voting on the questions as a pedagogical practice in a community of philosophical enquiry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12957/childphilo.2023.70520Keywords:
community of philosophical enquiry, voting, critical posthumanism, questions, early childhood education.Abstract
This article considers two of the methodological steps in a Community of Philosophical Enquiry: developing the questions and voting on the questions. Both of these practices are enacted by the 8-9 year old children who are the participants in a philosophical enquiry, which I facilitated at a government primary school in South Africa. Matthews (1994) reminds us that children as philosophical thinkers/doers have been left out of the dominant narratives about children and childhood. A question that guides this research is where is the place for philosophical questions (developed by children) and the kind of philosophical thinking/drawing/creating/being for child (and adults) in schools? How do we make space for such questioning–so that the richness of these pedagogical encounters can really matter and make a difference to the teaching and learning taking place? Gandorfer in an interview with Barad (2021), suggests that critical thought “is to encounter what is unrecognizable and imperceptible, yet sensible and constructive of sense without separating it from the physical world” (p. 20). I would agree and apply this to the critical thoughts of child. This thinking is not located in the child, in their mind and does not emerge only through the thoughts, child verbalises. A critical posthumanism theory/practice analysis ensures that as researcher, I do not stand outside of the research peering in at a distance. Similarly the children, the questions, the voting and the enquiries are not separate from the world, they are all already entangled with the world. When the children are voting on the questions, this performs as a pedagogy of interruption (Michaud, 2020). As the facilitator, I do not know which question will receive the largest number of votes for the philosophical enquiry. This makes possible an emergent curriculum in its be(com)ing. Toby Rollo’s (2016) formulations about child as political agent and not just moral agent and the implications for more democratic and just schooling are theorised in this paper through the act of the children voting on the questions. I argue that children are not just excluded from participating in decisions about what and even how they are learning at school but from most pedagogical practices in classrooms and schools. I show how the children creating the questions and voting on the questions can be democratic practices with political and moral implications in a community of philosophical enquiry.
Downloads
References
Abebe, T. & Biswas, T. (2021) Rights in education: outlines for a decolonial, childist reimagination of the future – commentary to Ansell and colleagues. Fennia 199(1) 118–128. https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.102004
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: quantum mechanics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
Barad, K. (2010). Quantum entanglements and hauntological relations of inheritance: dis/continuities, spacetime enfoldings, and justice-to-come. Derrida Today, 3 (2), 240- 268. https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2010.0206 .
Barad, K. (2014). Diffracting diffraction: cutting together-apart. Parallax, 20 (3), 168-87. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2014.927623
Barad, K. (2017). Troubling time/s and ecologies of nothingness: re-turning re-membering, and facing the incalculable. New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics, (92), 56-88.
Barad, K., & Gandorfer, D. (2021). Political desirings: yearnings for mattering (,) differently. Theory & Event, 24 (1), 14-66. https://doi.org/10.1353/tae.2021.0002 .
Benjamin, M., & Echeverria, E. (1992). Knowledge in the classroom. In A.M. Sharp, & R. Reed (Eds.), Studies in philosophy for children (pp.64 - 79). Temple University Press.
Bua-Lit Collective (2018). How are we failing our children? Reconceptualising language and literacy education. Position Paper. Cape Town. https://bua-lit.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/bua-lit-language-literacy-education.pdf
Chan, K. H. (2010). Rethinking children’s participation in curriculum making: a rhizomatic movement. In V. Pacini-Ketchabaw (Ed.), Flows, rhythms, and intensities of early childhood education curriculum (pp. 39-53). Peter Lang.
Costa-Carvahlo,M., & Mendonça, D. (2019). The richness of questions in philosophy for children. Childhood and Philosophy, (15), 1-21.
Dahlberg, G. & Moss. P. (2010). Introduction In H. Lenz Taguchi, Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood education: Introducing an intra-active pedagogy (pp. ix-xx). Routledge.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari , F. (1991). What is philosophy? (H. Tomlinson & G. Burchell, Trans). Columbia University Press. (Original work published in 1991).
Echeverria, E., & Hannam, P. (2017). The community of philosophical inquiry: a pedagogical proposal for advancing democracy. In M. Rollins Gregory, J. Haynes, & K. Murris (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children (pp. 3 - 10). Routledge.
Elicor, P. P. (2017). The notion of pedagogical authority in the community of inquiry. Kritike: An Online Journal of Philosophy, 11 (2), 80-92. https://doi.org/10.25138/11.2.a5 .
Gregory, M., Haynes, J., & Murris, K. (2017). Part 1: the democratic nature of philosophy for children. In M. Gregory, J. Haynes, & K. Murris (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children (pp.1-2). Routledge.
Haynes, J. (2008). Children as philosophers: learning through enquiry and dialogue in the primary classroom. Routledge.
Haynes, J, & Murris, K. (2017). Intra-generational education: imagining a post-age pedagogy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49 (10), 971-983.
Josefsson J & Wall, J. (2020) Empowered inclusion: theorizing global justice for children and youth, Globalizations, 17:6, 1043-1060, DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2020.1736853 doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2020.1736853
Kennedy, D., & Kohan, W. O. (2008). Aión, kairós and chrónos: Fragments of an endless conversation on childhood, philosophy and education. Childhood & Philosophy, 4 (8), 5-22.
Kennedy, D. (2010). Philosophical dialogue with children: Essays on theory and practice. Edwin Mellon Press.
Kohan, W. O. (2014). Philosophy and childhood: critical perspectives and affirmative practices. Palgrave Macmillan.
Kohan, W.O. (2015). Childhood education and philosophy: New ideas for an old relationship. Routledge.
Laverty, M., & Gregory, M. (2018). Ann Margaret Sharp: a life teaching community. In M. Gregory, & M. Laverty (Eds.), In Community of inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp: philosophy, childhood and education (1-25). Routledge.
Lecce, S. (2009). Should democracy grow up, children and voting rights. Intergenerational Justice Review. 9(4), 133-139.
Mathebula, T., & Ndofirepi, A. (2011). Philosophy for children in South African schools: its role for citizens-in-waiting. South African Journal of Childhood Education, 1(2), 127-142. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v1i2.89
Matthews, G. (1994). The philosophy of childhood. Harvard University Press.
Michaud, O. (2020). What kind of citizen is philosophy for children educating? What kind of citizen should it be educating? Philosophical Inquiry in Education, 27 (1), 31- 45. https://doi.org/10.7202/1070276arMichaud 2020
Michaud, O., & Välitalo, R. (2017). Authority, democracy and philosophy: the nature and role of authority in a community of philosophical inquiry. In M. R. Gregory, J. Haynes, & K. Murris (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children (pp. 27 - 32). Routledge.
Moss, P. (2014). Transformative change and real utopias in early childhood education: A story of democracy, experimentation and potentiality. Routledge.
Murris, K. (1997). Metaphors of the child’s mind: teaching philosophy to young children. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, Hull University, United Kingdom).
Murris, K. (2016). The posthuman child: educational transformation through philosophy with picturebooks. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Murris, K. (2021). The ‘missing peoples’ of critical posthumanism and new materialism. In K. Murris (Ed). Navigating the postqualitative, new materialist and critical posthumanist terrain across disciplines: an introductory guide (pp. 62-84). Routledge.
Murris, K., & Haynes, J. (Eds.). (2018). Literacies, literature and learning: Reading classrooms differently. Routledge Research Monographs Series.
Murris, K., & Haynes, J. (2020). Troubling authority and material bodies: Creating sympoietic pedagogies for working with children and practitioners. Global Education Review, 7 (2), 24-42.
Murris, K., & Menning, S. (2019). Videography and decolonizing childhood. Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy, 4 (1), 1-13. https://brill.com/view/journals/vjep/4/1/vjep.4.issue-1.xml?language=en .
Oliverio, S. (2018). The teacher as liberator: Ann Margaret Sharp between philosophy of education and teacher education. In M. Gregory, & M. Laverty (Eds.), In community of inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp: philosophy, childhood and education. Routledge.
Reed-Sandoval, A. (2019). Can philosophy for children contribute to decolonization? Precollege Philosophy and Public Practice, (1) (27- 41) doi: 10.5840/p4201811284.
Rollo, T. (2016). Separate but equal: False equality and the political exclusion of children. Canadian Dimension, 50 (2), 32-34. https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/separate-but-equal-false-equality-and- the-political-exclusion-of-children
Rollo, T. (2018). The colour of childhood: The role of the child/human binary in the production of anti-black racism. Journal of Black Studies 49 (4) 307-329. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934718760769
Sharp, A.M. (2018). Silence and speech in pixie. In M. R. Gregory, & M. Laverty (Eds.), In Community of inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp: philosophy, childhood and education (pp. 174-185). (Original work published in 1996). Routledge.
Stanley, S. & Lyle, S. (2017). Philosophical play in the early years classroom. In M. Rollins Gregory, J. Haynes, & K. Murris (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of philosophy for children (pp. 53 – 61). Routledge.
Vansieleghem, N., & Kennedy, D. (2011). What is philosophy for children, what is philosophy with children - After Matthew Lipman? Journal of Philosophy of Education, 45 (2), 171- 182.
Wall, J. (2011). Can democracy represent children? Toward a politics of difference. Childhood. 19(1), 86-100.
Wall, J. 2022. From childhood studies to childism: reconstructing the scholarly and social imaginations. Children’s Geographies 20(3), 257-270. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2019.1668912