Analytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis

Editor’s Welcome

Jason J. Howard — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction: This second issue of AT&PP (Vol. 44) includes six articles that deal with complex issues in education and personal development, one reflection (field note) on a classroom workshop focused on peace, and a book review.

Cultivating Open-mindedness through the Community of Inquiry

Philip Cam — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Anyone familiar with Matthew Lipman’s Community of Inquiry is likely to acknowledge that it cultivates open-mindedness. Even so, bare recognition of this fact is not the same as having a detailed knowledge of what open-mindedness involves and how the Community of Inquiry helps to foster it. To extend our knowledge of these matters, we will conduct a psychological analysis of the dispositions, abilities and skills involved in open-mindedness and show how the Community of Inquiry helps to develop them. Coming to appreciate what is involved in this way deepens our understanding of what we are doing in the Community of Inquiry and enables us to be more attentive to these matters in practice.

Social Roles and Meaningful Lives

Aaron Yarmel — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Many educators are also academic researchers and activists. This diversity can enrich our lives in important ways, allowing us to experience distinct domains of life and apply insights across them. Nevertheless, the responsibilities connected to these roles sometimes conflict in ways that undermine the meaningfulness of an educator’s life by undermining the coherence of its narrative structure. In this discussion, I argue that conflicting responsibilities connected to these, and other roles can undermine the meaningfulness of our lives, respond to the most pressing objections to this argument, and then offer a general approach for navigating these conflicts.

Is Liberal Tolerance under Threat?

Susan T. Gardner, Alex Newby, Taya Wall, Jason Chen, Ethan Belcourt-Lowe — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction: In his book Liberalism and Its Discontents (2020), Fukuyama argues that classical liberalism is under severe threat today (p. vii). Although such a claim is alarming, since strongly stated cases are not unusual in academic writing (e.g., Fukuyama once argued (2012) that we had reached the end of history in the sense of arriving at the pinnacle of human organization), on its own, a non-alarmist response seemed to us appropriate. Nonetheless, it prompted us to engage in further reading which, in turn, led us to ponder whether ignoring Fukuyama’s claim might, in fact, be unethical. Since, despite our reading, we were still agnostic, it seemed premature to engage in a full-scale study. Instead, we decided to undertake a small informal study of our friends and acquaintances to see, on the one hand, what sort of measuring tool might be used to estimate whether a threat to classical liberalism had seeped into the ordinary everyday attitudes of ordinary everyday citizens, and on the other, whether there was any indication that a more extensive study in the future was warranted. This paper describes that effort.

The Philosophical and Theoretical Background of an Educator Working with P4C: How Much Philosophy?

Félix García Moriyón, Tom Lardner — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction: A common response from teachers when involved for the first time with theP4C program is related to their lack of background in philosophy. "How can I use philosophy in my classroom if I have studied so little of it?" A necessary assumption of the program, such as it was developed by Lipman and Sharp in the IAPC, at this point is that any teacher can learn to facilitate a philosophic discussion, with the help of the manuals and sufficient experience in workshop and ongoing seminars.

Why and How Diagrams Help in Teaching Syllogistic Skills: An Embodied Account

Menno Van Calcar — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Teaching syllogistic reasoning is often perceived as teaching pupils the purely formal rules of deductive inference. According to this common conception, such reasoning is a highly abstract skill, one that is carried out by the processing of syntactically encoded representations of the premises. This paper argues that syllogistic reasoning may, indeed, keep clear of the concrete contents of the premises, but is realized by a skill that is less abstract than rule-following. It argues that reasoning is continuous with our other skills and is realized by our capacities to deal with spatial situations. This explains why the use of Venn diagrams, a much-used technique for evaluating syllogistic inferences, is effective: the spatial layout expressed by the diagrams directly activates the actual mechanism reasoners use. Teachers are therefore right when they teach the use of such diagrams. This paper also argues that using tools that tap into our capacities to deal with a three-dimensional world will be even more effective and corroborates this argument with an experiment in which three-dimensional Venn diagrams were used to train high school pupils.

Establish Dewey’s Concept of Democracy in TVET in Kenya Towards Realizing Sustainable Development. A Pragmatic Approach

Alfred Simiyu, Stanley Omuterema, Juma Injendi, Philip Mukonvi — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

UNESCO, World Bank and different countries including Kenya have placed education and training as a central tool towards youth employability and realization of the industrialization agenda. Despite the dying industries and increase in demand for employability skill in training, TVET graduates lack employability skills. The study was tasked to establish how Dewey’s concepts of democracy can facilitate TVET in Kenya to realize Sustainable Development. The study sought to answer the following research question: how can Dewey’s concepts of democracy facilitate TVET in Kenya towards realizing Sustainable Development. The study used rational research design that adopted philosophical analysis and synthesis methods Both primary and secondary sources were purposefully sampled. Content analysis was adopted to analyze data. The study found out that the change from 8.4.4 education system to Competency Based Education and Training (CBET) in technical education and training was motivated by Dewey’s principles of democracy of education and thus full implementation of CBET can lead to Sustainable development in Kenya. However, there exists challenges of unqualified trainers, inadequate resources and poor industrial and training institution linkages to breed skills for the world of work. The study recommends adequate funding of TVET institutions to facilitate TVET in Kenya to have adequate resources for trainee empowerment, coordinate collaborations between TVET institutions and industry in skilling for the world of work and, finally, promote critical skills in problematized learning.

Notes from the Field: Activating the Community of Dialogue in a 6th Grade Primary School Class in Mexico City: A Workshop to Strengthen the Thought of Care and Awareness of Peace

María del Rosario del Collado — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction: In the present writing, whose character is more testimonial and practical, I consider from my perspective as a teacher and specialist the experience of a dialogue community carried out before a group of sixth graders in a private school in Mexico City. To contextualize this experience, first, I briefly focus on the current situation in Mexico, which is deeply affected by violence; second, I discuss ways that I encourage actors and the educational sector to assume appropriate responses to this violence from their respective field and creative possibilities; third, I describe and analyze the experience of organizing a dialogue community in a 6th grade class, breaking this down into a series of sessions aimed at empowering the students. Finally, I conclude with suggestions on how to see the scope and implications of this exercise within the pedagogy of Philosophy for Children, especially in terms of its emphasis on the search for, and construction of, an education for peace. In general, tailoring communities of dialogue to focus on complex everyday issues, informing people about them and providing strategies for dealing with them, acknowledges the complexities of human beings and gives ample opportunities for those leading these communities to utilize their educational expertise to support organizational frameworks.

The Role of Students' Identity in a Community of Philosophical Inquiry, on Arie Kizel's book "Enabling Students' Voices and Identities: Philosophical Inquiry in a Time of Discord"

Dr. Nava Bar — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction: Arie Kizel's latest book "Enabling Students' Voices and Identities: Philosophical Inquiry in a Time of Discord" (Lexington, 2024), delves into the critical role of education in fostering critical thinking, empathy, and a sense of belonging in increasingly polarized world. The book offers a compelling philosophical exploration of how educational practices, as a community of inquiries, can empower students to navigate complex societal issues and develop their unique identities.