Critical thinking, 10, 13, 26, 67, 77, 81, 85, 86, 96–99, 101, 106, 110, 142, 145–147, 159, 162, 163, 216, 236, 260, 261, 271, 273, 282, 283, 290, 292–294, 312, 324–326, 367, 370, 377, 409 Cultural intelligence, 249, 252, 253, 255, 256, 258, 260, 262–264 Culture, 65, 128, 180, 195, 200, 205, 231–241, 243–246, 251–253, 256, 258, 260, 261, 271, 274, 277–279, 322, 339, 340, 357, 368, 380, 396

D Democracy, 4, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 21–25, 27–29, 31, 34, 40, 42, 49, 50, 52, 57, 59–61, 69, 142, 147, 194, 197, 208, 251–254, 275, 277, 283, 293, 301–304, 314, 315, 349, 377, 378, 397 Democratic education, 3–5, 7–18, 21, 23–28, 30–32, 34, 57, 61, 216, 249, 250, 252, 254, 255, 264, 273 Dialogic inquiry, 157, 158, 161, 172, 184, 218–221, 227, 377, 393, 405, 407, 409 Dialogue, 4, 9–11, 13–17, 27–33, 40, 41, 43–45, 47, 49–54, 59–61, 63, 80, 83, 85–87, 91, 142, 144, 146, 148, 151, 158, 160, 161, 167, 168, 182, 185, 186, 193–196, 198, 200–204, 206–209, 216–218, 220, 232–234, 237, 238, 240, 244, 245, 253–256, 259, 260, 264, 280, 281, 286–290, 292, 295, 301, 304, 305, 311, 314, 315, 319, 323, 325, 327–332, 335, 337–340, 342–348, 350–352, 359, 365–369, 375, 377, 378, 380, 382–385, 387, 400, 403–407 Disagreement, 14, 21–25, 28–32, 34, 52, 87, 99, 100, 122, 125, 126, 151, 198, 251, 256, 283, 292, 297, 313, 344, 347, 350

Index Discussion, 3, 4, 11, 13, 15, 26, 28, 34, 42, 44, 47, 52, 60, 62, 64, 86, 98, 100, 103, 105, 107, 112–114, 121, 122, 128, 143, 148, 150, 157, 165, 166, 169, 170, 178, 185, 198, 201, 216, 218, 220, 221, 223, 225, 239, 254–259, 262, 264, 278, 281, 282, 290, 292–296, 311, 325, 328–330, 349, 357, 361, 366, 367, 369, 377, 385, 387, 391, 401, 406, 407 Discussion plan, 161, 214, 223, 224, 227 Dissent, 47, 52, 53, 147

E Education, 3–18, 30, 59–61, 65, 66, 83, 87, 88, 97, 99, 103, 104, 106, 121, 127, 133, 137–142, 148–153, 158–160, 162, 164, 167, 171–173, 177–189, 195, 199–201, 216, 217, 236, 243, 250–253, 259, 260, 262, 263, 271, 273, 274, 276, 279, 282, 283, 287, 288, 293, 295–297, 301–304, 306–310, 314, 320, 321, 323, 324, 337, 343, 344, 356–361, 363–366, 368–370, 377, 378, 385, 391–396, 400, 402, 403, 406, 407, 409 Emancipatory, 12, 16, 18, 319, 320, 329 Emotions, 14, 21, 23, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 58, 66, 67, 69, 78–80, 85, 87, 88, 137, 139–141, 144–146, 151, 199, 207, 219, 239, 245, 281, 292, 294, 326, 349 Employee education, 375, 376, 380, 383, 387 Enrichment activities, 166, 404, 406 Evaluation, 5, 11, 13, 62, 65, 69, 85, 86, 96, 97, 101, 105, 111, 112, 114, 124, 125, 145, 166, 167, 169, 215, 219, 236, 275, 276, 347, 355, 377, 386, 403, 404 Extremism, 213, 215, 216, 227, 347

F Fairness, 16, 147, 217, 337, 364, 367, 368, 405 Freedom, 8, 9, 11, 16, 29, 216, 244, 253, 254, 256, 259, 271, 320, 327, 377

G Games, 85, 124, 133, 166, 225, 227, 282 Guideline, 100, 104, 111, 165, 381, 398, 405

Index H Habituation, 95, 100, 101, 104, 106, 107 Hegemony, 24, 32, 245, 260, 288

I Inclusive/Inclusivity, 42, 147, 231, 245, 324, 355–357, 359–363, 367–370, 398 Indigenous knowledge, 235, 236, 240 Indoctrination, 220, 259, 355–359, 361–363, 367, 369 Inference, 95, 97, 107, 108, 111, 124, 125, 184, 225, 240, 259, 260 Inference to the best explanation, 96–98, 107, 112 Inquiry, 16, 27, 28, 31–34, 39, 41–53, 58, 59, 61, 66, 70, 79, 83, 86, 88–91, 98, 121–123, 127, 128, 132, 142–146, 148, 151, 158, 160, 161, 166, 170, 171, 181, 184–187, 196, 203, 207, 208, 213, 216, 219, 236, 245, 254, 256, 259–261, 277, 288, 289, 294, 301, 302, 304–306, 309, 311–314, 324–331, 338, 340, 343, 346, 348, 349, 358, 363, 364, 368, 383–385, 391, 393, 396, 399–404, 406 Inquiry plan, 221, 227, 250, 262 Intellectual Virtues, 10, 14, 97, 99, 103, 113 Islamic education, 217–219, 227

J Japan, 188, 375, 380 Judgment/Judgement, 10, 12, 17, 27, 29, 42, 65, 66, 68, 79, 85, 86, 88–90, 104, 111, 120, 121, 123, 132, 133, 141, 142, 144–150, 167, 181, 194–201, 203, 208, 213, 215–218, 225, 227, 236, 261, 275, 276, 288, 292, 294, 324–329, 342, 350, 365, 377, 385, 386, 398, 402–404

K K-12 / K-to-12 / K to 12, 163–165, 171, 289

L Lesson plan, 157, 158, 165, 166, 168, 169, 172, 214, 221, 250, 262, 348, 406, 407 Lesson proper, 166, 169, 170

413 M Malaysia, 217, 218, 225, 255, 287 Meta-cognition, 58, 61, 113, 203, 207 Meta-ethics, 58, 386 Mind map, 225, 226 Moral education, 66, 70, 250, 355, 356, 358–360, 362, 365, 367–369 Multidimensional thinking, 26, 79, 80, 84, 137, 140, 240, 297, 319, 324, 326, 327, 331, 349, 403

N National identity, 272 Nation-building, 7–9, 15, 17 Netherlands, 378 Ninho, 95, 97, 98, 102

O Online Community of Inquiry, 285, 291, 295 Outcomes-Based Education (OBE), 77–84, 87–89, 91, 92, 163, 165 Owl challenges, 335, 336, 338, 340, 342–344, 346–351 Ownership, 40, 47–49, 51, 53, 62, 182, 184, 406

P Peace, 10, 193, 201, 206, 251, 252, 274 Peace education, 193, 194, 196, 203, 206 Pedagogy, 9, 12, 13, 16, 21, 23, 26–28, 34, 69, 77, 80–82, 86, 87, 90, 104, 119, 121–124, 128, 129, 131–133, 142, 150, 151, 160, 161, 163, 164, 172, 180–183, 185, 187, 193, 195, 196, 198, 204, 205, 207, 208, 213, 217, 249, 254, 257, 287, 289, 295, 297, 303, 304, 319–321, 324, 325, 330–332, 357–366, 376, 377, 387, 391, 393, 396, 399, 401–403 Pedagogy of care, 142 Philippines, 86, 157–159, 162–166, 168, 169, 171, 172, 185, 188, 233, 285–288, 295, 321, 364, 409 Philocreation, 335, 336, 338–348, 350–352 Philosophical consulting, 378, 380, 381, 383, 387, 388 Philosophical inquiry, 27, 28, 31, 32, 41, 45, 47, 53, 142, 159, 213, 216, 219–221, 234, 243, 255, 285, 289, 290, 297, 307, 339, 345, 347, 381, 386, 404, 407

414 Philosophical pedagogy, 349, 355, 356, 363, 365–367, 369 Philosophical practice, 122, 349, 375, 380, 381, 388 Philosophical quality, 346, 347 Philosophical textbook, 169 Philosophy, 3–17, 23, 29–31, 44, 50, 57, 59–62, 64, 70, 81, 83, 92, 97, 119, 123, 131, 133, 142, 160, 164, 168, 186–188, 199, 217, 218, 223, 232, 233, 245, 246, 254, 273, 274, 283, 289, 290, 297, 298, 301, 302, 304, 322, 326, 327, 329, 331, 332, 335, 337–339, 341, 342, 344, 346, 348, 349, 351, 352, 362–366, 369, 377–379, 382, 386–388, 391, 394, 397, 399, 402, 409 Philosophy education, 377 Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC), 4, 21, 23, 26–34, 39, 41, 42, 45, 46, 49, 50, 52, 57–61, 63, 65–67, 69, 77–80, 83–89, 91, 137, 140–143, 146, 147, 149, 157–160, 163–166, 168, 169, 171, 172, 178, 184, 194, 231–236, 238, 240, 241, 243–245, 271–278, 285, 301, 303, 304, 311, 313, 314, 321, 335, 337–339, 341, 346–348, 350, 352, 356, 363, 366–369, 375–378, 380, 381, 383–387, 392, 393, 396, 399, 401–404, 407, 409 Philosophy for Children (P4C), 30, 40–42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 50, 59, 61–65, 70, 142, 144, 148, 158, 159, 164–166, 171, 172, 177, 178, 183, 184, 186–189, 193–196, 198–201, 204–208, 216–218, 249, 253, 254, 257, 260, 282, 285–287, 291, 295, 301–306, 314, 320, 324, 325, 331, 332, 337, 342, 350, 367, 384, 385, 399, 403, 404 Philosophy in business, 378 Philosophy of education, 4, 59, 84, 186, 187, 364, 409 Political polarization, 21, 22 Polling, 40, 42, 43 Pragmatic, 60, 106, 147 Primary school, 97, 218, 287, 288, 295, 309 Public Conversations Project, 193, 196, 206–208

Q Quranic teaching, 213, 215, 218–222, 227

Index R Reasonableness, 17, 40, 66, 67, 70, 79, 84–89, 91, 98, 99, 114, 119–124, 126, 127, 130–133, 137, 138, 140, 145–150, 152, 177, 181, 183, 184, 188, 189, 193, 194, 196–198, 200, 202, 204, 208, 216, 243, 259, 285, 286, 288, 289, 298, 303, 304, 312, 313, 324–327, 329, 348, 366, 376, 377, 403 Reflection, 46, 53, 58, 61–65, 67, 69, 70, 79, 86, 102, 142, 159, 163, 168, 170, 196, 197, 207, 208, 238, 244, 271, 273, 277, 280, 281, 295, 339, 341, 345, 363, 365, 366, 400, 404, 406 Reflexive, 60, 67, 240, 244, 288 Reflexive thinking, 238 Reflexivity, 58, 66, 67, 69, 232, 233, 237, 238, 240, 241, 245, 330 Relationality, 231–233, 235–238, 240–242, 244, 245 Relations of power, 21, 24–26, 30, 33, 34 Religious education, 216, 356–358, 367–369 Respect, 48, 51, 63, 69, 70, 84, 91, 128, 139, 142, 148, 151, 161, 172, 184, 197, 238, 251, 253, 255, 256, 258–260, 264, 290, 301, 305, 306, 313, 314, 326, 344–346, 359, 360, 364, 367, 377, 384, 398 Responsible autonomy, 338, 340

S Secondary school, 11, 119, 122, 123, 214, 218, 308, 351 Self-corrective, 60, 62, 66, 67, 70, 325 Singapore, 287, 295 Social-Emotional Learning, 139, 140 Socratic method, 182, 183, 254, 365, 366 Socratic questioning, 221, 257, 259 South Africa, 27, 301–303, 305, 306, 308, 310, 314, 315 South Korea, 164 STAR Lesson Plan, 166–171 Stimulus, 27, 39, 41, 45, 47, 129, 130, 166, 167, 169, 170, 196, 201, 214, 218, 219, 221, 222, 238, 239, 256–258, 262, 292, 295, 329, 349, 368, 403, 404, 406

T Teacher education, 177–179, 181–183, 185, 186, 188, 189, 304, 360

Index Teachers, 7, 11, 12, 16, 33, 43, 48, 50, 62, 77, 79–91, 95, 100, 101, 104, 113, 121–133, 137–140, 142, 143, 146, 149–152, 157–172, 177, 179–183, 185–189, 197, 198, 208, 215, 216, 218, 220, 221, 223, 226, 227, 233, 241, 250, 260–262, 264, 277, 278, 285–289, 295, 302, 304, 305, 307–310, 314, 315, 331, 341, 343, 350, 355, 357–362, 365, 366, 368, 369, 396–401, 405, 406 Teaching, 6, 7, 11, 12, 16, 25, 33, 41, 58, 80, 83, 87, 99, 107, 119, 123, 124, 127, 130, 132, 133, 137, 138, 140, 141, 149–152, 157, 159, 162–166, 169, 172, 177, 180–189, 213, 215, 216, 218, 227, 233, 244, 254, 260, 263, 264, 273, 274, 278, 280, 283, 285–290, 294, 295, 301, 309, 355–367, 369, 377, 386, 391–394, 396–399, 403–405, 407, 409 Thinking, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 27, 28, 44, 45, 49, 51–53, 58–64, 66, 67, 69, 70, 78–80, 83–91, 95, 97–99, 101, 102, 104, 106, 107, 109, 112, 119, 124–133, 141, 142, 144–152, 159, 160, 162–164, 167, 168, 170–172, 177, 178, 181, 183–186, 188, 189, 195–197, 201, 203, 205, 207, 208, 215–218, 220, 225, 231, 233–241, 243–246, 253, 254, 256–262, 271, 278, 279, 288, 289, 293, 297, 303, 309, 312, 324–328,

415 338, 340, 341, 344–349, 351, 362, 368–370, 377, 379, 380, 387, 388, 398, 399, 401, 403–407 Thinking moves, 49, 304, 306, 311, 312 Thinking questions, 219–221, 257, 262 Thinking routines, 95–98, 101, 102, 107, 119, 124–126, 130, 132, 133 Thinking skills, 11, 12, 77, 80, 84, 85, 87, 89–91, 141, 142, 168, 171, 172, 196, 216, 218, 225, 227, 274, 346, 351, 361, 399 Trauma, 195, 196, 200, 203–206, 208

U Ukraine, 271, 274, 278, 279 United States/North America, 203, 235, 378

V Value-building, 272 Values education, 164, 355–363, 367–369, 409 Violence, 16, 193–196, 199–208, 251, 339, 342, 347 Virtue, 10, 11, 15, 17, 61, 79, 84, 99, 100, 122, 127, 133, 147, 194, 197, 208, 235, 302, 303, 339, 363, 364, 377, 378, 393, 402 Vote/Voting, 26, 39–50, 53, 203, 219

Y Youth agency, 352