Dewey's book on Democracy and Education established his credentials in the field of education and once counted as his most important book. It has been re-published in many editions and continuously in print ever since the original publication in 1916.

Ethics and the Community of Inquiry gets to the heart of democratic education and how best to achieve it. The book radically reshapes our understanding of education by offering a framework from which to integrate curriculum, teaching and learning and to place deliberative democracy at the centre of education reform. It makes a significant contribution to current debates on educational theory and practice, in particular to pedagogical and professional practice, and ethics education.

The following paper outlines the historical and philosophical development of, ‘community of inquiry’ in educational discourse. The origins of community of inquiry can be found in the philosophical work of C. S. Peirce. From Peirce the notion of community of inquiry is adopted and developed by educational theorists of different orientations. Community of inquiry denotes an approach to teaching that alters the structure of the classroom in fundamental ways. With particular consideration given to the unique philosophical origins of this approach, (...) this paper outlines and discusses how community of inquiry is situated in today's educational landscape. (shrink)

The philosophy for children curriculum was specially written by Matthew Lipman and colleagues for the teaching of philosophy by non-philosophically educated teachers from foundation phase to further education colleges. In this article I argue that such a curriculum is neither a necessary, not a sufficient condition for the teaching of philosophical thinking. The philosophical knowledge and pedagogical tact of the teacher remains salient, in that the open-ended and unpredictable nature of philosophical enquiry demands of teachers to think in the moment (...) and draw on their own knowledge and experience of academic philosophy. Providing specialist training or induction in the P4C curriculum cannot and should not replace undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in academic philosophy at universities. However, although for academic philosophers the use of the P4C curriculum could be beneficial, I will argue that its use poses the risk of wanting to form children into the ideal ‘abnormal’ child, the thinking child—the adult philosopher’s child positioned as such by the Lipman novels. The notion of narrativity is central in my argument. With the help of two picturebooks—The Three Pigs by David Weisner and Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne—I illustrate my claim that philosophy as ‘side-shadowing’ or meta-thinking can only be generated in the space ‘in between’ text, child and educator, thereby foregrounding a ‘pedagogy of exposure’ rather than ‘teacher proof’ texts. (shrink)

In the past decade well-designed research studies have shown that the practice of collaborative philosophical inquiry in schools can have marked cognitive and social benefits. Student academic performance improves, and so too does the social dimension of schooling. These findings are timely, as many countries in Asia and the Pacific are now contemplating introducing Philosophy into their curricula. This paper gives a brief history of collaborative philosophical inquiry before surveying the evidence as to its effectiveness. The evidence is canvassed under (...) two categories: schooling and thinking skills; and schooling, socialisation and values. In both categories there is clear evidence that even short-term teaching of collaborative philosophical inquiry has marked positive effects on students. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research and a final claim that the presently-available research evidence is strong enough to warrant implementing collaborative philosophical inquiry as part of a long-term policy. (shrink)

The ‘community of inquiry’ as formulated by C. S. Peirce is grounded in the notion of communities of discipline-based inquiry engaged in the construction of knowledge. The phrase ‘transforming the classroom into a community of inquiry’ is commonly understood as a pedagogical activity with a philosophical focus to guide classroom discussion. But it has a broader application. Integral to the method of the community of inquiry is the ability of the classroom teacher to actively engage in the theories and practices (...) of discipline-based communities of inquiry so as to become informed by the norms of the disciplines, not only to aspire to competence within the disciplines, but also to develop habits of self-correction for reconstructing those same norms when faced with novel problems and solutions, including those in the classroom. This has implications for science education and the role of educational philosophy in developing students' ability to think scientifically. But it also has broader implications for thinking critically within all key learning areas. Here we concentrate on science education. We present the parallels between philosophical inquiry and scientific inquiry that need to be realised to promote and engage with scientific inquiry in the classroom. We also discuss the conflicts between philosophical inquiry and the way inquiry science in the classroom is portrayed in the education literature. Based on philosophical and historical perceptions of science as inquiry, a practical approach to implementation of scientific inquiry in the science classroom is presented. (shrink)

In this paper, we will explore how Albert Camus has much to offer philosophers of education. Although a number of educationalists have attempted to explicate the educational implications of Camus’ literary works, these analyses have not attempted to extrapolate pedagogical guidelines towards developing an educational framework for children’s philosophical practice in the way Matthew Lipman did from John Dewey’s philosophy of education, which informed his philosophy for children curriculum and pedagogy. We focus on the phenomenology of inquiry; that is, inquiry (...) that begins with genuinely felt doubt, pointing to a problematic to which the inquirer seeks a solution or resolution. We argue that the central purpose of education is to develop lucid individuals. To this end, we concentrate on Dewey and the pragmatist tradition, starting from Peirce, leading to Lipman’s development of Dewey’s educational guidelines into classroom practice. We show where Camus and the pragmatists are congruent in their thinking, insofar as they can inform the educative process of the community of inquiry. What we conclude is that the role of the teacher is to develop lucid individuals facilitated in a classroom that is transformed into a community of inquiry embedded in contemporary historical moments. (shrink)

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of calls for moral education to receive greater public attention. In our pluralist society, however, it is difficult to find agreement on what exactly moral education requires. Philosophical Discussion in Moral Education develops a detailed philosophical defence of the claim that teachers should engage students in ethical discussions to promote moral competence and strengthen moral character. Paying particular attention to the teacher's role, this book highlights the justification for, and (...) methods of, creating a classroom community of ethical inquiry. (shrink)

This study explored the impact of facilitating collaborative philosophical inquiry, in the tradition of “Philosophy for Children,” on connectedness pedagogies. The study employed an experimental design that included 59 primary teachers in 2 groups. The experimental group received an intervention that comprised training in CPI and the comparison group received training in Thinking Tools, a subset of the CPI training. Lessons were coded on four variables of connectedness pedagogies, across the two groups, at three time-points. Teacher interviews were conducted to (...) gather participants’ perspectives. Between-groups analysis of variance on particular measures of pedagogy revealed that CPI significantly broadened teachers’ pedagogical repertoires, in ways that included drawing on students’ background knowledge and preparing a problem-based curriculum which connects students to the world beyond the classroom. (shrink)

Within the community of inquiry literature, the absence of the notion of genuine doubt is notable in spite of its pragmatic roots in the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, for whom the notion was pivotal. We argue for the need to correct this oversight due to the educational significance of genuine doubt—a theoretical and experiential understanding of which can offer insight into the interrelated concepts of wonder, fallibilism, inquiry and prejudice. In order to detail these connections, we reinvigorate the ideas (...) of Peirce by borrowing the language and concepts of Albert Camus, at the same time demonstrating their unlikely congruence. In particular, we argue for the necessity of genuine doubt along with the need for the presence of a diversity of prejudices as a starting point for genuine inquiry. (shrink)

This study explored the impact of implementing Philosophy, in the tradition of 'Philosophy for Children', on pedagogy. It employed an experimental design that included 59 primary teachers. The experimental group received an intervention of training in Philosophy and the comparison group received training in Thinking Tools, a subset of the Philosophy training. Lessons were coded on variables of pedagogy, across the two groups, at three time-points. Teacher interviews were conducted to gather participants' perspectives. Between group analysis of variance on several (...) measures of pedagogy revealed that Philosophy significantly broadened teachers' pedagogical repertoire. (shrink)

Philosophical inquiry has the capacity to push boundaries in teaching and learning interactions with students and improve teacher’s pedagogical experiences. This paper focuses on the potential for Philosophy to foster pedagogical transformation. Two groups of primary school teachers, 59 in total, have been involved in a comparison of pedagogical transformation between teachers who implemented Philosophy and teachers who used thinking tools for conceptual exploration. A mixed methods approach, including, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, was employed to inquire into the effect of (...) teaching Philosophy on teachers’ perceptions of their pedagogy. This paper describes how the engagement in communities of philosophical inquiry results in a significant improvement in perceptions of pedagogy, teacher thinking and student engagement. (shrink)

The overall purpose of this paper is to explore three related themes: feminist philosophy and philosophy for children have much in common including pegagogy, an inclusive orientation and fallibilist but critical epistemology, both feminism and philosophy for children benefit from a close reading of Peirce, but only philosophy for children draws explicitly on Peirce, and because of this common bond feminist philosophy and philosophy for children provide place to stand against the postmodern retreat to texts.e.

This book was written to serve two functions. First it is an exploration of what I have called Socratic pedagogy, a collaborative inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning suitable not only to formal educational settings such as the school classroom but to all educational settings. The term is intended to capture a variety of philosophical approaches to classroom practice that could broadly be described Socratic in form. The term ‘philosophy in schools’ is ambiguous and could refer to teaching university style (...) philosophy to high school students or to the teaching of philosophy and logic or critical reasoning in senior years of high school. It is also used to describe the teaching of philosophy in schools generally. In the early and middle phases of schooling the term philosophy for children is often used. But this too is ambiguous as the name was adopted from Matthew Lipman’s Philosophy for Children curriculum that he and his colleagues at the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children developed. In Britain the term ‘philosophy with children’ is sometimes employed to mark two methods of teaching that have Socratic roots but have distinct differences, namely Philosophy for Children and Socratic Dialogue developed by Leonard Nelson. The use of the term Socratic pedagogy and its companion term Socratic classroom avoids the problem of distinguishing between various approaches to philosophical inquiry in the Socratic tradition but also separates it from the ‘study of philosophy’, such as university style philosophy or other approaches which place little or no emphasis on collaborative inquiry based teaching and learning. The second function builds from the first. It is to develop an effective framework for understanding the relationship between what I call the generative, evaluative and connective aspects of communal dialogue, which I think are necessary to the Socratic notion of inquiry. In doing so it is hoped that this book offers some way to show how philosophy as inquiry can contribute to educational theory and practice, while also demonstrating how it can be an effective way to approach teaching and learning. This has meant striking a balance between speaking to philosophers and to teachers and educators together, with the view that both see the virtues of such a project. In the strictest sense this book is not philosophy of education, insofar as its chief focus is not on the analysis of concepts or formulation of definitions specific to education with the aim of formulating directives that guide educational practice. It relinquishes the role of philosopher as ‘spectator’, to one of philosopher ‘immersed in matter’ – in this case philosophical issues in education, specifically those related to philosophical inquiry, pedagogy and classroom practice. Put another way, it is a book about philosophical education. (shrink)