What’s the difference between Philosophy Circles and “traditional” P4C?
When we work with schools that have already tried Philosophy for Children, we often get feedback such as, “When we had philosophy training before, we wanted to do it. But now we know how to make it work.”
All P4C gets children thinking about challenging questions, and teachers act as facilitators rather than knowledge-givers. Traditional P4C follows a series of stages. Children see or read a stimulus, think about the ideas in it, create questions, evaluate the questions, and then choose one to talk about. In Philosophy Circles, the facilitator usually asks the first question, so the discussion gets started faster. The children’s own questions are still important, but they emerge through discussion. Rather than stages, Philosophy Circles is built around three facilitation principles which run through the whole process. It makes it more fast-paced and versatile for use across the curriculum.
After 30 plus years of teaching, advisory and inspection experience I thought I’d seen plenty of innovative and exciting approaches in the classroom but whilst sitting in a session led by Tom I couldn’t help feeling that here was something new and of superior standing. Philosophy Circles is like a magic portal (dare I say TARDIS….bigger on the inside!). I've been carrying it around in my handbag for months. Just 50 pages but packed with an ever expanding wealth of resources and don’t get me started on what it feels like when you try them out in class. As the book says ‘take the road less travelled’ and it will make ALL the difference to your class!"
