Firstly – here’s two films that I made for the Skeptic Zone podcast and only recently got uploaded. They were first filmed for the TANK vodcast; now they are edited for easier viewing. Thanks to Richard Saunders for getting me more time to show them in full.
Interview with Professor Jeff Malpas – Dr Jeff Malpas interview on the origins and efforts with primary school students in Australia and the need for wider society to encourage critical thinking in schools.
Interviews with Dr Stephan Millett and Dr Alan Tapper – interview on the efforts in Western Australia to implement critical thinking into mainstream secondary education.
I hope they’re of interest to you!
The following lengthy post is in response to an inquiry – I think that the topic is kind of self-evident, but if you wish a quick summary: it’s about resources for a person seeking to promote science and critical thinking amongst a class of children from a domestic violence and sexual assault shelter.
Maybe it will be of use to readers of this blog – it certainly outlines an example of the range of challenges that we can face.
My initial response was to look at it from a perspective of approaching the issue of abuse with a prevention program that stemmed from a similar request back in early 2000. The problem I have with it involves accessibility and getting access to the resources (after all, funding, getting training, finding texts is always a factor in delivering a program) – and my concerns about the ease of application, when it doesn’t directly tackle what is a need for ’science/critical thinking classes’.
But my final considerations of the matter are greatly influenced by the a good friend of mine who has provided some excellent resources of a more ‘general’ approach – that of science education.
Since I am not qualified to adequately tackle the educational needs of abused children, I have to plead ignorance on how effective the following links are for this particular case. But what I do know is that the Science By Email resources are free, easy to use, regularly sent out with updates and are created by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
Michael McRae is the Science Communicator who I interviewed briefly in episode #4 of the Skeptic Zone podcast – he has been deeply involved with Science By Email, which I personally think is the most suitable resource in this case:
Science by Email is a free online newsletter for members of CSIRO’s Double Helix Science Club, teachers and anyone with an interest in science. Subscribe to Science by Email. Science by Email is a weekly email newsletter featuring science news and activities. Science by Email delivers the world’s best science direct to your inbox.
In addition:
To celebrate its ‘30,000-subscriber’ milestone, the publishers of CSIRO Education’s free weekly e-newsletter, Science by Email , have released an archive of the 100 top science activities distributed to students, parents and teachers over the past seven years.
In seeking more resources, I also got in touch with Atlanta Skeptic Heidi Anderson, whose presentation for SkeptiCamp (which was broadcast on Mp3) so impressed me, that I look forward to seeing her present at Dragon*Con later this year.
Here follows my initial investigations – which might be of further use in a non-science education fashion:
My first response is to recall the following text, as I went to a workshop with the author Ann Margaret Sharp several years back when I did my Level 2 training in Philosophy for Children (P4C). She said that a particular book, ‘Hannah’ was created, as a significant problem in Canada was recognised as so detrimental, that the government approached her about creating books – using the ‘P4C’ method as a way of dealing with it:
This particular work, along with Hannah, a program for middle school children, are different in the sense that they also focus on a disturbing social problem: child abuse. They are part of a project of La Traversee in Quebec, Canada (there are seven programs in all) that aims to help children understand the problem of child abuse and become conscious of strategies to prevent their being subjected to such abuse. What is different about the approach is that instead of giving children a list of rules to follow, the issue of child abuse is introduced through an exposure to philosophy of body, together with the ageless philosophical concepts that underlie children’s experience. Further, children are afforded an opportunity to practice self-consciously the various skills of critical, creative and caring thinking, while probing philosophical concepts such as unjust relationships.
However, if you reach the conclusion of the study that was done in 2001-2, you can see:
However, children receiving the prevention program did not improve their social skills compared to children of the control group. It is possible that the program of Philosophy for children does not help children improve their social skills. It is also possible that more time is required to modify substantially children’s social skills. Since philosophy for children does not focus on telling how their behaviour should be changed, but rather let them experience a new way of interacting with others, it may take longer to integrate this manner of being into their every day interactions outside of the community of inquiry.
To increase their effectiveness, violence prevention programs have evolved over the years to be sophisticated multi-faceted and long-term (Flannery, 1998). We believe that in choosing to approach violence prevention by using philosophy for children, we are following that trend as well as opening a new promising perspective for future prevention programs. Philosophy for Children had never been used in prevention and its impact had never been assessed in a quasi-experimental study. We plan to continue evaluating the program next year to see if progress for self-esteem are maintained and, to see whether long-term application of the program would have an impact on social skills.
This is an ongoing issue with the implementation of P4C – something that I talked about at a skeptic’s conference in Wagga Wagga, Australia, last year – that critical thinking programs that are not consistently shown to have effectiveness or empirical evidence beyond anecdotal or social skills really can’t be touted as a solution. I do think that P4C has a lot more going for it in comparison to many other programs, but there should be more of an opportunity to investigate it’s application and effectiveness. What real influence it has on critical thinking skills is still something that educators have been rallying to develop – even finding funding has been a major hurdle. It has been implemented as an aspect of the Philosophy and Ethics program in Western Australia though (but not as a means of addressing issues like abuse specifically, just as a method of dialectic involvement amongst students for philosophical investigations).
More recently, we had the author Christopher Phillips visit Perth and voice his own doubts about getting P4C into systems where it might ‘challenge’ the traditional school methods or conflict with testing policies. I also know that the P4C method is not universally adopted (despite it being world-wide) and there must be more programs that draw from health professional backgrounds, rather than just educational. But in terms of ‘philosophy and encouraging critical thinking for kids’, this is possibly of use.
Christopher Phillips’ books are as follows – they are part of a broader children’s philosophical education and are great fun to use. Just encouraging dialectic in itself should be seen as valued:
Philosopher’s Club - What is silence? What is wisdom? How do you know you’re here? Socratic dialogue—for kids? At least the answer to this last question is an easy, resounding Yes! The rest you’ll have to think about and discuss with your friends, which is just what philosopher Christopher Phillips is hoping for. He has long been leading thinkers of all ages on a thoughtful and thought-filled quest for knowledge, and this picture-book models for young children that mulling over some of life’s big questions can be done anytime, anywhere.
I hope this is of use to people – certainly one of the great things about being a member of the Skeptic Zone podcast is the range of people and issues it brings us into contact with.
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