Levels of The Questions Formulated by Preschool Children During the Philosophical Inquiry Process and The Qualities of Their Answers: Philosophy with Children

Author : Vesile Yıldız Demirtaş -- Filiz Karadağ - Kurtul Gülenç
Number of pages : 277-294

Abstract

Inquiry is an intellectual process for bringing an experience to a meaningful position. Inquiring individuals are individuals who motivate, direct, maintain continuity of questioning, be skeptical, willing to learn, curious, respecting the causes, and needing time to adopt evidence (Beyer, 1991). The nature of the questions that are asked to ensure a good interrogation process is very important. Because qualified questions allow children to better analyze the depth of thought (Moyer & Milewiez, 2002). The philosophy with children approach improves the ability of children to construct concepts, reasoning, interrogating, interpreting, making meaning, and making connections between meanings (Fisher, 2005). It is known that the performances of attention, reasoning, empathy, active listening and skills, use of logical argumentation, discrimination of all parts relations are positively affected, especially in pre-school children through philosophical inquiry (McCall, 2013). According to these data the purpose of study is to determine the level of questions that children make during the questioning process of 'philosophy with children' teaching program applied to pre-school children and the difference in the quality of the answers they give. In the study, one group pre-test post-test unqualified experimental design from quasi-experimental designs (Creswell, 2013) was used. Within the scope of the research, 'philosophy with children' educational activities were applied for 8 weeks. The applications were applied as 1 hour per day for 8 weeks. These activities were developed within the context of the CoPI method, which is often used in 'philosophy with children'. The study group of study consisted of 7 girls, 7 boys, 14 boys in the 6 years age group who were attending the school in 2015-2016 school year. In this study, the data were gathered with the "interview form containing the philosophical inquiry text and questions” and the voice recordings taken during the training sessions. In the process of analyzing the data, the processes of the children 's questioning and responding to the questions were analyzed and evaluated by 2 researchers. In the analysis of the data obtained from the interviews, the method of tendered data analysis (Creswell, 2012) was used. When the study findings were examined, it was seen that the 'Philosophy with Children' curriculum developed the level of the questions that the pre-school children had in the philosophical inquiry processes and the quality of the answers they gave (answer the questions, explain the reason, give examples and use the number of words).

Keywords

philosophy for children (P4C), philosophy with children (PhwC), preschool education

Read: 532

Download: 134