Gilbert Burgh

We argue that to face climate change, all education, from kindergarten to tertiary, needs to be underpinned by environmental education. Moreover, as a site of reframing, education when coupled with philosophy is a possible site of influencing societal reframing in order to re-examine our relations to nature or our natural environment. However, we contend that as philosophy has been largely absent from curricula, it is vital to redress this issue. Further, the environment cannot be viewed simply as subject matter for study but, reconceptualised in the Indigenous sense as Place. Only in this way can we overcome the human-nature divide. We conclude that educators must look for what Plumwood calls ‘experiences that do not fit the dominant story’ to disrupt an important link in the chain of climate change by developing ‘traitorous identities’ able to challenge the dominant culture.

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.

In Community of Inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp: Childhood, Philosophy and Education is the first in a series edited by Maughn Gregory and Megan Laverty, Philosophy for Children Founders, and is a major contribution to the literature on philosophy in schools. It draws attention to an author and practitioner who was largely responsible for the development of scholarship on the community of inquiry, who co-founded the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC), and who undeniably made a significant contribution to philosophy for/with children as a global movement. For anyone familiar with Philosophy for Children, they would, no doubt, also be familiar with its founder Matthew Lipman. However, not always acknowledged is that Ann Margaret Sharp, a philosopher of education, was also one of its pioneers who collaborated with Lipman to develop a theory and practice of the community of inquiry as a collaborative pedagogy and method for Philosophy with Children, as well as a pre-college curriculum. Also, not widely known is that the term ‘community of inquiry’ first appeared in an article co-authored by Lipman and Sharp (1978). Lipman credited Sharp with reconstructing the Peircean/Buchlerian notion of community of inquiry into a model of educational practice. Together they extensively developed the community of inquiry as an approach to teaching, said to transform the structure of the classroom in fundamental ways. Gregory and Laverty set the record straight regarding Sharp’s involvement in the development and success of Philosophy for Children as a school program and worldwide movement. Both editors are highly qualified for a project like this. Between them they have written numerous articles, book chapters and books and have co-edited books on philosophy of education, particularly philosophy for/with children. They are also well-respected practitioners who have collaborated with Sharp.

The task of teaching students how to think well rests formally with schools and the classroom teachers who work within them. The education system has a responsibility to fulfil the need for relevance in the school curriculum. A corollary is that the teaching profession, through collective efforts, needs to transform the ways in which curriculum and teaching are conceived. This is not to say that teachers cannot or should not work with existing curriculum, but rather that we need to reconceptualise the ways in which we approach curriculum, teaching and learning. Professional development for teachers to teach philosophically needs to move away from an in-service model that relies on ‘skilling-up’ to one of an ‘apprenticeship’ in self-correction which allows teachers to help themselves. Teachers, as professionals, need to keep abreast of new ideas and insights; to extend their professional development to joining professional associations, attending and presenting at conferences, undertaking further study, and engaging in ‘collaborative negotiation’ with universities, consultants, teacher educators, professional bodies, and in-service providers in the development of deliberative and reflective capabilities, pedagogical practices, and classroom materials as ways of assessing their own philosophical progress

One challenge posed by climate change education is that, despite the scientific consensus on human induced climate change, the issue is controversial and politicised. A recent poll conducted in the USA revealed that 45% of respondents did not believe that human activity is a key cause of climate change, while 8.3% denied that climate change was occurring at all. The poll also found that those with conservative political beliefs were far more likely to deny anthropogenic climate change. The controversial nature of climate change is a double-edged sword for educators—offering both benefits and risks. Controversial topics can be engaging for students, allowing them to critically examine competing perspectives, justify opinions and, thus, develop and practice critical thinking skills. On the other hand, they may provoke classroom conflict and expose teachers to backlash from students, parents, colleagues or even members of the public, including accusations of indoctrination. This risk has resulted in some teachers adopting problematic approaches to teaching about climate change, such as presenting students with an impartial account of ‘both sides’ of the debate. Some climate change sceptics groups have even developed their own curriculum materials and lobbied for their implementation in schools in order to provide students with a ‘balanced’ account of the issue. These problems, and suggestions for overcoming them, are explored by several papers in this special issue.

Teaching children to ask and answer questions is critically important if they are to learn to talk and reason effectively together, particularly during inquiry-based science where they are required to investigate topics, consider alternative propositions and hypotheses, and problem-solve together to propose answers, explanations, and prediction to problems at hand. This study involved 108 students (53 boys and 55 girls) from seven, Year 7 teachers’ classrooms in five primary schools in Brisbane, Australia. Teachers were randomly allocated by school to one of two conditions: the metacognitive questioning condition (Trained condition) or the prescriptive questioning condition (Untrained condition). Data on students’ discourse and reasoning and problem-solving (RP-S) were collected across Times 1 and 2. The results showed that while there were significant differences in the discourse categories of the students in the two conditions at Time 1, the only significant difference was in questioning behaviour at Time 2 with the students in the trained condition continuing to ask more questions than their untrained peers. Given that these students had been taught to specifically ask ‘thinking’ questions that probed and interrogated information, these results are not surprising. A follow-up examination of students’ discourse during their small group discussions illustrated how these students interacted with each other to probe and interrogate information by providing explanations and reasons to make their thinking explicit and by using analogies to verbally represent concepts they were trying to express. Results on the follow-up reasoning and problem-solving (RP-S) tasks indicated that students in the Trained and Untrained conditions improved their scores from Time 1 to Time 2 although the change was not significantly different between conditions.

This paper reports on a study that was conducted on the effects of training students in specific strategic and meta-cognitive questioning strategies on the development of reasoning, problem-solving, and learning during cooperative inquiry-based science activities. The study was conducted in 18 sixth grade classrooms and involved 35 groups of students in three conditions: the cognitive questioning condition; the Philosophy for Children condition; and the comparison condition. The students were videotaped as they worked on a specific inquiry-science task once each term for two consecutive school terms. The results show that the students in all conditions demonstrated more helping discourses or discourses known to mediate learning than any other of the discourse categories. This outcome is encouraging because it is the helping discourses where students provide explanations, elaborations, and reasons that promote follow-up learning.

Teaching students to ask and answer questions is critically important if they are to engage in reasoned argumentation, problem-solving, and learning. This study involved 35 groups of grade 6 children from 18 classrooms in three conditions (cognitive questioning condition, community of inquiry condition, and the comparison condition) who were videotaped as they worked on specific inquiry-based science tasks. The study also involved the teachers in these classrooms who were audio-taped as they interacted with the children during these tasks. The results show that while there were no significant differences in the children's explanatory behaviour across the two time periods, there were significant differences in the total verbal interactions between the children in the cognitive questioning condition and their peers in the community of inquiry and comparison conditions. Furthermore, the children in the cognitive questioning condition obtained higher reasoning and problem-solving scores than peers in the other conditions. Interestingly, while there were no significant differences between the teachers’ basic and extended mediating behaviours in the three conditions at Times 1 and 2, there was a significant difference in extended mediation behaviours with the teachers demonstrating nearly three times more extended mediation to promote students’ learning at Time 2 than they did at Time 1. Teacher intervention in providing guidance in how to interact during cooperative, inquiry-based science appears to be critical to helping students engage in higher-level thinking and learning.

Developing students’ skills to pose and respond to questions and actively engage in inquiry behaviours enables students to problem solve and critically engage with learning and society. The aim of this study was to analyse the impact of providing teachers with an intervention in inquiry pedagogy alongside inquiry science curriculum in comparison to an intervention in non-inquiry pedagogy alongside inquiry science curriculum on student questioning and other inquiry behaviours. Teacher participants in the comparison condition received training in four inquiry-based science units and in collaborative strategic reading. The experimental group, the community of inquiry (COI) condition, received training in facilitating a COI in addition to training in the same four inquiry-based science units. This study involved 227 students and 18 teachers in 9 primary schools across Brisbane, Australia. The teachers were randomly allocated by school to one of the two conditions. The study followed the students across years 6 and 7 and students’ discourse during small group activities was recorded, transcribed and coded for verbal inquiry behaviours. In the second year of the study, students in the COI condition demonstrated a significantly higher frequency of procedural and substantive higher-order thinking questions and other inquiry behaviours than those in the comparison condition. Implementing a COI within an inquiry science curriculum develops students’ questioning and science inquiry behaviours and allows teachers to foster inquiry skills predicated by the Australian Science Curriculum. Provision of inquiry science curriculum resources alone is not sufficient to promote the questioning and other verbal inquiry behaviours predicated by the Australian Science Curriculum.

Many feminist philosophers have formulated arguments on how the construction and use of reason and rationality, especially in the western philosophical tradition, has silenced, in particular, women's voices. Some writers, such as Luce Irigaray (1985), have suggested that women develop their own discourse and ignore philosophical tradition, whereas others, for example Genevieve Lloyd (1984), contend that this tradition must be confronted. Recently, these concerns have been voiced by feminist philosophers who have been addressing the connections between feminism and the philosophy for children. Terri Field (1995) expresses her concern that traditional philosophy with its established dichotomies (e.g., mind/body, reason/emotion, masculinity/femininity, subjectivity/objectivity) devalues and excludes the somatic, affective and imaginative from philosophical investigation and constructs practical barriers for women to partake in such activity. She uses a feminist critique of reason to assess philosophy for children and its goals of reasonableness. San MacColl (1994, p.5) asks ‘would you wish on women or small girls a practice of philosophy which you yourself have come to see as deeply imbued with disguised, gendered ideals and associations?’ MacColl’s question expresses well the concerns of feminists interested in the philosophical education of children. This paper looks at some of the criticisms by feminist philosophers of traditional western epistemology and how this may impact on philosophy for children.

I argue that philosophical inquiry as underpinning educational practice can reduce the fragmentation in the school curriculum, and therefore, create an educational environment that is in accord with the Adelaide Declaration on the National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century, and in Queensland, the 2010 Initiative. It can also promote democratic practice itself as opposed to students merely practising the processes of democracy while at school in preparation to function effectively as future democratic citizens.

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 (graphic organisers), 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.

There is a widespread view that philosophical thinking has no application to matters pertaining to the ‘real world’. It follows from such reasoning that if the purpose of education is to prepare students for the real world, then philosophy has no place in schools or university courses, and by implication in everyday life. One of the aims of this paper is to illustrate that the reasoning behind this view is mistaken. The ability to think critically and creatively through philosophical inquiry provides an intellectual context for study and discussion of issues related to all areas of study. But the introduction of philosophy into the classroom is not without its critics. This paper, therefore, explores a major accusation aimed at philosophy, i.e., that it is necessarily adversarial. The final section of the paper argues that Matthew Lipman’s approach to philosophical inquiry offers much to remedy the more adversarial and limiting elements of the Western philosophical tradition. It is clear that we should not simply aim to reproduce traditional methods of doing philosophy in the classroom. The community of inquiry is an illustration of a positive direction in respect to participation, relatedness and relevance to those involved.

In this paper I will focus on the role of the community of inquiry and its commitment to democracy. I suggest that if we are serious about this commitment we need to do more than merely utter the word democracy as if we have communicated a concept that is both precise and worthy of commendation. The word democracy is, in fact, laden with ambiguity. Claims for democracy have been used to support civil rights, freedom of speech and universal franchise. On the other hand, it has aided and abetted the free market society and defended the dominance of the two-party political system. It seems that some democrats can support the very same programs that other democrats oppose, all in the name of democracy. I will look at some of the ambiguities surrounding the term democracy and offer a model which captures the spirit of the community of inquiry. I conclude that while it is true that the community of inquiry method goes beyond the hidden curriculum and actively encourages pupils to be critical and reflective thinkers, children from an early age also need to learn how to govern themselves. How can this be achieved? By actively involving pupils in the process of decision-making in the classroom on issues that affect their daily lives, and by finding practical ways to increase the participation of everyone involved through the creation of learning opportunities within schools and between the schools and the wider community. It is important, therefore, that pupils acquire the skills needed to become active decision-makers in a participatory democracy. This requires that teachers and educators question the existing democratic structures and processes while taking into account the social realities that have shaped children's consciousness of themselves.