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20 Thinking Tools Collaborative Inquiry For The Classroom
20 Thinking Tools Collaborative Inquiry For The Classroom
20 Thinking Tools Collaborative Inquiry For The Classroom
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AN: 162389 ; Cam, Philip.; 20 Thinking Tools : Collaborative Inquiry for the Classroom
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ACER Press
2
Collaborative Inquiry for the Classroom
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All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Copyright Act 1968 of
Australia and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.
Bibliography.
For primary and secondary school students.
ISBN 978 0 86431 501 4.
372.8
Explanatory Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Theoretical Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Practical Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
The Tools of Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Introductory Toolkit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
The Question Quadrant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Reasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Agreement/Disagreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Distinctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Borderline Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Thought Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Thumbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Intermediate Toolkit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67
Agendas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Counterexamples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
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Generalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Discussion Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Advanced Toolkit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89
Fact, Value, Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Deductive Reasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Reasoning Diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Disagreement Diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
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The tools in this book have been classified using the system below. It is
important to ensure that your students demonstrate a basic proficiency with the
more elementary tools before proceeding to those at the next level. In general,
the rate of progression will vary with the educational stage of the students, with
older students being able to progress to the Intermediate and Advanced Tools
more quickly. Progression will also depend on the amount of time and effort
devoted to acquiring proficiency in the use of the tools, and on whether or not
attention has been paid to their acquisition in earlier years. While I have linked
the tools to different educational stages, students of any age will need to acquire
facility with the Introductory, Intermediate and Advanced Tools, in that order.
Teachers should also note that most of the tools can be used in elementary, as
well as more sophisticated, ways.
Introductory
These tools can be introduced to students at any age and level of
attainment. They are particularly suitable for students in their early
school years.
Intermediate
The Intermediate Tools can be introduced to students once they
have learned to use the Introductory Tools. They are particularly
suitable for students in their middle primary years.
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Advanced
The Advanced Tools require some logical sophistication
and/or a capacity to reason abstractly. They are
particularly suitable for secondary school students, but
may also be introduced to experienced students in the
final year of primary school.
Suppose for a moment that students were to graduate from our schools
almost entirely innumerate. Imagine the outcry. Now picture them turning
out to be more or less illiterate and how appalled the community would be.
By contrast, students actually do leave our schools basically insocratic, and it is
barely noticed. Given that until now there has not even been a word such as
‘insocratic’ to stand alongside ‘illiterate’ and ‘innumerate’, it is hardly surprising.
Yet I am referring to something quite comparable and so basic that it demands
the most serious attention.
I derive the word ‘insocratic’ from ‘Socrates’. Socrates was fond of engaging
people of all ages in dialogue aimed at getting them to think for themselves
about the central issues of life. He held that the unexamined life was not worth
living, and that the kind of open-minded inquiry in which he engaged with
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his fellows was really the best way to live. In coining this term, I do not suggest
that we should be engaging students in Socratic dialogue in the classroom.
Were you to inspect Socrates’ practices closely, you might not altogether agree
with his methods, and you might even wonder whether the specific kind of
knowledge that he sought actually is central to a good life. Yet there can be no
doubt that the ability to think about the issues and problems that we face in
our lives, to explore life’s possibilities, to appreciate alternative points of view, to
critically evaluate what we read and hear, to make appropriate distinctions
and needful connections, and generally to make reasonable judgements are
among the attributes of anyone who has learnt to think effectively in life.
People who cannot adequately think for themselves in these ways are to that
extent insocratic. And my claim is that our education system systematically
fails to teach people to think for themselves to any significant degree.
Introduction 1
We attempt to teach people to reason mathematically and to read
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fluently—though there are perennial calls for schools to teach these things
better than they do. We try to teach people to comprehend the various
subject matters that form the basis of the school curriculum—although this
comprehension tends to rely heavily on memory work and basic routines.
Yet virtually no attention is given to teaching people to think well in the
context of their lives away from school, in those everyday social, familial and
personal contexts in which the great bulk of decisions and actions take place.
There is a Reading Recovery program, but no Thinking Recovery to rescue
the ‘insocratic’ student. And the kind of attention that we normally pay to
thinking in the curriculum has at best a diffuse effect when it comes to these
contexts, and for the most part provides no preparation at all.
This is a source of social and personal tragedy. All too often individuals,
families, organisations, communities and sections of society live with the
consequences of poorly thought-out decisions, faulty reasoning, biased
judgements, unreasonable conduct, narrow perspectives, unexamined values
and unfulfilled lives.
Introduction 3
Introducing the toolkits
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will soon discover the benefits of working with Agendas. I also recommend
that teachers make use of Discussion Maps as soon as they begin to introduce
students to the Intermediate Tools, in order to help keep track of the growing
complexity of discussion. The explicit use of Counterexamples, Criteria and
Generalisation, which can be introduced in succession, also makes demands on
the mapping process.
Fact, Value, Concept gives students an Advanced Tool for analysing questions
and uncovering further questions that may be necessary for the purposes of their
inquiry. The introduction of formal Deductive Reasoning and the various kinds of
diagrams that can help them structure and track discussion completes the set of
Advanced Tools that this book provides. When introducing diagrams, teachers
should begin with Reasoning Diagrams, and only proceed to Assumptions and
Disagreement Diagrams when this basic device is well understood.
Introduction 5
There are three general pieces of advice about introducing these tools that I
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3 Make the tools as visible as possible: Be sure to make the tools as visible
and concrete as possible. Particularly for younger students, I recommend
that you use the idea of a toolbox and ask them to visualise it. When first
acquiring a tool, get them to think of placing it in their box, and then
subsequently ask them to think of reaching for it as the need arises. You
can even build a Thinking Tools Box as a teaching aid and keep cut-outs
of the tools in it. You should encourage your students to identify the tools
that they use by name, and have the names of the tools they are learning
to use posted up in the classroom. It will help if you also display examples
of the students’ work in such a way that they can readily identify their own
successful use of the tools.
This book follows John Dewey (1966, 1997) and Matthew Lipman (2003)
in emphasising the centrality in school education of learning to think. Both
these philosophers of education belong to what we may call the tradition of
reflective education, in which learning to think lies at the core of educational
aims and practices. Furthermore, both writers understand thinking as a
process of inquiry.
Dewey’s model of inquiry owes much to the patterns of thought in
experimental science, although he applied it to inquiries into matters of value as
well as matters of fact. Indeed, Dewey was particularly concerned with the need
to develop an inquiring intelligence in regard to values, and he thought that we
had much to learn in our deliberations and disputes over values from modes of
thought that have been successful in science.
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Theoretical Background 7
on the ways in which people relate to one another in their everyday lives and
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habits and capacities that characterise people who have learnt to think for
themselves, such as:
On the other hand, by having students learn to think together, we are also
developing social habits and dispositions, such as:
Theoretical Background 9
that a person’s social and intellectual development is primarily a process in
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which students come to ask themselves for reasons. Learning to consider the
viewpoints of others—rather than merely asserting one’s own—forms the
basis for coming to consider alternatives to one’s own first thoughts and to
generally being prepared to explore a range of views and possibilities in one’s
own thinking. In general, learning to think for oneself is, on this view, to
convert the practices of open collaborative inquiry into ways of thinking for
oneself through the process of internalisation.
Vygotsky is better known to teachers for what he calls ‘the zone of proximal
development’. This zone is defined by the difference between what a student
can do unaided and what he or she can do with prompting or with scaffolding
provided by an adult, or by more competent peers. The zone of proximal
development focuses on the student’s potential, and instruction proceeds ahead
of the actual level of development, drawing on socially available functions
Theoretical Background 11
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& CONCEPTUAL
EXPLORATION
problematic problem ideas, implications, evidence, tests, conclusion,
initial situation formation, conjectures, assumptions, criteria resolution,
agenda setting hypotheses meanings implementation
Practical Beginnings 13
Initiating inquiry
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When your students have become familiar with this practice, you should
vary the procedure. For example, you might divide the class into pairs or threes
and have each pair or threesome negotiate a question among themselves and, if
they are able, write it with a felt pen on a strip of paper. This will actively involve
all your students in the process of question formation and should improve the
quality of the questions asked. You might like to adopt the practice of having
your students keep a reflection book in which they record questions about their
lives that occur to them in the course of the day, and which they bring to class
for discussion. Once they have mastered the basics, you will be able to help them
make their questions more deeply exploratory, as will be explained later when we
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Practical Beginnings 15
will quickly get better with practice. They will soon be able to supply deeper
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connections in place of more superficial ones; and they will see that sometimes
questions are logically connected, so that, for example, it would be important to
try to answer one question before turning to another with which it is connected.
Having assembled the questions, the students are ready to begin their
discussion. They will almost certainly have generated many more questions than
can be discussed in the time available, and may well have generated sufficient
inquiry starters to keep the class going for several sessions. Provided that interest
is maintained, that is all to the good. You do not need to start every session by
generating questions, and next time you may begin by asking the students to
provide a brief review of their previous session and then invite them to take
up the discussion from where it left off, or to proceed to other questions that
remain to be discussed.
While your students are just beginning to learn what makes a question good
for inquiry, you might proceed more directly by yourself selecting a question
(or group of questions) that seems to have real promise. The discussion will
almost certainly fall flat if you don’t alight upon a question of substance. Having
said this, it can be useful briefly to address a question or two that can be easily
answered; or to consider one where different hypotheses might be suggested
that lead nowhere, because, for instance, there is no way of testing them out.
It helps students to get a sense of the difference between these kinds of
dead-end questions and those that open up a really stimulating discussion.
Quite reasonably, teachers often feel that they would like the time to reflect
on the chosen topic or question before commencing discussion. This is often
a good idea. Among other things, it provides the teacher with the opportunity
to formulate some supplementary questions or to devise an exercise or an
is therefore quite common for teachers to take the process described above up
to this point in one sitting, and then to come back to discussion on the next
occasion, allowing time for further preparation.
Generating suggestions
The first object of discussion is to generate ideas, hypotheses, conjectures or
expressions of opinion—or what I call Suggestions, in short. That is to say,
there is some question, problem or issue under discussion and we are looking
for possible answers, explanations, solutions, or remedies in response. If the
question with which we began is one appropriate for inquiry, it will leave
room for various possible responses of this kind. Attending to these different
possibilities is crucial, because it enables us to move on to the business of
reasoning, analysis and evaluation that is needed in order to reach a considered
judgement or conclusion.
Just how the discussion proceeds will depend to some extent on what kind
of question is under discussion. One standard beginning is to ask the questioner
to address their question in a preliminary way. It may be helpful for the
questioner to explain what prompted their question, to clarify it if need be, and
also to offer further thoughts if he or she has any. By now, other students will be
ready to respond. Since we are looking for a variety of opinions, different points
of view or alternative ideas or possibilities, it is important to allow a number
of students to speak briefly at this stage. During the process, students can be
encouraged to build on each other’s ideas, to express agreement or disagreement,
to offer alternatives, or simply to try out an idea. Some clarification of their
ideas may be needed, including making distinctions and connections of various
sorts between the suggestions themselves. While it is right and proper for
students to express their differences and disagreements by giving reasons for
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them, you should ask students to put aside detailed debate on any suggestion
for the moment, until some alternatives have been collected.
We need different points of view, rival hypotheses, or alternative ideas in order
to suspend judgement in the community as a whole. The suspension of judgement
is central to the intersubjective practice of inquiry. It may be that some students
begin with fixed ideas about the matter under discussion, but the fact that other
students express different ideas, or that alternative possibilities are suggested, means
that the community has not made up its mind and discussion will ensue.
Let us take, for example, the following suggestions from a secondary
classroom in which students are addressing the question of what makes an action
fair. In this case the suggestions were generated by discussion in small groups.
Practical Beginnings 17
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Conceptual exploration
In order to get an initial feel for conceptual exploration, let us go back to the
question we were considering a moment ago: What makes an action fair? You
coming up with examples of actions that they take to be either fair or not fair,
and this almost inevitably leads into controversy about one case or another.
This is because the question with which we began effectively calls on us to state
the criteria for saying that an action is fair; and like just about all of the central
concepts we employ when we talk about things of importance to our lives,
the tacit criteria that govern the concept of fairness turn out to be somewhat
uncertain and surprisingly contentious.
So first of all we need to make our unspoken criteria explicit, and then we
need to examine them. This may not result in a consensus about the meanings of
concepts we employ, but it will enable us to more deeply understand the import
of our ideas and to better appreciate where we stand in the intellectual terrain.
Distinction-making is one basic kind of conceptual move. Here we insert
a divider between things that might otherwise be treated as the same. This can
bring greater clarity and precision and save us from a multitude of errors. In the
discussion of fairness, for example, one group’s suggestion was that an action is
‘fair enough’ if it does no one any harm. We may well want to ask whether the
notion of something being ‘fair enough’ is the same as something being fair.
After all, to say that something is fair enough is often just to say that it is merely
sufficiently justified to be acceptable in the circumstances. To be ‘fair enough’ is
therefore, arguably, to be only good enough to be allowed to pass. And qualified
fairness is not what we were asking about. It could therefore be important to
distinguish being fair from merely being ‘fair enough’. In the case in point, even
were an action fair enough so long as it did no one any harm, ‘not doing harm’
may be too weak a constraint to ensure that an action is completely fair.
Distinction-making is to be found whenever we try to sort out ambiguities
or vagueness in the meanings of words.
Practical Beginnings 19
Conceptual exploration also involves paying attention to connotations
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and other conceptual connections. This can be as simple as seeing that words
belong to clusters or families of words that have bonds of meaning, that form
conceptual oppositions, or are ordered along some dimension. Consider, for
example, the suggestion that an action is fair if it treats people as they deserve
to be treated. We usually speak of what people deserve in the context of
reward and punishment. ‘To get what you deserve’ is to get your just reward
or punishment. In the context of fairness, ‘punishment’ and ‘reward’ belong
to a cluster of terms that have to do with appropriate penalties (according to
offence) and the differential treatment of people (according to merit), including
such words as ‘payback’, ‘retribution’, ‘forfeit’, ‘compensate’, and ‘prize’, ‘award’,
‘reward’ and ‘entitlement’. On the face of it, they belong to a different family of
ideas than those tied to equality.
So those who suggested that an action is fair if it treats people as they
deserve to be treated appear to be looking at fairness from a different angle than
those who said that an action is fair only if it treats everyone equally. (In more
advanced discussions, we might refer to the distinction between retributive and
distributive justice.) Perhaps, with some work, these two perspectives can be
made to align, but there is certainly a difference between them. It is a difference
that we can begin to articulate by exploring the connotations of the words being
used, and that is a very useful conceptual exercise.
Perhaps the most elementary task of this kind is to divide a set of things
into those that have some property and those that do not. Suppose that we had
a set of scenarios involving various actions, some of which are clearly fair, others
of which are clearly not fair, and some of which we could argue either way. In
attempting to categorise each of these scenarios as either FAIR or NOT FAIR
we need criteria. Our criteria are our reasons for saying that one action is fair
or that another is not, which are implicit in the judgements we make about the
various cases. Unearthing and scrutinising our criteria can be a demanding task.
others, and which may conflict with one another in certain circumstances. This
can lead to uncertainty and disagreement. We may need to determine whether
the features we are relying on are ones that something must have in order to be
categorised in a certain way, or ones that identify only some things of that kind;
or whether one criterion takes precedence over another when they come into
conflict, and so on.
From a seemingly simple task of categorisation, therefore, we can find
ourselves facing intellectually sophisticated and demanding issues. How far
students pursue such matters will depend on their age and experience as well
as their interests, but the possibilities of categorisation tasks are rich and
rewarding.
In sum, conceptual exploration gives us a clearer, more coherent view
of just about any rich and complex subject matter. When it comes to the
classroom, acquiring some basic tools for conceptual exploration—and
learning how to use them effectively—paves the way for deeper understanding
in all areas of the school curriculum. This provides strong grounds for saying
that the art of conceptual inquiry ought to be built into the learning process
throughout the school years.
Reasoning
Reasoning is an extensive topic that forms the subject matter of both formal
and informal logic, and yet it is hardly touched upon in school education.
The fact that scant attention has been paid to reasoning in school education is
sufficient to explain why most teachers were not trained to be aware of patterns
of reasoning, and often have difficulty in determining when those patterns are
valid or fallacious.
This would not be such a disaster if poor reasoning skills did not get people
into all sorts of difficulties in their lives. The fact is that muddle-headed and
fallacious reasoning, and such things as jumping to conclusions, acting on
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Practical Beginnings 21
logically implied. Secondly, however, there are those implications that follow
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with only some likelihood or degree of probability. Let us look at these in turn.
From some propositions others simply follow. For example, from the
claim that an action is fair only if it treats everyone equally, it follows that
any action that fails to treat people equally must be unfair. This implication
is important because we can now cast about for an example that treats people
unequally but which seems to be fair. Someone might suggest, for instance,
that when a younger brother or sister is required to go to bed earlier at night
than their sibling, this is unequal treatment and yet it is fair (or fair enough!)
given that they are younger. If this were accepted, it would provide what is
called a counterexample to the original claim, which would have to be revised
or given up. I am not saying, of course, that everyone is likely to agree that such
treatment is indeed unequal (or that such a policy is fair). We would certainly
need to look at what ‘equal treatment’ means here. It may well be argued that
being different in age is itself a difference that makes a difference—‘equal
treatment’ implying that like cases should be treated alike, rather than that
different cases should be treated the same.
Take a second example: From the claim that an action is fair when
everyone’s interests are taken into account, does it follow that an action cannot
be fair unless it takes everyone’s interests into account? To some people’s
surprise, the answer is that it does not follow. It is a common fallacy to think
that it does. For students to come to see that this is a fallacy in reasoning, and
why that is so, would be progress indeed. Later in the book, we will be learning
about how to teach students to avoid this kind of fallacy.
In learning to reason, we come to take account of the way that words such
as ‘if ’ operate, and so to be mindful of what statements containing ‘if’ clauses
do and do not imply. Students who were used to thinking about their reasoning
would also immediately notice the difference between ‘if ’ and ‘only if ’ as they
occur in the suggestions in our example. To say that an action is fair only if it treats
everyone equally, implies that if an action does not treat everyone equally then it
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is not fair. By contrast, the claim that an action is fair merely if it treats everyone
equally does not have this implication. To think that it does is to fall for the fallacy
in reasoning that we met a moment ago. Students who are practised in reasoning
are alert to such implications and choose their words carefully.
Most of the implications that students need to think about in examining
their ideas do not follow from them in the manner of what is known as
deductive logic. One thing is thought to imply another because they are
regularly found to accompany each other, or because there is some thread of
evidence linking them, or simply because this is what we have been brought up
to believe. Reasoning here covers a great deal of territory with which students
will become increasingly familiar as they learn to find their way in inquiry.
This includes learning to probe around in a situation where there may be more
than one live possibility, rather than assuming that the most salient possibility
Practical Beginnings 23
suggestion that has already been rejected. In short, in an inquiry process,
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opinionated than would otherwise be the case. This lack of consensus is hardly
surprising, given that we are often dealing with perennial questions of meaning
and value that do not have anything like single correct answers. Educators who
are used to dealing with questions that have settled correct answers sometimes
feel uncomfortable with such questions, and may even regard the lack of
authoritative or agreed-upon answers as a mark of the educational futility of
addressing them. Yet such questions are among the most important ones that
we face in our lives and our answers to them can make a significant difference to
the kind of society in which we are to live.
however, and yet inconsistent with some other conjecture that has been made.
Therefore the two conjectures cannot both be true, so that at least one of them
must be false. In this case, the logical demand for consistency is an important
part of the evaluative process that can help to point the way forward. It may
send us looking for evidence of one kind or another to sort out the matter.
In fact, what we have just described is a commonplace in science, where
the implications of competing hypotheses are subject to assessment through
controlled experimental test and the analysis of data. Science makes use of
reasoning to derive testable predictions from hypotheses or theories, and then
uses experimental procedure and systematic observation and analysis to check
whether they conform to the evidence.
One of the distinctive features of classroom inquiry is that it uses student
experience as evidence. Students draw on their experience to back up their
Practical Beginnings 25
claims. A simple case might involve students giving an example from their
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own experience. Examples are an elementary evidential tool that can be used
in the evaluation of many suggestions. We need to be mindful, however,
that experience is a complex construction that varies from one student to
another—along with individual differences in intellectual and social maturity,
competence, temperament, likes, dislikes, interests, family life, friendships,
social circumstances, and all of the happenstance of their individual histories.
Thus for students to test their ideas and understandings against each other’s
experience, and to develop new thoughts and ideas by reflecting on their
combined experience, is an important part of the learning process. By sharing
their experiences and reflecting on them, students are learning to open
themselves up to a wider range of experience, to become more sensitive to the
experience of others, and to take a more objective view of their own experience.
Experience also provides students with a valuable source of what I referred
to earlier as ‘counterexamples’. A counterexample is an example that shows
that a general claim is mistaken. If someone were to say, for example, that
Indigenous people are all lazy folk who don’t try to do anything for themselves,
students will know of Indigenous people who do not fit this stereotype. Even
if this does not come through personal acquaintance, it may come from other
forms of experience, such as television or the Internet. Many Australian students
could cite the Olympic athlete Cathy Freeman, for instance. She supplies a
counterexample to the generalisation that was made, and forces the student who
made it to reconsider what they said. Counterexamples provide an important
evaluative tool for the purposes of inquiry, and students can become quite adept
at drawing counterexamples from their own experience.
Students engaged in classroom inquiry often find that in order to evaluate
their suggestions they need information that they do not have to hand. Such
background knowledge provides an important source of evidential material that
can be used for evaluation. This includes information that might be supplied by
the teacher, knowledge derived from textbooks or library resources, through the
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are used in these ways. They are useful facts rather than so much unusable
information.
In seeking information, students must make judgements about the
reliability of their sources. Are they trustworthy? Are some sources more
authoritative than others? Do the sources provide unquestionable knowledge, or
are they merely reliable guides? If the latter, just how likely is the information to
be correct? Moreover, what standards of proof or evidence should we require in
one context or another? And how should we decide these things? Such questions
lead us into that branch of philosophy known as epistemology, or the theory
of knowledge, and thus into a philosophical discussion in its own right. Since
questions as to what constitutes knowledge and how can we come by it hover
about all inquiry, students will need to engage in epistemological discussion
from time to time. More generally, however, it is important for students to
develop their critical faculties in evaluating sources of knowledge or evidence,
and not to uncritically treat all sources as equal or to favour some sources over
others for reasons that do not stack up.
It is often a good idea to conclude an inquiry with a short reflection
session on what has been accomplished. This is not an occasion for teachers
to summarise the conclusions that have been reached. It would be better to
ask the students what they have learnt from their inquiries, than to try to state
the outcomes yourself. Since there is often room for a range of reasonable
judgements, be prepared for a variety of responses. While many students are
likely to agree on what has been discovered, others may express a somewhat
different view, or even outright disagreement. In any case, it is important to
note that such summing up addresses only one aspect of the inquiry. It is useful
to ask the students questions that lead the class to reflect on both the process
and the outcome of various aspects of their inquiry. Note that Thumbs provides
a tool for such reflection (see pp. 61–63).
Different kinds of inquiry differ in their methods of evaluation and the
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outcomes that they are expected to deliver. The experimental method evaluates
scientific hypotheses by conducting critical trials or tests to see whether
predicted observable consequences materialise, and then draws theoretical
conclusions accordingly. Practical suggestions are evaluated in everyday life by
criticism and formulation into plans that we implement, and often continue
to monitor and evaluate further down the track. Conceptual suggestions, such
as that an action is fair only if it treats everyone equally, are more likely to be
evaluated against actual and possible cases that could provide counterexamples,
the conclusion being the adoption or revision of some idea. Some cases,
therefore, conclude with the concrete implementation of suggestions; other
cases result in theoretical confirmation or repudiation; and yet others bring
about a shift in our understanding, the practical bearing of which may be
indirect and diffuse.
Practical Beginnings 27
While the last kind of result is more common in the classroom, it is important
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for students to put their results into action in one way or another. Most notably,
in the educational context, this means the students seeking to apply what they
have learnt to other school work: written, verbal, graphic, dramatic, and so on.
That is to say, the work that they have done through collaborative inquiry should
make a difference to the quality of their work overall.
It is important to see what happens, therefore, when collaborative inquiry is
integral to teaching and learning in a school. Since this is unfortunately all too
rare, we still have a lot to learn in this regard. Although the results to date are
somewhat limited, we can be much encouraged by the fact that where persistent
immersion in collaborative inquiry has been implemented throughout a school,
we see significant improvements in both academic outcomes and social attitudes
and behaviour. And where this kind of work has been systematically carried out
over several years, the results can be quite dramatic. (For example, look at the
results from Buranda State School in Queensland, Australia, available from the
school through www.burandass.qld.edu.au)
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working with questions, others are used for reasoning, for conceptual exploration
or for evaluation, and so on. Even then, it is worth noting that some of the tools
could almost equally well be classified under more than one heading. To arrange
questions into Agendas, for example, is to group them under some theme or topic,
which is itself a way of conceiving of them, and therefore is a conceptual activity.
Similarly, Disagreement Diagrams provides a way of keeping track of the reasoning
that occurs in a disagreement, so that it is equally a tracking tool; and to give and
consider reasons is at once to justify or evaluate as well as to reason.
The scheme provided is a useful one all the same. It recognises that in our
classroom inquiries we basically engage in the following kinds of intellectual
work: we raise questions, hypothesise or suggest, reason with each other, engage
in conceptual exploration, and evaluate claims and suggestions. For each of
these broad kinds of tasks there are tools to assist us, whether we are beginners
or more advanced students.
quite quickly. If you are a secondary teacher, you should eventually be able to
introduce the Advanced Tools, but you will need to ensure that the ground has
been well prepared.
John Dewey made the extraordinary claim that ‘all which the school can
or need do for pupils, so far as their minds are concerned ... is to develop their
ability to think’ (1966, p. 152). Since by ‘think’ he meant ‘inquire’, it was the
development of inquiring minds to which he referred. Even if Dewey’s claim
may be criticised for blithely ignoring a whole raft of outcomes that look to be
legitimate ones for school education, he was certainly right to stress the central
place of developing students’ ability to think. And although our schools are in
many ways much closer to Dewey in this regard than those he addressed some
ninety years ago, we still have far to go. I hope that this book may in some small
way help us to continue to move in Dewey’s direction, and accordingly I wish you
every success in your attempts to improve the quality of your students’ thinking.
sun is low and it casts a yellowish-orange glow over the scene. Piglet is wrapped in
woollens and a scarf, while Pooh has nothing on but an old short-sleeved top that is
several sizes too small for him. Piglet says to Pooh touchingly, ‘We’ll be friends forever,
won’t we Pooh?’ ‘Even longer,’ Pooh replies.
‘closed’. An open question does not have a settled answer, whereas a closed question
does. If there are facts to hand that settle the answer to a question beyond all
reasonable doubt, say, or if the answer is a matter of general knowledge, then the
question is normally regarded as closed. This applies to the first four questions on
our list, two of which demand nothing more than what is generally thought of as
reading comprehension, while the other two refer to matters of general knowledge.
When I say that these questions are closed, I do not mean that they need to
be settled in the minds of every person who reads the passage or has it read to
them. The first question, for instance, might not be settled in a reader’s mind
for all sorts of reasons. The reader might not know the relevant facts of climate,
for instance, or be uncertain about where Pooh and Piglet live. Even such a
straightforward question is settled only in the context of relevant background
knowledge and assumptions. Nonetheless, the question is almost certain to be
regarded as closed because on standard background assumptions the scene is set
in winter. Similarly, it is easy to imagine someone tossing up as to whether the
answer to the third question on our list is A.A. Milne or, say, Kenneth Grahame
(author of Wind in the Willows), so that the question is not settled in their
mind. Once again, however, the question can be regarded as closed because
there is no serious dispute that A.A. Milne wrote the stories about Pooh and
Piglet. There is a single, established correct answer in this case.
Stories leave many things indeterminate. It need never be explained to us
why Pooh is out walking on a winter’s day dressed only in a short-sleeved top.
We might be left to guess. Perhaps it is because he already has a warm furry
coat. Maybe the top is the only thing that he has that isn’t too dirty to wear. It
could be that, being a Bear of Very Little Brain, it simply didn’t occur to him to
dress for the weather. Such suggestions may be more or less plausible or fitting,
but neither the text nor the background knowledge and assumptions that we
bring to it need rule them out. They are open possibilities.
Questions 5 and 6 on our list ask us to imagine such possibilities. Although
they provide very elementary examples of open imaginative questions, it is easy to
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see that they can help to fulfil a very important educational function. Imaginative
exploration of the possibilities within a story is a means to its interpretation. We
engage in it whenever we make guesses about what a character will do, where
their behaviour is likely to lead, what possibilities are open to them, or how a
plot will turn. We also do exactly the same thing in daily life when we attempt
to discern people’s motivations, try to predict how they would behave in a given
set of circumstances, or think about our own life’s possibilities. Obviously we
can do these things either more or less intelligently and with varying degrees
of insight and understanding. In the long run, the difference between a well-
developed capacity of this kind and a poorly developed one will have such far-
reaching consequences for our lives that we should pay considerable attention to
its development. The nurturing of such a capacity is one of the benefits that the
study of literature can confer, and this alone provides a quite compelling reason
to give students ample opportunity to study it.
sort. They are ‘larger’, more general questions about what we should value in
life and our conceptions of what is possible. And while there is little point in
arguing in favour of one imaginative possibility over another (such as Pooh’s
warm furry coat rather than his forgetfulness being responsible for his state
of attire), the same is not true of these last two questions. Here a proper
exploration will require us to critically examine what we say, to discuss our
disagreements, and test out alternative points of view. We will need to do
such things as: clarify what we are saying, give and evaluate reasons, examine
assumptions, draw relevant inferences, make necessary distinctions and
connections, examine concepts, and appeal to appropriate criteria. In short, in
order to address these final two questions we will need to engage in intellectual
inquiry. Hence we may call them ‘inquiry questions’.
Let me summarise the discussion so far by means of The Question Quadrant.
I do not claim that it exhausts all possible questions that students might raise,
or that its compartments are completely watertight. Nevertheless, I have found
it good enough for practical purposes. The particular version shown below
assumes a set of questions that are stimulated by a text, and somewhat different
labels would obviously be needed if some other form of stimulus were used
to generate the questions. This is a complication that can be set aside for the
present purpose.
TEXTUAL
QUESTIONS
Is the season summer or winter? Where are Pooh and Piglet going?
Who is dressed more warmly, Why isn’t Pooh dressed more
Pooh or Piglet? warmly?
READING COMPREHENSION LITERARY SPECULATION
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CLOSED
OPEN
QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS
INTELLECTUAL
QUESTIONS
open intellectual questions would serve us best. Once students have some idea
of these requirements, they are unlikely to ask very many closed questions. If
they do ask questions of basic comprehension, they will need to be addressed.
In all probability they can be answered by other students in the class, before
moving on. Again, questions of background factual knowledge might arise,
but students will quickly come to see that they are more properly addressed by
asking the teacher, by a trip to the library or by an appropriate web search. The
persistent problem is that many children continue to ask questions of the kind
that I refer to here as ‘literary speculation’, which can occupy a great deal of
discussion time with very little pay-off as far as intellectual inquiry is concerned.
The question is how we can get our students to raise a greater
preponderance of questions that naturally belong to the lower right quadrant.
Experience gives us reason to believe that an effective way of doing so is simply
to introduce them to the distinctions between questions that we find in The
Question Quadrant.
uses ‘Look and see questions’ in place of ‘Reading comprehension’, ‘Ask an expert
questions’ in place of ‘Factual knowledge’, ‘Use your imagination questions’ in
place of ‘Literary speculation’ and ‘Thinking questions’ in place of ‘Inquiry’.
When working with The Question Quadrant in the classroom, I like to lay it out
on the floor with such labels on pieces of card.
As an introduction to The Question Quadrant, you might first discuss the
various kinds of questions with your students, using a made-up example or two
that they can easily relate to for each of the quadrants. Then give your students
some further made-up questions to sort out for themselves. You might do this as
a whole class, but when the students are sufficiently confident you could divide
them into small groups, with each group being given a minute or two to sort
out a number of questions for themselves. (If you give all the groups the same
questions they will more easily be able to discuss any disagreements between the
groups when they report back.)
Does the law allow children who Did Mr Beecham do the right thing
steal to be sent to jail? in his proposal to Carl, or not?
Are hardware stores allowed to How can stealing ever be all
sell knives to children? right?
ASK SOMEONE WHO KNOWS YOU REALLY HAVE TO THINK
THE ANSWER ABOUT IT
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Introductory Toolkit—Suggestions 37
indicators. To say that value judgements may act as suggestions is to indicate
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that, in the context of inquiry, values are something to be inquired into and
not just dogmatically asserted. This is especially so when it comes to areas of
disagreement about values.
• Meanings: Attempts to define a term or to analyse the meaning of a concept
are suggestions made in response to conceptual questions. Such suggestions
are a starting point for conceptual exploration.
As with students’ questions, the quality of their suggestions is a cardinal
determinant of the outcomes that they achieve. So it is a discouraging thought
that, while teachers may often be delighted by the fertility of their students’
suggestions, the production of suggestions seems to be one of those things that
can be encouraged but not taught. The fact is, however, that, once their interest
is engaged, students will spontaneously come up with suggestions. The teacher’s
task is to provide the means by which students can learn to improve the quality
of their suggestions. Fortunately, this is something that we can do. Implausible
suggestions, unworkable proposals, wild conjectures and naïve hypotheses can be
discovered to be such when they are carefully considered by the class, because they
involve such things as false or unwarranted assumptions, erroneous implications,
failure to fit with the evidence, or likely but undesirable consequences.
By learning to subject their suggestions to systematic scrutiny your students
will gradually internalise habits of thought that help them to discard more
obviously unworkable ideas with increasing ease. Of course, nothing can
substitute for a rich store of knowledge and understanding, and in many areas
students’ suggestions will inevitably betray their relative lack of experience.
By critically examining their suggestions in the light of what knowledge and
experience they do have, however, your students will definitely improve the
quality of their suggestions over time.
The other major factor in using suggestions in an inquiry is the importance
of alternative possibilities. Open intellectual and practical questions generally
leave room for alternative possible answers for which something can be said.
Even when, at the end of the day, there must be a unique right answer or truth
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of inquiry deserve to be taken seriously, even if a brief airing is often all that
is needed for them to see which ones are worth taking forward. Obviously,
you may be aware of important possibilities or other points of view that have
not occurred to your students. And as teachers we sometimes have in mind
particular possibilities that we would like our students to suggest, but which
do not seem to be forthcoming. You need to exercise caution in such cases.
If a suggestion is important and does not come up, you might eventually and
tentatively introduce it—‘Suppose that someone were to suggest the following
...’, ‘What do you think of that?’
In collaborative inquiry-based learning, suggestions are tools that students
use to make progress with an issue or headway with a problem. In pointing
out a direction that an inquiry might take, offering a suggestion is like
indicating that we should try a certain path when hiking across unfamiliar
territory. Just as with hiking, one cannot sensibly offer such a suggestion
without taking in the general lie of the land, having a sense of how that
path will help us to get to our destination, and of how it compares to other
alternatives that present themselves.
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Introductory Toolkit—Suggestions 39
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One of the most elementary tools of inquiry is the giving of reasons for claims
made. So in inquiry-based learning, from the very beginning, we need to
encourage students to give reasons. We might even begin the very first inquiry
session in the early years by teaching students to use the word ‘because’ to give
a reason. Of course, many students will intuitively use the word to give a reason
when asked to do so, but we want everyone in the class to have the word in
their toolkits so that they can consciously reach for it in order to give reasons.
We need to make reason-giving a move that they consciously and deliberately
make, and ask others to make, when that seems appropriate.
In order to establish reason-giving with young children, I might begin with
the following activity.
• I will tell the students that I am going to ask them about their all-time
favourite movie, or perhaps their favourite television show, or whether they
think that dogs or cats make better pets—anything, in fact, for which they
can be expected to have preferences or opinions, and for which they might
be able to supply a reason. I will not tell them about the word ‘reason’ or
anything like that, but simply say that I want them to be thinking about
which one is their favourite and why that is their favourite.
• I will also tell them to listen for a magic word that people might use when
they say why something is their favourite.
• Then I will go around the class and ask various people what is their favourite,
and then why that is their favourite.
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• Often I will repeat what they say and maybe emphasise the word ‘because’
when it gets used. When it begins to become apparent to the students that
this is the word, I will stop to ask who can guess the magic word. I will have
this word prepared on a sheet of card and ‘magically’ lay it on the floor when
students name it as the word for which they have been listening.
• I will then ask the students what people went on to do when they used the
word ‘because’. After a brief discussion we will see that they went on ‘to say
why’ or to give a reason. I will also have the word ‘reason’ on a sheet of card
and lay it on the floor.
• I will conclude by saying that when we come to discuss the story or whatever
it is that we are going to talk about today, I want them to keep the word
‘because’ handy because they might need it to give a reason for what they say.
and have them tell me about ‘because’ being a reason-giving word. Then I will
end by telling them that I want them to imagine that they have a toolbox on
the floor beside them and to pretend to open it up and look inside. ‘Look,’ I
will say, ‘it is empty! There is nothing inside.’ I will then ask them to pick up
the word ‘because’ and put it in their toolbox. So that when in future they
need to give a reason for something they can reach into their box and grab the
magic word.
• I will also tell them that we will be placing more tools in our box as we go
along, so that by the end of the term we will all have a kit of tools that we can
use in order to talk and think about things.
because
Do bunyips exist?
In the Community of Inquiry, giving and evaluating reasons is a collaborative
affair. Often students can be broken into small groups to explore reasons for
what they want to say, and then they can present their reasons to the class as
a whole for further deliberation. Depending on the age of the students, each
small group might be given a sheet of butcher’s paper and asked to write their
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Introductory Toolkit—Reasons 41
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reliable
no photographs of bunyips
no reports of bunyips
bunyip pictures are different in different books
‘bunyip’ sounds like a vegetable
One of the students in the class objected to the claim that there were no reports
of bunyips, saying that his cousin had told him that she had seen a bunyip
when she was camping with her family over the summer. Several students were
not prepared to accept this report at face value, some saying that it was a tall
tale and others that the cousin may have caught a glimpse of something else and
mistaken it for a bunyip.
In light of this, the class decided that they needed to distinguish between
reliable and unreliable reports of bunyips and the group whose reason it was
agreed to modify their claim by saying that there were no reliable reports of
bunyips. The student who had related the report of the bunyip was not quite
willing to give up on the issue, however, and insisted that, while his cousin
could have been mistaken, his classmates were not there and so they could not
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introduce it only to recommend the general procedure that the teacher used.
The use of small groups is an excellent vehicle for an initial consideration
of reasons. Having to communicate to one another what they think, and to
collaborate in coming to a written formulation of their reasons, fully involves
the students in the consideration of reasons. When the small groups then
present their reasons to the class as a whole, each group gets to test out their
reasons with their classmates and to think about the broader spectrum of
reasons that other groups have raised. The mix of small group activity and
whole class discussion is one that I generally recommend, and the activity we
have been viewing on reason-giving and the follow-up evaluation gives us a clear
example of how to make that mix work.
I have treated reason-giving and evaluation as an introductory topic in order
to suggest some simple ways of getting started in this area. Later we will move
from simple reason-giving to more complex reasoning, where students attempt
to provide evidence for the truth or falsity of a claim by relating it logically to
other claims.
Before we come to these more sophisticated tools, however, it is important
that students become used to the elementary business of giving reasons where
it is appropriate and also to be expecting this of one another. In developing
inquiring minds, nothing is more powerful than hearing others say things that
fascinate or surprise you and to want to know why they say what they do. And
then, sometimes, to begin to wonder why you think what you do, and whether
what you think can be justified by good reasons.
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Introductory Toolkit—Reasons 43
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It may seem odd to suggest that agreement and disagreement can be thought
of as a toggle-headed tool, but the reasoned expression of agreement and
disagreement is central to the dynamics of collaborative inquiry, and their
vigorous combination gives the process much of its critical edge.
Agreement and disagreement are the basic alternative responses to a
suggestion. When students express their agreement with someone’s suggestion,
they are normally expected to supply reasons that add to its plausibility; just as
when they express their disagreement, they are expected to give reasons for their
reservations. So discussing a suggestion involves a critical evaluation on the basis
of reasons both for and against it.
The interplay of agreement and disagreement gives direction to the
proceedings. For example, a succession of students may build a case for a
suggestion, but then students who do not agree begin to make observations that
pull us in the opposite direction. Students who come to a decision in a small
group then discover that another group has reached a different conclusion;
and now they find themselves together at a fork in the road, with each group
having to respond to the other’s reasons for heading down a different path.
In collaborative inquiry, agreement and disagreement represent patterns of
convergence and divergence in thought that enable us to tack back and forth
into the wind, and give our inquiry its forward movement.
It is important to note that the dynamics of an inquiry differs from that of a debate.
In a debate, opposing teams present arguments either for or against a proposition.
One must play one’s part in arguing the case that one’s team has been assigned,
regardless of one’s own opinions and the suggestions that one might otherwise
make. The object is to win the debate, not to offer helpful suggestions no matter
where they may lead. In debate, one expresses agreement with one’s team members
and disagreement with the opposition. It would be an act of treachery to do the
reverse and a sign of weakness to not know where one stood. Debating points often
do not depend on soundness of argument, but on rhetorical devices designed to cut
the ground from under the opposition and to sway the audience to one’s side. These
are the tactics of lawyers and politicians and which—for better or worse—are deeply
entrenched in the way that they conduct their affairs.
as we see fit, provided that what we say is constructive. We do not take sides
on an issue except when we feel we should, we may speak both for and against
a suggestion as we continue to deliberate, and may change our minds if reason
dictates. Rather than striving to see our opinions prevail, we are reflecting on
them in the hope that we may receive instruction.
It would be misleading to suggest that in an inquiry people should never
express opinions or give reasons other than those they hold. Someone may
disagree with a proposition in order to play devil’s advocate, for example,
and insofar as this helps to put that proposition to the test it can be an
entirely legitimate role to play. The danger of this and similar stances in
the classroom is, of course, that they can become a kind of game. Students
who delight in contradiction or who constantly play the sceptic, may bring
a sense of fun to the proceedings, but their input needs to be tempered by
recognition that inquiry is an attempt to make headway with the matters
under discussion.
There will also be occasions when a suggestion that is either generally agreed
to or else dismissed in the classroom may be regarded quite differently by some
members of the broader community. Students may need to be reminded of this,
so that a wider range of considerations is canvassed. Often the teacher can draw
attention to such considerations simply by asking the students whether they can
think of someone who might express a different opinion or look at the matter in
a very different way. If all else fails, the teacher may proceed to identify the view
in question and ask the students to consider it.
There can be many shades of agreement and disagreement. Students
may say that they ‘kind of ’ agree or disagree with what someone said, or
that they both ‘agree and disagree’. In such cases students need to tell us the
respects in which they concur or differ. Students expressing partial agreement
may be sympathetic to the proposition being put, but wish to improve on
it in some respect; or they may wholeheartedly agree with the proposition,
but for significantly different reasons than those previously given. Likewise,
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students who qualify their disagreement may want to express only some shade
of difference in the proposition or emphasise the importance of a different
reason. Students who both ‘agree and disagree’ with what someone says are
usually making much the same kinds of moves. They may wish to agree with
the proposition being put, but to disagree with the reason given in support; or
they may agree with a statement in some respects but not in others, thereby
wanting to improve on it.
In whatever way students qualify their expressions of agreement and
disagreement, the development of these more nuanced judgements is
to be encouraged. It represents a move away from an ‘I’m right/you’re
wrong’ mentality to one that recognises that we can often arrive at better
understandings and more reasonable decisions by looking for points of
agreement and disagreement rather than by making blanket judgements.
Introductory Toolkit—Agreement/Disagreement 45
As your students learn to explore their disagreements thoughtfully they will
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be acquiring the habit of dealing with their differences without recourse to the
destructive tendencies that otherwise so readily prevail. Verbal abuse, physical
violence, ostracism and gang rivalry all involve an element of antagonism built
on differences of one kind or another. It is therefore a social imperative that
we learn to deal with our differences on the basis of being reasonable with one
another, and learning to explore disagreements through the give and take of
reasons is a means of doing just that.
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meant not only to illustrate my claim but also to provide evidence that what I
say is true. They both exemplify and support my assertion. Evidential support
is a common reason for introducing examples. If someone says that global
warming is a reality, they might cite the disintegration of Antarctic ice shelves in
evidence. In that case, the breakup of the ice shelves is offered as an example to
prove what they say.
Care must be exercised when an example is used in evidence, as it might
not be typical or representative. That something is sometimes so does not
mean that it is always or even normally the case, and we need to take care that
we are not led astray by examples that we already have in mind just because
they appear to confirm what we are saying. When students supply examples
in support of a claim, it is therefore often useful to ask them whether they can
think of other examples that might provide contrary evidence. By encouraging
students to search for evidence against a claim as well as to provide evidence for
Introductory Toolkit—Examples 47
it, you are teaching them to evaluate claims critically. When appropriate, we
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need to remind our students that the critical evaluation of their claims is a key
requirement of inquiry.
Sometimes a single contrary example can be sufficient to defeat a claim.
Only one clear contrary case is required for us to reject a categorical assertion
that something is always the case, or that it is never the case. Such knockdown
examples are called counterexamples and are of sufficient importance to
be regarded as a thinking tool all on their own. Counterexamples will be
introduced later.
More general or abstract talk about a subject matter needs to be brought
into contact with relevant firsthand experience wherever possible in the
classroom. This will help your students to make sense out of the things that they
are discussing, and encourage them to think about their own lives in the context
of their learning. Examples drawn from experience are one way of making such
meaningful connections and should be encouraged.
Given that your students are engaged in inquiry, however, it is important that
the sharing of experience is a means of pursuing the inquiry and does not relapse
into some other form of discourse that deflects us from our objectives. Insofar
as drawing examples from experience is concerned, it may be necessary to ask a
student whether they are giving an illustration or providing evidence, as the case
might be, or merely engaged in the anecdotal retelling of some experience that
the discussion brought to mind. Sometimes such anecdotal material can form the
basis of an example, of course, but it is very important that students understand
this and learn to treat it accordingly. It is the difference between students who are
reminded of something that happened to them and then simply proceed to tell
the class about it, and students who say that they can provide an example from
their own experience and then proceed to tell the class.
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a bicycle.’ This may all be very well as an attempt at humour, or just fine as
an exercise in creative imagination, but it is definitely deviant as distinction-
making. Given that a distinction is normally a way of dividing things that are
similar, we can draw a distinction by stating it as a difference within a shared
domain. To say that red and green are different colours is to acknowledge a
shared domain—that is, colour—within which we wish to mark a distinction,
just as we might say that circles and squares are different in shape.
Of course, it is not always so easy to say just what the things we wish
to distinguish have in common. To take an example from below, what is it
that entrances and exits have in common? A satisfactory answer may not be
immediately obvious and we will have to think about it.
To proceed to make a distinction is to identify the property or properties
within the specified domain in which the things in question differ. To take
another simple example from below, we might say that a pebble and boulder are
Introductory Toolkit—Distinctions 49
both pieces of rock, but that they differ in size—size being the relevant property.
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A pebble is a small piece of rock, while a boulder is a much larger one. That is
a simple statement of the distinction. Of course, once again, it can be far more
difficult to specify the property in question. Suppose that someone asked you to
distinguish between a fort and a prison. It is not entirely obvious what property
to alight upon. Here is one possibility. Prisons and forts are both enclosures
designed to make it difficult to breach their boundaries, being distinguished
by the fact that a fort is an enclosure designed to prevent those on the outside
from getting in, while a prison is an enclosure designed to keep those on the
inside from getting out. Variations on this theme are also possible. For example,
we could say that a fort protects those on the inside from those on the outside,
while a prison protects those on the outside from those on the inside.
The following exercise is designed for middle to upper primary students to
learn to pay attention to both the domain within which a distinction is made
and the property that distinguishes the things in question. In distinguishing
between a knife and a fork, for instance, it is not sufficient to say that a knife
has a blade but a fork has prongs. While that is true, a more complete answer
is that they are eating utensils that differ in these respects. Of course, we might
also make the distinction in other ways, such as the differences in the purposes
for which they are used. It is important to remember that there isn’t just one
way to make a distinction.
You might work on a couple of examples with the whole class and then have
students work on examples in pairs. It is useful to ask different pairs to work on
the same examples so that they will be able to examine differences in their results.
Can you state some respect in which the following pairs are the same and some
other respect in which they are different? For example, a brother and his sister
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might be said to have the same parents, but to be of the opposite sex.
One of the most useful tools for conceptual exploration is the problematic
or borderline case. If we wish to think about what makes something fair, for
example, it can be very helpful to consider cases that are neither obviously fair
nor clearly unfair.
• Suppose that Maria stole something from you, and so you stole something
from her. Was that fair?
• Robert works very hard at school, although he nearly always receives poor
marks. Is that fair?
If you were to present these cases to a group of ten-year-olds and to ask them
whether they were fair or not fair, you would almost certainly provoke mixed
reactions. Disagreement or uncertainty among the members of your class would
be an indication that these cases do not sit altogether comfortably within their
collective understanding of fairness. Such cases will therefore encourage students
to consider reasons for and against counting them as fair, and that will lead to a
deeper understanding of what it means for something to be fair.
We can even use a borderline case as a provocative stimulus, discussion
of which will lead to open intellectual questions. Consider an example: The
photograph below shows an elephant from northern Thailand that has been
taught to paint by holding a brush in its trunk. Such elephant paintings do
not appear to represent anything, but they often contain pleasing, colourful
patterns, which look somewhat like the works that some artists make. At the
elephant camp where I took this picture, the paintings were on sale under a sign
that read ‘Elephant Art’. In fact, there is a worldwide market for ‘elephant art’
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question should be placed with ‘ART’ or with ‘NOT ART’. If they are
uncertain or cannot agree among themselves, then it will need to be placed
with the question mark. After they have had time to deliberate, you can ask one
group to place their card where they think it belongs and to give their reasons
for placing it there. Then you can open the case up for discussion. You can
then move from group to group, as time permits, gathering reasons for calling
something art, or denying that it is art, as you go. By the end you should have
unearthed and discussed a large range of criteria for calling something art. You
can even label them ‘criteria’ if you like, because as the students advance we will
be introducing them more formally to thinking about criteria.
With a little thought you can find borderline cases for the application of
any large and contestable concept. Whether it is beauty, goodness, fairness,
friendship, existence, evil, intelligence, personhood, bullying, freedom, right,
bravery, racism, knowledge, or what have you—all these concepts can be
explored in this way. I will leave you with a set of scenarios for the concept with
which I began: justice.
JUST UNJUST ?
1 Maria stole something from you, and so you steal something from her.
2 Chi found some money in the playground and handed it to the teacher. As no
one came to collect the money, the teacher let Chi keep it.
3 Jackson pulled the cat’s tail, and the cat scratched him.
4 No one would own up to having broken the classroom window, so the whole
class was made to clean up the schoolyard.
5 Bethany knew who had broken the window, but she wouldn’t tell. So the
teacher punished her.
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obviously alive (a paradigm case) but may be dormant. If we can find such a
case, we can say that being dormant does not prevent something from being
alive. This may prompt someone to think of a hibernating bear, lying dormant
in the depths of winter. The bear is alive, but dormant. So merely being
dormant does not disqualify seeds from being alive.
On the other hand, that a particular paradigm case has what seems to be a
significant attribute that is lacking in a borderline case, does not automatically
discount the borderline case. Someone might say that a playful puppy is obviously
alive because it is always running around. But there are paradigm cases of living
things that do not move about like the puppy. Plants are alive, for instance, but
they do not run around. So we need to be careful not to become too fixated upon
a particular case. Paradigm cases can vary in significant ways, and a wider survey
may reveal that certain attributes are not really essential to the concept.
when it is perfectly clear that they do not. To suggest that stones are alive
is to invent a crazy case. Stones may contain living things, but they are not
themselves alive. When we attempt to say why stones are not alive, a long list
of candidates suggests itself: Stones are not born and do not die; they do not
produce baby stones that mature and grow up; they do not gain sustenance
from their environment; and so on. Each of these reasons is a potential
requirement for something to be alive. By asking what seems to be missing
in the case of a stone, we have generated a broad spectrum of attributes to
consider. It can therefore be quite a good idea to introduce a crazy case early on,
as a brainstorming exercise. It is important to note that this is the sole purpose
of the crazy case, and it is beside the point for someone to try to argue that a
crazy case really could be a genuine case.
With some concepts it is useful to introduce a contrary case rather than
a crazy case. If we were exploring the concept of ‘justice’, for example, it
would be silly to invent a crazy case; but a contrary case—a case of manifest
injustice—would be instructive. We could then ask why that would be a clear
case of injustice, and our answers would once again yield a provisional list of
the criteria that define our concept of justice. With the concept of ‘being alive’,
we can use both crazy cases and contrary cases. Here a contrary case is simply
something that is no longer living—a piece of fish, for instance. Contrary cases
are obviously restricted to those concepts that have genuine opposites, such as
justice and injustice, alive or dead, good and evil, knowledge and ignorance,
and beauty and ugliness. So it is useful to note at the outset whether your
concept is of this kind.
As with concepts generally, a concept like ‘being alive’ has a history. In this
case, our understanding of what makes something alive has been very much
influenced by the growth of scientific knowledge. Yet, like ancient and primitive
animists, young children are likely to believe that all kinds of things are alive.
They may begin by taking anything that moves to be alive, later restrict the
concept to anything that moves of its own accord, and only with the acquisition
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Introductory Toolkit—Target 55
should motivate them to go and check the facts from an authoritative source,
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their newfound knowledge will avail them little so far as exploring the concept
of ‘being alive’ is concerned. They may establish that their hair is not alive
because it is made up of dead cells. But that does not tell them much about
the concept of ‘being alive’. In other words, the work with Target is conceptual
rather than factual. So beware of getting sidetracked into disputes of this kind.
One final tip: As proposed criteria are suggested, do make a list of them on
the board. You can always modify them or cross them off your list as you move
along. With more advanced students you might also make notes about various
criteria, as to whether the attribute specified by a criterion is:
• necessary: anything that falls under the concept must have the attribute
• merely common: paradigm cases commonly, although not invariably, have the
attribute
• sufficient: having the attribute, or set of the attributes, is all that is required for
something to fall under the concept.
Sometimes you may even be able to arrive at a set of both necessary and
sufficient conditions for something to satisfy the concept in question. At other
times, however, you will not be able to do so, and not necessarily because the
discussion was not up to the task. Many concepts are not plausibly construed
in that way. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said about the concept
of ‘games’, the things that fall under our concepts often bear only a family
resemblance to one another, and we should look for similarities or analogies
rather than trying to construct a watertight category.
I will leave you with a target for the concept of ‘being alive’, a concept
which is especially fascinating to younger children, and which has been much
studied by researchers, famously including the developmental psychologist
Jean Piaget in his classic work The Child’s Conception of the Mind. I have
mixed together a range of cases that I would invite students to pin on
the target, giving their reasons for placing them where they do, and thus
beginning our discussion.
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not alive
?
alive
One way of testing out an idea is to conduct a thought experiment, that is, to
imagine a scenario or situation that will enable us to test the idea against our
intuitions. For example, the seventeenth-century English philosopher John
Locke was interested in the topic of personal identity and, in particular, what
makes you the same person over time. He held that being the same person
depends on the persistence of your consciousness and not the persistence of
your bodily form. In testing out this claim against our intuitions he asks us to
imagine that the soul of a prince enters into the body of a cobbler whose soul
has just departed. This soul ‘with all its princely thought about it’ ensconced
in the cobbler’s body is the same person as the prince, says Locke, who is
responsible for any actions previously committed by the prince but not those
of the cobbler. To outward appearances, of course, he is the same man as the
cobbler. But, says Locke, this only shows that the bodily being or man is not
the same as the person; and we need to distinguish between being the same man
and being the same person over time and changing circumstances.
Locke’s thought experiment is reminiscent of the folktale in which a
handsome young prince is turned into a slimy old frog that can be transformed
back into the prince only by the kiss of a beautiful princess. To suppose
that the frog really is the prince, as children so readily do, is effectively to
entertain Locke’s thought that the person of the prince persists through these
transformations, and therefore to distinguish the person of the prince from the
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bodily form that misfortune has cast upon him. (For a modern version of this
story with a humorous twist, see Babette Cole’s Princess Smartypants, Hamilton,
1986.) The prince is that inner being who suffers from his predicament and is
all too well aware of the need to convince the princess of his true nature. Of
course, if Locke is right, it is also not the true nature of the person of the prince
to be a handsome young man; and no doubt this is something that the princess
will discover as the years go by when they live together happily ever after.
In any event, such a story can be used as a thought experiment with quite
young children to help them test their preliminary suggestions regarding the
significance of physical and psychological factors in maintaining our identity
as persons over time.
While such ready-made thought experiments can help students to test out
their ideas, they should also be encouraged to construct their own thought
experiments. Typically these will begin with a student saying, ‘Let us imagine
that ...’ or ‘Just suppose ...’, followed by a scenario in which some suggestion
that has been made can be tested against their intuitions.
Here is an elementary example from a Year 6 classroom in which the
students are discussing the topic of value:
Lorena: I think you should value whatever comes, whether it’s good or bad,
because if something bad comes and it’s your fault, you can learn
from your mistakes.
Kirin: I want to challenge that. Just imagine that you burnt down your
house. Everyone in it was killed. Value that!
Here Kirin’s dramatic scenario provides a challenge to Lorena’s claim that we
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should value the bad things that happen in life along with the good. ‘Just
imagine …,’ says Kirin, as he introduces a made-up but entirely conceivable
situation in which Lorena’s claim seems hard to sustain. In this case, Kirin’s
simple thought experiment is also meant as a counterexample to Lorena’s general
claim, which may encourage her to modify it in order to take account of what
he has to say.
Here is another example from a Year 5 classroom: The students had been
discussing whether it is ever acceptable to lie, and Max expressed the view that
you should always tell the truth because you will only cause more trouble by
lying. Other students suggested that sometimes ‘little white lies’ don’t matter,
and that whether or not you should tell the truth depends on the situation. A
couple of students tried to convince Max that sometimes you really ought to
lie—or at least not tell the truth—such as when telling the truth might hurt
someone’s feelings. Here is how one student put it:
Like Kirin, Cathy is appealing to Max’s intuitions regarding a readily imagined case.
She supposes that, when he thinks about it, Max will find that his intuitions agree
with hers. It is a simple thought experiment that, again like Kirin’s, is supposed to
supply a counterexample to Max’s claim that we should never tell a lie.
As a final example, let us look at a more extended discussion of imagined
possibilities that test our intuitions about some idea or claim. In this case a
Year 4/5 class is discussing whether we could have a mountain that is half on
the earth and half on the moon. The question comes from a set of questions
designed to provoke the students to try to imagine possibilities and thereby to
conduct thought experiments. (See ‘What can happen and what can’t happen?’
in Lipman and Sharp, 1984.)
Some students think that they can imagine a mountain that is half on the
earth and half on the moon, but some say ‘you can’t’. One student who thinks
that it can be imagined says, ‘You can imagine a mountain so big that it goes
right up and touches the moon.’ This meets with the response: ‘That wouldn’t
be half on the moon. A mountain that went up and touched the moon wouldn’t
be half on the moon.’ ‘Okay,’ comes the reply, ‘but you could have a mountain
that was solid all the way from the earth to the moon.’ After some discussion,
the student adds, ‘It would be a solid shaft.’ Another suggests: ‘It would be
like a stalagmite and stalactite that joined into a column.’ ‘But would that be
a mountain?’ someone asks. ‘Yes,’ it is asserted. ‘It would be one mountain
because it was one column.’ ‘But it doesn’t have a top,’ insists the questioner.
‘Does a mountain have to have a top?’ asks the teacher. The students have
different opinions about this. One says, ‘No, a mountain could go on forever.’
In reply, another says that even if a mountain went on forever, it must have a
bottom. And that is a problem for the mountain that is being imagined as a
shaft or a column. ‘Where would the bottom be?’
After further discussion, someone suggests a new possibility for a mountain
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that is half on the earth and half on the moon. ‘You can imagine,’ says the
student, ‘a mountain that was cut down the middle from top to bottom, and
one half taken up to the moon.’ This case meets with general agreement until
someone says, ‘That would make two mountains—one on the earth and one on
the moon.’ The teacher asks why we would say that, and the student responds,
‘They would be physically separate, and so they would be two mountains.’
Other students suggest that whether we should say it is one mountain or two
mountains depends on what we think about a range of similar cases, such as
whether, if one half of a building were moved to another site, that would be
two buildings or just two halves of the building in different places. And so the
discussion continues.
This playful imaginative thinking is a kind of conceptual exploration. By
examining what can and cannot be imagined or conceived, the students are
exploring the possibilities and limits of their concepts.
into the inquiry, if you like—as an aid to consolidation and a guide to the
direction of further inquiry. It can also lead to suggestions from students about
aspects of their practice, thereby functioning as a tool for self-evaluation and
improvement that uses the student’s assessment of their past conduct to direct
future conduct.
Teachers can use Thumbs to direct attention to any aspect of the inquiry
they would like their students to consider. It should normally be used to canvass
a mixture of what are called ‘procedural’ aspects and ‘substantive’ aspects of the
inquiry—although the distinction between them is sometimes moot.
• Procedural aspects are those that belong to the process or method of inquiry,
such as the general order in which inquiry proceeds, the management of an
agenda and keeping on track, or how we proceed to answer a certain kind of
question or use a particular tool. In terms of learning, the focus here is on the
acquisition of procedural knowledge—what we are learning to do.
Introductory Toolkit—Thumbs 61
• Substantive aspects go to the subject matter of inquiry, including the questions,
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issues or problems dealt with, the suggestions that are made, the concepts
explored and the conclusions reached. Here we focus on discursive knowledge
and understanding—what we can discern as a result of our inquiries.
On the procedural side, the teacher may wish the students to attend to
anything from not calling out and learning to take turns in discussion, to the
ordered use of specific tools, such as exploring the concepts that we need to
understand before we attempt to answer certain questions, or avoiding the
tendency to become too narrowly focused on giving and evaluating reasons for
some suggestion without bothering to think about possible alternatives. Here
the teacher may ask questions such as the following:
• How well did we share the discussion today?
• Have we learnt to use counterexamples?
• Do we always explore concepts when we need to?
• Are we sufficiently aware of alternative possibilities?
On the substantive side, we will want to see what we have learnt from
the inquiry so far, and we may wish to draw attention to certain aspects of a
problem that we have dealt with or highlight a particularly significant insight or
finding, as well as to identify further matters that still need attention. This may
involve questions such as:
• Were all the questions on our agenda genuine inquiry questions?
• Did we achieve depth in our discussion?
• Have we arrived at a satisfactory answer to our question?
• Do you have a better understanding of such-and-such a concept?
It is possible to straightforwardly ask students to summarise what they
have learnt from the class, of course, or to explain a particular concept, or to
define what is meant by a counterexample, and so on. While that approach can
be productive, Thumbs is specifically designed to fit with the inquiry process.
It asks students to express an opinion that they can be expected to justify in
the same terms in which the inquiry itself was conducted. Because students
are unlikely in most cases to have come to total agreement about matters of
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that Sally has provided a good reason for having her thumb down. Now that a
student (and not the teacher) has raised the problem, the question about what
we should do to deal with it can be thrown back to the students themselves,
who will usually have sensible suggestions to make. In this way, the students
become involved in formulating rules and managing practices, rather than
simply having them laid down and enforced by the teacher.
Obviously the sophistication of the questions that get asked under Thumbs
will vary with the age and experience of your students, and the things that you
highlight will depend on the state of progress and your students’ particular
needs. You might also ask only one or two questions or you might ask several,
again depending on the circumstances. The following list is therefore offered
only as a further indication of the kinds of questions that you might ask, and
you will need to exercise judgement in framing such questions for your class.
Substantive questions
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64
Notes
Introductory Toolkit—Notes
65
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because inquiries that are based on poorly articulated problems or issues are
unlikely to produce fruitful results.
• Clarification: The problem may be obvious to everyone, or the question may
be clear; but, where this is not the case, inquiry should not proceed until
an attempt has been made to clarify things. If students initially offer vague
characterisations or ambiguous questions, they should be asked to supply:
– further details
– more carefully qualified statements
– more precisely worded questions.
• Ordering: Where an agenda consists of a number of items, it needs to be
organised and not left as a rag-tag collection of things. This may mean
that issues need to be separated, problems ordered according to priority, or
questions grouped according to topic or placed in a logical sequence.
Intermediate Toolkit—Agendas 69
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When proceeding in this way, the questions that initially frame each topic may
need further ordering. For example, on the topic of ‘growing up’, Kris’s question
relates most closely to the story entitled ‘Bizzy Road’ (in Cam, 1997a), in which
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various topics that have been raised, we could always begin by restricting our
agenda if that were thought to be desirable.
In regard to scope and elaboration, it can be very useful for the teacher to
take the time between sessions to develop some follow-up questions that might
help the students to broaden the scope of their discussion or to more deeply
probe various aspects of the topic. We can call a set of such additional questions
a ‘Discussion Plan’. While it takes time, real effort and some experience to
develop a well thought-out Discussion Plan, it is worth your while to develop
the practice. It provides the opportunity for you to question these matters more
systematically, and the additional depth of your questioning will help to guide
your students to question and explore more deeply. Look, for example, at the
following Discussion Plan that builds on Annie-Kate’s question.
Intermediate Toolkit—Agendas 71
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A class of third graders had begun reading a story called Elfie (Lipman 1988b),
but were not yet sure about the identity of the central character. Was Elfie a
little girl, an animal of some sort, or perhaps an elf?
This raised the question, ‘What is Elfie?’ In discussion the following episode
ensued, which is transcribed almost verbatim.
Susan: I think that Elfie is a rabbit.
Teacher: Why do you think that Elfie is a rabbit, Susan?
Susan: Well, because it says here that Elfie curled up into a ball to sleep. And
that is what rabbits do.
Robin: That doesn’t prove anything, Susan.
Susan: I think it proves that Elfie is a rabbit.
Robin: No, it doesn’t. What about kittens? They curl up into a ball to sleep,
and they’re not rabbits.
Tom: I agree with Robin because I curl up into a ball to sleep and I am
certainly not a rabbit.
I was observing this class and wondered what the teacher would do at this
point. She was relatively new to classroom inquiry, and didn’t seem sure what
to say. After asking Susan what she thought of what Robin and Tom had said,
she simply passed on. While that was perfectly understandable, she missed a
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golden opportunity to draw attention to the students’ reasoning, and after the
class I recommended that next time she should return to this little exchange.
On my understanding of it, Robin and Tom implicitly took Susan’s reasoning
to be as follows:
1 Elfie curls up into a ball to sleep.
2 Rabbits curl up into a ball to sleep.
3 Therefore, Elfie is a rabbit.
In reply, they show that by the same form of reasoning Susan would have to
accept that kittens are rabbits and that Tom is a rabbit. You might as well say,
for example, that:
1 Kittens curl up into a ball to sleep.
2 Rabbits curl up into a ball to sleep.
3 Therefore, kittens are rabbits.
A bird is a creature that flies. Mammals have either two or four legs.
Intermediate Toolkit—Counterexamples 73
Note that for a counterexample we want something that is an example of the
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kind of thing mentioned in the generalisation that does not have the feature in
question. So an airplane would not be a counterexample to the first claim, for
instance. Beginning students sometimes succumb to this confusion, so be on
the lookout for it.
Here are a couple of examples of the kinds of reasoning that could be used
to help students learn to construct counterexamples. Just as in the case taken
from the classroom, remember that we need parallel reasoning that takes us from
premises we may assume to be true to a conclusion that we know to be false.
1 Sonya believes that Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world.
2 Knowing something involves believing it.
3 So Sonya knows that Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the
world.
Hint: Substitute ‘The Space Shuttle’ for ‘Gabriel’ in the first example. In the
second example, for the statement that Mount Everest is the highest mountain
in the world you can substitute a false statement that Sonya might be assumed
to believe, such as that Mt Kosciusko is the highest mountain in the world.
Aims: Committees sometimes reject proposals because they lie outside the aims
of the organisation that they represent. Here the organisation’s aims provide
the criterion for making a decision.
Codes: Clubs may impose dress codes. Such codes provide criteria that
determine acceptable standards of dress.
Definitions: The taxation department has a definition of taxable income that is
used in determining the amount of income tax payable. This is a criterion
the tax department will appeal to in cases of dispute.
Evidence: Courts admit the testimony of witnesses as evidence in the
determination of verdicts. Subject to admissibility and examination, the
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Intermediate Toolkit—Criteria 75
Rules: Board games have rules that determine which moves are admissible. In
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court of law is the pronouncement of that verdict. The return of the verdict
is both necessary and sufficient for having been found guilty. It is therefore
the criterion that we use. (It is worth pointing out that in the case of a guilty
verdict, the jury must have found the accused guilty before the verdict was
delivered. Otherwise it could not deliver that verdict. This illustrates the fact
that a criterion of something is not the thing itself, but the means we use to
determine that it is so.)
• A criterion can be a very reliable condition: Sometimes factors that we can
generally rely on in making a judgement or reaching a decision are regarded
as criteria. In this broader use of the term, things such as natural signs and
distinctive characteristics may be treated as criteria because they are such very
good indicators. That a solution turns a litmus paper red, for instance, is such
a reliable sign of it being an acid that we use it as a criterion for establishing
the presence of an acid in the laboratory.
it may be that we have only some implicit and vague scale in mind. Scales may
be rudimentary or sophisticated, rough or exact, and qualitative or quantitative,
but in all these cases we implicitly rely on what we may call ‘scalar’ criteria.
It must be admitted that this simple division leaves room for exceptions
and anomalies. For example, consider judgements about family relationships,
such as that X is a cousin of Y. For X to be a (first) cousin of Y, X must be Y’s
mother’s or father’s brother’s or sister’s child. (Did you get that?) In this case the
criterion is the definition of what it is to be a cousin, and X and Y must satisfy
that definition if they are to be cousins. Given that the criterion is definitional,
we might expect that the judgement is absolute. Yet ‘cousin’ is a relational
notion, albeit not a scalar one. Here we may say that the judgement is relative
rather than comparative. (Hence we call our cousins relatives.)
Again, consider the commercial classification of medium eggs. While hens’ eggs
have a natural weight range, and some eggs naturally fall in the middle of that range,
Intermediate Toolkit—Criteria 77
to regard a medium egg as one in a precise weight range is to impose a classification
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EXERCISE: Stealing
Are the following examples of stealing? Be ready to give a reason for your answer.
Stealing Not stealing ?
1 You borrow something and forget to
return it.
2 You are lent something that you never
intend to return.
3 You use someone’s things without asking.
4 You take something that you know the
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statement that no fish can fly. Most people would take Hee-Min to imply that
it is always wrong to tell a lie, making her remark implicitly an ‘All’ statement.
Can we analyse Johnny’s and Alison’s assertions as ‘All’ or ‘No’ statements?
Here we may need to ask what they had in mind. Does Johnny mean to say
that dogs always make a better pet than cats, or merely that they usually do?
Does Alison mean to imply that no migrant kid can speak English properly, or
that it is almost always or perhaps generally the case? When we are dealing with
general statements, it is particularly important to become clear about whether
the statement in question is to be interpreted as an ‘All’ or a ‘No’ statement, or
whether it is to be qualified by ‘almost always’, ‘usually’, or whatever. This initial
step of clarification can save a great deal of confusion, and it can help students
read more critically and think more carefully about what they say.
Commonly such general statements are formed by what is called ‘induction’.
That is to say, the general claim is inferred from knowledge of particular cases that
fall within the person’s experience or other learning. William might know that the
earth is a solid ball of matter and that so is Mars. So he might suppose that all the
planets are alike in that respect. Emily might think that fish can’t fly based on the
kinds of fish that she knows. (By the way, do so-called flying fish fly?)
In other cases the basis of the claim is very unlikely to be induction, or
at least not one that the claimant has made. When Hee-Min claims that it is
wrong to tell a lie, for instance, she is almost certainly just asserting a rule of
conduct that she has been taught. Even if this rule of conduct has a distant basis
in our collective experience of the consequences of truth-telling and lying, it is
not likely to be the student’s warrant. Still, students could easily supply plenty
of examples where it seems clear that it would be wrong to lie in order to supply
the generalisation with inductive support.
One standard way of testing a generalisation is to search for
counterexamples. For instance, if Hee-Min means that it is always wrong to
lie, then we might test her claim by considering cases where it might not be so
clear that it is wrong to lie. Would it be wrong to lie if telling the truth would
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do great harm, for example? What if she could save the life of a friend only by
telling a lie? Such questions are likely to reveal counterexamples to the claim
that lead to its modification. In the same way, a student might site Saturn or
Uranus as counterexamples to William’s claim, or someone might remind Alison
that Hee-Min is a migrant who has a good command of English.
Counterexamples can defeat ‘All’ and ‘No’ kinds of generalisations.
Other kinds may need to be tested by a variety of other means. We may need
to assemble the evidence, or to find out whether expert opinion is agreed.
Sometimes a thought experiment may reveal what would be the case if the
generalisation were either true or false. If Hee-Min’s statement were meant as
the claim that lying is generally wrong, for instance, we might ask: What would
our world be like if people couldn’t generally be trusted to tell the truth? Would
the world be different in ways that we would not like? Would it be sufficiently
disagreeable to show that it would generally be wrong to lie?
Intermediate Toolkit—Generalisation 81
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Inquiry begins with a problematic situation, then seeks its resolution through
a pattern of systematic exploratory activity. I have provided an outline of the
exploration process in terms of students:
1 raising, analysing, organising and selecting inquiry questions
2 generating suggestions as to alternative possible resolutions of whatever
matter is in question
3 drawing out the implications of their suggestions through reasoning and
conceptual exploration, and
4 comparing and evaluating various alternatives in order to form reasoned
judgements or resolutions.
While this is the basic pattern, actual inquiries will naturally vary in emphasis
and detail. No matter what actual shape an inquiry takes, it is vital to keep
track of the proceedings. It is all too easy to forget where a discussion has
come from or where it was supposed to be going. We can lose sight of the
fact that we were discussing a particular question, and be left wondering how
we got onto some topic that seems only distantly related to the matter with
which we began. We may become so involved in a dispute over a suggestion
that we omit to think about significant alternative possibilities that were
raised. In fact, the danger of becoming entangled in our subject matter in
ways that thwart the inquiry is ever-present. One tool that can assist us to
avoid such problems is a Discussion Map.
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While there is no rigid formula for mapping a discussion, and the details
will vary with the intellectual terrain, a Discussion Map should always reflect
the pattern of inquiry. Thus we need only consider the basic pattern of inquiry
in order to construct the outline of a general Discussion Map. It will follow
the same sequence of initiating, suggesting, reasoning, analysis, evaluating,
and concluding. More concretely, it will lead from a question to suggestions,
to indications of their relevant implications and meanings, coupled with
evaluations based on relevant criteria, with the whole affair culminating in
a judgement or conclusion.
QUESTION
SUGGESTIONS
EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVES
CONCLUSION
The map of a particular session might deal with only a part of this process, of
course, and it may also ignore all sorts of details and subsidiary inquiries within
the overall inquiry process, recording only its larger results.
Earlier I gave the example of a group of secondary students who decided to
inquire into the question, ‘What makes an action fair?’ On that occasion, after
some preliminary discussion, the class broke into small groups, and each group
was asked to come up with a brief written response to that question in the form
‘An action is fair if …’ There was considerable discussion in most of the groups
about what their short statement should contain, with various suggestions being
made and then discarded as seemingly better alternatives presented themselves.
Because this activity asked for an answer to the question, in effect it invited
each group to hold a rapid-fire mini-inquiry and to come up with at least a
somewhat considered conclusion. Yet the details of those mini-inquiries were
not recorded, even though some of the deliberations that occurred undoubtedly
informed later discussion. At this stage the class’s Discussion Map included only
the question and the students’ preliminary answers. These partially considered
conclusions then became suggestions requiring further examination when the
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had raised the question, ‘Do bunyips exist?’, and a small group was working on
the suggestion that they do not exist by assembling reasons in its support. In
this case the students effectively reasoned that if there were bunyips, then:
1 we would expect there to be photographs of them
2 there should be reported sightings of them
3 they would not be depicted as such different kinds of animals in different
books
4 they wouldn’t have a ‘made-up’ name.
Therefore, the lack of photographs and reports, the different depictions and
the curious name are all reasons to suppose that there are no bunyips. What
this group of students actually recorded, however, was just the list of reasons
that they presented to the class. This written record should be seen as part of a
Discussion Map that will also include the reasons that other groups of students
have given as to whether bunyips exist or not. If the inquiry is to be really
thoroughgoing, no final conclusion can be reached until all of these reasons
have been assembled and conjointly evaluated; and even then we may come to
only a broad consensus, with universal agreement being hard to attain.
Do bunyips exist?
• no photographs of bunyips
• no reports of bunyips
• bunyip pictures are different in different books
• ‘bunyip’ sounds like a vegetable
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What is stealing?
Suggestions:
• knowingly taking something that isn’t yours
• taking someone’s things without permission
• taking someone’s things without their knowledge
• to take something dishonestly
Criteria: is deliberate, involves property, lack of permission, secrecy (usually),
dishonesty
Conclusion: Stealing is deliberately and dishonestly taking property that isn’t
yours, without permission and usually without the owner’s knowledge.
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86
Notes
Intermediate Toolkit—Notes
87
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Inquiry questions are of various kinds. Some concern matters of fact about
which there is either total ignorance or dispute; others concern matters of
value, particularly where there is uncertainty or disagreement regarding proper
conduct; and yet others are questions about the adequacy of our reasoning and
the connections between ideas. Inquiry questions may also involve a mixture of
the above, and cannot be adequately addressed without first sorting them out.
Before proceeding to such complexities and suggestions for dealing with them,
let us first review these different kinds of questions in a little more detail.
Factual questions
Science provides us with the most successful procedures that we have for inquiry
into matters of fact. Procedures for systematic observation and recording,
laboratory techniques, experimental method, mathematical modelling,
statistical analysis and all the trappings of quantitative method provide scientific
inquiry with enormous predictive and explanatory power.
In this book, however, we are not concerned with scientific inquiry,
but with trying to develop an inquiring outlook in social and intellectual
contexts away from science, and attempting to bring at least a modicum of
resourcefulness and rigour to everyday judgement and decision-making. This
does not mean that these other endeavours have little to learn from science. On
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to avoid such lengthy and fruitless disputes. Even so, we should not entirely
abandon speculation. For example, the domain of metaphysics appears to deal
with speculative questions concerning matters of fact about which there is
endless dispute. Traditional questions about the existence of God, the relations
of mind to body, and the existence of freedom in a deterministic world, for
example, look to be about matters of fact, even though philosophers and
theologians seem unable to settle them. Such questions are important to many
people and may arise in the minds of students. That students are unable to
arrive at definitive answers to such questions does not mean that they are not
worth discussing. Given the perennial nature of these questions, we should
value reasoned disagreement and the development of a thoughtful attitude
towards such matters above mere conviction.
Just as factual questions are concerned with how things actually stand, and
questions of value are concerned with how we should stand towards things,
logical and conceptual questions deal with relations between propositions and
distinctions and connections among ideas. Relations in the latter domain are, of
course, in many ways answerable to those in the former. Erroneous conceptions
can misrepresent how things actually stand, faulty reasoning can suggest
that things must be thus-and-so when they may not, and we can both fail to
distinguish things that are actually distinct and make distinctions where none
exist. However, logical and conceptual relations may also govern how things
otherwise stand. We reason in order to control or reconstruct our world. We
arrange our affairs according to how we conceive of them. And we behave as we
think proper according to our understanding. The interdependence of objective
relations, our agency, and our reasoning and conceptions lies at the heart of
inquiry. We ultimately rely on our reasoning to run true and our conceptions to
be both fitting and productive in regard to the ends that we are trying to achieve.
So questions about whether certain things should be held distinct for
particular purposes, or by what criteria we should judge something to fall in a
certain category, or whether we can assert a given proposition on the basis of
certain reasons or evidence, are among the most common in inquiry and a great
deal of attention needs to be paid to them.
falls, may seem to be a bit like asking whether something is animal, vegetable
or mineral in the old parlour game. What happens in the parlour game if I
am thinking of, say, a number? Numbers do not fit into any category on offer.
So can we be sure that all inquiry questions will fall into one (or more) of my
three categories? Well, insofar as a question can be answered by reference to
actual or possible experience, by gathering evidence, conducting an experiment,
employing principles, standards, norms or criteria, or by thinking about
reasoning, it can be so classified. And if nothing of this sort can help us to
answer the question, it is unclear how any kind of inquiry could answer it at
all. Again, to ask whether a question is about matters of fact or of value may
appear to be philosophically presumptuous, in assuming that values are not facts
and that there is a clear divide between the two. Nothing of the kind is being
presupposed, however. We can distinguish between these different kinds of
any non-human
Do animals think? (F)
The following is an exercise in sorting out inquiry questions that I might give to
a group of senior secondary students. You might find it useful to try some of the
questions for yourself.
1 Do animals think?
2 Should we never tell a lie?
3 What do we mean by a ‘true friend’?
4 Is the universe infinite?
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Answers: (1) F, (2) V, (3) C, (4) F, (5) V, (6) F, (7) F, (8) C, (9) F
words such as ‘not’, ‘and’, ‘or’ and conditional expressions such as ‘if … then …’
and ‘if and only if’, which it defines in terms of patterns of truth and falsehood
that arise when they operate on statements. For example, if we conjoin two
statements together with ‘and’, we get a conjunction; and a conjunction will be
true if both of its conjuncts are true, otherwise it will be false. From such humble
beginnings very powerful systems of deduction can be built.
You may be relieved to know that I am not about to offer you a systematic
introduction to either ancient or modern formal logic. When it comes to
discursive classroom inquiry, these systems do not offer sufficient pay-off for
all the work required to master them in even an elementary form. Yet it is
worthwhile for students to acquire some of the fundamental ideas in formal
deductive logic, as well as logical competence in elementary forms of deductive
reasoning, by the time they begin secondary school. It is worth understanding
At the moment we are not concerned with whether these statements are true,
but only with what could be said to follow from them. If the statements are or
were true, is there any other statement that would have to be true as well? Once
we put it this way, there is an intuitively obvious conclusion that we can draw:
No rabbits are things that can fly.
Now the deduction of this conclusion from what we may call the above two
‘premises’ can easily be shown, intuitively, to depend not at all on the fact that
these statements are about rabbits, furry creatures and things that can fly. They
may just as well have been about planets, balls and pyramids, or indeed about
anything at all. In order to see this, we only need to replace the relevant words
systematically with letters.
So let us replace ‘rabbits’ with the letter ‘A’, ‘furry creatures’ with the letter
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‘B’ and ‘things that can fly’ with the letter ‘C’. This time we will also put the
conclusion under the other two statements and separate it by a line—the
equivalent of saying ‘therefore’—to indicate that it has been deduced from
them. We may call the resulting schema the ‘form’ of the argument.
All A are B.
No B are C.
No A are C.
I might have demonstrated this with a Venn diagram or some other convention,
but I take it that within a few moments nearly everyone can see that the third
line follows from the other two just as surely as in the original argument. Yet the
choice of letters was arbitrary, even though they were substituted systematically.
And since that choice was arbitrary, I may now substitute new words for the
Once again, it is intuitively easy to see that the conclusion follows from the
premises. Any systematic substitution of common nouns for the letters ‘A’,
‘B’ and ‘C’ would have had the same result. So the connection between the
premises and the conclusion of the argument does not depend on what the
statements are about, but rather on the form of the argument itself.
Let me clarify what is meant by saying that the conclusion ‘follows’.
In deduction, when we say that the conclusion follows, we mean that it is
impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. This also
allows me to explain the use of the word ‘valid’ when used in deduction. A valid
argument is one that gives this guarantee: An argument is said to be valid if and
only if it is impossible for all of the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false.
Finally, then, we may say that an argument is valid in virtue of its form.
Having introduced the idea of the form of an argument and the concept of
validity, let us now return to the topic of conditional reasoning. Like the rest of
us, children are forever using the conditional, which is commonly expressed in
English by ‘if … then …’:
• ‘If I am kept in after school, then my mum will throw a fit.’
• ‘Well, if I were you, then I would apologise to Mrs McDonald. Otherwise
she’s sure to keep you in.’
There are many variations of this so-called conditional form, including:
• implicit terms (‘If she tries to keeps me in, [then] I’ll just leave.’)
• implicit conditions (‘Then you’ll get into even more trouble.’)
• the substitution for ‘if ’ or ‘then’ of logically equivalent expressions (‘Whenever
I get into trouble, my mum throws a fit.’), and
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• reversal in the order of the clauses (‘My dad throws a fit, if I get into trouble.’)
In all of its variations, the conditional consists of an antecedent or ‘if ’
clause and a consequent or ‘then’ clause. A wide array of relationships may
be expressed by this means—including conceptual and logical relationships,
causal relationships, correlations, temporal sequences and mathematical
relationships—and conditional expressions commonly feature in an extensive
range of human acts, such as prediction, promising, warning and bargaining.
Conditionals express a movement in thought from one condition to
another, where one condition is taken to be dependent on the other. Therefore
it is the natural form with which to begin reasoning. Not only that, the
conditional also lends itself to deductive inference, because in deduction we
are saying, in effect, that if the premises are (or were) true, then the conclusion
must be (would have to be) true, too. So the conditional is a good vehicle for
introducing students to deductive forms of argument.
conditional. One involves affirming the antecedent and the other denying the
consequent. These forms are of great antiquity and traditionally go by their
Latin names, which I may as well introduce.
Modus ponens Modus tollens
If P, then Q If P, then Q
P Not Q
Q Not P
Modus ponens
Modus ponens provides us with a simple form of reasoning for both prediction
and explanation. In prediction, we argue from
1 the supposition that if a given condition obtains, then a certain result can
be expected, and
2 the fact that the condition is found to obtain (is observed, or whatever), to
the conclusion that the result can be expected.
Here is an example:
If the pea is not under this cup, then it will be under that one.
Ah, huh! The pea is not under this cup.
The pea will be under that one.
In explanations using modus ponens, we deduce a statement of the circumstances
to be explained from what we already know (have observed, or whatever),
together with an explanatory hypothesis. For example:
If you eat green bananas, then you’ll have a stomach-ache.
You ate green bananas.
You have a stomach-ache.
Of course, we usually do not bother to spell things out in this way. If a boy
suffered a stomach-ache after he had eaten green bananas, we might explain
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it simply by saying that it was because he had eaten the bananas. By making
the underlying conditional explicit, however, we have drawn attention to the
generalisation on which the explanation depends.
This can be important because, just as in science, the generalisations that
people rely on in everyday explanation are often in need of scrutiny. This
is particularly true when it comes to explanations that rely on questionable
attitudes and values. Explanations that appeal to racist and other prejudices
provide all too many examples. For example, for a child to say that some newly
arrived immigrants did something ‘stupid’ because they are migrants, might well
rest on the prejudicial assumption that migrants are by nature stupid. (By the
way, the generalisation that ‘All migrants are stupid’ is logically equivalent to
‘If someone is a migrant, then they are stupid.’)
Associated fallacies
These two forms of valid reasoning have invalid counterparts. To say that they
are invalid is simply to say that they are not valid, or in other words that the
truth of the conclusion is not guaranteed by the truth of the premises. These
‘fallacies’, as they are known, have the following forms:
Fallacy of denying Fallacy of affirming
the antecedent the consequent
If P, then Q If P, then Q
Not P Q
Not Q P
other than those stated by the antecedent may be sufficient for the fulfilment of
the consequent. Thus, suppose that one were to argue as follows:
If you build your house of sticks, then the wolf will be able to blow it down.
You do not build your house of sticks.
The wolf will not be able to blow it down.
The conclusion does not follow, of course, because it is possible for the premises
to be true and the conclusion to be false, which is, of course, what happens in
the story when you build your house of straw. Fallacious reasoning can be very
dangerous.
The problem with the ‘Fallacy of affirming the consequent’ is, once again,
that conditions other than those stated by the antecedent might be sufficient to
ensure the consequent. Here is an example:
If the miller’s daughter can spin straw into gold, then there’ll be gold in the morning.
There is gold in the morning.
The miller’s daughter can spin straw into gold.
Once again, we can see that the argument is clearly invalid. The premises can be
true while the conclusion is false—which is exactly what happens when it turns
out to be Rumplestiltskin rather than the miller’s daughter who can perform
the trick. We fall for the fallacy of affirming the consequent whenever we fail
to consider possibilities other than the one we had in mind for explaining the
known condition. The danger in doing so is that we will think that what we
know or can observe confirms our theories, when those facts are really subject to
a quite different explanation. Like the miller’s daughter, we can be in for a long,
rough ride when this happens.
I have set out these rudiments of deductive reasoning in the hope that you
will consider it worthwhile introducing them to students. As mentioned earlier,
by paying attention to such reasoning when it occurs in discussion and giving
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students associated exercises, you will be helping them to learn to reason well,
and to avoid at least some invalid forms of reasoning that can prove to be both
expensive and dangerous.
In the concluding exercise you are asked to decide whether a given
argument is valid or not. It is the kind of exercise that might be given to Year 6
or 7 students. I have included answers at the bottom of the page, but do avoid
looking at them until you have satisfied yourself. If you manage to get all of
the answers right, I can assure you that you have learnt something. When these
examples have been presented to groups of untutored teachers, the results have
been close to what one might expect by chance.
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supporting reason
claim supported
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deport them if their application for refugee status fails, and that it serves as a
deterrent to others who might contemplate similar action. These two reasons are
clearly independent of one another. If one reason collapses, the argument can
still rest on the other. The overall argument will be weaker, of course, but this is
only to say that the total weight of such an argument is the sum of the weights
of each of the reasons that are given. In a Reasoning Diagram, each independent
reason is presented with an arrow showing its support for the claim.
the conventions spoken of, but rather acts as a conjunction. It is being argued
that mandatory detention is inconsistent with certain international conventions
and that governments have a duty to uphold those conventions. The statement
about government duty is not an independent reason for objecting to a policy
of mandatory detention, however, but is meant to make its alleged inconsistency
with international conventions something that the government should not ignore.
In order to distinguish the form of this argument from that of the previous
one, we may adopt the convention of using the plus sign (+) together with a
bar and a single arrow to indicate the interdependence of the reasons that are
offered in support of the claim. We will call these reasons ‘dependent’ reasons
as opposed to the ‘independent’ reasons in the first example.
It is obvious that many other patterns are possible, including using the same
reason in support of different claims, and using claims for which support has
been given as support for yet other claims, in turn. The following looks at an
example of the latter kind.
Suppose that the person who was arguing in favour of a mandatory
detention policy was challenged about whether such a policy is in fact
an effective deterrent. That person might then claim that the number of
unannounced arrivals has fallen in countries where such a policy has been
adopted, which has not been the case elsewhere. Right now we are not
concerned with the truth of these claims or how they might be verified, but
only with the structure of the argument given. Two points need to be made.
First, support is being provided for one of the reasons previously given. That is
to say, we have buttressing of an existing reason. Secondly, this further support
consists of two claims that depend on each other to provide a reason for
accepting that the policy acts as a deterrent. The entire argumentative structure
can therefore be represented as follows:
Uncovering assumptions
While the assumptions that we uncover are not themselves tools of inquiry,
we can use our tools to help uncover them. In particular, we can use Reasoning
Diagrams to help reveal what is being assumed when someone argues for a
conclusion that does not seem to follow automatically from their premises. Since
that is common in everyday reasoning, this move has the potential for wide
application. Let us see what is involved by working our way through an example.
Suppose someone were to argue that democratic government is the best
form of government because it maximises freedom. We may set this out as a
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Reasoning Diagram.
not follow from the speaker’s premise in the way that the conclusion does follow
from the premises of a valid deductive argument. There is, we might say, a ‘gap’
between the reason given and the claim it is meant to support. This indicates
that something is being assumed. The most plausible assumption is the thing
that best plugs the gap.
What we are looking for, of course, is not just any means of plugging the
gap. The presenter might come up with additional independent premises, for
instance. But that would be to present further argument. We need to stick to
the argument given, if we wish to see what it assumes. In fact, we need to look
for some dependent reason that is already implicitly assumed. That is to say, we
are looking to replace the question mark in the following Reasoning Diagram:
Democratic government + ?
maximises freedom.
There are various ways of plugging this gap. For example, we could always make
the argument deductively valid by converting it to modus ponens. This involves
merely the addition of a conditional statement that allows us to validly deduce
the conclusion.
This manoeuvre is not very informative. In effect, all it tells us is that the
original argument depends on the assumption that the best form of government
is one which maximises freedom. But we don’t need to complete a Reasoning
Diagram in order to work that out. We know it already.
In order to see more deeply into what is being assumed, we need to plug the
gap in the original argument with something more informative. For example,
consider a couple of alternative suggestions for plugging the gap:
Freedom is to be prized above all other things that government can deliver.
These statements are equally good at plugging the gap that originally existed
between the premise and the conclusion. When added to the Reasoning
Diagram, either one would allow us to deduce the conclusion. Both of them
are also more informative than our first attempt to plug the gap, because they
tell us why the best form of government is one that maximises freedom. They
supply explanations as to why the claim that democratic government maximises
freedom may be supposed to imply the conclusion that it is the best form of
government. One statement says that this is because, when it comes to good
government, nothing else matters beside freedom. The other says that it is the
best form because freedom is the most valuable thing that government can
deliver. These are substantial claims and they are obviously not equivalent.
It would make a difference to suppose that the argument depended on one
statement rather than the other.
Finally, we need to acknowledge that some explanations are more plausible
than others. By saddling the argument with the claim that nothing beside
freedom is of value, we would be making it depend on an obviously false
assumption. If this were what the presenter had in mind, the argument would
not be worthy of further consideration. Our second suggestion fares much
better in this respect. While it is certainly debatable whether freedom is to
be prized above all other things that governments can deliver, it is not an
altogether implausible suggestion. With further investigation, it might even
turn out to be an acceptable one. So plausibility provides a third criterion for
fixing on a given assumption.
We may now summarise the things to be taken into account when
attempting to uncover a premise that is implicit in the presentation of an
argument. If we are going to stick with the original argument and make the
most of it, we need to look for a claim that could plug the gap between the
premises and the conclusion of a Reasoning Diagram that is:
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• a dependent premise
• explanatory or informative
• the most plausible alternative.
what it implies and whether those implications are acceptable in one way
or another. This means that testing an assumption involves hypothetical
reasoning: If the assumption is correct, then things should be thus-and-
so. From a logical point of view, the rejection of an assumption involves
reasoning by modus tollens: If the assumption were correct, then things would
have been thus-and-so. But things turned out not to be thus-and-so. So the
assumption was not correct.
Things are a little more complicated when an assumption turns out to be
justified. An assumption may straightforwardly be proved to be correct, or it
may only be justified to the extent that it conforms to the evidence we have so
far and we have no other cause for rejection. ‘We assumed that it would rain,
and so it did.’ Here our assumption proved to be correct and that is the end of
the matter. ‘Mr Treasurer, are we justified in assuming that the economy will
improve?’ ‘Yes, all the signs are there.’ Here the assumption is justified only to
the extent that those signs have been predictive in the past, and provided that
what the treasurer says about the signs is true. Even if justified in the context,
our assumption might not be correct. To think that it must, is to fall for the
fallacy of affirming the consequent: ‘If the economy is about to improve, then
there should be such-and-such signs. All the signs are there. So the economy
is about to improve.’ This argument is not deductively valid, as we saw. It is
possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.
Note: See Deductive Reasoning (pp. 95–101) for more about modus ponens,
modus tollens and the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
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claim
When people express a difference of opinion, however, they are more often
not only disputing some claim, but also arguing in favour of incompatible
claims. This would be the case if, for example, I am arguing that we should
go away for the weekend, while you are arguing that we should stay at home.
Given that we can’t both stay at home for the weekend and go away, we are
arguing in favour of incompatible propositions, each of which excludes the
other. We may represent the situation as follows:
In the case of incompatible claims, the arguments will have the respective claims
as their conclusions. Going back to the example used to introduce Reasoning
Diagrams, we would begin to construct a Disagreement Diagram as follows:
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This seems to be the natural way to represent the disagreement, as arising from
support for incompatible claims rather than being directly a dispute about the
acceptability of a single claim.
2 Next we build the supporting arguments for both sides of the argument,
using the tool of Reasoning Diagrams.
In other words, the Disagreement Diagram will be a combination of the relevant
Reasoning Diagrams. In terms of the earlier disagreement about mandatory
detention, in the first round of discussion we would have produced the
following Disagreement Diagram.
further
counterargument
Notes
Advanced Toolkit—Notes
113
Copyright © 2006. Australian Council for Education Research. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair
Further reading
Baron, Joan Boykoff & Sternberg, Robert J (eds) 1987, Teaching Thinking Skills:
Theory and Practice, WH Freeman and Company, New York.
Bennett, Deborah J 2004, Logic Made Easy, WW Norton & Company,
New York.
Cam, Philip 1995, Thinking Together: Philosophical Inquiry for the Classroom,
Hale & Iremonger/PETA, Sydney.
Dewey, John 1966, Democracy and Education, The Free Press, New York.
Dewey, John 1997, How We Think, Minolta, Dover Publications Inc, New York.
Fisher, Robert 1993, Teaching Children to Think, Simon and Schuster
Education, Hemel Hempstead.
Haynes, Joanna 2002, Children as Philosophers, Routledge Falmer, London.
Kelley, David 1988, The Art of Reasoning, Norton and Company, New York.
Lipman, Matthew 1988a, Philosophy Goes to School, Temple University Press,
Philadelphia.
Lipman, Matthew 2003, Thinking in Education, 2nd edition, Cambridge
University Press, New York.
Lipman, Matthew, Sharp, Ann M & Oscanyan, Frederick S 1980, Philosophy in
the Classroom, Temple University Press, Philadelphia.
Matthews, Gareth B 1980, Philosophy and the Young Child, Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Matthews, Gareth B 1984, Dialogues with Children, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Mass.
Paul, Richard 1994, Critical Thinking, Hawker Brownlow Education, Highett,
Victoria.
Pritchard, Michael S 1985, Philosophical Adventures with Children, University
uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
Cam, Philip 1993a, Thinking Stories 1: Philosophical Inquiry for Children, Hale
& Iremonger, Sydney.
Cam, Philip 1993b, Thinking Stories 1: Teacher Resource/Activity Book, Hale &
Iremonger, Sydney.
Cam, Philip 1994a, Thinking Stories 2: Philosophical Inquiry for Children, Hale
& Iremonger, Sydney.
Cam, Philip 1994b, Thinking Stories 2: Teacher Resource/Activity Book, Hale &
Iremonger, Sydney.
Cam, Philip 1997a, Thinking Stories 3: Philosophical Inquiry for Children, Hale
& Iremonger, Sydney.
Cam, Philip 1997b, Thinking Stories 3: Teacher Resource/Activity Book, Hale &
Iremonger, Sydney.
Cam, Philip 1998, Twister, Quibbler, Puzzler, Cheat, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney.
de Hann, Chris, MacColl, San & McCutcheon, Lucy 1995, Philosophy with
Kids, Longman, South Melbourne, Victoria.
Golding, Clinton 2002, Connecting Concepts, Australian Council for
Educational Research, Camberwell, Victoria.
Lipman, Matthew 1981, Pixie, Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for
Children, Montclair State College, Montclair, NJ.
Lipman, Matthew 1983, Lisa, University Press of America, Lanham, MD.
Lipman, Matthew 1986, Kio & Gus, Revised edition, Institute for the
Advancement of Philosophy for Children, Montclair State College, Upper
Montclair, NJ.
Lipman, Matthew 1988b, Elfie, Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy
for Children, Montclair State College, Upper Montclair, NJ.
Lipman, Matthew 1992, Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery, Australian adaptation
prepared by Laurance Splitter, Australian Council for Educational Research,
Camberwell, Victoria.
Lipman, Matthew & Gazzard, Ann 1988, Getting Our Thoughts Together:
uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
Bibliography 115
Murris, Karen & Haynes, Joanna 2000, Storywise, www.dialogueworks.co.uk
Copyright © 2006. Australian Council for Education Research. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair