Vygotsky's Theory of Language and its Relationship with the Theoretical Foundations of Teaching Philosophy to Children

In my experience and that of my colleagues, children and adults without philosophical training are nevertheless capable of discerning ethical, aesthetic, political and other philosophical dimensions of their own experience, of recognizing problematic aspects of that experience, and of inquiring toward judgment and action intended to resolve what is problematic in that experience. In my work in pre-school through university classrooms around the world, I have often seen classroom dialogues that are highly democratic and that evidence many kinds of critical and creative thinking, yet tend to be disorganized and haphazard, lacking direction and momentum, because of a lack of a shared framework for systematic inquiry. In this article, I present a framework I have used for facilitating philosophical dialogue with children, school teachers and graduate students, in my work for the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC). The framework I present is meant to be an aid for conducting dialogue construed as systematic, collaborative inquiry. I think of such inquiry as having a trajectory in the shape of an arc, beginning with some kind of question, problem or vague opportunity, and ending in some kind of satisfactory resolution or fulfillment. The framework I present here is not a substitute for the social and cognitive virtues that distinguish rigorous dialogue from other modes of discourse; it is intended to structure the exercise of those virtues so that they can reinforce and build on each other toward a meaningful resolution of the questions at hand. It is intended to structure the exercise of those virtues so that they can reinforce and build on each other toward a meaningful resolution of the questions at hand. Regarding those virtues, the framework can be used pedagogically: students can learn the principles and the uses of argumentation and informal logic, as well as habits of democratic interaction. The framework consists of six stages. There is an order to the stages, but the order isn’t lock-stepped: the dialogue can move back and forth between stages and even jump around among them, so long as the participants know where they are within the framework and which tasks have been accomplished. The hierarchy of these stages is as follows: 1) identify issues relevant to purposes; 2) formulate and organize relevant questions; 3) formulate and organize hypotheses in response to questions; 4) clarify and test hypotheses in dialogue and confirm, revise or abandon; 5) experiment with hypotheses in experience and warrant, revise or abandon; 6) implement warranted hypotheses. Finally, the kind of dialogue described in the intended framework is only possible if individual participants see themselves as partners in one collaborative inquiry, if they commit to a shared agenda of questions and to shared methods of pursuing those questions.