ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses a special form of 'talking to think' based on an approach called Philosophy for Children. It is a form of dialogic teaching that emphasises the development of critical and creative thinking through questioning and dialogue between children and teachers and between children and children. A community of enquiry seeks to create the optimal conditions for group discussion. One of the prime benefits of this is that it helps children to internalise the ground rules for intelligent discussion. Philosophy for children fulfils the criteria for high level discussion of texts, but it offers more. It is about training children not only to answer but also to ask questions, to interrogate texts, so that they not only learn how to be active, critical readers but critical and reason-able thinkers as well. The community of enquiry creates the conditions that foster emotional engagement and self-expression. It creates conditions that engender awareness of and new feelings towards others.