The Provocation of an Epistemological Shift in Teacher Education through Philosophy with Children

Abstract

Experience indicates that the questioning and democratic nature of the community of enquiry can be demanding and unsettling for teachers, presenting unaccustomed challenges and moral dilemmas. This paper argues that such significant episodes in the practice of Philosophical with Children (PwC) offer rich opportunities for wider critical reflection on epistemological and pedagogical questions for teacher education and continuing professional development. We illustrate the nature of this ongoing work through noticing and focusing on critical incidents drawn from our lived experience of PwC with learners, students, teachers and fellow practitioners in the UK and in South Africa, identifying common themes and offering an account of their origins. The article proposes a way of developing and refining educational practice through a grounded and collaborative practitioner action research orientation, investigating common themes that emerge from significant events in practice and mirroring the process of PwC itself. We conclude that the recurrent themes we identify show the value of PwC in opening up a transformative critical space in teacher education that disrupts prevalent epistemological frameworks and suggest that a deconstruction of the role of the educator, and the epistemological shift it provokes, is the hub of the project of bringing philosophy into schools and universities, and into the professional development of PwC teacher educators. POSITIVE CHALLENGESPhilosophy has not been part of the school curriculum in most countries. Over the last three decades interest in Philosophy with Children (P4C/ PwC) 1 has grown. It has stimulated rich debate about the nature of philosophy, philosophy with children and philosophy in school curricula. The practice has been dismissed by some as faddish, therapeutic navel-

Promoting Student Teachers' Reflective Thinking Through a Philosophical Community of Enquiry Approach

“…For example, after using PCoE in professional development activities for teachers, Haynes and Murris (2011) found that it provided a transformative critical space for exploring epistemological and pedagogical questions about experienced teachers' practice. Similarly, Scholl et al found that it was a catalyst for indepth reflection because of the way it challenged and extended teachers' pedagogical orientations towards more learner-centred and enquiry-based approaches (Scholl, 2011).…”

Enabling identity: The challenge of presenting the silenced voices of repressed groups in philosophic communities of inquiry

“…Teacher self-identity as epistemic authority may sometimes constitute a serious barrier to hearing children's voices, even when their ideas are deliberately solicited in the classroom (Haynes & Murris 2011). Children consequently require opportunities to actively engage in democratic decision-making processes-first within the school and then within their local communities-before they can learn to abide by subsequent decisions in society as they grow up (Lansdown 2001).…”

Philosophy for Children and the Incidence of Teachers’ Questions on the Mobilization of Dialogical Critical Thinking in Pupils

“…They explain that interrupting with questions destabilizes pupils' representations and, in so doing, leads to problematizing ideas and to more sustained argumentation. In short, to these authors, interruption by questioning leads to a process of critical inquiry that results in a more complex resolution of the problem posed or a more refined representation of the concept being discussed (Barth, 2008;Berland & McNeill, 2010;Golding, 2009;Haynes & Murris, 2011;Karabulut, 2012;Martin & Hand, 2009). …”