Benefits of Collaborative Philosophical Inquiry in Schools

Abstract

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.

"Inside-out Pedagogy": Theorising Pedagogical Transformation through Teaching Philosophy

“…While there has been considerable research to link the teaching of Philosophy to noteworthy improvements in students' cognitive (Camhy & Iberer, 1988;Garcia-Moriyon, Rebollo & Colom, 2005;Millett & Tapper, 2012;Morehouse & Williams, 1998;Niklasson, Ohlsson & Rinborg, 1996;Topping & Trickey, 2007a, 2007bTrickey & Topping, 2004), affective and social skills (Camhy & Iberer, 1988;Gardner, 1999;Millett & Tapper, 2012;Sasseville, 1994;Trickey & Topping, 2006) there has been less research about the impact of teaching Philosophy on pedagogy.…”

Why Philosophy? Aims of Philosophy with Children and Aims of Academic Philosophy

“…Just as building Lego sets is not essential in improving fine motor skills (because these could be realized in alternative ways, such as through playing with beads or transferring liquid with a pipette), it could be other elements in philosophy with children which have the beneficial effect. Meta-analyses (such as Topping 2004 andMillett andTapper 2011) have focused on correlations not on causal explanation of relations between philosophy with children and cognitive and social gains. So it may be the case that benefits shown in empirical findings are the result of, for instance, the way the philosophical inquiry is conducted, rather than a result of the philosophical content of the discussion.…”

Does One Stand to Gain by Combining Art with Philosophy? A Study of Fourth-Year College (13/14 Years of Age) Philosophical Writings Produced Within the PreCPhi/Philosophemes Corpus

“…To facilitate the first step, a number of educational short stories were created by Lipman's successors: these alternate narrative with dialogues, featuring true-to-life characters (Daniel, 2002;Lipman et al, 1980;Talbot, 1999). The performance and the benefits of educational tools that introduce philosophy into the classroom in an innovative manner are well established (Gregory et al, 2017): development of dialogical skills (Daniel, Pettier, & Auriac-Slusarczyk, 2011), mobilization of dialogical critical thinking (Daniel & Gagnon, 2012, 2013, increased self-esteem, ability to reason, to de-center, implementation of argumentative capacities (Leleux, 2005;Millett & Tapper, 2012;Topping & Trickey, 2007) and so on. Although the benefits of philosophical practice are internationally recognized, research within France's colleges (secondary schools) is quite recent.…”