An Empirical Study of the Effectiveness of Lipman’s Philosophy for Children Programme on Promoting Children’s Critical Thinking in Hong Kong, China

Abstract

Although the Philosophy for Children (commonly known as P4C) programme has proved successful at enhancing the intellectual development of children in many parts of the world, the questions of whether children can do philosophy and whether P4C can foster children’s critical thinking have not hitherto been the focus of research in Hong Kong, China. This chapter reports the results of the first systematic, though only exploratory, study that assesses the effectiveness of the P4C programme in promoting children’s critical thinking in Hong Kong. Forty-two Secondary 1 students volunteered for this study, from whom 28 students were randomly selected and randomly assigned to two groups of 14 each: one receiving P4C lessons and the other receiving English lessons. The students who were taught P4C were found to show a greater improvement in the reasoning test performance than those who were not, to be capable of doing philosophy, and to have a positive attitude towards doing philosophy in the classroom. It was also found that P4C played a major role in developing the students’ critical thinking, and that such crucial factors as the following contributed to the success of the P4C programme: providing a favourable physical setting for discussion, adopting mixed-code teaching, using effective pedagogic strategies, integrating P4C into the formal curriculum, establishing a closely knit community of inquiry, maintaining good discipline in the community of inquiry, and giving after-class individual counselling to students who repeatedly display disruptive or negative emotional behaviours in class.