you should not give your friends the word ... that's not fair! representations of children on the word manager in the philosophical research community

Abstract

The present article focuses on presenting and debating the representations of children on their role as Word-Managers (WM). This resource was created and developed in the scope of the Philosophy for Children sessions, according to the methodology of the community of philosophical inquiry of Matthew Lipman (2003) and Ann Margaret Sharp (1987). Word-Manager is the expression coined to refer to the member of the community of inquiry who is responsible for choosing, during the dialogue, who is going to speak and when. This strategy aims at actively involving the children in the session’s procedure, and its importance locks with the pedagogic and philosophic dimensions of the community of inquiry. The methodology chosen was the study of an exploratory case, resorting to a query for each questionnaire in order to find out the children’s ways of thinking. By analyzing the content of the questionnaire, in the definition of what the WM should and should not do, three subcategories came to light: cognitive, ethical and social. Of these, it is the ethical dimension that shows a larger number of responses, with implications towards the fundamental dimensions of Philosophy for Children, as the promotion of caring thinking (LIPMAN, 2003) and the concept of authority in the community of inquiry. Thus, the article is divided into five sections: Philosophy for Children as a scientific area and an educational program, focusing on the community of philosophical inquiry concept; the WM in the scope of the community of inquiry; the methodological casing of the research; presenting the results; and debating.