ABSTRACT
In my fifteen years of involvement in the Philosophy for Children movement, many questions have arisen about how best to run a community of inquiry. Some have been my own questions; others, questions from teachers and teacher educators, asked at training sessions. In this chapter, I want to address some of these questions, particularly the type asked by teachers who have already gained some practical experience of the community of inquiry in their own classrooms. The rest of this chapter is structured as a series of answers to, and ruminations on, such questions, drawing on the philosophical conclusions of the preceding chapters. The starting assumption is that we have accepted the answer given below to the following question:
They ought to engage their students in a community of ethical inquiry. This is not, of course, a full answer to this question, for there are many ways in which children can be so assisted. However, it is one important, and often neglected, part. The community of ethical inquiry is a specific instance of the community of inquiry (§7.1), in which the core content to be discussed concerns ethical and moral matters. The teacher is absolutely vital to an effective community of ethical inquiry. They must wield pedagogic action (§3.141): an indissoluble melding of open strategic action with communicative action and discourse, to help develop the students’ reasonableness and communicative autonomy. This action is justified because the students have not yet fully developed these capacities, and the teacher has a responsibility to develop them. Withdrawal from power, as is sometimes advocated in child-centred pedagogies, and absolute control of proceedings, as a teaching machine might have, are both fatal to the flourishing of a community of inquiry. The teachers judgement is central to success, and it too develops in part through experience in organizing communities of inquiry.
