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New this academic year will be the introduction of philosophy sessions for all the children in Years 3 to 8. The staff will also be attending the sessions with their classes so that they can bring some of the techniques of philosophy to their own subjects.
The sessions will be held every third week, lasting two lessons for Years 5 to 8 and one lesson each for Years 3 and 4. The sessions are being led by Peter Worley, lead consultant and founder member of the Philosophy shop. For further details and an in depth view of the work on offer please consultant the web site at www.the philosophyshop.co.uk
Overall aims and objectives.
The aim is to teach the children how to philosophize rather than about the history of the subject. It is hoped that sessions will -
- Develop a disposition in pupils towards good thinking (so that it becomes naturalised) rather than merely providing a skill-set (this promotes life-long learning)
- Improve pupil's ability to follow a train of thought to a greater degree of depth
- Develop pupil's ablility to give clearer expression to their thoughts and ideas
- Develop speaking and listening skills to the level of dialectic (rational, critical and collaborative exploration through discussion)
- Enable pupils to build on each other's ideas constructively and collaboratively
- Enable pupils to critically evaluate each other's, and their own, claims respectfully.
Quick-Guide to Philosophy Techniques
- The stimuli are designed to guide the children towards philosophical questions and themes
- Talk-time is their opportunity to think-through the topics together
- A main aim of the philosophy sessions is to deepen their lines of thought and argument both as a group and as individuals and for their ideas to develop from one another collaboratively (even when challenging each other)
- Speaker management techniques used:
- Free-play – where the ball is passed randomly to begin some discussions and later to identify silent members and offer them an opportunity to speak.
- Response invitation – where ideas are invited from the talk-time that the facilitator feels will generate interest, response and dialogue or to include silent members.
- Thinking avenues – this is where lines of argument are deepened by inviting only those who have a response to the preceding contribution. It helps to build connections between the ideas, and good thinking and discussion is all about ‘connections’. This is never done for too long, but long enough to develop subtleties in their thinking that other management techniques don’t achieve.
- Tension play – this is where ideas that have been introduced which have implicit tensions between them are brought out so that the tensions become explicit. This is a good method for engaging them in a lively way.
- Right to Reply – This is the right any of them have to respond to a comment made about their contribution. This allows for debates to occur which is also a good way for the discussion to move to a deeper level and for the children to develop or change their ideas
- Self-management – this is something for the more mature groups (though varying in age) where they are encouraged to come in with their ideas without waiting to be selected. It works very well with smaller groups as a main method of speaker management, but should not be used too much with larger groups as dominant children can monopolise this method.
- Echo – The facilitator will often echo the ideas of the children to the group, either to encourage the children to think more about that contribution or to simply make it heard (esp. with younger children)
- Anchoring – This is used to bring the children back to the Task Question but also to encourage supporting premises to their conclusion(s)
- Challenge – This is where the facilitator appropriately challenges the children with the following techniques:
- Voice of a child – using other children’s ideas from other discussions to challenge an idea
- Voice of a philosopher – speaking on behalf of a philosopher to represent their possible response to the child to create an imagined dialogue between the child and the (usually) dead philosopher
- Thought experiment – inventing a possible scenario to test the child’s idea or intuitions
- The facilitator should not personally challenge a child with their own view in a way that makes the child feel that they might be wrong.
- Identifying group assumptions – one aim of all the above is to find an assumption within the class that may be lurking under the surface such as in a story to do with happiness there may be present the view that you would be happy if you could do what you want. Once this has been identified it can be formulated into a Task Question: would you be happy if you could do what you want?
- Challenging group assumptions – the next stage once the assumptions have been identified is to then challenge the assumption. Someone may introduce a challenge such as: “You wouldn’t be happy if everyone did what they wanted and it was unfair to you and other people wouldn’t be happy if you did the same to them, so, I don’t think just ‘doing what you want’ would make you happy.”
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