Claire Cassidy

Building Collaborative Communities of Enquiry in Educational Research.

This article explores the concept of community of enquiry through an examination of 3 case studies: (a) a school-based community of enquiry involving pupils, teachers, and researchers; (b) a community of enquiry involving teachers from around 100 different schools in a Scottish local authority, together with policy advisers and researchers; and (c) the project team involved in the present study itself. The 3 case studies are considered in relation to 7 factors identified in previous research as significant considerations when attempting to build a community of enquiry, namely: dialogue and participation; relationships; perspectives and assumptions; structure and context; climate; purpose; and control. The authors conclude by highlighting key issues and potential implications for attempts to foster collaborative partnerships between educational researchers and practitioners.

Teaching human rights? 'All hell will break loose!'

Human rights education is a prominent concern of a number of international organisations and has been dominant on the United Nations’ agenda for the past 20 years. The UN Decade for Human Rights Education (1995–2004) has been followed by the World Programme for Human Rights Education (2005–ongoing) and the recently adopted UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training. This article shares findings from a project that aimed to gauge the knowledge of human rights education of students undertaking initial teacher education and childhood practice programmes at one university in Scotland. Students were invited to share their experiences of and attitudes towards human rights education. While some students were confident in their approach to human rights education, others identified barriers, including their own knowledge and the structures acting upon them as teachers. Initial conclusions suggest that education students feel ill-equipped to engage with human rights education and that this issue must be addressed in initial teacher education courses.

Using a Virtual Research Environment to Support New Models of Collaborative and Participative Research in Scottish Education.

Drawing on research supported within the Scottish ‘Applied Educational Research Scheme’ this paper explores the use of the Virtual Research Environment (VRE) in developing ‘communities of enquiry’ in Scottish education and research. It focuses on the role of VREs in influencing collaborative working and educational research. The paper uses three vignettes to illustrate the ways in which VREs have the potential to transform the processes of collaborative enquiry and research in education, by offering new ways of conducting research and engaging various stakeholders (the policy, practice and research communities). The paper argues that, while initially the work conceptualised VREs essentially as tools to support communities of enquiry, it has become clearer during the analysis of emerging data from the project that VREs are developing as new environments in which participants engage and generate new forms of knowledge. They pose ethical dilemmas and challenge the status and analysis of data. The authors conclude that practitioner use of VREs needs to be recognised as a legitimate approach to collaborative working and that virtual dimensions to communities of enquiry require careful nurturing if they are to prove successful.

Children’s status, children’s rights and ‘dealing with’ children

Several models of child exist, each maintaining child as something other to adult. Stables asserts: “…how we think about [children] does affect how we deal with them” (2008: 1). Seeing children as becomings is a problem. Here, I would like to consider the recommendations from the most recent United Nations’ report card on the implementation of the UNCRC in the UK and place these against the question of how society ‘deals with’ children and whether a report that is more positive than ‘must do better’ is likely to take us beyond seeing the child as different, as other, as becoming.

Promoting human rights through philosophy with children

Whilst much has been written about children’s rights and children’s human rights, little appears to have been said about the place children have in the promotion of human rights. This article considers the concept of child in conjunction with citizenship education to take forward children’s promotion of human rights. It is proposed that one approach, where individuals explore views and come to this through reason, dialogue and community engagement, would be through Philosophy with Children (PwC). PwC provides space for children to engage in the political, that they might explore questions relevant to their lives as be ings in society. Such activity would not only prepare children for the political world, since this sees the child as deficit, but would facilitate their engagement politically as children. The article proposes that philosophically deliberative children are required in order to support any society interested in the promotion of human rights.

Encouraging and Supporting Children’s Voices

Children are considered not to be full members of society and that their participation should be limited. Further, this limitation is imposed by adults. In order to counter these attitudes, it is key to afford space for children’s voices and that this is facilitated in some way. Philosophy with Children, in all its variety of approaches and practices, lays claim to being a tool that allows children to develop the skills necessary for citizenship, such as participation and airing their views. This section focuses on the role of Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI), a specific method of practical Philosophy with Children, to empower children and give them a voice. CoPI has a series of distinctive features that makes it especially apt in meeting this goal. Children are able to articulate their views on a particular topic and this is supported by the structure of the dialogue itself. In addition, their statements must build on previous statements by demonstrating dis/agreement and the participants must provide reasons to justify that dis/agreement. The method thereby emphasizes the primacy of the children’s thinking and the facilitator works to juxtapose speakers in order to drive the dialogue further philosophically. In this article, these features of CoPI are illustrated by examples from dialogues on the Good Life, stimulated by the question ‘What kind of society would you like to live in?’ CoPI is shown to give children voice with a view to promoting their participation in society while also eschewing the imbalance in the adult/child power relationship as questions regarding the good life ultimately invite us to reconsider our views of children.

Philosophieren mit Kindern ist aktive Demokratie

Philosophy with Children is Democracy in Action and thus part and parcel of Civic Education. This slogan can be supported, first, because the respective methods of Philosophy with Children and Civic Education are very similar: namely, by the fact that political socialisation is driven substantially by developing communication competences, a concern at the heart of Philosophy with Children. Second, reflecting the basic concepts and values of civic education is first and foremost a philosophical issue. Data recently collected amongst children and teenagers aged 4 to 17 in Scotland and Switzerland on the question “In what kind of society do you want to live?” used Catherine McCall’s “Community of Philosophical Inquiry” (CoPI) to corroborate these assumptions and to contribute to understanding how Philosophy with Children complements Civic Education in terms of its methodology and its content: the discussions on justice lay the foundations upon which society can act politically.

Building bonding and bridging capital through the 'China Club'

Abstract Out-of-school activities offered to young people can be discrete activities, completely divorced from school life and school curriculum, or they can offer extensions to normal school curriculum. This article reports on an ethnographic case study that investigated the effectiveness of a particular out-of-school activity, the ‘China Club’. It offered secondary school pupils in the West of Scotland opportunities to learn about Mandarin language and Chinese culture, and facilitated the development of Bonding Capital between the group members and Bridging Capital between individual group members and people outwith the group. In working with those with whom they would not normally have engaged, and in visiting China as part of the ‘China Club’, the young people’s peer relationships were positively impacted upon, as was their willingness to take risks by moving beyond familiar and predictable social and learning environments to those that challenged and tested them, socially, and as learners.

Philosophy with Children, Self-Regulation and Engaged Participation for Children with Emotional-Behavioural and Social Communication Needs.

ABSTRACT This study examined the effectiveness of Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI) as an inclusive pedagogical approach by which to support the communicative interaction and opportunities for collaborative dialogue for children with social, emotional and behavioural needs in two mainstream classes. There is currently no empirical work that considers children with these particular needs participating in practical philosophy, particularly in CoPI. Two groups of children, aged between nine and twelve, engaged in CoPI over a period of 10 weeks. The philosophy sessions were conducted as part of the regular class work. The results show that the children were able to engage in collaborative, philosophical dialogue with their peers without being any more disruptive than their classmates. The findings of this study lead to the assertion that it is the structure of CoPI that supported the children’s engaged participation and self-regulation and that this might usefully be considered in creating classroom activities for all children.

Using practical philosophy to enhance the self-regulation of children in secure accommodation

ABSTRACT Secure accommodation provides extreme forms of control and support for a small minority of society’s most vulnerable children. Within such environments it is unclear how children exhibit or develop self-regulation when external controls affect every aspect of day-to-day life. This study provides an insight into self-regulation by examining children’s adherence to the rules associated with a practical form of philosophy, namely Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI). Data was collected from a series of CoPI sessions which took place in secure accommodation and a thematic analysis was used to identify key themes emerging from participant’s rule-adherence. The findings suggest that argumentative dialogue allows children to demonstrate self-regulation in relation to the CoPI rules, although it is often sporadic and variable between individuals. Whilst encouraging argumentation and dialogue can seem counterintuitive, it might promote more adaptive behaviours, which will give children in secure accommodation greater control over their lives.