Philosophy for Children

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Thinking Processes in Middle School Students
Caryn Matsuoka
The current trend in American educational reform isdirected to standards-based curriculum and assessment. Oneoutcome of this effort is that a great deal of attention is paid
to the summative assessment of students toward the end ofeach school year. At many schools this had led to a focus on
the mastery of content and in teaching to the test. At WaikïkïSchool, the focus is different. The school is committed totwo related programs—Habits of the Mind and Philosophyfor Children Hawai‘i (p4c Hawai‘i)—to teach thinking processes directly to their students. It’s not that Waikïkï School
students don’t learn the relevant content. Instead, the thinking processes are the vehicle through which the content isdelivered. The students learn the standards-based content byengaging in activities that provide them with opportunities tomake meaning of the content and to use it to draw their own
conclusions. The goal of the school is directed to processes
rather than content and to encouraging students to ask questions, explore problems, and make thoughtful decisions.
As part of my doctoral program at the University ofHawai‘i at Mänoa, I conducted a study to determine whether
and how former sixth-grade students at Waikïkï School
were using the thinking processes and strategies they weretaught in elementary school when they were in middle school(Matsuoka, 2007). In order to find this out, I interviewed
eight former students who had graduated from WaikïkïElementary School in the 2002–2003 school year. The students participated in a total of seven focus-group interview
sessions with me towards the end of the 2003–2004 schoolyear. At the end of each session, I asked students to write
down additional thoughts and ideas in a reflection journal.
Of the eight focus-group participants, three were selected forfollow-up interviews to provide more in-depth data. I alsointerviewed parents and teachers of the three students to gettheir input.

Effectiveness of Habits of the Mind andPhilosophy for Children Hawai‘iIn analyzing the data from my interview transcripts, I
discovered that the students had retained some of the p4cHawai‘i vocabulary that they had learned in elementaryschool. This vocabulary was an essential part of the problemsolving processes that we had taught in the Habits of theMind and the p4c Hawai‘i programs. These were the concepts that had helped set the groundwork for the students tobecome more skillful problem solvers and decision makers.
In addition, students were able to describe occasions
after they had left elementary school in which they had usedthe concepts they had been taught. Several related personal
stories in which they had used Habits of the Mind andPhilosophy for Children Hawai‘i concepts in order to think
through the consequences of their actions and make informed
choices. One of the participants, Adrian, described a situation when she had to make a decision regarding the issue ofsmoking, and she related, “we went camping and they wereasking me if I wanted to smoke and stuff and so I kind oflike used the STARs, I stop and I think and I acted by saying
no and I reviewed what my mom told me, like consequences
might happen if you do certain stuff. I was like, no, thankyou” (Matsuoka, 2007, pg. 223).
An important finding of the study was that althoughthere were times that the students used the thinking processes
to make decisions that led to positive consequences, there
were also times when they used Habits of Mind and p4c
Hawai‘i concepts to excuse or rationalize negative behavior.
Though the students did talk about using Habits of the Mindand p4c Hawai‘i to make informed decisions, not all ofthese stories demonstrated that the students were engaging
in problem solving or making the right decisions about
their actions. Some of the choices that participants madewere unethical, immoral, or illegal. One of the participants,
Conner, described a situation in which he stole a bus passfrom one of his peers because his peer would not leave
him alone after he told him to go away. Conner believedthat taking his peer’s bus pass was an appropriate behavior
because the other student had given him a reason to, and hesaid, “if these people left me alone, I wouldn’t be doing anyof those things.” Conner believed in fairness, and he feltthat he would accept the consequences if he were the one

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Educational Perspectives ❖ Volume 44 ❖ Numbers 1 and 2

who was causing the trouble to his peers, and he explained,“Aww, cause in that case, if I do something first, he can getback at me” (Matsuoka, 2007, pg. 225).
People often look for reasons when something
has happened to provide justification for taking action.
Sometimes this is an effort to rationalize the action—to makean excuse for doing something when we know it is wrong.
However, both Habits of the Mind and p4c Hawai‘i require
students to go deeper. They teach that simply providing
a reason is not enough. Students are encouraged to ask
themselves whether the reason is a good one or if it is simply
an excuse for poor behavior.
The opportunity to practice inquiry with others helps
individuals consider these situations more thoroughly andallows them to take their thinking to a deeper level. Habitsof the Mind and p4c Hawai‘i incorporate this kind of activity
into the curriculum. These discussions play an importantrole in helping students think more deeply about reasons foractions and about the consequences of their actions, theirbeliefs, and the decisions they make. When students sharesituations and perspectives in a community circle, theyget to compare their ideas with those of other students andthe discuss alternatives that they may not have considered.
Through this self-corrective process, students help each otherpush their thinking further, and even revise them, in the lightof better reasons.
I glimpsed this process during one of the focus-groupsessions. At one point in the inquiry, in which we wereexamining what it meant to be bad, Conner made thestatement, “on the street, it’s not wrong if you don’t getcaught,” (Matsuoka, 2007, pg. 292) and several of theother participants were not content with his conclusion.
They replied that certain behaviors were wrong regardlessof whether the individual had been caught. They provided
reasons explaining why they felt that the conduct was wrong
and provided examples which took into consideration thelaw, knowledge of right and wrong, and what they had beentaught by their families.
Brooke described a situation in which her friends had
broken the law and had shoplifted from a store when she was
not with them. She explained to the other participants, “I
told them it was wrong, and they shouldn’t have done that”(Matsuoka, 2007, pg. 292). Adrian felt that people should
just know right from wrong, and she said, “I think that doing
something that you’re not supposed to be doing without

getting caught is wrong because . . . I don’t know! You
just know it’s wrong” (Matsuoka, 2007, pg. 292). Later in
the inquiry, Adrian made reference to learning what wasright from wrong from her own family, and she explained,“I’m thinking that if you’re raised good, you would know
the difference between right and wrong” (Matsuoka,2007, pp. 293–4).
Students grow ethically by coming to see that theirreasons and actions are not narrowly confined to selfinterest, but that they must take into consideration the views
and interests of others. Thus, they learn to reexamine andreevaluate their own beliefs in terms of an increasingly
larger and broader social context—not just through theirown eyes or their peer group at school but from a widersocial perspective.

Internalization of Habits of the Mind andp4c Hawai‘i
An important goal of teaching and learning is theinternalization of thinking processes and skills and theirtransferability to novel situations. By practicing activities insocial situations, students come to internalize these processes
so that they become more natural to them and even habitual.
But what is more important is that these processes don’t
become automatic and invariable, but that they are adapted
for use in novel situations.
In my study, I wanted to learn if there was evidence
that these students had taken the thinking processes they
had learned in elementary school and had applied them intheir lives as middle-school students. In the interviews andreflection journals, the students shared several examples oftimes that they had used many of the thinking processes tothink through situations and make well-informed decisions.
During one focus-group interview session, for example,
a student recognized that she had been employing thethinking processes in her life without consciously thinking
about using them. She remarked, “When I do stuff, I do itjust cause I think it’s right, but when I come here and I see
the mindful behaviors, then I realize that I do use them, butI don’t realize that I was using them before. So I never think
about using them, I just do it” (Matsuoka, 2007, pg. 229).
She commented that she might have been using Habits of
the Mind all of the time, but that she had only come to thisrealization after attending the focus-group sessions. Herreflections were one example of how students often used thePhilosophy for Children

thinking vocabulary to describe situations they encounteredand to explain some of their behaviors. But at another level,
they appeared to have internalized the vocabulary necessary
to reflect on their behavior and decisions and that theprocesses that the vocabulary described had become internal
to their thinking.
The business of approaching challenging situations,solving problems, and making informed decisions requiresthat students think through these issues before taking action.
Rationalizations are reasons that come after the problem, notbefore. Students grow ethically by learning to withhold preconceived judgments, work cooperatively with others, andask questions of themselves and others. Habits of the Mindand p4c Hawai‘i teach students to pose problems, listen with
empathy to other points of view, and show persistence inseeking a solution.
I found that the participants in my study used p4cHawai‘i by creating and maintaining an intellectually safe
community where they could practice inquiry on relevant
and interesting topics. The students employed the Good
Thinker’s Tool Kit to assist them in the inquiry process.
They encouraged each other to ask questions, provide
examples, give reasons, test truths, and look at assumptions
being made. As we discussed p4c Hawai‘i further, thestudents realized that they had not forgotten the lessons they
had learned in elementary school and that they had beenusing p4c Hawai‘i strategies to think all along about some of
their personal issues.

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Throughout our seven weeks together, the participants
used thinking tools from the Good Thinker’s Tool Kit as
we dialogued together. The participants consistently gave
reasons, examples, and counterexamples. They asked eachother to clarify questions, such as “What do you mean by .
. . ?”, “What are they assuming?”, and “Is that true?” Their
intuitive use of the Good Thinker’s Tool Kit provided thestudents with a means of philosophically digging deeper into
the ideas they shared with each other. They did not simply
accept each other’s beliefs and ideas as truth, but questioned
each other in the systematic ways that they were familiar
with from their elementary school program. They took thetime and persisted with issues so that they could achieve adeeper and more meaningful understanding.
In summary, my study concluded that both the Habits of
the Mind and Philosophy for Children Hawai‘i programs had
become an integral part of the students thinking processes—
so much so that the participants no longer appeared to beaware of using them. Their Philosophy for Children Hawai‘ithinking processes had become habits of their minds.

REFERENCE
Matsuoka, C. (2007). Thinking processes in middle-school
students: Looking at habits of the mind and philosophy forchildren Hawai‘i (Doctoral Dissertation). Retrieved from
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (Accession Order No. AAT3302153).