Emmanuel Skoutas

In the publication 'In Community of Inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp' the editors, Maughn Rollins Gregory and Megan Jane Laverty present a series of significant essays that honour Anne Margaret Sharp and her significant contribution to the Philosophy for Children program. One of the essays, 'Looking at others’ faces', is a revised version of Sharp’s earlier essay and further develops her original themes and interests in post-structuralist research and its implications for the P4C program. Sharp and Laverty argue for recognising alterity as informed by Emmanuel Levinas and his notion of the ‘Other’ in the Community of Inquiry alongside the well-established model of Socratic maieutics. But can Socrates and Levinas be reconciled as Sharp and Laverty invite us? In this essay I examine an interpretation of maieutics from Levinas that makes it both incompatible and yet, ultimately, reconciled with alterity in his notion of teaching. Finally, I explore ambiguities and implications that emerge from accepting this approach and suggest further questions that remain to be explored in relation to the pedagogy of the CoI.

Victoria has seen an increase in Community of Inquiry-styled competitions, where students and participant schools are pitted against one another, assessed and ranked according to professed philosophical Communities of Inquiry (CoI) criteria. This has occurred in the context of the introduction of the ‘Capability’ Curriculum in Victorian schools by State and Federal Education Departments. Assessment indicators common to both performance in CoIs and Capabilities have led many to consider CoI as one of the more promising pedagogies of choice. Various competitions model their events on the CoI format, but can they accord with the key characteristics that have historically defined this pedagogical practice? This paper seeks to examine the incompatibility between competitions that encourage contestants to gain superiority over others and the spirit of philosophical inquiry as conceived by the originators of CoI. Ultimately, we argue that competitions are largely incommensurate with philosophical CoI and suggest an admonitory approach if philosophy is to be associated with such competitions.