Philosophy for Children in a Pandemic: Rethinking the "Community" of Inquiry

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1-2021

Publication Title

Teaching Philosophy

Volume

44

Issue

3

First page number:

297

Last page number:

317

Abstract

In this article, I reflect upon my experiences developing an asynchronous Philosophy for Children (P4C) course toward the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I argue that P4C practitioners ought to reconsider what we mean by community in Community of Inquiry (CoI). The traditional Community of Inquiry model emphasizes face-to-face interactions in which the children and facilitator(s) are traditionally seated in a circle, synchronously wondering together. The CoI pedagogical model has, once again, served as a methodological starting-point for the place-based P4C I have tried to practice in my teaching, but it was also the model that I had to overcome while developing a virtual P4C course in a pandemic. Specifically, I argue that we ought to broaden vastly what we mean by "community" in "Community of Inquiry" in order to make Philosophy for Children more accessible for a virtual, and even asynchronous, learning environment. Furthermore, I argue that this reconceptualization of "community" is useful not only to our pandemic pedagogy, but also for our post-pandemic future in which face-to-face classes are resumed.

Keywords

Teaching philosophy; Asynchronous philosophy course; COVID-19 pandemic; Community of Inquiry model

Disciplines

Education | Higher Education | Online and Distance Education | Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Language

English

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