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Preparing Teachers to ‘Teach’ P4c Journal of Philosophy of Education 1(1) Preparing Teachers to ‘Teach’ p4c Journal of Philosophy of Education 1(1) Preparing teachers to ‘teach’ philosophy for children Revised article Laurance J Splitter Hong Kong Institute of Education [email protected] Introduction: The training challenge Like many others, I have resisted the idea that education, in general, is a form of training. We always talk about training for something, while an educated person is not educated for any one thing. But for this very reason, I do not wish to abandon the term ‘teacher training’ in favor of ‘teacher education’, although ideally I would prefer to speak of ‘teacher preparation’ (or even ‘teacher formation’) because the term ‘training’ always reminds me of monkeys. I shall use the terms ‘training’ and ‘preparation’ interchangeably, with both standing in contrast to ‘education’. All persons deserve to be educated; there is nothing specific to teachers here. Teacher training, whether general or specific to a subject or discipline, remains a contentious business. Some regard Pedagogy as a legitimate subject area (I used to teach a subject entitled The art and science of effective teaching) and structure training around it; others prefer to see teacher training firmly in the context of the various disciplines that teachers will, in turn, be teaching: mathematics, literature, history and, in this case, philosophy.1 Indeed, when it comes to training teachers to teach philosophy, the problem is exacerbated by the plain fact that most teachers have no formal background in philosophy. So we are faced with the rather daunting prospect of providing such a background (teaching philosophy) as well as providing whatever is needed in order to teach philosophy to others (e.g. children). Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp were well aware of this challenge when they set up the first training programs in Philosophy for Children (p4c) at Montclair State College (as it was then) in the early 1970s; hence the requirement that if classroom teachers were not actually qualified in philosophy (however that is interpreted!), at least those who trained them to do philosophy with children should be.2 However, this idealistic model was always going to be difficult to apply. The problem, as it developed in countries around the world, was two-fold: teachers with little or no philosophical background were, increasingly, being trained by other educators who were in the same boat (hence the fear that however good the pedagogy, there would be little or no philosophy actually being done in classrooms); and conversely, when professional philosophers did become 1 Such different approaches are linked to the issue, noted above, of whether teacher preparation is a form of training or education. 2 In this paper, I use the letters ‘p4c’, generically, to refer to all approaches to doing philosophy with children which are linked, whether structurally or just historically, to the work of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children at Montclair. 89 Preparing Teachers to ‘Teach’ p4c Journal of Philosophy of Education 1(1) involved in teacher training, it quickly became apparent that they (often) lacked any real training in pedagogy, and so were inadequate to the task of modeling the role of the teacher in the (pre-tertiary) classroom. To look on the bright side, some constructive attempts have been made to resolve these shortcomings. The one with which I am most familiar (being one of those who instituted it) is the Australian model for what is termed ‘Level Two training’, that is, training those who will, in turn, train and work with classroom teachers. This model recognizes the complementary requirements of philosophical and pedagogic expertise, respectively, by awarding certificates of achievement based on whether those trained have come from the discipline of philosophy, the practice of teaching (children), or both. Ideally, then, training workshops for teachers would be directed by at least one person in the former category, and at least one in the latter. Teacher training in Singapore Building on these experiences, various models of training in philosophy for children have emerged, and while the dialogue concerning what constitutes ‘best practice’ remains robust (as it should, for it is a hallmark of philosophy that it reflects critically on its own practice), it is up to each state, country or society to adopt whichever one(s) fit their own system of schooling best or, alternatively, to come up with their own. From my limited understanding of the philosophical and pedagogical scenarios operational in Singapore, the following strategies should be considered: Encouraging local philosophers (and strong graduate students in philosophy), irrespective of whether their backgrounds are in western, eastern or other areas of philosophy, to become involved. Such involvement may consist in offering a few seminars in philosophy for the benefit of classroom teachers, or taking the time to familiarize themselves with schools and classrooms with a view to conducting philosophical conversations with children, or going ‘all the way’ and undergoing the kind of training that would better equip them to work with teachers (and/or children). In some way, and at some level, the links with the philosophical community need to be built up and maintained if, that is, there is a serious commitment to retaining the ‘philosophy’ in ‘philosophy for/with children’. Encouraging teachers, at all levels (preschool, primary, secondary, junior college), to ‘have a go’ at doing philosophy with their students while simultaneously becoming aware of and involved in whatever local support groups (such as the Singapore Teachers Union or various state authorities might provide) are available. Where practicable, drawing upon the expertise in countries with a more established tradition in p4c, at both the teaching and philosophical levels. I am privileged to have been involved in various training workshops and seminars in Singapore since 1989, as well as the truly invigorating experience of conducting 90 Preparing Teachers to ‘Teach’ p4c Journal of Philosophy of Education 1(1) philosophical conversations with students in a number of schools and colleges. It makes good sense for Singapore to join and take advantage of the international p4c community and its resources. As someone with a ‘cosmopolitan’ disposition, I see the merits of forging and fostering such international connections with, for example, the Federation of Australasian Philosophy in Schools Associations (FAPSA) and the International Council for Philosophical Inquiry with Children (ICPIC). Still, in so far as Singaporeans view themselves as preserving, or at least respecting, a distinctive Singaporean approach to teaching philosophy, the role of such external ‘experts’ should be seen as advisory; supporting not supplanting those aspects of the project which are distinctive (the writing of philosophical stories from an Asian perspective, for example). These considerations notwithstanding, there are features of training in general, and training in p4c, in particular, that have emerged over, and stood the test of, time, and which should be taken into account in the Singaporean context. The first and most general of these is that good training programs operate on models (for there is more than one) of reflective practice. We teach or train others to do X by getting them to do X and then to reflect on their own practice, for without reflection, there is no guarantee that what is practiced will actually improve. It is thus with any practice that relies on a combination of skills and aptitude, but none more so than with good thinking. When it comes to working with those who would assist others to become better thinkers, there is simply no substitute for inviting them to work together to become better thinkers themselves. In the context of philosophy for children, this means engaging with those undertaking teacher training, in both doing philosophy together and (whether simultaneously or subsequently) reflecting on this very process together. Models of reflective practice are applicable in just about any field, but particularly in philosophy which is, itself, a reflective discipline. A framework for thinking about teacher training: Three dimensions of classroom life Let me be more specific about how a model of reflective practice might operate in the case of philosophy for children. In so doing, I will invoke a framework which characterizes both the environment of the classroom community of inquiry (CoI)— which is an essential ingredient of p4c—and the specific case of philosophical inquiry (recognizing that not all inquiry is labelled ‘philosophical’; there is an argument for transforming science classrooms into communities of scientific inquiry, history classrooms into communities of historical inquiry, and so on). The framework in question proposes three connected ingredients or dimensions of what might be called classroom life. I will articulate these three dimensions and offer some guidelines as to how they might be put to good use in the context of teacher preparation. D1: The first and, in some ways the most important, dimension is that of the classroom itself, as constituting a particular kind of environment, climate or culture. Any community of inquiry must be—or become—a certain kind of place—partly in physical 91 Preparing Teachers to ‘Teach’ p4c Journal of Philosophy of Education 1(1) terms (for example, with participants seated in a circle to facilitate a more egalitarian interaction), but especially in normative and affective terms. The idea of community is crucial here: the members of a CoI trust and respect one another as persons, they share a sense of common purpose—namely, settling the inquiry at hand—and they work together to (try and) achieve that purpose. But working together as a collaborative community, while necessary, is not sufficient to achieve the kind of community we are concerned with here. Some communities may not be especially interested in the practice of good thinking (philosophical or otherwise), and some may actually oppose it.
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