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Philosophy for Children’s Educational Curriculum

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Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp

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Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the key aspects of the Philosophy for Children educational curriculum devised by Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp. This will start with a detailed examination of the reasons why Lipman wrote Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery, the first novel of the curriculum, as an attempt to reconstruct the Western philosophical tradition. Addressing the topic of Harry’s educational potential leads on to clarifying its modelling effect on the classroom community of inquiry. The chapter then deals with Lipman and Sharp’s unconventional use of novels to engage children with philosophy. In this sense, they not only conducted experiments to examine the effects of this practice, but relentlessly worked at the development of the “community of philosophical inquiry” practice and educational curriculum. As a result, over time they not only published a complete series of novels, each accompanied by an instructional manual, but also gave shape to a specific format of classroom discussion. Of equal importance was their engagement in the training of supervisors and teachers, whose educational role and responsibility had to be thoroughly revolutionised.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is worth noting that the following novels, also written by Lipman and Sharp, maintained this plurality of perspectives as the narrative expression of their multidimensional approach to thinking: critical, creative, and caring (Oyler, 2017, 1874).

  2. 2.

    According to psychologists like Mead, Vygotsky, and Piaget, “internalization” was “the conversion of the external behavioural process into an internal thinking process” (Lipman, 1996a, 101). Arkady Margolis acknowledged that in the case of the P4C programme, this process moved from the interpsychical to the intrapsychical: “The development of individual thinking is a product of internalization of group thinking as demonstrated in collective discourse” (Margolis, 1996, 123).

  3. 3.

    Lipman (1992, 4) intentionally gave this clue through some of the characters’ surnames: Tony Melillo, Jill Portos, Milly Warshaw, Suki Tong, Micky Minkowski, Laura O’Mara, Mark and Maria Jahorski, and Sandy Mendoza (Lipman, 1974, 35–37).

  4. 4.

    The novel occasionally presented dialogic situations in which adults, who normally used “adultsplaining”, became gradually aware of the limits of their posture and began to interact in a more constructive way with children and youngsters. See, for instance, the dialogue between Mr. Portos, his daughter Jill, and her friends in Lipman (1974, 30–34).

  5. 5.

    For a critical-comparative analysis of this experiment, see Trickey & Topping (2004, 371).

  6. 6.

    Over the years, many more experiments took place. See for instance (Colom et al., 2014; Gazzard, 1988; Karras, 1979; Strohecker, 1985; Trickey & Topping, 2004, 2013; Topping & Trickey, 2014; Ventista, 2021), including studies comparing P4C with other educational approaches (Soter et al., 2008). In addition to this quantitative research, Sharp in particular became progressively aware of the need to carry out also a more refined qualitative evaluation of P4C (Sharp, s.d.; see also Franzini Tibaldeo & Lingua, 2018; Santi, 1993; Santi & Oliverio, 2012). More will be said in this regard in the following section. On the IAPC website (https://www.montclair.edu/iapc/research-in-philosophy-for-children/), Esther Cebas and Félix García Moriyón compiled a detailed list of empirical and evaluative research in P4C covering the areas of cognitive skills, affective and social skills, reasoning and affective skills, and methodological aspects.

  7. 7.

    In this regard, see also Lipman (1991, 216), De Marzio (2011, 35–39).

  8. 8.

    In this sense, questioning was an educational resource that went “far beyond a mere methodological step of asking questions within a P4C session”; rather, questions were “a central part of thinking and inquiry” (Mendonça & Costa Carvalho, 2019, 3–4).

  9. 9.

    In the IAPC’s Philosophy for Children Practitioner Handbook, these features were defined as related to “community” and “inquiry”, respectively. “Community” focused on “connections” and “inclusion” (namely, the relationships among participants), while “inquiry” considered the aspects of “reasoning” and “structure” (Gregory, 2008, 43, 78).

  10. 10.

    As regards operationalisation, the Philosophy for Children Practitioner Handbooks released by the IAPC provided assessment calendars and instruments, such as observation guides, self-assessment questions, and surveys for both children and teachers (Gregory, 2008, 69–81).

  11. 11.

    See also Sharp’s earlier essay “A Letter to a Novice Teacher” (Sharp, 1992–2018, 90–91).

  12. 12.

    Sharp acknowledged that she had been inspired in this regard by Jane Braaten’s reflections on the intellectual competences, virtues, and abilities required to build communities in which well-being was possible (Braaten, 1990, 6).

  13. 13.

    Guin (1991), who served as a resident teacher educator at the IAPC from 1978 to 1998, also underlined the importance of scaffolding and coaching to teacher training. Moreover, he significantly compared the approach to teacher training developed at the IAPC with Donald Schön’s influential model based on the “reflective practitioner” (Schön, 1983, 1987, 1991).

  14. 14.

    Indeed, Lipman and Sharp were aware that the traditional approach to teacher education had to be utterly revised in this regard. See for instance Lipman (1988, 151–159).

  15. 15.

    For a more extensive account of what it means to facilitate (i.e. both “guide” and “orchestrate” a classroom discussion appropriately), see Lipman et al. (1977–1980, 102–128). See also Kennedy (2013), Gardner (2015), Michaud & Välitalo (2017). Of great interest to the understanding of the current challenges related to facilitation is also the dossier on “Ethical implications of practicing philosophy with children and adults”, published in the “Childhood & Philosophy” journal (Kennedy & Kohan, 2021).

  16. 16.

    In other words, as the process of communal inquiry developed, the community acquired auto-facilitation capabilities and this went hand in hand with the transfer and subsequent distribution of the facilitating functions used by the teacher with the members of the group (Kennedy, 2004, 753); see also Castleberry & Clark (2020).

  17. 17.

    The teacher education workshops and summer seminars promoted by both the IAPC and fellow organisations spread all over the world (see Chaps. 1 and 5) and, finally, the graduate and post-graduate courses in Philosophy for Children created at the IAPC (see Chap. 1) served the purpose of providing teachers with these skills.

  18. 18.

    A document preserved in the IAPC archive detailed these as follows: tolerance for dissenting opinions, respect for majority opinion, the reaffirmation of one’s own position despite majority, open-mindedness, seeking consensus, mutual respect, absence of intimidation, formation of a community of inquiry, acceptance of cultural differences, responsible citizenship, and personal integrity (IAPC, 1987).

  19. 19.

    Lipman identified the following: (a) skills “involved in investigating or examining a problematic subject-matter”; (b) “reasoning skills”; (c) “concept-formation skills”; (d) “translation skills” (Lipman, 1996a, 23).

  20. 20.

    As regards the effects of P4C on the professional development of teachers, see Baumfield (2017), Davey Chesters & Hinton (2017). According to others, rather than just being a facilitator of classroom discussion, the true emancipatory teacher should become a “difficultator of what the school as institution asks her to teach and the student to learn” (Haynes & Kohan, 2018, 219).

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  1. Escola de Educação e Humanidades, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil

    Roberto Franzini Tibaldeo

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Franzini Tibaldeo, R. (2023). Philosophy for Children’s Educational Curriculum. In: Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp. SpringerBriefs in Education(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24148-2_4

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