DAVID KENNEDY

FORMING PHILOSOPHICAL COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY

CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS
Published in Early Childhood Development and Care 120,1 (Fall 1996): 1-14. All
rights reserved.

A small group of second graders at the University of Chicago Children's School

are engaged in a discussion. It has been instigated by Vivian Paley, a kindergarten
teacher from the same school who is interested in what slightly older children think
about a topic of great significance to her five-year olds--magic. Paley introduces the
topic with a little piece of a story, followed by a question, and it goes from there:
Teacher:A kindergarten boy once told the class he intended to become a mother lion
when he grew up. He said he would do this by practicing magic.
Thalia:Magic doesn't make things that people want to be.
Teacher:Is there any use for magic at all?
Thalia:There are magic tricks. You can learn tricks.
Harry:Well, he could put on a disguise and then there could be a tape recorder beside
him of a lion and people would think that's a real lion.
Thalia:But that would still be a trick.
Stuart:Like the magic set my sister gave me. The balls don't really disappear.
They're in the cups all the time.
Harry:The only kind of magic there really is is superhuman strength. Now that is
really true.
Allan:If you know how to do a magician's things, you do have to keep practicing
until you know how to do it real good.
Thalia:But it's still just tricks, Allan.
Allan:Everything isn't tricks, Thalia.
Teacher:Even if you practiced for years, could you learn to become an animal?
Allan:No, but maybe something else.
Stuart:My friend does this--it's not magic, but it's like magic. Like once he believed
so hard his father would give him something and when that day came
his father really gave him what he believed.
Teacher:Is that like wishing?
Stuart:No. He was just believing in his mind that his father would give him
something.
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

John:That boy in your class. It was just something he really wanted it to happen but
it couldn't happen. It was a fantasy.
Harry:Scientists could work hard and make up a formula to make someone into a
lion.
Thalia:The only kind of magic I've heard of are miracles.
Teacher:Is that something like Stuart's friend believing in something real hard?
Thalia:A little different. Like you're wishing something will happen but you know it
won't and all of a sudden it happens.
Sally:I think there might be a potion some day. I don't think it could happen. I mean
a potion to make someone a lion. But it might happen.
Harry:They might be able to not make him into a lion but make him look like a lion
with all the doctors working hard to do it.
Sally:You mean to look like a lion but not talking like a lion. Not roaring or
anything. But it wouldn't be magic. It'd be something to do with
science.
(Paley, 1981, pp. 198-200)
Within the short period of this transcribed discussion, and with the help of
Paley's skilled conversational midwifery, these students have introduced and
examined four definitions of magic. There are magic "tricks" which depend on
sleight of hand; "superhuman strength"; bringing things about by "believing in [one's]
mind"; miracles; and transformations brought about by scientific technology. In the
course of the exploration the issue of "real" magic versus the art of illusion is
considered, as well as the difference between magic and science.
There is a lot of thinking going on in this conversation. Paley's chief interest
here is in the gradual transformation of the kindergartners almost willful belief in
magical solutions to life's goals and problems, towards the more nuanced view of the
seven year old. A close look at the form of the conversation reveals that this gradual
social and personal process is being carried along by a powerful undergirding
structure: the forms of thinking and talking which are commonly called "critical
thinking skills." In this brief glimpse of young children thinking collaboratively, we
find them classifying and categorizing, formulating hypotheses, making
generalizations, providing instances and illustrations, working with criteria, working
with consistency and contradiction, grasping part-whole connections, predicting
consequences, and defining terms, to name a handful of skills traditionally identified
as "critical" (Lipman, 1991). Members of the group are also building on each other's
ideas, correcting their own ideas through dialogue, and working hard to produce a
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

warrantable judgment about the phenomenon of magic.

These seven-year olds did not arrive at a definitive judgment about magic in one
conversation, and we don't know if or how their discussions continued. But this brief
transcript allows us a clear and compelling glimpse into the spontaneous and
emergent characteristics of a philosophical community of inquiry among young
children.
WHAT IS COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY?
A community of inquiry describes any group of people who communicate
together regularly, and who take it as their common project to make a critical and/or
creative inquiry into something: to find out how things work, to discover the
meaning in things, to make judgments about something important to them--in short,
to create knowledge together. Scientists working on the same kinds of problems form
communities of inquiry, as do artists who follow each other's work and share
influences. Plato's Academy was a philosophical community of inquiry, and the
salons of 18th century France were literary ones. Any classroom, in that it is a group
of people brought together to inquire in a specific field of study, represents a
potential community of inquiry. But what distinguishes a classroom that is a
community of inquiry from one that is not?
The distinction begins with our idea of how knowledge is generated and
acquired. Community of inquiry is associated with two ideas of knowledge. One is
that knowledge is communally constructed through the process of dialogue between
persons. One person does not bring it and deliver it to the whole group; rather, it
grows through the interaction of group members. The other is that it is emergent. It is
never complete. No individual or group will ever have the whole picture. When we
apply these ideas to the classroom, we get a model of the class as a working group in
which each individual contributes in some way to the knowledge being created there,
and each individual benefits from the knowledge of the whole group.
AN EARLY CHILDHOOD COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY
Now imagine a group of people who spend a large part of every day together
surrounded by interesting tools, models and model-making materials, all manner of
arts and crafts materials, the world's finest literature, intriguing costumes, musical
instruments, gymnastic equipment, and so forth. Imagine that group of people to have
an almost boundless energy, a strong propensity for playful exploration through both
words and action, and a tremendous hunger for knowledge. What we are imagining
is a developmentally appropriate early childhood classroom. In such a community,
each individual in the group is, to a greater or lesser degree, in a process of co-
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

construction of knowledge with each other individual, and each individual is in a

continual process of internalizing the characteristic knowledge, skills, and
dispositions of other individuals, and of the group as a whole.
Those three young children building a city in the block area are busy replicating
the social world through modeling its built environment, so they could be said to
engaged in sociological inquiry. But unit blocks can also be the vehicle of
architectural as well as mathematical inquiry. The four children acting out a story
theme in the dramatic play area are also involved in sociological inquiry, but in a
different modality. They are thinking verbally, kinesthetically, and interpersonally,
where the children in the block area are emphasizing the spatial and the logical
mathematical (Gardner, 1985, Krichevsky, 1992). The child painting in bold strokes
of line and color in the art area is involved in an inquiry into art, the child at the sand
table into physics, but both of their inquiries could have social science or literary
dimensions as well. The child painting could be depicting her family, or a character
from a book; the child at the sand table could be working through the problems of
familial conflict through representing "monsters" or dinosaurs locked in combat.
Thus there are many overlapping forms of inquiry going on in an active early
childhood classroom, in different modalities and combinations of modalities, and in
different representational forms--or, to use Malaguzzi's (1987) term, "languages."
The teacher circulates, interacting with individuals and small groups. She is in
dialogue with each child at his or her particular developmental level, and works
tirelessly to promote and integrate the themes of inquiry she sees unfolding around
her, to extend and enrich each inquiry, and to put these tireless inquirers into dialogue
with each other. But is there one place where all of these active inquirers come
together in one place and take up one inquiry in particular? The project method
(Katz & Chard, 1991) is a teaching and learning process structure through which a
theme for inquiry emerges from the interests of the group itself, and is pursued in a
relatively systematic way by all or some of the group members. Then there are large
and small group times, where events like reading and story telling, dramatizations
and puppets shows, musical listening and playing, demonstrations and focussed
exploration of materials, center the whole group in one shared experience. Then there
is the planned group discussion.
AN EARLY CHILDHOOD PHILOSOPHICAL COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY
Imagine that the signal for cleanup is given, and afterwards, children assemble
for circle time. During this period the teacher, who is an expert storyteller, tells a tale
using two identical felt-board figures. It is a somewhat zany, magical story, about a
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

boy whose father is an inventor, and constructs a robot who looks and talks and
walks and behaves exactly like his son, and the troubles that everyone has telling
them apart. The teacher follows her short tale with a lead off question--is the robot a
person? When one child answers "No," the teacher asked her why not. Because he's
a robot, is the answer. The teacher asks, what is the difference between a robot and a
person? Another child chimes in, a person sleeps! But animals sleep too, says another
child, because I have a hamster in a cage and he sleeps a lot! Are animals persons?
queries the ever-alert teacher. No! is the chorused reply. So the teacher presses on:
what can we find that just persons, only persons do or have? she asks. They have
arms and legs! shouts an excited child; but almost immediately another child points
out that some animals have arms and legs. A discussion ensues about whether
animals have "all arms" or "all legs" or both. Monkeys are mentioned.
The teacher asks whether there is anything else which only persons have or do.
Talk! bursts out a young child. Do animals talk? asks the teacher. A chorus of yesses
and no's. Seeing that she is in the yes chorus, the teacher asks a young child who
seldom says much in these discussions to explain why she thinks that animals talk.
And so on.
By the end of the session, which could last anywhere from ten to thirty or more
minutes, the group may have established--with helpful summaries by the teacher--
one or more necessary conditions for calling someone (or thing!) a "person," or they
may not have decided on any. In either case, the teacher summarizes, and promises
they will talk about it again. She then suggests that some people may wish to draw
and dictate the robot story, or one like it. Perhaps she also has some props in the
dramatic play area which encourage playing stories with robots in them. For next
week's discussion she may tell another story, she may pick a children's book--The
Velveteen Rabbit (Williams, 1975), for example, or Pinnochio (Collodi, 1991), The
Steadfast Tin Soldier (Andersen, 1953), or The Gingerbread Man (Hauge, 1973)--or
tell a story with doll house figures and props, or act out a short skit with another
teacher (Edwards, 1986). She may stick with persons as theme, or present something
which suggests another topic. She may solicit direction from the group itself.
The teacher in this classroom is conducting a philosophical community of
inquiry. It deserves to be called "philosophical" for two reasons. First, because it is a
kind of inquiry which focuses on the larger meaning of human experience--how our
thoughts work, what is and what has to be, the nature of persons, how to define right
and wrong, the good, the fair, the beautiful, and so on. It is a controlled, communal
form of wondering about the "big questions." We are also justified in calling it
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philosophical because it is, with the help of the teacher-facilitator, a continual process
of exploring the conditions of knowledge. Can we give reasons for what we think?
Are there good reasons and not so good reasons, and how do we determine? How do
we know what we know--what "person" means, for example? What sort of evidence
is necessary to make a claim that so and so or such and such is a person, and what
would it take to discount it? Philosophy has to do with how we know what we know,
and what we mean when we say something is "true" or not.
DISPOSITIONS AND SKILLS OF A PHILOSOPHICAL COMMUNITY OF
INQUIRY
The kind of thinking, talking, and feeling which is going on in this discussion
circle is associated with verbal, logical-mathematical, and personal modalities, or
intelligences (Gardner 1985). Through their own participation and the teacher's
skilled facilitation, young children are practicing dispositions like valuing taking
turns, feeling responsible for giving reasons and offering evidence for one's beliefs,
determining to respect persons even if we disagree with their ideas, and wanting to
build on each other's ideas. The skills of philosophical community of inquiry are
those usually associated with critical thinking, such as making generalizations and
then evaluating them through offering and evaluating confirming or disconfirming
examples, using criteria to guide our judgments (Lipman, 1988a).
In the example above, the child who bursts out Talk! when the teacher asks what
only persons do, is making a generalization which could be more formally state as
the proposition "All persons talk." As like as not, this proposition may immediately
bring to the mind of a child sitting across the circle someone she knows who is a deaf
mute, or a T.V. program or movie she saw in which a deaf mute played a part. Then
the job is to decide whether that constitutes a disconfirming example, i.e. whether it
proves that "all persons talk" must be changed to "some persons talk." Another child
may point out that deaf mutes can talk with their hands, leading us to call for a
definition of talking. This could lead to exercising the major critical thinking skill of
evaluating analogous relationships. Is talking with your hands just like talking with
your voice? Are the singing of birds and the talking of humans the same or different?
Can we say that birds "talk" the way we say humans talk? Ultimately, through this
often meandering process of comparison and exemplification, we are working
towards identifying some necessary conditions for being a person. If, for example, a
person could not talk and still be a person, then talking is not a necessary condition
for being a person.
Group philosophical dialogue involves two styles of thinking--the critical and
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

the creative (Lipman, 1991). Critical thinking is rule-governed, meaning we follow

the rules of logic, for example taking care not to contradict ourselves, and holding
arguments up to the scrutiny of whether they follow logically from each other. We
have long understood all experience, including perception itself, to be implicitly rule-
governed (Kant, 1965), so thinking with rules of thought certainly is not a style of
experience which must be learned from scratch by young children. The minute, for
example, one child generalizes that people have arms and legs, the arms or legs of
other animals spring to the listener's mind, and she finds herself comparing the arms
and legs of animals and humans. Are they like enough that we can say they are the
same, or are they different enough that I can call them something else, and say they
are in another class altogether? This kind of patterned thinking goes on even at the
level of perception, and categorical thought has been characterized as a "primitive
psychological function" (Mandler, 1983, p. 466).
Creative thinking involves imagining things in new ways, generating
counterfactual notions--for example, if humans had four arms how would they be
different?--or seeing connections which are not immediately apparent, as well as
thinking in other "languages" (Malaguzzi, 1987; Gardner, 1985) like art, stories,
drama, movement, or music. Creative thinking is also rule governed (Lipman, 1991),
but its rules are less obvious. It often involves seeing the larger picture intuitively,
and proceeds by imaginative leaps, hunches and connections, rather than through a
step-by-systematic step process. Community of inquiry theorists speak of the group
discussion "following the argument where it leads" as it moves through numerous
bifurcations, then circles around in a recursive movement and gather up the themes
which it has generated into a larger theme. The movement of the "argument," or
the sum of what has been said about the issue under discussion (say, what makes a
person a person) is also said to be "self-correcting," in that in dialogue, a response to
a statement more often than not offers a correction to the original statement. For
example, when you make a generalization and I think spontaneously of an example
which disproves it as a generalization, your generalization is being corrected, but this
correction occurs through the spontaneous play of our dialogue. Through self-
correction, the argument becomes more complex and better organized--it builds. But
the structure of the argument is emergent, as in the second graders' conversation
about magic quoted above. And what drives this emergence is the self-correcting
play of the perspectives of each participant (Lipman, Sharp, & Oscanyon, 1979)
BUT CAN YOUNG CHILDREN THINK CRITICALLY?
There is a strong prejudice in early childhood circles against the notion that
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young children can think logically. This prejudice seems to arise from a combination
of a lack of appreciation of the categorical logic which is found in perception,
experience, and language itself (Nelson, 1985), and from the incorrect interpretation
of Piaget's notion of "pre-operational" to mean "non-logical." In fact Piaget's theory
places the origins of logic in action, and if that is the case, then the young child is
thinking in logical structures from the beginning, whether in sensory-motor schemes
or concepts (Piaget, 1954; Langer, 1980). Cognitive scientists have been arguing for
at least 20 years that a fundamental logic is in place from the start of psychological
life (Fodor, 1975, Chomsky, 1985, Bower, 1989).
This is all too easy to say about children who are hardly speaking yet; but what
about 3 and 4 year olds? Are they able to apply general rules to specific cases, or
evaluate general rules by considering specific cases? Consider a 2-year old who lives
in a house with a dachshund, and sits for the first time, safe in her mother's arms,
before a Great Dane. She shouts, in awe and delight, "Doggie!" In doing so she is
implicitly applying a general rule to a specific case, as follows:
General rule: All dogs have four legs, fur or hair of some kind, a head shaped in a
certain way, and a certain manner of self-presentation ("dogginess").
Particular case: This creature before me has four legs, fur or hair, a head shaped a
certain way, and a "doggy" self-presentation. Therefore, although it is bigger
than any such creature I've ever seen, it is probably a dog.
Another example: a father stands before a fence, holding his child of 3, and
examining a horse, who is standing on the other side of the fence. The horse lifts his
head over the fence and towards the two humans, and its lips draw back slightly,
exposing large teeth. The child asks her father, "Does he eat people?" In this case the
child appears to be thinking, albeit unconsciously, in classic syllogistic form, in
which there are two premises and a conclusion, and a carry over relationship from
one class to another:
All animals with large teeth are carnivores.
All carnivores are potentially dangerous to people.
Therefore: All animals with large teeth are potentially dangerous to people.
The little girl's information is incorrect--she has not yet made the critical
distinction between the sharp teeth of carnivores and the blunt teeth of herbivores--
but her reasoning is not. It is spontaneous and structural and semi-conscious: if you
asked the child to state the syllogism, she would not have a clue what you were
asking for, but this fact does not make the pattern of her reasoning any less
syllogistic. This is possible because the basis of reasoning is the spontaneous mental
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

activity of assimilating individual cases to general categorical schemes and rules

(Dewey, 1991; Piaget, 1952), and thereby continually accommodating as well, i.e.
reconstructing those schemes to better approximate the way things are since the new
case was assimilated. If we think of these schemes as theories, or pieces of theories,
then we see that young children are just as spontaneously theory-driven as adults
(Carey, 1985; Wellman, 1990). Recent research even points to the capacity of young
children to formulate verbal syllogisms apart from any empirical situation, using
make believe animals and things in reasoning games (Hawkins et al, 1984).
The tendency to characterize young children as illogical is especially difficult to
overcome because it is associated with a noble cause, which is the effort to protect
the young child from the oppression of push-down curriculum (Elkind, 1993). But
the essential difference between children and adults is not about logic but lack of
experience, and the child's weaker or more rudimentary conceptual framework in
which the experience is organized. And this is made up for by the fact that, as Tizard
and Hughes (1984) have pointed out, children ages 3 to 5 year old are characterized
by a "persistent intellectual curiosity." They explain this as the result of "the flexible
and incomplete structure of their conceptual framework, and also because of [their]
growing awareness of the many confusions and misunderstandings that occur." They
emphasize the importance of "the role of verbal exploration--that is, puzzling and
thinking--in 4 year old children," as well as the "the child's interest in the social world
of adults, and the role which adults can play in helping the child toward
understanding through dialogue" (p.126).
Young children are already, on the level of perception, action, and interpersonal
interactions, making the fundamental logical moves associated with critical thinking.
When they practice these skills which they already have in some degree in the
controlled environment of the philosophical community of inquiry, the difference is
twofold. First, it is a situation where language rather than action becomes the
exclusive medium of thought; second, it is a group dialogue situation. In dialogue,
the other person, in responding to my statement, provides the contradiction or
limitation which leads me to reformulate it. Each reformulation by members of the
dialoging group offers the possibility of leading to a clearer picture of the the topic
around which the dialogue is taking place, without the personal threat which often
accompanies one-on-one dialogue. If, for example, I have the more or less
unconsciously held assumption (as some 4-year olds do) that all doctors are men, and
I never bring that assumption into dialogue with others, it remains in an unreflective
state. If in a group conversation about doctors, medicine, hospitals, etc., I am moved
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

to state my assumption, and someone in a flash returns, "Uh uh! My doctor is a

woman!" the example has just been offered which disproves it. Therefore I must
reorganize my proposition from an "all" to a "some" statement, i.e. from "All doctors
are men" to "Some doctors are men." This self-correction is less likely to happen if it
is not brought into dialogue, but when it is, it happens quite naturally. And if it is
brought into a group dialogue like the community of inquiry, it forms part of a
collaborative inquiry into the necessary and sufficient conditions for being a doctor,
and is internalized as knowledge by all the participants (Vygotsky, 1978).
BUT DO YOUNG CHILDREN CARE ABOUT THESE KINDS OF
QUESTIONS?
Another common belief among early childhood practitioners is that young
children do not really care about the "big questions," like how to define a person,
how thinking works, what language is, whether there is such a thing as magic, etc.
Ever since the reaction against Froebelian curriculum at the turn of the century,
practitioners have been encouraged to begin with the concrete and close to home in
children's experience, since they were assumed either to be confused by or not
interested in abstract concepts, ideas, or larger framework of issues (Shapiro, 1983).
But in fact the child's first form of deliberate abstract conceptual work is dramatic
play. Vygotsky (1978) offers the example of two sisters who decide to play "sisters,"
and thereby enter a conceptual world where they are acting according to their
generalized ideas of how brothers and sisters act, and have risen beyond their own
relationship, into the realm of universal categories (p. 95). Likewise, Egan has
pointed out that young children think in "powerful abstract oppositional concepts . . .
that they use to explore and organize the world and experience" (1994, pp. 28, 29).
He refers to binary concepts like security/danger, courage/cowardice, and
hope/despair, all of which lend themselves to philosophical exploration. Egan
identifies fairy tales as vehicles for this exploration. The philosophical community of
inquiry, as we have seen, can use such stories to present and pursue these larger
conceptual preoccupations of young children through dramatization and discussion.
But even if young children are moved by "powerful abstract concepts," are they
even aware of them on a conscious level? And even if they are, are they really
interested in discussing them? In fact, wondering-- questioning the world and one's
experience--is a natural activity, as natural as playing, or making music (Matthews,
1980, 1994), and more characteristic of the 3-5 year old than of older children or
adults (Tizard & Hughes, 1984). This drive to "puzzle and think," fueled by a greater
state of intellectual disequilibrium than most adults experience, is regularly
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

overlooked by adults, especially in preschool or child care settings, where teachers

encounter children mostly on the level of management statements and requests
(Wood, McMahon & Cranstoun, 1980). Tizard and Hughes (1984) have
demonstrated experimentally that young children actually do more thinking and
puzzling at home with their mothers, even when their mothers don't put that great a
value on that kind of thinking and talking.
When young children's tendency to puzzle and think is allowed to take place on
a regular basis in a community, facilitated by a leader who is sensitive both to the
philosophical preoccupations of young children, and to their ways of thinking and
talking, the educational implications are significant. Through an internalization
process which Vygotsky (1978) has characterized as the "intrapsychical reproduction
of the interpsychical," the individual appropriates the critical thinking skills and
dispositions which are occurring in the group as a whole. To the extent that the
group, led and encouraged by the teacher, regularly asks for reasons for statements or
ideas, the individual learns to question her own thinking. To the extent that members
of the group build on each others' ideas in their dialogue, the individual learns to
sequence and connect her own ideas in her own personal thinking. To the extent that
the group dialogue, as it grows and changes, is self-correcting, the individual is
increasingly freed from the need to always be right. And so on. The modeling and
practice from an early age of the skills and dispositions of the community of inquiry
give children powerful basic tools in their own search for meaning.
LEARNING THE SCRIPTS AND DISCOURSE MODELS OF DIALOGUE
Since young children are novices in philosophical community of inquiry, a large
proportion of time in early childhood settings is typically spent teaching the implicit
rules of group discourse. Two bodies of research shed light on what is being learned
here, and how. First, researchers in school discourse (Ripich & Spinelli, 1985;
Willes, 1983) point out that children must learn classroom discourse patterns like the
"cue-bid-nomination" move, that is, the call for an answer to a question, a raised
hand, and the bestowal on the one cued of the right to speak. The discourse patterns
of the community of inquiry are less dependent on a single adult than the traditional
classroom model. The teacher's goal is to get group members talking between each
other, so she functions, not so much as group center and authority, as arbiter of turn
disputes, maintainer of topic across turns, and initiator of conversational repairs when
necessary--i.e., as moderator. She models and coaches children in dialogical skills
and dispositions like addressing the point which was just made, taking care to
criticize ideas rather than persons, not interrupting, asking for restatements and
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clarifications, and thinking to return to the subject after a digression.

Second, young children are learning what researchers refer to as the "script," or
"general event representation" (Nelson et al, 1986) of community of inquiry. The
adult general event representation of community of inquiry would go something like
this: we all sit together in a circle and there is a text of some kind, which is shared
communally; after it's shared, everybody shares the questions that the reading made
them think of; then we talk about the questions. They are "big" questions, which
usually don't seem to have any one right or final answer. We talk in a certain way,
which involves above all expecting that what we say conforms to logic--i.e. is
reasonable, "makes sense," "follows," or is "warrantable." In order to do this, we
must be open to being corrected in our thinking by another member of the group, or
the group as a whole, since we recognize that each of us represents only one
perspective among all the perspectives of the group members, and the group as a
whole represents one large, emerging perspective. The goal of the process is to come
to agreement about the answer to some of these questions, although we recognize
that these questions are not the kind that have one right answer, and therefore can be
talked about again and again.
This is quite a complicated script, with many slots, default values, and fillers,
and is learned over time, with much reinforcement and repetition, and a teacher who
models and coaches the skills and dispositions involved. As with any script, it grows
more flexible and more inclusive with time and use. The skilled teacher learns to
identify children operating spontaneously in the skills and dispositions of the
discourse model, and reinforce them. For example, when the child in my group offers
the counterexample mentioned above--"Uh uh! My doctor's a woman!" I can say,
"So Joanna just gave an example that shows not all doctors are men. That's all it
took--just one example to make the whole idea not true! But we can say some
doctors are men, can't we?" The skillful teacher maintains the scaffolding of the
discourse model, confident that, as each individual in the group practices the skills
and dispositions of community of inquiry, the group learns to regulate itself.
CURRICULUM IN PHILOSOPHICAL COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY
The materials for doing community of inquiry with young children, because
they are stories, are abundant. Many children's books lend themselves to
philosophical inquiry with young children, especially those which evoke the
"powerful abstract oppositional concepts" to which Egan (1988, 1994) has referred.
Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit (1902), for example, evokes a number of these
concepts--for example good and naughty, accidents and things on purpose, animals
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

and humans, children and grownups, danger and safety (Kennedy, 1993). Teachers
can prepare discussion plans which focus on these issues, which they can use to steer,
to clarify, or even to redirect the discussion. The question of what's an accident is an
important one for the young children, whose concept of causality is still closely tied
to purpose (Piaget, 1929, Carey, 1985). The following discussion plans, taken from a
set developed for Peter Rabbit (Kennedy, 1994) focuses on this issue. The teacher
holds these questions in reserve, and uses them only when they seem appropriate,
whether because the issue of accidents has been raised by the children themselves, or
because she feels it is worth introducing the issue herself.
ACCIDENTS
Was it an accident that Peter's father was killed and eaten by Mr. McGregor?
Was it an accident that Peter went to Mr. McGregor's garden?
Was it an accident that Peter lost his coat and shoes?
Did Peter go to Mr. McGregor's garden on purpose?
How can you tell if something is an accident?
How can you tell if something is on purpose?
BY ACCIDENT OR ON PURPOSE?
The sun rises in the morning
The sun comes out from behind a cloud
A train wreck
Someone gets angry
It starts raining
A doctor hurts someone with a needle
You were born
It gets dark
Numerous other children's books lend themselves to philosophical inquiry
(Matthews, 1980, 1988), in particular the works of Arnold Lobel (1971, 1975, 1977,
1978, 1979). In addition to such texts, teachers can make up stories and skits
themselves which evoke the questions they are interested in having children explore
together, for example the story which focused on the notion of persons above, or the
skits developed in Edwards (1985). There are also texts with accompanying
discussion plans developed specifically for purposes of doing philosophical
community of inquiry in early childhood, (Lipman, 1988b; Lipman & Gazard, 1988).
For example The Doll Hospital (Sharp, 1994), developed for young children in
preschool settings, tells the story of Jesse and her doll. The story is arranged in short
episodes, which are designed to stimulate wonder about philosophical issues. The
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

teacher typically reads to the children, solicits questions, and writes them on chart
paper or chalkboard, which is an opportunity for experience with language in print.
Through collecting the questions in this way, the children themselves are
constructing the discussion agenda, and the teacher encourages children to decide
which question to start the discussion with.
In the dialogue that follows, participants ask for and give reasons for their
thinking, built on each others ideas, and, with the help of the teacher, "follow the
argument where it leads," through its self-correcting movement. The teacher
introduces all or parts of discussion plans which focus on specific issues which have
been raised by the text, which move the group toward the examination of overarching
regulative ideas.i Finally, the teacher encourages further response to the questions in
other "languages" or expressive modalities, such as the telling or writing of stories,
drawing and painting, dramatic play, puppetry, music, model play with sand or
blocks, block building, and so forth.
CONCLUSION: THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY AND THE
DEMOCRATIC PERSONALITY
Every classroom, from early childhood to postgraduate, has the potential for
becoming a community of inquiry. The developmentally appropriate early childhood
classroom is structurally closer to a community of inquiry than the traditional
classroom, because it operates according to individual student initiative and
principals of emergent curriculum, rather than exclusive teacher control and pre-set
curriculum (Kennedy, 1994). It is a dialogical, horizontal structure, rather than a one-
directional, vertical one.
Every community of inquiry--whether of art, history, dance, science, politics,
economics, etc.--has the potential for becoming a philosophical community of
inquiry, because every discipline has a philosophical understructure which can be
explored. The philosophy of art has to do with how art means to us when we make
or behold it, how we define art, how we judge good and bad art, and so forth. The
philosophy of science concerns how we determine what a scientific "fact" is,
admissible and inadmissible evidence in making scientific "proofs," the larger, non-
scientific paradigms which guide scientific practice, and so forth. In other words, the
philosophical dimension of any field of inquiry has to do with its larger meaning
dimensions, the "big questions" which it inspires in us when we really to try to
inquire into what it is and how it works. In keeping with the concept of the "spiral
curriculum," or the proposition that "the foundations of any subject may be taught to
anybody at any age in some form" (Bruner,1966), the "philosophy of" this or that can
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

be done by young children at their particular level. For example, the discussion
about magic quoted above is an example of young children doing philosophy of
science, because the participants are evaluating claims about the power to manipulate
nature through technologies of one sort or another in a critical manner.
Above and beyond the educational implications of community of inquiry, the
process is a training ground for the skills and dispositions associated, not just with
creative and critical thinking, but with the autonomous, democratic personality
(Sharp, 1991). The constant dual encouragement both to think for oneself and to
think "in community" forms the basis for a way of solving social problems and
dealing with conflict which is both autonomous and socially engaged. The high value
placed on working through issues as a group, on giving and asking for reasons, and
the emphasis on evaluating logical arguments, not the persons who hold them,
provides a fundamental context for the learning of tolerant, non-biased attitudes
towards others, and for the formation of healthy self-concept (Lago, 1990). As
children become skilled in the discourse of CI, they are able to apply its form of
social problem solving to issues of fairness, equity, or personal conflict which arise in
the community of the classroom. CI provides the discourse setting for a moral
community.
Community of inquiry theory and methodology represents a form of pedagogy
and a model of classroom practice which is both consonant with the most advanced
early childhood theory, and also embodies the aspirations of the 20th century
Western reform movement in education, which is directed towards the evolution of a
citizen who is capable of what Barber (1984) has characterized as "strong
democracy." The "strong" democratic personality is individuated and autonomous,
but also highly collaborative, and holds a "conflict model" rather than an "order
model" of social process (Chesler & Crowfroot, 1975), meaning she feels it is
possible to use conflict in the interests of positive change and development. The
community of inquiry's emphasis on the social construction of knowledge, and on
truth as a process rather than a given; its emphasis on group process, on
collaboration, problem-solving, and emergence, make of it a developmentally
appropriate form of education for the cultural and social goal of the democratic
personality. Recent advances in our understanding of children's thinking have
allowed us to see that it is not too early, provided we are sensitive to young children's
limitations and lack of experience, to start toward this goal in the early years. Nor
should we forget how deeply we as adults stand to be enriched as we assist at young
children's collaborative construction of meaning.
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

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Andersen, H.C. (1953). The steadfast tin soldier. New York: Scribner.
Barber, B. (1984). Strong democracy. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
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Bower, T.G.R. (1989). The rational infant: Learning in infancy. New York: W.H.
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Bruner, J. (1966). The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
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Carey, S. (1985). Conceptual change in childhood. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chesler, M. & Crowfoot, J. (1975). Toward a conflict model for understanding the
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Chomsky, N. (1980). On cognitive structures and their development. In Language
and learning. M. Piatelli-Palmarini, Ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Collodi, C. (1991). Pinnochio. Prince Frederick, MD: Recorded Books.
Dewey, J. (1991[1910]). How we think. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
Edwards, C.P. (1986). Promoting social and moral development in young children:
Creative approaches for the classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.
Egan, K. (1988). Primary understanding: Education in early childhood. New York:
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Egan, K. (1994). Young children's imagination and learning: Engaging children's
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Elkind, D. (1993). Images of the young child. Washington: NAEYC.
Fodor, J. (1980). On the impossibility of acquiring more powerful structures. In
Language and learning. M. Piatelli-Palmarini, Ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
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Gardner, H. (1985). Frames of mind. New York: Basic Books.
Hauge, M. & C. (1973). The gingerbread man. Racine, WI: Golden Press.
Hawkins, J, Pea, R.D., Glick, J. & S. Scribner (1984). "Merds that laugh don't like
mushrooms": Evidence for deductive reasoning by preschoolers.
Developmental Psychology 20 (4): 584-594.
Kant, I. (1965). Critique of pure reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. New York:
St. Martin's Press.
Katz, L. & Chard, S. (1991). Engaging children's minds: The project method. New
York: Ablex.
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Kennedy, D. (1992). Using Peter Rabbit as a philosophical text with young children.
Analytic Teaching 13, 4 (Fall): 53-58.
Kennedy, D. (1994). The community of inquiry and educational structure. In
Thinking, Children, and Education. M. Lipman, Ed. Dubuque, IA : Kendall
Hunt.
Krechevsky, M. (1991). Project Spectrum: An innovative assessment alternative.
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Lago, J.C. (1990). The community of inquiry and the development of self-esteem.
Thinking 9,1: 12-16.
Langer, J. (1980). The origins of logic: Six to twelve months. New York:
Academic Press.
Lipman, M., Sharp, A. & F. Oscanyan (1979). Philosophy in the classroom.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Lipman, M. (1988a). Critical thinking: What can it be? Educational Leadership
46,1 (September): 38-43.
Lipman, M. (1988b). Elfie. Upper Montclair, NJ: Institute for the Advancement of
Philosophy for Children.
Lipman, M. & Gazzard, A. (1988). Getting our thoughts together: Instructional
manual to accompany Elfie. Upper Montclair, NJ: Institute for the
Advancement of Philosophy for Children.
Lipman, M. (1991). Thinking in education. Cambridge: Cambridge University
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Lobel, A. (1970). Frog and Toad are friends. New York:Harper & Row.
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Matthews, G.B. (1988). The philosophical imagination in children's literature. In
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Sharp, A. (1994). The doll hospital. Upper Montclair, NJ: Institute for the
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MORE CHILDREN'S BOOKS FOR PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION
Asch, F. (1982). Happy birthday moon. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Asch, F. (1985). Bear shadow. New York: Simon & Schuster.
FORMING COMMUNITIES OF INQUIRY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASSROOMS KENNEDY 2

Gordon, G. (1992). Duckat. New York: Scholastic.

Steig, W.(1969). Sylvester and the magic pebble. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Steig, W. (1984). Yellow and Pink. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Myller, R. (1962). How big is a foot? New York: Dell.
Williams, B. (1974). Albert's toothache. New York: Dutton.
Wiseman, B. (1959). Morris the moose. New York: Harper & Row.
Zolotow, C. (1986). I know a lady. New York: Viking.
i
. McCall (1988) includes an extended transcript of a discussion
among second-graders, based on a reading of a short section of
Lipman's novel Elfie (19