About P4C

Developed more than thirty years ago by Dr. Matthew Lipman a philosophy professor at Montclair State College in New Jersey, Philosophy for Children is an international educational programme taught widely in many countries. At last count, Philosophy for Children was represented in some sixty countries around the world – ranging from Austria to Iceland, Bulgaria to Brazil and Canada to Taiwan and China.

Philosophy for Children is often described as a thinking skills programme or a course in critical and creative thinking. While it is true that philosophy for children does improve students’ critical and creative thinking skills, calling it a “thinking skills” programme does not do it justice. It does much more as well.

Philosophy for children builds on the students’ own wonder and curiosity about ideas that are vitally important to them. The subject matter of Philosophy for Children is those common, central and contestable concepts that underpin both our experience of human life and all academic disciplines. Examples of such concepts are:

Truth, reality, knowledge, evidence, freedom, justice, goodness, rights, mind, identity, love, friendship, rules, responsibility, action, logic, language, fairness, reason, existence, possibility, beauty, meaning, self, time, God, infinity, human nature, thought.

The central pedagogical tool and guiding ideal of Philosophy for Children is the Community of Inquiry. In the community of inquiry, students work together to generate and then answer their own questions about the philosophical issues contained in purpose written materials or a wide range of other resources. Thinking in the community of inquiry is critical, creative, collaborative and caring.

“In philosophy you learn how to think, not what to think”
– A student

In the community of inquiry students learn to respect, listen to and understand a diverse range of views. The process of philosophical exploration in this environment encourages students to take increasing responsibility for their own learning processes and to develop as independent and self-correcting learners. Students develop the confidence and intellectual courage to put forward their own views in a group. Participation in the community of inquiry develops higher order thinking skills in the context of meaningful discussion.

“Philosophy also enables and empowers teachers. As they become more experienced in the practice of teaching Philosophy, teachers are excited by how it inspires their teaching practice and affects their own thinking and learning processes.” – Amy Eberhardt, Wairau Valley School

Philosophy for children achieves these aims by giving students the opportunity to think for themselves about ideas and concepts that they themselves select as the ones which are interesting and worthwhile pursuing.

Examples might be:

• What kinds of things have minds?
• How should we treat our friends?
• Should we always think for ourselves?
• What would a fair society be like?
• Do we own our bodies?
• What does it mean to know something?
• What counts as a good reason for believing something?

A typical session consists of a group reading of a source text, followed by the gathering of students’ questions that have been stimulated by the reading. These questions form the agenda for discussion. Each reading usually generates enough questions for several subsequent discussions in the community of inquiry. The students’ collaborative inquiry can be facilitated by the use of appropriate discussion plans and activities, which function to maintain focus and encourage depth of discussion. Purpose written texts are just one possible source material. Other written material, images and recordings can also be used to stimulated philosophical inquiry. Drawing and drama can also be used as a springboard for discussion. Some sessions begin with an activity which stimulates thinking about a particular contestable concept. Such a session might end with a gathering of the students’ own questions, to be the agenda for further sessions of inquiry.

Discussion in the community of inquiry is not just a process of swapping opinions. Classroom discussion is aimed at the construction of the best answer to the questions raised. This best answer is not provided or validated by the teacher. Instead, the class has the responsibility for both constructing and evaluating the range of possible responses to a question. Philosophy for children is not based on the assumption that there are no right or wrong answers. Instead, it is based on the belief that, even if final answers are difficult to come by, some answers can reasonably be judged better – more defensible – than others.

Philosophy for Children emphasizes a conversation and dialogue based process of inquiry. As all participants share their own ideas so each individual must consider many different perspectives. Many students have the experience of seeing that what they thought was obvious is not obvious to people who have different perspectives. This encourages tolerance of others ideas, and increases students ability to work together.

Philosophy for children improves critical, creative and rigorous thinking. Participants develop their higher order thinking skills through engagement in the community of inquiry: through learning from peers, from expert teacher questioning which elicits the use of relevant thinking skills, and by engaging in specially designed tasks for building particular critical thinking skills. Students also develop the attitudes and dispositions necessary for good thinking through experience of the community of inquiry, and the internalisation of its democratic norms. They also greatly improve their communication skills and their abilities to work with others.

The skills developed include:

Philosophy is a subject matter particularly suited to the development of critical thinking skills. Read about why this is so here:

What is special about philosophy as a subject matter for critical thinking?

 

Links to research on P4C:

https://www.sapere.org.uk/about-us/p4c-research.aspx

http://my.icpic.org/research.html

Philosophy_for_Children EEF Study Report.   (This large UK study shows the impact of P4C not just on critical and collaborative skills, but also on literacy and numeracy!)

 

• Higher order thinking skills
• Independent thinking
• Excitement and motivation
• Increased reading comprehension
• Maths and science achievement
• Increased co-operative skills
• Better relationships with peers and parents
• Personal development and self-esteem
• Transfer of skills to other areas of study

Skills learned in the community of inquiry are transferable. Philosophy for children enables students to make bridges between the various things they learn, thus making the curriculum more meaningful to them. Both the co-operative skills and the thinking skills developed in Philosophy for Children contribute to improved social interactions and greater social responsibility.

 

Ethical values are integrated into philosophy for children in two ways. First, the ethos of the community of inquiry both requires and develops a range of ethical values that are essential to participation in a society in which there exists a plurality of values. These “democratic” values include tolerance, respect for others, taking all ideas seriously, caring for the procedures that govern collaborative inquiry, and willingness to listen to alternative viewpoints. Secondly, ethical questions are often the subject of inquiry. Ethics is a central area in philosophy and many of the purpose written materials stimulate philosophical exploration of concepts such as good, bad, fairness, rules, rights, duty, friendship, and empathy.

The issue of values education has given rise to two contrasting concerns. First, some people fear that “values education” is likely to be authoritarian and didactic and therefore, in the long term, ineffective. Second, others fear that if children are encouraged to make up their own minds about ethical values, there will be little agreement about core values, and that children will adopt a relativist position on values, according to which all choices for action are equally “good” and all immune from criticism. Ethical inquiry in philosophy for children avoids both these perceived dangers. Exploring ethical questions in the community of inquiry does require students to make up their own minds, through dialogue with others, but the rigorous nature of the inquiry, and the emphasis on assessing reasons for positions means that, in practice, a community is very unlikely to come to the conclusion that “anything goes”. In fact, students in the community of inquiry typically recreate for themselves – and own – a stable set of core ethical values which have withstood the test of careful evaluation.

 

Philosophy classes is best practiced as a regular part of the teaching week, though it can also be run as a special program with students of any age and ability. For example, in the primary school, one session per week can devoted to doing philosophy for children, at first with prepared activities, and purpose written materials, and then with carefully selected children’s literature or materials from other parts of the curriculum. As the students and the teacher become more familiar with the processes of collaborative philosophical inquiry, sessions can be based on age appropriate newspaper or magazine articles, humorous or political cartoons, images, movies, songs and on any current social issue. Some teachers choose to do philosophy within their literacy programme. In the senior school, philosophy can take place within English, social studies, science, technology – almost any subject!

While all students benefit from engaging in philosophical inquiry, and nearly all students enjoy it immensely, two groups of students are likely to find it especially appealing and useful. Those students who seem to not perform well in the traditional school situation can respond very well to participation in the community of inquiry. Since participation is primarily oral, it can be an excellent opportunity for extension of students who may have difficulties with reading and writing. Because the subject matter of philosophy includes questions that we all wonder about, students who have difficulty seeing the relevance of school subjects often become interested in the deep ideas explored in the community of inquiry. The atmosphere of care and safety generated in a good community of inquiry provides a space in which less confident students can try out ideas with the guarantee that they will be listened to. Critical skills acquired through participation in the community of inquiry can then be transferred to other areas of study. Secondly, many gifted students find the chance to engage in philosophical exploration extremely stimulating. They respond especially well to the intellectual challenge of engaging with ideas that are common and central to our lives, but are ultimately contestable.

”Philosophy in the classroom includes everyone. Students from non-English-speaking backgrounds will sit quietly for weeks or even months, soaking up the wonderful language modelling that is occurring, then stun you with their contribution and understanding.
Gifted students will find that providing the answer and moving quickly on to the next thing does not work, and that they are required to slow down and really think things through. They learn also that students who do not succeed at school with traditional subjects can be brilliant at Philosophy; that we are all good at something.  A significant positive impact has been observed on students who may not be succeeding with their schooling in the traditional sense, that is, students with identified learning difficulties. These students often prove themselves to be excellent higher-order thinkers.” – Amy Eberhardt, Wairua Valley School