Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 23:22 30 Nov 2021; For: 9781315726625, chapter3, 10.4324/9781315726625.ch3

3
A CITIZEN’S EDUCATIONThe Philosophy for Children Hawai‘i
approach to deliberative pedagogy
Amber Strong Makaiau

Deliberative pedagogy is an emergent field of research and practice that aims to identify
meaningful approaches to a citizen’s democratic education (Carcasson 2013; Longo 2013;
Manosevitch 2013). ‘The primary goal isn’t civic education per se, but for students to develop
commitment, knowledge, and skills necessary for creating and maintaining equitable, diverseand democratic spaces, whether it be in the local community, the workplace, the nation, orworld’ (Doherty 2012: 25). Deliberative pedagogies work to prepare citizens for life in a democratic society by engaging students and teachers in the practice of ‘considering perspectives,
evaluating views, and treating each other as political equals’ as they think collectively about thelarger question, ‘How should we live together?’ (Hess & McAvoy 2015: 5).
Philosophy for Children (P4C) has much to offer this area of scholarship. When practisedwith fidelity, P4C can provide individuals with the ‘experience of dialoguing with others as
equals, [and] participating in shared public inquiry [so] that they [are] able to eventually takean active role in the shaping of a democratic society’ (Sharp 1993: 343). As both an educational
theory and a set of classroom practices, P4C is a form of deliberative pedagogy that gives life
to Dewey’s (1916) assertion that in order for democracy to function as it should, students andteachers must have opportunities to experience democracy in schools.
In this chapter I draw from thirteen years of teaching high school social studies to elaborate
on connections between P4C and deliberative pedagogy, and to explain how the Philosophy
for Children Hawai‘i (p4cHI) approach aims to create democratic experiences in multicultural
schools. The chapter is organized into three sections. First I discuss the difference between traditional forms of democratic education and Horton and Freire’s (1990) notion of a citizen’s
education. Second, I offer the p4cHI approach to deliberative pedagogy as a resource for translating the ideals of a citizen’s education into a working classroom practice.Third, I share findingsthat emerged from my qualitative case study on the impact of p4cHI on student learning in ahigh school Ethnic Studies course (Makaiau 2010). The conclusion reflects on my experiencesand desire to advance the pedagogy towards philosophical communities of action (Popp 1981).

From civics to a citizen’s education
In my work as a social studies educator I am constantly reflecting on the relationship between
democracy, education and the civic mission of schools. Inspired by the scholars who came19

Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 23:22 30 Nov 2021; For: 9781315726625, chapter3, 10.4324/9781315726625.ch3

Amber Strong Makaiau

before me (Dewey 1916; Freire 1970; Vinson 2006; Hess & McAvoy 2015), I have developed
beliefs about the connection between democracy and education, and I have worked hard totranslate my aspirations into a meaningful classroom practice. At the heart of this process ofongoing professional development there has been one democracy-education praxis puzzle thathas kept me particularly engaged. What does it mean to experience democracy in school?
In many of the classrooms that I’ve observed the answer to this question is often shallow
and contrived. Civics education in the USA is typically interpreted as instructing students about
given citizen knowledge, information, skills, and values (Vinson 2006). Teachers typically provide direct instruction on political philosophies and the bureaucratic role of citizens and elected
officials in democratic governments. Lessons often include memorizing the three branches ofgovernment, defining the separation of powers, and learning about how a bill becomes a law.
In these lessons, democracy is presented as a set of facts that students need to memorize for
their civics exam, and teaching consists of lecturing and closed questioning from the textbook.
With an emphasis on the transmission of factual knowledge, this approach has createdgenerations of American youth who believe that government and politics are components ofa career pathway destined for a select few. They demonstrate low levels of civic engagement,
lack civic knowledge, and experience an ever-widening civic achievement gap depending on
their family income or ethnicity (Gould 2003). On the whole, American students do not see
democracy as an all-encompassing project experienced by every citizen on a daily basis, andgenerally feel ill-equipped or motivated to take civic action in their lives. They internalize
government as something outside of their sphere of influence and they are unable to discern
the political dimensions of their classrooms, families, churches, and neighbourhoods (Gregory2004). Above all, they do not seem to see themselves as citizens (Horton & Freire 1990) or
active members of a democratic ‘community’ (Dewey 1916: 4). All of this should come as no
surprise to proponents of P4C, who are familiar with Lipman’s (1988) pronouncement that
‘only by active participation in democratic and constitutional praxis will young people be prepared to exercise citizenship when they become adults’ (p. 60).
Democracy is a living work in progress, and I argue that schools are in a position to respondto this continually changing ‘mode of associated living’ (Dewey 1916: 87) with a citizen’s education (Horton & Freire 1990). In contrast to a traditional civics course, a citizen’s education isan approach to schooling that is integrated across disciplines, practised at every grade level, andenacted throughout the school day by all members of the school community. It is based on
the assumptions that schools should ‘take the lead in exemplifying educative community life’(Popp 1981: 4) and that, along with fostering those skills and dispositions that are necessary forlife in a functioning democratic society, the process of co-constructing what it means to be a
citizen is one of the main purposes of schooling (Horton & Freire 1990). It is for these reasonsthat educators that facilitate the development of citizen’s education at their schools, are notnecessarily responsible for reflecting democracy as it is, but rather for providing students withthe opportunity to experience democracy as it could and should be.
Ideally, teachers and students who engage in a citizen’s education have opportunities to
ask meaningful questions; explore problems of democracy (Matthews 2014) that are relevantto their community; access, read, and analyze sources of information that represent multiple
viewpoints and cultural backgrounds; think about complex topics and participate in deliberative dialogue with diverse groups of people; listen with empathy, treat others with respectand be a valued member of a community; reflect, write, and reason for themselves; and takeresponsible and informed action.
The process of translating these ideals into an actual classroom practice is not always an easytask. In the following section I analyze the approach to P4C developed in Hawai’i – p4cHI –20

Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 23:22 30 Nov 2021; For: 9781315726625, chapter3, 10.4324/9781315726625.ch3

A citizen’s education

to show how it can assist students and teachers in realizing a citizen’s education, and to uncoverareas where it can be improved.

The p4cHI approach to deliberative pedagogy
Philosophy for Children Hawai‘i (p4cHI) is a culturally responsive offshoot of Lipman andSharp’s P4C programme. It evolved in response to the tensions that arose while doing P4C ina multicultural community context, and from the way in which the Hawaiian concept of aloha
is used to mediate these tensions and build community between diverse groups of people in theislands. Directly in line with the culturally responsive teaching movement (Gay 2000), p4cHI
practitioners emphasize the creation of ‘intellectually safe’ (Jackson 2001: 460) communities ofinquiry in which participants’ cultures, languages, histories, socio-economic backgrounds, andother aspects of their identities are included and validated during the building of relationships
and the co-construction of knowledge (Castagno & Brayboy 2008).
Also unique to p4cHI is the way in which it responds to the culture of schooling found in
most American State Departments of Education. Rarely practised as a stand-alone school programme, p4cHI is now thought of as a ‘philosopher’s pedagogy’ (Makaiau & Miller 2012: 8) or an
overall approach to teaching and learning that can be used by classroom teachers to incorporate
the ‘activity of philosophy’ (p. 10) into standards-based learning. Always sensitive to context,
and hence rarely, if ever, enacted in the exact same way across diverse cultural and institutionalsettings, the translation of p4cHI from theory to practice depends on the professionalism andvalues of teachers who must adapt the pedagogy so that it can meet the needs of their particularteaching context. Generally characterized by ‘reflection and action upon the world in order totransform it’ (Freire 1970: 33), the goal of p4cHI is to move school culture from a top-down
bureaucracy to a community-based, participatory model.
Based on my experiences with using p4cHI to teach high school social studies I view theapproach as a form of democratic praxis (Freire, 1970). It is built upon the four conceptual
pillars of community, inquiry, philosophy, and reflection, and it has an actual set of flexible
classroom strategies that can assist students and teachers in incorporating ‘deliberative decision
making with teaching and learning’ (Longo 2013: 49) across the curriculum. This was myexperience when I used p4cHI to design, teach, and research a high school Ethnic Studies
course in Hawai‘i.
Ethnic Studies is an important site for a citizen’s education because it provides rich opportunities to explore democratic ideals such as social justice, multiculturalism, self-determination,and civic action. From 2004–2011, I was given the opportunity to experiment with using
p4cHI to teach Ethnic Studies at a small public high school on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
To investigate the impact of this approach to deliberative pedagogy on student learning in ourmulticultural community context, I designed and implemented a qualitative study (Makaiau2010). One of the main research questions was: what does the data tell us about the impact ofhigh school ethnic studies course that utilizes a philosopher’s pedagogy?

Research methodology
Student participants were selected on the basis of their enrolment in the Ethnic Studies classes
that I taught between 2004 and 2007. In the first two years of the study my class was voluntary, and then in year three, due to a new school policy, students were required to take Ethnic
Studies for graduation. In total, 89 of my students agreed to participate in the research project.
They were between 14 and 18 years old, females (49) and males (40), heterogeneously grouped21

Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 23:22 30 Nov 2021; For: 9781315726625, chapter3, 10.4324/9781315726625.ch3

Amber Strong Makaiau

in regards to their academic ability; the majority qualified for free or reduced cost lunch; andthey mainly identified as Hawaiian/Part-Hawaiian, Japanese, or White.
My role in this study was as a participant researcher. This had benefits, such as the close
relationships with my student participants, but it also had drawbacks, including my desire forpositive findings. In an effort to reduce bias, and view the course through my students’ eyes,
I invited them to help me collect the data. They video recorded our sessions and provided
me with copies of their coursework. Analysis involved the method of constant comparison(Glaser & Strauss 1967), which included employing the expertise of critical friends (Miles &Huberman 1994) to decrease researcher bias. At the end of the study, three important findings
related to the impact of a philosopher’s pedagogy on student learning in a multicultural highschool Ethnic Studies course emerged. In this particular context, p4cHI supported the development of (1) respectful and ethical civic relationships, (2) shifts in the distribution of power
and access to multiple perspectives, and (3) dialogue, deliberation, and action.

Respectful and ethical civic relationships
One of the defining features of p4cHI is students and teachers working together to co-create
intellectually safe classroom communities of inquiry. In Ethnic Studies, I started this work fromthe outset by writing Jackson’s (2001) definition of intellectual safety (p. 460) on the board.
I made myself vulnerable and used examples from my own life to illustrate why I believeclassrooms should not only be physically safe, but intellectually safe as well. From there, mystudents and I worked collectively to think about the type of classroom environment that we
wanted to create. We listed examples and counter-examples, from our diverse backgrounds
and experiences to help us explain what intellectual safety would look like in the context ofour classroom. When our concept map was complete, we made the agreement to do our best
to put our words into practice.
Based on the analysis of their class reflections, this process appeared critical for students’development of respectful and ethical civic relationships.
When intellectual safety . . . is highly stressed . . . This encourages students to be free
thinkers and it allows students to voice their opinions based on their various upbringings and cultural backgrounds . . . This class is cool because we are able to discuss any
topic concerning culture or race. It is safe to discuss things here and voice your opinion,
it is a freedom that we don’t really have in other classes.
(Senior Male Student 2007)
These ways of being with one another did not always come easy. One student wrote:
In the beginning of this Ethnic Studies class, it was one of the first times I becameaware of what it feels like to be discriminated. We were going around the circle talking about ethnicity and one of my classmates said to me, ‘I thought you were Asian.’This bothered me because he assumed that I was just Asian when in my own mind
I was thinking of myself as Hawaiian. Right at that moment I realized it hurts to bediscriminated by other people.
(Freshman Male Student 2007)
Through experiences like these, we found out the hard way that the establishment and maintenance of an intellectually safe learning environment is an ongoing process. This is an important22

Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 23:22 30 Nov 2021; For: 9781315726625, chapter3, 10.4324/9781315726625.ch3

A citizen’s education

take-away for p4cHI practitioners like me, who – in our mission to create a more just and equitable civil society – must remember that civic relationships need to be explicitly taught, worked
out together in a community, experimented with, and practised in our schools.

Distributing power and accessing multiple perspectives
The use of a ‘community ball’ (Jackson 2001: 460–61) also had an impact on learning in
Ethnic Studies. Handmade by students in each Ethnic Studies class period, the community ballserved as a physical manifestation of our social-emotional connectedness and the thinking we
did together. Seated in a circle, we used the community ball to mediate turn taking, distribute
power, and open up room for multiple perspectives to be heard during classroom deliberations
and inquiry. Put in place to shift traditional power structures, this instructional tool helped tocultivate and nurture a collaborative civic space (Makaiau 2015) in which no one perspective
dominated, and every voice was valued. It also redefined teachers and students as co-inquirers(Freire 1970) who recognize that in order for the work of a democracy to move forward,
every­one must be learning together (Matthews 2014).
Examples of how the community ball distributed power and opened up space for multiple
perspectives were prevalent in the data. For example, when asked to reflect on her participation in a deliberative inquiry about the violence that was occurring in our school community,
one student wrote,[Our two communities] face many social problems. One major problem isviolence . . . [and] there is tension between these two communities . . . Ethnic Studies
has taught me to see through the tensions and hostilities. During the . . . discussions I
believe we broke down barriers and really opened up. I also learned a very important
mediation skill as a ‘facilitator’ [with the community ball] . . . I know these skills will
help me in the future to communicate better. Through Ethnic Studies I’ve learned to
be open, and more accepting of others.
(Senior Female Student, 2005)
In this particular deliberation the students elected to engage in an inquiry about the reasons forviolence both on and off of our campus. At the beginning of the inquiry, the students had adifficult time communicating with one another because they came from two different communities. However, as they passed the community ball around, and shared their experiences, theycame to recognize that each student had something unique and important to contribute to thegroup’s thinking. At the close of this inquiry we didn’t rid our community of violence, but what
we did experience was the ways in which the p4cHI approach seemed to build our capacity
for becoming more caring and empathetic citizens. In 2012, this positive transformation of ourschool culture was formally acknowledged by a visit from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

Dialogue, deliberation, inquiry, and action
There are two additional strategies found in the p4cHI approach to deliberative pedagogy thatproved helpful in facilitating dialogue, deliberation, inquiry, and action. They are the ‘Good
Thinker’s Tool Kit (GTTK)’ (Jackson 2001: 463) and ‘Plain Vanilla’ (p. 462). The GTTK isa set of seven philosophical moves that assisted us in thinking responsibly about the problemsof democracy during classroom deliberations and Plain Vanilla is the five-step inquiry processthat we used to structure those deliberations.
23

Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 23:22 30 Nov 2021; For: 9781315726625, chapter3, 10.4324/9781315726625.ch3

Amber Strong Makaiau

One example was an inquiry about racism. After reading an article about a young woman
who grew up with privilege and prejudice, the students elected to explore the questions: ‘Is
it true that racism exists at our high school? If so, what are the implications?’ About halfway
through their deliberative dialogue they started to wonder about their friendship groups. To
strengthen their enquiry they applied the GTTK and looked for reasons behind their thinking and examples to support their emergent claims. This led them to the realization that theytended to be friends with students of their same ethnicity. They asked: ‘Is it because we likethe same things? Is it because people of my same ethnic background are more like me, so we
get along better? Is it because we live in the same town/community?’ Then one of the students
in the class pointed out that she tended to socialize with the students that were in the same
courses as her.
But I also think it has to do with your classes and stuff. Being in gifted andKimi:	talented and in honors classes we hang out with a lot of the same people
who are in our classes. We get homework help. We have similar interestsand goals I guess. And having gifted and talented classes, I can say fromexperience that we don’t have very many people from [Community A] or
Polynesian people in our classes. (Junior Female Student 2004)
Teacher: So why is that?
Kimi:
I don’t know why that is.
Becki:
I’ve been thinking about that the whole time we’ve been talking about the[differences between Community A and Community B] . . . because I was
thinking that we hang out with who is in our classes. And it is true that
there are not very many people [from Community A] in gifted and talentedclasses, and I was talking to Mark and he was like, ‘how are you in Algebra
Two, you are only a sophomore?’ And I told him; ‘I just took algebra when I
was in eighth grade.’ And he told me, ‘we don’t even have that at our school’[Community A’s intermediate school]. And so I’m not saying that the reason they don’t have it is because they are stupid but maybe it is because[Community B] is thought of as a more well off area then [Community A]
is and schools reflect the area, like what is offered at the school. And so I
guess what happens is that maybe their curriculum isn’t as challenging andthis is the reason why they [the kids from Community A] aren’t in the honors classes as much. And then also . . . that reflects who you hang out with.
(Junior Female Student 2004)
As the transcript shows, students scratched beneath the surface of this difficult topic, madeprogress in their inquiry, and uncovered the fact that the schools in the predominantly Native
Hawaiian Community A did not have access to advanced mathematics classes when comparedto the students from the more affluent neighbouring Community B. As a result, when thestudents got to high school, the majority of the Native Hawaiian students from Community
A weren’t eligible for advanced mathematics, while the Caucasian and Japanese-American
students from Community B were. This was the hard-to-see manifestation of institutionalized racism at our school, and it was a problem of democracy that my students now wanted
to address.
This session did not conclude with the making of a plan for collective action, but we did use
what we learned from the process of engaging in the activity of philosophy to take some individual actions. I brought the issue up to our school administration, yet never followed through24

Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 23:22 30 Nov 2021; For: 9781315726625, chapter3, 10.4324/9781315726625.ch3

A citizen’s education

to see if changes were made. My students seemed to make concentrated efforts to form friendship groups outside of their tracked classes. And together, we extended our thinking about thisproblem during final classroom deliberations of the semester.
When I reflect on these actions a number of critical questions surface. Could we havedone more? Is changing one’s thinking good enough? What about the collective and sustained
action needed for institutional change? Should classroom teachers be responsible for organizing this sort of action with their students? As time has gone by, I’ve come to believe that theanswers to these questions are yes, and in my efforts to improve upon p4cHI, I want to pushthe deliberative pedagogy further.

Strengths, limitations and directions for future research
In the full report of this study (Makaiau 2010) I offer an in-depth look at the impact of p4cHI
on student learning in a mainstream high school social studies course and the ways in which
this approach works to realize Horton and Freire’s (1990) notion of a citizen’s education. The
research aims to provide a window into the ways in which philosophy, when conceptualized
as an activity rather than a school subject, can be used by teachers to establish deliberative anddemocratic procedures for making classroom decisions, and engage students in philosophicalinquiry as part of their regular education coursework. It is a strong case that adds to the scholarship of previous researchers who questioned practitioners’ abilities to incorporate P4C into
the pre-set curriculum (Haynes 2007), integrate P4C into all stages of the civic action process(Gregory 2004), and use P4C as a method for the democratic reconstruction of classroom
management (p. 171). Bound by a ‘snapshot’ (Makaiau 2010: 37) methodology, this study islimited because it does not examine whether or not p4cHI had a lasting impact on students intheir lives beyond the classroom. Longitudinal research in this area is needed.

Concluding thoughts
On the role of philosophy in democratic education, Lipman (1988) writes,
One of the most valuable contributions philosophy has to make to the conversationof mankind with regard to civic education is the model philosophers offer of a community of inquiry in which the participants are profoundly aware of how much they
can learn from other participants with whom they strongly disagree.
(Lipman 1988)
While I agree with Lipman, I also believe that students and teachers need opportunities toapply their philosophical insights to action outside the classroom. Popp (1981) refers to this as a‘community of action,’ and to build communities of action he explains that educators need to
identify the conditions of ‘progress in human history and to envision the school as an institutionthat exemplifie[s] these very conditions’ (p. 4). This is the powerful potential of schools andwhere I want to pursue further curriculum development and research.
Instead of recreating democratic life as it is, educators are in the privileged position tocreate opportunities for students to experience democratic life as it could be, and to support
students in making democracy work as it should both in school and in out-of-school contexts.
With additional structures and strategies for ensuring that informed action is regular part of thecommunity-based philosophical inquiry process, p4cHI will move closer to providing students
and teachers with the necessary conditions for experiencing what ideal democracy feels like,25

Downloaded By: 10.3.98.104 At: 23:22 30 Nov 2021; For: 9781315726625, chapter3, 10.4324/9781315726625.ch3

Amber Strong Makaiau

so that when they are faced with problems of democracy outside of the classroom, they will beready to draw from these experiences and turn those ideals into our new reality.
Horton and Freire (1990) tell us that ‘real liberation is achieved through popular participation. Participation in turn is realized through an educational practice that itself is bothliberatory and participatory, that simultaneously creates a new society and involves the people
themselves in the creation of their own knowledge’ (p. xxx). This is a citizen’s education. It
is what we are aiming to do with p4cHI, and this is the purpose of practising a deliberative
pedagogy.

References
Carcasson, M. (2013). Rethinking Civic Engagement on Campus: The Overarching Potential of
Deliberative Practice. Higher Education Exchange: 37–48.
Castagno, A.E., & Brayboy, B.M.J. (2008). Culturally responsive schooling for indigenous youth: A reviewof the literature. Review of Educational Research 78: 941–93.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: The
Free Press.
Doherty, J. (2012). Deliberative Pedagogy: An Education that Matters. In D.W.M. Barker & M. Gilmore (Eds).
Connections: Educating for Democracy (pp. 24–7). Dayton, OH: The Kettering Foundation.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Gay, G. (2000). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Teachers College
Press.
Glaser, B.G., & Strauss, A.L. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Dallas, TX: Houghton Mifflin.
Gould, J. (2003). Guardian of Democracy: The Civic Mission of Schools. [Online]. Retrieved May 25, 2016
from http://www.civicyouth.org/wpcontent/uploads/2011/09/GuardianofDemocracy.pdf.
Gregory, M. (2004). Practicing Democracy: Social Intelligence and Philosophical Practice. International
Journal of Applied Philosophy 18(2): 161–74.
Haynes, J. (2007). Freedom and the Urge to Think in Philosophy with Children. Gifted Education
International: Special Issue on Philosophy for Children 22(2–3): 229–37.
Hess, D.E., & McAvoy, P. (2015). The Political Classroom. New York: Routledge.
Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990) We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations On Education and Social
Change. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Jackson, T. (2001). The Art and Craft of ‘Gently Socratic’ Inquiry. In A.L. Costa (Ed.), Developing Minds:
A Resource Book for Teaching Thinking. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development.
Lipman, M. (1988). Philosophy Goes to School. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Longo, N.V. (2013). Deliberative Pedagogy in the Community: Connecting Deliberative Dialogue,
Community Engagement, and Democratic Education. Journal of Public Deliberation 9(2): 1–18.
Makaiau, A.S. (2010). Adolescent Identity Exploration in a Multicultural Community Context: An Educator’s
Approach to Rethinking Psychological Identity Interventions (Doctoral dissertation). University of Hawai‘i,
Honolulu.
Makaiau, A.S. (2015). Cultivating and Nurturing Collaborative Civic Spaces. C3 Teachers. [Online] Retrieved
August 19, 2016 from http://c3teachers.org/c3shifts.
Makaiau, A.S., & Miller, C. (2012). The Philosopher’s Pedagogy. Educational Perspectives 44 (1–2): 8–19.
Manosevitch, E. (2013). The Medium Is the Message: An Israeli Experience with Deliberative Pedagogy.
Higher Education Exchange: 60–68.
Matthews, D. (2014). The Ecology of Democracy: Finding Ways to Have a Stronger Hand in Shaping Our Future.
Kettering: Kettering Foundation Press.
Miles, M.B., & Huberman, M. (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Popp, J.A. (1981). The Democratic School. Thinking; The Journal of Philosophy for Children 3(2): 2–10.
Sharp, A.M. (1993). The Community of Inquiry: Education for Democracy. In M. Lipman (Ed.), Thinking
Children and Education (pp. 337–345). Dubuque: Hunt Publishing Company.
Vinson, K.D. (2006). Opression, Anti-opression, and Citizenship Education. In E.W. Ross (Ed.), The
Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems and Possibilities (pp. 51–76). Albany: State University of
New York Press.

26