Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children, Volume 17, Numbers 1 & 2

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Bringing P4C Into theUndergraduate Classroom
ASHBY BUTNOR
Everything I know about teaching I learned from P4C.
I’m not sure if that’s completely accurate. However, it
is true that P4C has been central to my pedagogical style,reflections, and refinement as I have emerged onto the college scene after a few years learning the ropes from scoresof grade school students. Teaching, its practice and improvement, has been central to my graduate experience at
the University of Hawaii. My initiation into the philosophyof teaching and education that I have applied throughout myclassroom experiences these last five years began with Dr.
Thomas Jackson’s “Philosophy with Children” seminar.
Clearly, it would be a mistake to assume that this course
and the Philosophy in the Schools Project are applicable
only to the teaching of elementary school children. Rather,
the philosophy of teaching that we develop and implement
is applicable to any classroom. This essay is an attempt toconvey the central idea of P4C—the fostering of reflective
communities of inquiry—and then explain how I havebrought my P4C training, experiences, and methodology
into the college classroom.
Our Philosophy of Teaching and Learning
What we endeavor to create in the Philosophy in the
Schools Project are “reflective communities of inquiry”
within every classroom, elementary or otherwise. We begin
by fostering the development of community through the establishment of intellectually safe places for thoughtful engagement and inquiry. In an intellectually safe place, respect for persons and ideas is paramount, thereby creating aspace for a diversity of viewpoints. Questioning of others
and ourselves is central; active listening is valued as highlyas speaking. As a result, learning becomes a genuinely empowering, and hence, joyful experience. As part of thiscommunity-oriented learning environment, the community
as a whole, as opposed to “the Teacher,” establishes theguidelines by which dialogue shall proceed and the criteriathat will be used to evaluate community inquiries. This, inpart, is what is meant by a reflective community—that is,reflection refers not only to the ability to reflect on the subject matter at hand, but, further, to reflect on the process bywhich learning was achieved or, perhaps, failed to beachieved according to the group’s own standards.
Finally, the community is engaged collaboratively ininquiry. This is where the philosophical component of ourwork is perhaps most recognizable. Above and beyond the“facts” of a particular topic (and, in the case of a college
course, the assigned reading materials), members of thecommunity develop the skills necessary to take inquiry to a
deeper and more intellectually rigorous level. As the community strengthens, there is an expectation that reasons will
be given to support views, that evidence will be sought insupport of claims, that recognition of ambiguity and theconsequent clarification of meaning is necessary, that assumptions and implications will be pursued, and thatcounter-examples will be envisioned to test the truth of theclaims being made. The exercise of these thinking tools,
coupled with a responsibility for one’s own thinking andparticipation in the inquiry, transforms students—too manyof whom have internalized the role of passive listener—into
active co-inquirers, reflective thinkers, and lifetime learners.
Prior to my teaching on the UH Manoa campus, I
worked as a teaching assistant in the Philosophy in the
Schools Project for two and one half years. During thattime, I engaged in philosophical dialogues on a weekly basis with over twenty classes in Hawai’i’s public schools
ranging from kindergarten to fifth grade. While the formation of an intellectually safe place and the practice of
higher-order thinking skills are of first importance in preparing for philosophical inquiry, “doing” philosophy withchildren advances far beyond these initial requirements.
Although these young students do not engage directly withtraditional philosophical theories, their chosen topics andthe depth of their insights are far-reaching and rich. It is notuncommon, within the course of the year, for the students toinquire into the nature of reality, space, and time, the existence of God and the role of religion, the definition of hapAshby Butnor (butnor@hawaii.edu) is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at UH/ Manoa and has recently completed the graduate certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies in the Women’s Studies Program.
Her research is in the areas of ethics, feminist theory, and Japanese
Buddhist philosophy. Ashby has been involved with P4C since 1998.

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Butnor, Bringing P4C into the Undergraduate Classroom

piness and the good life, the structure of society and government, the value of science and technology, and numerous ethical questions that they encounter in their lives. Being a member of these dynamic communities has been ofenormous benefit to me in developing patience and active
listening, recognizing student insights (however inchoate)
and pursuing them, adapting to the community’s interestsand skills, designing creative approaches to different topics,
sharing in the satisfaction of intellectually hard work, andpreparing for the element of surprise. It was with this experience of genuine learning and this philosophy of teac hing that I first stepped into a UH classroom in January
2001—expecting nothing less from my college students
than what I had received from my grade school philosophers.
Special Challenges of the College Setting
The above description of reflective communities of inquiry is, of course, an ideal—but an approachable one.
Each community has unique challenges
and promises that will shape how its
successes are defined and achieved. A
teacher or facilitator must become
quickly attuned to his or her community’s particularities in order to begin
laying the foundation for such success.
While I do not wish to stereotype all
elementary and college students, I do
want to point out a couple differencesthat I’ve noticed in working with thetwo groups. For example, I’ve foundthat younger students are much more
open to change and experimentation inlearning situations, and this lends itself
to a more creative and imaginative engagement with thinking. They are oftenvery free and comfortable with exploring new ideas with each other. This
freedom is, I believe, a direct result of
the intellectual and emotional safety created by the classroom teacher and continuously fostered by the philosophy
facilitator. When such safety has not been developed andpracticed, there is a very noticeable effect on all membersof the classroom community.
College students, on the other hand, are very often aproduct of the kind of information-laden, heavily structured
environment that is characteristic of most U.S. high schools.
By the time they enter college, they are rather accustomed
to this style of teaching and learning, have mastered it tosome extent, and rely on it to continue. College students
are accustomed to the instructor being “The Teacher” andpassing along information that will then be returned on tests
and quizzes. The possibility of classroom engagement anddialogue is something that often creates great anxiety—especially for those who were considered the top students inhigh school.
Another factor that can impede genuine learning that I
have noticed here at the University of Hawai’i—which islargely a “commuter school” for undergraduates—is the“coolness factor.” Many of the students in any given class
may have gone to high school together or have some sort oftie to other students. While this may produce an instantcommunity of engaged learners, it may also perpetuate asituation in which the peer pressure to conform has nevergone away. College then may never become the opportunity where the student steps out of his or her element andreally explores and challenges her own thoughts, opinions,and goals. Rather, at its worst, it is simply an extension ofhigh school—with all the trappings, associations, and expectations that go along with it. I do not want to claim that
this situation represents an ultimate barrier to P4C goals,
but it may be a characteristic of every community that facilitators must attend to in order to devise creative means
for breaking through the walls that we build around ourselves. Once students begin to open up to each other andthe given topic of a course, there isso much productive energy and enthusiasm that follows.
In addition to the unique make-up
and expectations of the members ofa community, every classroom will
have particular constraints that will
limit what can be done—for example, time, subject matter, class size,and so forth. One of our mottoes in
the Philosophy in the Schools Project is “We’re not in a rush to getanywhere… but that doesn’t mean
we’re not going somewhere.” However, in a college course, we often
are in a rush to get somewhere or, atthe very least, there is an expectationthat certain material will be covered.
This differs from our experience inthe elementary classroom where P4C facilitators often pursue inquiries that are of the students’ choosing for as longas the community interest holds. Striking a balance between the limitations imposed by required course content
and time for open-ended student-directed inquiry is a skill
that is difficult to master. Depending on the subject matterof a course, I have found it most productive to creatively
intermingle lectures, community dialogues, student-initiatedinquiries, group presentations and dialogue facilitation.
P4C Methods in the College Classroom
Over the past two and one half years, I have taught six
introductory courses at UH—ranging from women’s studies, introduction to philosophy, ethics, and logic —and assisted with one upper -division course. With the exceptionof the logic courses, I have attempted to bring P4C peda-

Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children, Volume 17, Numbers 1 & 2

gogy and methods into each one of these classes with varying degrees of success and many kinds of challenges.
While I must admit that I have not even come close to perfecting the union of P4C and college teaching, I outline heresome of the methods that I have employed.
1. Community Building
I honestly believe that building a strong community is
the most important element in a successful classroom. The
community serves as the primary foundation upon whichlearning and serious inquiry can happen. In many ways, it
seems like the inquiry can take care of itself if the community is well established. While this is not necessarily thecase, forming a safe community should always be the firstgoal of a teacher or facilitator. While difficult to define,safety may be best understood as an atmosphere of equality
and freedom within a community. Classrooms are safe
when there is a natural ease and mutual willingness to shareideas and explore them together. Safe classrooms are mosteasily recognized in contrast to unsafe ones—
where tension, hesitation,
embarrassment and/or
hostility hang heavy in the
air. When unsafe classroom dynamics are allowed to continue overtime, it becomes all themore difficult to establish
community and, therefore,
to really become immersed in engaged dialogue.
The methods for forming a safe community in the college classroom are very much the same as the ones we use
during P4C in the elementary school classroom. The firststep is for the community members to get to know one another. While this may not seem so important, it allows each
student to be recognized as a member of the community
with certain responsibilities to himself or herself and to thegroup. Also, the community can begin to get a sense of theunique particularity of each member and will begin to see
how each perspective contributes something special to theongoing inquiry. This process begins with a simple restructuring of the classroom setting so that all members—theteacher included—are facing one another in a circle. Thiscan be done by moving chairs or by rearranging seminartables. This new arrangement not only allows students toreally see and participate with others, but there’s also something about having to face the other members that reinforces
the classroom activity as a shared endeavor to which everyone is responsible.
Like the elementary P4C classroom, I like to begin eachcourse by making a community ball. The process of making a community ball together allows the members to hear

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from each other and begin to know one another. Since thecommunity ball marks who is speaking in the classroom,
the practice of tossing the ball around the classroom
switches the classroom dynamics from a normally teachercentered activity to a community activity. With the community ball, we can easily track the movement of the ball,and thus the speaking, around the classroom. If the ballseems to always go back to the teacher or other outspoken
members, inquiries can be differently structured so as toopen the dialogue to more students. While the community
ball is an effective way to get students involved in the dialogue, it may also pose as an obstacle in some college classrooms. For example, the community ball may be considered too childish or “kiddy.” Throwing around a yarn ballcertainly isn’t necessary in college where all students aresupposedly mature and eager to engage in adult-level discussions. I have faced resistance in the use of the community ball, but I have also seen how much it helps the students take charge of their own communities of learning. It
allows members of the community to reign in outspoken
students who often dominateclass discussion as well as
giving more quiet students
the forum in which to speak.
Indeed, resistance to thecommunity ball may evenreflect resistance to community learning itself. The best
way for a facilitator to breakthrough this resistance is tomodel how one can let one’s
guard down, relax, and, inthe process, reinvigorate a love for learning.
2. Taking Responsibility for Classroom Dialogues
As I described above, part of what it means to have astrong community is a sense of responsibility for what goeson within that community. In P4C, this responsibility shifts
from the teacher as the sole authority and disciplinarian to
the whole community as a self-evaluative and corrective
unit. This means that the community is responsible for theamount of safety sustained during a dialogue as well as thequality of that dialogue—meaning how good the group was
at “scratching beneath the surface” of a given topic or question. Students may not always want that kind of respons ibility—even as a whole. They may not want to deal withissues of student non-participation in class dialogues, outspoken, aggressive, or overly opinionated students, or thequality of class discussion. However, if the classroom isgoing to be a reflective community of inquiry, these are exactly the kinds of issues that the community must sort
through together.
In one particular class, I had all three of these problems
going on simultaneously. I tried to gently urge students to68

Butnor, Bringing P4C into the Undergraduate Classroom

take control of their education and the class and to steer it
the way they thought it should be going. This gentle urging, however, was to no avail and students were getting increasingly frustrated. When these breakdowns of community and inquiry begin to emerge, I find it best to break fromthe routine of class and focus specifically on the problems
in the classroom. This can be done by opening a forum
through which students can evaluate how the class is going,
their participation in shaping its direction, and brainstorm
about creative methods for getting the class back on track.
I’ve found that students really respond when the instructor
takes a genuine interest in hearing what they have to say
about the class and its trajectory. After these evaluation
sessions, classes can often start afresh with a new set of
methods and rules for the dialogue that can help refocus thecommunity on their shared goals.
3. Critical Reflections: Self and Group Evaluations
Once a safe community is established, I think that
evaluations play the next biggest role in ensuring the success (however defined) of the class. Group evaluations canbe community activities, as just described. Or they can takethe form of individual, written evaluations of both class andpersonal participation. For example, before and after group
work, I like students, both within and outside the groups, toevaluate individual and group participation and learning.
The most important aspect of evaluations is, I believe, theirregularity. In many P4C elementary classrooms, evaluations of community safety, depth of inquiry, and fun andinterest level have become a reflective way to close eachsession. Perhaps such frequency is not necessary in the college classroom, but setting aside time and a forum to discuss the process of collaborative learning is surely helpful—though sometimes difficult and challenging—in reaching the kinds of goals that the group has envisioned. In
terms of student evaluations (namely, grades), I evaluate
not only class participation, these self- and group evaluations, and group assignments, but also a fair amount of writing where I can track the depth and sophistication of theirindividual inquiry in the field.
4. Community in Action: Group WorkA good measure of how your class operates as a reflective community of inquiry is to assign group projects thatrevolve around classroom teaching and the facilitation ofcommunity dialogue. While this may seem like a hefty assignment for intro students, I like to save this activity as asort of course culmination exercise. Towards the end of thesemester, students are familiar with community dialogues
and have participated in and reflected upon both successful
and failed attempts within our classroom. As an example ofthis kind of group activity, in an introduction to ethics
course, I had the students pick three contemporary ethicalissues that they, as a class, wanted to explore. After we hadchosen the topics, the class divided into three groups basedon their interest in the selected issues. Each group was thenresponsible for three class days in which they covered their
topics. They were responsible for assigning reading materials, doing outside research, structuring the class days, presenting the issue, and facilitating at least one full day of dialogue. I thoroughly enjoyed watching these students go
through the process of learning from one another, playing
off each other’s strengths, brainstorming methods to piquetheir classmates’ interest in their topic, and struggling
through the dialogue facilitation. Most satisfying, ofcourse, was the pleasure they took in their own achievements—particularly in their ability to take on the responsibility for teaching and to really think through how they
could make it a truly collective undertaking.
Elementary vs. College Classrooms
This portrayal of my experiences as a P4C-educatedcollege instructor is not intended to paint a dichotomous
picture of education—where the elementary classroom is anemotionally safe, fun-loving, free, and creative environment
for the exploration of profound ideas and the college classroom is a place of conflict-ridden communities incapable ofengaging intellectually with one another. Actually, both
environments can be silly or serious, profound or mundane,
frustrating or exhilarating. Perhaps one advantage that
P4C facilitators and teachers have in the college classroomthat is sometimes lacking in the elementary classroom is thevisibility of direct and lasting results. Through my work in
the Philosophy in the Schools Project, I have witnessed the
beginnings of a transformation of young people’s thinking
and the development of a certain philosophical awarenessthrough the process of community dialogue. However, in
this work, there is always an understanding that we are only
planting a seed—a seed that must be nurtured through thecourse of one’s education with the help of parents andteachers. We proceed with the faith that the seed that isplanted—the love and respect for thinking and ideas—cansomehow survive through an educational and social environment that may be constantly working against it. In contrast, working with college students, I see immediate andpowerful changes in the way they perceive and think about
the world. Through class discussion and even more in theirwriting, the impact of both the content and the skills learnedin this class are clearly visible and are continuously beingrefined. Of course, I cannot be entirely assured that oneclass will turn them all into deeply profound thinkers or socially responsible individuals, but I am sure with new thinking tools and collaborative learning skills, they will walkaway as different people and will be better off, in someway, as a result. This is not to say that we should wait until
the time of higher education to provide such tools. But until we turn all our children into philosophers and keen social
observers and reformers, we are lucky to have the opportunity to teach and learn and positively change each other’s
lives—at any point therein.