56

Strong, Voyaging to the Outer Litllits tt'Education

Voyaging to the Outer Limits of
Education: Reflections on P4C
in the Secondary Classroom
AMBER PE,NNINGTON STRONG
he first day I attempted to practice P4C in my classroom the students revolted. The memory is clear in
my mind-most potentially scarring events are. The
students, all thirty-three of them, were seated in a circle
which had already made them squirmy because it was not

the five neatly aligned rows facing the teacher that by tenth
grade they had all become accustomed to. I stood in thecenter ofthem all, as they exchanged glances with one another across the room, and began to expiain how the community ball that we had made would be used during classdiscussions. "This is too hard," one girl whined using that
perfected teenage pitch. "Yah, you're making us do college
stuff," commented another boy. Although I was a novice
teacher, merely attempting the fine aft of student teaching, I
recognized that if I didn't say something quick I would
soon be buried in a shallow grave ofadolescent rebellion.

With conviction, I confidently replied, "This class will bedifferent for most of you, but I know you are all excellent

thinkers and capable of what we are about to do. Please takea risk with me and try something new." This pivotal moment opened the door that led to my quest, as an educator,
to explore how the ingenious ideas behind P4C couldchange the face of public education in the state of Hawaii.
I could have easily resigned to my student's fears, aswell as my own insecurities during the first few weeks that I
experimented with P4C. I was student teaching at a Windward Oahu high school where I taught two tenth grade U.S.
history classes and four senior political science classes. I
had decided that I wanted to investigate how P4C could beapplied in the secondary social studies classroom so I dove
into a year-long action research project and took my students with me.
My students and I may have been taking our "maiden
voyage," but the P4C route was not unchafted. Over the
past thirty years teachers all over the world have experi-

mented with Matthew Lipman's P4C cuniculum in theirown classrooms using "action research" to find ways totransform the fundamental ideas that center around P4C

into a classroom cuniculum that fits both the individual
practitioner's teaching style and, more impoftantly, theunique needs of their students (Cochrin Smith and Lytle,
1993). Action research requires that teachers research andpractice an existing curriculum, collect data from their experience, analyze the data and "improve the nature and specifics" of the curiculum (Oberg, 1990). The existing curriculum, in my case, was taught to me by Thomas Jackson
when I participated in his P4C course at the University of

Hawaii at Manoa.
I met Dr. Jackson while I was floundering in the open
ocean of a Masters in Teaching education program at the
University of Hawaii. Like most teacher preparation programs, no matter how liberal they seem, this one had
thrown me into a vast sea of theoretical inquiry and then
expected me to build my own pedagogical ship to stayafloat during my year of student teaching. Forlunately, as I
attempted to consttuct a curriculum that matched my theoretical beliefs, I was introduced to processes that had already been created for students participating in P4C-Dr.
Jackson's "Gentiy Socratic" method, incorporating the useof a "community ball, magic rvords, Plain Vanilla, and theGood Thinker's Tool Kit" (Jackson,2001). Dr. Jackson's
always-apparent enthusiasm and clearly articulated methodologies inspired me and provided me with actual techniqueswith which to experiment in my own classroom.
As my students staged their own version of "mutiny on
the bounty," I knew that the life preservers of Dr.Lipman
and Dr. Jackson would be by my side to catch anyone. including myself, if we were thrown over into the sea I described. Without giving away the story of my experience
Antber Strong (maniniz(@yuhoo.conr) received her Musters of' Edtrcution in Teaching degree.front the College of'Education. Universih'ttl
Hawctii/Manoa. Her Master's paper, co-authored v'ith Meredith Ing
was titled: "The Teacher as Researcher: Results and Reflections on
Practicing Philosophl,.for Children in the Secondary Clussroom. "Amber cmtently teaches social studie.s at Kailua lIigh School- She
has been involved with P4C since I999.

Thinking: The Jotrnal of Philosophlt .for Children, Volume I7, Numbers I & 2

with P4C, I must admit there was an occasional community
member thrown overboard. During my first year of student
teaching my students and I both ran into unique challenges
that might have ended our quest to change how we lookedat teaching and learning. However, it was the experiences ofeach and every community that had practiced P4C before us
that kept us above water-even soaring.
In my first year of student teaching, I was what veteransin the field ofeducation referred to as a novice teacher. This
meant that I was teaching six classes at the high school,
conducting action research that would be used to write my
Masters thesis, and concurently attending teacher education classes. I had decided that I would be focusing my research on the success and failures that I experienced while
practicing P4C. Naturally, I dialogued with Dr. Jackson frequently during this time. He and I collaboratively discussed
the types of processes I could use in my P4C classes andhelped me to develop effective ways to teach the students
about the cognitive tools found in the Good Thinker's Tool
Kit. The shared vision, conviction and passion for P4C that
Dr. Jackson and I had, gave me the support that I needed totake the risk and try something new with my students. It
s'as a good thing that I had his support because there weren't many other professional sources who were confident
about what I was doing.
First, I was frequently challenged to justify my decisionro use P4C in the classes that I was taking from the college.-rl education. In particular I remember when we were introduced to the fine art oflesson planning. Our professors
stressed that one of the main reasons for lesson plans was to"set an agenda" to eliminate any "down time" with our students. The course instructors stressed rhat"a novice teacher
should plan for each minute that we shared with our students," and then have a back up planjust in case the students got finished with their assignments early' Upon ret-lection I realize that this was good advice. The underlying
assumption however was that an unplanned moment for any
reacher would eventually lead her into the abyss of a class:oom management nightmare. Therefore, the P4C discussions that I was "planning" t<l consume the entire seventy
ninutes of the class period were discouraged by some:eacher educators. Also, most of the other novice teachers in
ry program, fearful of the uncerlainty of class discussions,.hied away from incorporating them into their developing:urriculums. I must admit that the fear of thirty-five out of:.-rntrol raging sixteen year olds did put fear in my heart.
:ltrw€ver, I knew that in order to really have student-driven:-scussion-based inquiry, I would have to take the risk of:-rt unplanned classroom moment.
Besides the classroom management issues, other educa-::s voiced concerns about the lack of content that I would:e covering by using class discussions as a method of-=:ching. My mentor teacher, as he corrected 180 fiIl-in-::-blank Civil War vocabulary tests, joked, "so what will
- -r class be discovering in the Kumbaya circle this' -k?" His perception was that because discussions al-

lowed my students to explore issues of their choice' in a
non-traditional setting compared to most other high school
history courses, that my students would not have the time to"know everything that they needed to know" about U.S.
history. Other teachers had similar concerns as they wondered how I would be able to cover all of the chapters in the
U.S. history book. Many of my colleagues believed that if I
took the time for students to actively engage in a dialogue
about the writings of Fredrick Douglas or President Lincoln, for example, I would never reach the Gulf War by theend of the school year. It was at this early point in my decision to use P4C that I began to rigorously question my own
belief systems about leaming.
The concerns voiced by the community of educators
described above initiated questions that guided the perpetual discussion in which I was engaged about the meaning ofschooling. Traditionally, learning is measured through standardizedtests by the quantity offacts that students can recall, the accuracy of their memory, their ability to identify
the standard conventions of English and apply mathematicalprocedures. Keeping the foundations of modem schoolingin mind, I wondered what exactly was it that today's students "should know" and what "should they know how to
do" as result ofparticipating in the courses that I designed?

I had not yet established where I wanted my students to beat the end of the school year as a result of experiencing a
discussion based class and I must admit that the outsidepressures voiced by the contingency for traditional teaching
did make me wonder if my students would end up "behind"their other classmates because of the nature of discussionbased inquiry. With all of this in mind I worked hard duringthat first year to create learning goals for my students and I
learned to appreciate how the critical voices that surrounded
me would selve as catalysts for challenging my own thinking.
During that first year I also wondered how could I, or
my students for that matter, measure learning that occurred
as a result of discussion-based inquiry? At the same time I
also asked the question: how could the leaming that took
place within the four walls of our classroom be shared withthe larger community that we belonged to? So, I began tocreate the tools my students and I would need to measure
our learning. These tools consisted ofdaily oral assessments, rigorous seventy minute discussion debriefs that required students to use evidence from all ofour discussions
to critique our discussion community, writing rubrics that
evaluated the student's ability to apply the thinking skills
we practiced during our discussions to the rest of their classwork, and finally I began to develop a test to measure theeffects of P4C over the course of a year for the following
school year.
With the use of my assessment tools I collected evidence documenting what was really going on in our classroom. This evidence allowed me to become confident in myability to share the successes and concems I was having
about P4C with people who were unfamiliar or even critical

I'

Strong, Vovaging to the Outer I'imits oJ Education

58

of the program. In that first year of experimenting with P4C
I relentlessly documented the success of the existingP4C
methodologies with which I was experimenting, the innovative curriculum that I was forging, and most imporlantly I
made sure to record the voices of my students. My documentation revealed much and allowed my students and I toreflect on our practice. By the end of that first year I wasable to articulate what was working in regards to P4C andidentify concrete areas of my developing curriculum thatneeded to be improved.
First, I did have classroom management challenges. After all, previous to their exposure to P4C, the students had
rarely been asked to speak in class. I was now requiringthem to take ownership of their learning by letting them ask
their own questions based on the readings I initially selected, choose their own topics of inquiry, speak freely in
an intellectually safe environment, inviting them to act asmembers of a democratic community and most imporlantly,
teaching them to challenge their ability to think criticallywhich often meant that they would challenge me. My students who were now seeing "education as the practice of
freedom" tested their new boundaries with one another andmyself, which often erupted in passionate discourse (Freire,1989). They had extreme difficulty listening to one another,and struggled to craft their verbal responses to the discussant that spoke before them. Quite often, during those firstfew months, "shut up" flew out of some student's mouths
and I found myself reclaiming the community ball from thegroup to signal that the shouting match that was occuring
needed to end.
In the first few months of P4C they also tested my professional "position ofauthority" by introducing topics fordiscussion that were extremely controversial and which
they might have previously thought to be were taboo inschool settings. For example, they often wanted to talkabout things like drug legalization or sexual identity issues.
On the day that one girl used genital mutilation in Africa asa counter example to the statement that "everyone is free,"the class erupted in inappropriate laughter. In the beginning,
the natural tendency for teenagers to want to talk about socially controversial issues affected classroom management
because the students didn't necessarily know how to have a
critical discussion about some "hot topics" and their immaturity would result in teenage silliness that could sometimes
be harmful to certain community members. However,whenever my students did push the topical boundaries I
made sure that we responsibly addressed various sides of
the issue and made sure that our community remained intellectually safe.
These challenges with classroom management drove

my mentor teacher wild. He kept his students in impeccably
straight rows and created lessons that required the students
to engage in mostly silent individual work. During someparticularly difficult discussions in the beginning of theschool year I could see him cringing in the corner oftheclassroom evidently holding in his immense desire to put

my students in their place. His feedback frequently questioned my decision to let the students be so vocal duringclass time when they obviously weren't prepared for thistype of classroom setting. It was also obvious that I was
navigating my way through experimental tenitory not reallyknowing what my students could and couldn't do before I
tried something with them.
The easy way out during those first months of P4C
would have been to simply silence my students as my mentor teacher alluded to. He was right-they obviously had
never learned how to critically engage in a dialogue with
their peers. However, I didn't become a teacher because I
thought it would be easy. I knew that I would have to work
hard if things were going to change in Hawaii's publicschools. So, as a result of his feedback and my own assessment, I did realize the need to make changes in the curriculum. lt was at this point that I began to develop a curriculum that would teach my students how to think critically forthemselves and to brainstotm instructional strategies thatwould give them the necessary skills to be responsible
members of a democratic classroom.
With regards to the classroom management issues, I
developed listening games and challenges that required thestudents to think before they blurled out their comments.
These exercises also included lessons that taught students
how to listen to constructive feedback from their peers andrequired that they demonstrate their listening by changing
their behavior. I also decided that when I introduced P4C tothe seniors at the beginning of the new semester I would
devote time to discuss with them what the difference is between a dialogue and a monologue. (Reed & Sharp, 1992).
This assured that the class had a concrete, operational definition before they experimented with discussions themselves. Finally, we also learned how to discuss "hot topics"
in responsible ways. It was during these discussions that I
witnessed my students really engage in a school activity
unlike they probably had ever done before-it gave mechicken skin.
Slowly, over the course of the year I began to see achange in the way students approached their peers duringclass discussion. I particularly remember a discussion that
centered on a recent school shooting in California. The seniors, after reading an article about the student who had committed the crime, chose to discuss the possibi|ty of gun related violence at our school. The question that they chose to
discuss required that the class uncover the different cliquesthat existed at our school and examine the implications ofthese cliques as they were forced to socialize with one another on campus. It should be noted that school violence iscommon on our campus, where fighting between different
social groups occurs on what seems to be a daily basis. So,
naturally when the students chose this question I began facilitating with trepidation, not wanting to instigate an inclass brawl. After all, in the beginning of the school year
the students had been very confrontational with each otherabout issues that didn't necessarily require them to draw

Thinking: The Jou'nal oJ'Philosophy for Chilcrren, vorume 17, Numbers I & 2

upon evidence this close to home.

As students began talking, their candor and willingness
to take intellectual risks with one another eased my discom_
forl in not knowing what direction the discussion would
take. It was in a discussion like this, at the end of the firstyear, that they demonstrated their internalized conception ofwhat it meant to be a community of inquiry. They pulled
examples from one another regarding times when particulargroups didn't resolve conflict in a non-violent way. They
were brave enough to look at the reasons why the specificgroups that they werediscussing, and of which
they were also members, didn't get along.
By the time the bellrang the students werebrainstorming the ways

in which they ensure
peace in their own
school community.
Besides being able
to talk about "hot topics." my students denronstrated growth inother areas as well. As i
reflected on what mystudents accomplishedduring the first year,
many mini-movies of
my students' discussions played out in mymind. I had been so impressed with how thestudents, who had put

on such a great performance resisting P4C at the
beginning of the course,
challenged their thinking and begged for"discussion Friday's:r,eryday" at the end of:he school year. I had.rbserved tenth graders; ho could barely readiemonstrate how intel.:ctually safe our class
r:d become as theyi,rrxldsd words out loud-:st so that they could create a question for their peers to:ink about. By the end of the year the tenth graders were.-.-'pping into class early to find out what topic we would be-::ding about so that they could be thinking about
it before':-.\, came to class.
Some students would even bring in arti_:-:s of their own that they thought would be of interest _-::se were the same students who never took text books-,ne, barely remembered to bring a pencil to class and59

hardly tumed in homework.
I reveled in the seniors' ability to use the assessment
criteria to give feedback to their peers and was even more
overjoyed when that feedback initiated changes in the stu_
dents' behavior. I witnessed students who had been intimi_
dating and domineering in the beginning of the year pass
the community ball to quieter students as they used our new
discussion language to ask the less vocal student, ,.what do
you think about what has just been said?"
euite often withthe encouragement from their peers students who I had notbeen able to coax into
giving a verbal response during discussion time would speak
when invited by theirclassmates.

I rejoiced on the day
when one girl complained, "we never
have the answer when
the bell rings." It had
been a parlicularly
deep discussion about

the difference between
what is real and what
is ideal. The class had
spent the majority ofthe discussion grappling with criteria andby the time the bell
did ring they had notcome to a consensus. I
had repeatedly told
the class that we were
not trying to find theone right answer as aresult ofour discussion. However, manyof the students thirsted

for certainty as theyexited the classroom.
On this parlicular day
as the girl I describedabove left the roomcomplaining I also
heard her classmate
answer, "yah, well wehave lot's of answers
and at least we know the reasons behind those answers." I
couldn't have said it better myself.
I was ultimately convinced of my students, growthon the day that the Lieutenant Governor to the State of Ha_

waii sat in and participated in a philosophy for Children
discussion. It was a bright sunny Hawaiian day-one of thelast days of the school year. While most Seniors were busy
cutting their final day of class, all twenty-nine of my stu_Strong, Voyaging to the Outer Limits o.f Etlucation

60

dents, plus the Lt. Governor and her entourage sat crammedin our discussion circle creating one final question that theywanted to talk about with their peers. On this last day ofclass, I explained to the group that the question could be
about anything that they wondered about in life-somethingthat they wanted to think about with their classmates before
they ended their high school joumey. The Lt. Govetnor was
included in the group and I gave her a pencil and paper towrite down her questions as well.
When the group finished constructing their questions,with out my prompting one student rose and took the position by the chalkboard that I had filled at the beginning of
the school year. With this visual cue the students wentaround the circle and read their wonderings out loud while
the student poised by the chalkboard transcribed theclasses' jewel like questions for the group to see. I remember thinking that their ability to articulate their thinking in
the form of a question mimicked Socrates and his disciples.
However, in this class it was hard to tell who was Socrates
and who were the disciples.
When it was the Lt. Governor's tum to ask her question
she looked to the camera, which was held by a member ofher group and stated, "I wonder how all children in theState of Hawaii can have access to an excellent education?"
The students watched as her question was put on the chalkboard next to theirs and one student raised his hand for thecommunity ball. She passed him the ball, and in an attempt
to clarify her question he asked, "why don't you go ask thegovernor? Isn't this the type ofthing you should have beentalking about with the governor and legislature the wholetime you've been in office?" His tone was inoffensive but
serious. With a politically conect smile she took the community ball back from the student and passed it to the next
student beside her. With a flurry of small butterflies in mystomach I waited to see how the class would react.
The class respected her right to pass and simply continued with the Plain Vanilla procedure that they had used during discussions all year (Jackson, 2001). They finishedgathering questions from the rest ofthe students, and initiated the voting process to select the question that theywanted to talk about. I clearly remember the content of thequestion that they chose. On that final day they wanted toknow why they could successfully communicate and disagree with one another within their classroom communityyet, when they were outside of class they would fall backinto their cliques and barely acknowledge each other's presence. The discussion was unforgettable as they used examples from their own life to scratch beneath the surface of auniversal issue regarding contradictions that are found in
human behavior. As the bell rang they were wondering whysometimes national harmony could exist and concunently
internationally turmoil would erupt in world wars. I often
like to remind myself that these are the types of things highschool students choose to talk about.
It was days like the one described above that exemplified the success of P4C in my first year. The students dem-

onstrated good thinking, an ability to respect the membersof their classroom community no matter how long that person had been with the group, and their ability to use discussion as a fotmat to challenge the status quo. My students
were truly practicing the skills needed to be a member of ademocratic society and I had become confident that P4C
was a necessary component of the secondary social studies
classroom.
At the end of that first year, while using P4C in thecourses I taught, I also internalized many of my own teaching philosophies that had merely been theoretical at the beginning of the school year-hypothetical foundations in mybeliefs about education prior to my hands-on experience inthe classroom. I had witnessed social constructivism in action, students leaming in accordance with Vygotsky's no-tion of a "zone of proximal development" (Vygotsky,1978). Jerome Btuner, along with other social leaming
theorists, explained that people leam as members of a community, and that it is during this community-based learningthat they are able to develop their social identities as they
figure out how to act in those groups (Bruner, 1996)' By
practicing P4C I concluded that I was not only teaching mystudents academics. My students were developing as people
and not just as isolated individuals. I witnessed my students
grow and craft identities that allowed them to participate as
conscious members of our collective human social group.
I also now had evidence to support my initial belief thatstudents could rise to any challenge that I put in front ofthem as long as I understood the leaming steps they would
need to take in order to meet that challenge. Teacher expectations do shape what students can do and their ability tothink critically. I completed my year of student teachingwith confidence in the capabilities of my students. Theirprofound ability to overcome challenges as a community ofinquiry during that first year inspired me to look fotward todeveloping a more refined P4C cuniculum for the following school year.
Besides the confidence that i developed in my students'
abilities I also left that first year feeling confident in myability as a teacher to foster a classroom culture that truly
matched my theoretical ideals about education. I now knewthat if I created cumiculum focused on my desired outcomesfor my students they could rise to the standard. I was maturing as a teacher and establishing for myself what it meant
to be a teacher who incorporated discussion-based inquires
in her classroom. I adjusted the way I managed my classroom, cultivated my ability to practice the art of facilitation,reflected constantly on my practice and ultimately invented
new ways to teach students how to monitor their own thinking and behavior. With great expectations in mind, I began
to formalize a P4C curriculum for the following schoolyear.

In the summer before my second year of teaching I
made a mental list of all the P4C activities and assessmentsthat I wanted to work on. First, I wanted to create a measurement tool that would measure cognitive and affective

Thinking: The Journal of'Phiktsophl'.fur Children, Volune 17. Nunfiers I & 2

effects of P4C. about which Lipman had rvritten extensively(Reed & Sharp, 1992). Keeping the desired outcomes for
my students that I described above, I developed a pre/post
test to measure the cognitive and affective effects of P4C in
my classroom. I collaborated on this project with MeredithIng, a middle school English teacher who also practiced
P4C and who had been my partner while writing our Masters thesis on our experiences with P4C. We finalized thetest with Dr. Jackson at the University of Hawaii and used
his feedback to make adjustments to this new assessment
tool we were creating.
At the beginning of the school year, my second year ofteaching, I gave the pre-test to my four tenth grade U.S. history classes. At the end ofthat year all four tenth gradeclasses took the same post-test. I had also made sure, during
this second year of teaching that another tenth grade U.S.
history class that was not practicing P4C took the pre andpost-test as well. Cunently, I am analyzing the results ofthese tests.

Besides creating the pre/post test during the summer
before my second year ofteaching, I also began to brainstom how I could extend the original P4C curriculum I
practiced during my student teaching. Keeping my previous
experiences with P4C in mind, I decided to focus on creating a curriculum that centered on teaching students how totacilitate their own P4C discussions. There were many reasons for this decision.
First, students explicitly wanted to know about facilitation. When I star-ted doing P4C with the tenth graders theyri'anted to know why I could talk without holding the community ball. Understanding their concem, and addressing
the major issue of faimess plaguing most teenagers, I explained the dynamics of facilitation. We began with a definition. Facilitate simply means, "to tnake easy," and by utilrzing specific skills the facilitator helps to keep the discussion alive (Webster, 1987).

As I continued to clarify the idea of facilitation, I used
eramples from our past discussions to describe how my aciions as a facilitator were fueled by a desire to make inquiries "easier." Making discussions easier meant constantly:hinking about how I could help our discussions "flow,":cratch beneath the surface ofour initial question and alriays look for ways to help our community maintain a standard of intellectual safety (Jackson,2001). Whiie I was;oaxed by their own inquisitiveness to define what it really:reant to be a facilitator, I uncovered the second reason I',i anted students to facilitate their own P4C discussions: tore consistently engaged in students' thinking through listen.rg attentively, which I found to be essential from my own
r-\periences facilitating. As a facilitator, after all, I realized
I had to continually serve as a reflective voice regarding the
JOn-rmunity's successes and weaknesses. This rneant taking.re risk to confront parlicular students' behaviors tactfully
opporlunities to praise the community when'nd create.rings were going well. Being a facilitator forced me to-:ragine what direction the discussion might go as a result

6tof the communities' individual personalities interactingwith the reading I selected. At the same time, facilitation
required that I make contemporaneous decisions during our"live" discussion. In summary, facilitating class discussions
required that I continually challenge my own thinking aboutcommunity and inquiry.
My facilitation skills grew exponentially over thecourse of that first year and I began to clearly define what it
meant to be a good facilitator. This is when I hypothesizedthat if it was true that facilitation fostered all the skills I described above in myself, then wouldn't my students develop
those very sarne skills if they were required to become classfacilitators themselves? This guiding question, if true, hadmany irnplications and inspired further questions. If all mystudents were effective facilitators wouldn't all our discussions become better in general? I imagined the students becoming better listeners, more engaged in each others' thinking, and this final step of requiring students to facilitate
would encourage them to take complete ownership of theirleaming. I envisioned students choosing their own reading,creating possible questions for the inquiry, establishingroles they would play during class discussions, thinking on
the spot, self-assessing their successes and taking the risks
to assess their peers. With all these learning goals and expectations in mind I remembered I would have to create
leaming opporlunities that would provide my students withthe skills to achieve these goals. The second voyage that I
was about to take with my students was preparing to set
sail.

I decided that a senior level political science class titled"American Problems" would be the perfect setting to experiment with student-led discussions simply because of thenature ofthe course content. This is not to say that studentled discussions could not be fostered in other courses, but
because this course would focus on current events, I believed it would be easier for the students to locate arlicles
regarding topics of their choice. The course was a semester
long, and I had also decided that in the first quarter the students would be looking at global issues that involved theUnited States and in the second quafier the students would
be required to select an internal American problem that theyfelt would be impofiant to inquire about in a discussion
with their peers. Having determined that American Problems would be the setting for my experiment, with a clear
vision of what I wanted my students to be able to do andwith the conceptual foresight of what I wanted them to understand, I began to rigorously design a discussion-based
inquiry cuniculum for the course.
The first step in developing a novel curriculum was to
examine which aspects of P4C that I had already practiced
would be relevant and useful with regards to the newly established leaming goais that I had set. Keeping the new culminating activity in mind, student-facilitated discussions, I
reviewed my already established P4C lesson plans. At thispoint I realized that despite the fact that I had established a
new standard of where I wanted my students to be at theStrong, Voyaging to the Outer Limits of Educatbn

62

end of the school year, most of the P4C activities withwhich I had experimented in the first year were still relevant. Over the course of the entire second year of teaching I
refined the P4C activities from the previous year and guided
changes with the question - what do my students need tolearn how to do next in order to become facilitators themselves? Finally, by the third quarter ofthat second year, I
had established a solid foundation for my new curriculum.
The cuniculum was clearly outlined in the following four
distinct learning stages:

A) Establishing a Framework for Discussion-Based
InquiryB) Building the Background by Practicing Discussion-Based InquiryC) Deepening the Understanding of Discussion Based
Inquiry through Role Playing and Peer Assessment
D) Culminating in Students as Facilitators for theirown Discussion-Based Inquiries
In the first stage of the curriculum, a foundation forlearning in P4C is established by the students and myself. In
other words, throughout the rest ofthe year all other learning opporlunities during discussion-based inquiries requirethat students have the base knowledge provided during thisfirst stage in order for them to grow as philosophers andmembers of a community of inquiry. The lessons in the firststage provide students with "scaffolding, a temporary structure around the 'construction' of the student's leaming thathelps hold concepts together during the early stages ofi'
learning about the skills required for engaging in P4C(Oakes & Lipton, 1999). In this first segment of the curriculum students take the P4C pre-test; uncover the difference
between dialogue and discussion; build their community ofleamers; discuss intellectual safety; are introduced to theGood Thinker's Tool Kit; and leam about "Plain Vanilla."
In the second stage students reinforce the skills, andprocedures, and try out the concepts from the stage one as I
facilitate a series ofdiscussion-based inquiries. For each ofthese discussions I select the arlicle and provide challenges
that include various experimental exercises with the Good
Thinker's Tool Kit. Besides encouraging use of the Good
Thinker's Tool kit in their questions, I have also created aseries of thinking games that focus on a particular letter of
the Tool Kit.
In the third stage the classroom set up changes dramatically. In the first two stages students had been accustomed
to the room set up with chairs placed in a giant circle. In
this third stage the room is set up with the chairs in a "fishbowl." This means half the chairs are in a circle in the middle ofthe room and the other halfofthe chairs are organized around the center circle. The primary goal of this third
segment is to foster meta-cognition where students arethinking about their own thinking during class discussions.
During the third stage the students' discussions improved dramatically in terms of community functioning andthe increased ability to scratch beneath the surface. Afterusing the fish bowl technique one or two times students
demonstrated increased concentration and practiced appropriate codes for a discussion because they knew that theirpeers would "call them" on their behavior. Some competition was initiated by the students themselves as they attempted to "out perform" the discussion group that hadgone before them. The inside group served as a window for
the outside group to look through to examine their own
thinking and behaviors during discussions. Most students,
who previous to this sort of reflective exercise and my own
feedback had not self-corrected their thinking and behavior,quickly began to grow as critical members of our communities of inquiry.
In the fourth stage students are introduced to the requirement that they will become co-facilitators of an inquiry. I began by reviewing what it meant to be a facilitatorand at this point laid out specific criteria of"good facilitation." The students then used these criteria to write down
examples of good facilitation as they obserued me facilitatea discussion with their peers. After I modeled good facilitation, to the best of my ability mind you, we debriefed thediscussion as a class. I then explained that the criteria I wasproviding for good facilitation would be the same criteria
their groups would be expected to meet and be assessed by.

My students were successful-beyond my wildest
dreams. And you know how I explained that most potentially scarring events stick out in your memory? Well,amazingTy, wonderful events do as well. Where do I begin?
First of all the students, on their own, picked a variety ofdynamic topics. We had discussions about the Hawaiian
sovereignty, the possibility of male pregnancy, a patient assisted suicide bill coming up for consideration in the legislature, the right to choose graduation attire, one group evenchose an intimidating article concerning the relationshipbetween science and religion. When the students were required to choose what they believed were "American Problems" they were able to do it independently from predetermined course content thus taking complete ownershipover their leaming.
When the students were asked to anticipate theirstrengths as co-facilitators they gave the following answers.
Our strengths are:Summarizing and clarifying because weknow a lot about the topic we are choosing.

Asking open ended questions to make theenvironment safer, which makes it easier forthe group to parlicipate and communicate.
We will be able to invite participants by using questions that should be easy to answer
and challenge their thinking.
Selecting a dynamic topic is one of ourstrengths because the discussants will be able

Thinking' The Journal of philosophyfor Chiklren, Volume 17,

Numbers I & 2

to relate their during/after prom experiences
to the conversation/discussion. Inviting all
discussants to participate will be on" oi ou.
strengths because we are all curious and in_terested in what everyone has to say.

It is evident from the students' anticipatory responses thatthey were thinking about the possible impiications of theiractions. The uncertainty of how their disiussions would
un_fold, even though they expressed that they felt they wereprepared, surfaced in their responses as one oftheir poten_

tial weakness.
Here is what a couple of students had to say about their,qroup's potential weaknesses. Our weaknesses are:Everyone's opinion will be different because
ofthe different experiences they went through.
We won't be able to anticipate everyone,sthoughts.

If the topic is not interesting it's hard to makeeveryone participate.
Demonstrating our own willingness to chal_lenge our thinking because the people in ourgroup are not always willing to parlicipate indiscussions. We might not make great ques_
tions but will try to make questions that every_
one will give input to.

It was interesting to read what the students
thought of their weaknesses, which truly were
the groups' fears because they were the samethings I would worry about as a facilitator.
The transformation of students from discuss_ants to facilitators allowed them to consider all

members of the community to really think
about the ways members of their community
might think about the topic they selected at thesame time they were working hard to chal_lenge their own thinking about the topic they

had chosen.

When the students finally led their discussions, class:articipation was at it,s highest, everyone seemed en_.:,eed, and the group's ability
to scratch beneath the sur_-ice of the topics they had chosen was prevalent. I kept arurnal during some group,s discussions and my com_
rrents at the time demonstrate the students' success. The:rllowing excerpt is from the group,s first peer facilitated:'scussion. The topic that the group had chosen was
un_::rage drinking.

Wow! I was very impressed with the discus_sion. The facilitation was good because of

the open-ended questions, they did an excel_

63

lent job clarifying all of the difficult words,
summarizing what people had said and invit_
ing other students into the discussion. I could
tell that they were thinking on the spot be_cause at first they started to read a questionthat they had planned and then theydecided
that the class had already addressed the topic
so they skipped the question and moved on.
The thing that I was mosr impressed withhowever was the skills that the discussantsdemonstrated. Leonard, Mitchell, Makani,
and Frankie constantly used parts of the arti_
cle to support what they were saying. They
got everyone to read the portion of the article
and then they began to ask many inferential

ifquestions themselves. Leonard asked
Ieaming about drinking was like learning
about history - if only particular things aretaught then do we only have a certain per_ception of things? Tamara began to wonder
ifour behavior about drinking (binge drink_ing) is shaped by societies perceptions or at_
titudes. So, because we can,t talk about
drugs and alcohol it shapes how people be_
have - like binge drinking. The class alsothen began to talk about religion and how
religious beliefs contribute to drinking.

Finally, I knew that the curriculum had been a successwhen I read the students' facilitation self-assessment forms.
1-9ng other things they were required to reply to the fol_lowing statement - describe on" ni,, thing that you learned
from being a facilitator and one new thing that you learned
from the group you facilitated. The following are vignettes

from their responses.

I learned that being a facilitator requires a lotof listening. If you miss o.re ans*ei yo.,could be left out of the whole rotation of

opinions. I leamed to listen no matter what,
so you don't have to stress later on. I learned
from our group that I was wrong to assume
that everyone was interested in alcohol con_sumption. Of all people I thought Kahai
would be interested and want to participate.
It turned out that this topic wasn't relevant to
his life at all. That,s what I learned from thegroup I facilitated today.

...I also learned that everyone in the group
has different points of views for their re_sponses so I have to accept them all _ fromRob's religious points of view to Mitchell,sown experiences.

I learned that it is not easy to be a facilitator

Sn'ong, Voyaging to the Outer Lintits qf Education64

because you have to keep the discussion

Tell me how you get them so excited." This is when it be-flowing.

came clear that P4C was changing the face of our school

I leamed that being a facilitator isn't easy.
You have to do so much you end up forgetting what your job entails. I learned that thegroup you facilitate will always come up
with a question that will really make you
think, and you won't always think of all of
their questions.
You have to have confidence in your topic
and questions and have control ofthe students. There are always a lot of assumptions
being made by people.

It's sort of hard to facilitate. I will be more
grateful to my teachers.
Are these the voices of a student led revolt against discussions? No, in fact, by the end of the year, when they
were required to co facilitate their own discussions, they
were diving head first into the challenge. Was it "too hard,"
like one girl had complained the first time I experimented
with P4C? Well, it was hard but as I explained, when mystudents were given the right steps to achieve a standard
that was set for them it wasn't "too" hard as evidenced ineach of their co-facilitated discussions with their peers.
Was I "making them do college work," like another boy had
whined at the beginning of this effort? Maybe, it was college work because intellectual discussions are at the heart ofa college education. However, being able to have an effective discussion with the people that you live with in theworld goes beyond college.
In our daily lives oral communication is the most prevalent form of human interaction. On any given day we discuss a variety of topics with our families, friends, the people we work with, govemment officials, the guy at thecounter of a convenience store, the people we love and thepeople that we experience the most conflict with in ourlives. In so many of these contexts people in general, letalone teenagers, feel thwarted in their ability to solve problems or really express themselves. This is why practicing
discussion, and the art offacilitating good discussions is a
crucial practice for the classroom teacher. Inquiry-based
discussions provide the most relevant leaming because they
mirror the reality of our social world.
From my colleagues, I eventually heard a lot less criticism and instead more dialogue about how P4C has developed in our school community. I knew things had changed
when a science teacher sacrificed her measly thirty-minutelunch break to visit my classroom. "What are you doingwith your students?" I had been accustomed to a culture ofnegativity and as I was about to ask her for clarification she
replied. "They always come to science on Friday, after yourclass, passionately dialoguing about some deep social issue.

culture. Could this enthusiasm about bettering the way welook at schools grow beyond the chicken wire fences of ourcountry school? I was beginning to think so.
The more that I work on facilitation of discussions withIf

teenagers, the more Irealize how important my job is.
teenagers are the next generation to change the world, don't

we want them to have the skills to talk about the world's
issues with one another? Most centers of power in ourworld operate within a context that requires their participants engage in discussions. For example, the United Nations is one of, if not the most imporlant forum for worldchange and the global positionrng of nations. Members of
the United Nations must be able to have effective discussions in order to resolve world conflict. An example more
specific to our country is the political ideal of democracy,and discussion is a requirement for the perpetuation of thisideal. Keeping these two examples of discussion-based realities in mind, I wonder, why is it that within our own
communities, especially our schools, we rarely give our students a space to critically discuss issues?
Discussion-based classrooms will change the worldfor the better. P4C provides the essential framework to
make this change happen. However, it is up to teachers totake this program, and experiment with it in their own
unique classrooms. Today's students, diverse as they are,must have a common language that allows them to talkabout their differences with one another in an intellectuallysafe and rigorous way. As individual teachers like myself
draw on the foundations that P4C has to offer, we can provide our students with the tools to change the world thatthey so desperately desire. Just as I strive to change certain
aspects of the Hawaii State School system I know my students are already changing cefiain aspects of Hawaii in general-for the better. One thing to keep in mind as you embark on your own journey with your own students: theymight revolt at first, but keeping my story in mind, remember-with a little encouragement anyone can go anywhere.

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Cocharin -Smith, M. & Lytle, S. (1993). Inside out.side; Teacher research und Knowledge. New York: Teachers College Press.
Freire. P. (1989). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Jackson, T.(2001). The art and craft oJ gently socratic inquiry.
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Oakes , J. & Lipton, M. ( 1999). Teaching to change the world. Boston: McGraw Hill College.
Oberg, A. & McCutcheon, A., (Eds.) (1990). Teacher as researchet
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