The Effectiveness of Philosophy Education on Cognitive Flexibility and Reasoning Skills in Children

Cultivating philosophical thinking in children is considered one of the basic programs of children's education because it leads to the expansion and strengthening of the child's mental and spiritual dimensions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of teaching philosophy to children on the development of cognitive flexibility and reasoning skills of primary school students.

The research method was a quasi-experimental type with a pre-test and post-test design with a control group. The statistical population was all fifth-grade male students of Kashan City in the academic year of 2019-2020. 30 students were selected from the available sampling method and randomly assigned to two experimental (15 people) and control (15 people) groups. Data collection tools included the Cognitive Flexibility Questionnaire (Dennis and Vanderwall, 2010), the reasoning skills test (New Jersey, 1983), and the educational intervention based on the training package (Robert Fisher, 1998). Data analysis was performed using analysis of covariance in the SPSS-26 environment.

The results of the analysis of covariance showed that there was a significant difference between the training and control groups in the variables of cognitive flexibility, subscales, and reasoning skills (p<0.05). The effect size was for the variables of cognitive flexibility (0.581) and controllability perception (0.174), perception of different options (0.192), behavior justification perception (0.501), and reasoning skills (0.804).

According to the findings of the research, it can be concluded that philosophy education programs for children, by creating an attractive exploration opportunity around various topics, cultivates the power of critical thinking, reflective thinking, collaborative thinking, and prevents children from feeling inferior.  As a result, it is suggested to use philosophy education programs to strengthen cognitive skills, change and developent children's attitudes and behaviors in schools.