Using philosophical and spiritual conversations with children and young people: A method for psychological assessment, listening deeply and empowerment

Abstract

This paper develops a thesis that listening to children and young people (CYP) can be enhanced and promoted through attending to their deeper attitudes and ideas which underpin motivation. It is argued that questionnaires, checklists and closed questions are useful, to a degree, but may be restrictive and limited in eliciting significant views.Following a brief background literature review of earlier work in the area of listening to children, the paper focuses on our most recent research direction, namely using conversations, around classical Socratic and philosophical, spiritual questions as a method of enabling children to elaborate their deep attitudes to life. The authors describe and discuss a tool they have developed, based upon empirical research, which could be of value to Educational Psychologists (EPs) and other professionals. An important feature of the development of this tool was the involvement of CYP as part of the research and production team. This tool, entitled ‘A Little Box of Big Questions’ (LBBQ), contains four subsets of questions, presented on colourful, illustrated cards: Identity; Important People; Meaning and Purpose; and Thinking and Planning.The authors believe that such conversations, which can throw light on the child’s viewpoints and stances, could underpin future action and self-understanding and facilitate empowerment. Evidence to date shows that the tool is workable with children aged 8 to 14 years, who enjoy responding to the questions, and they say very interesting things. Further on-going work with colleagues in the UK and Australia is mentioned, and finally some implications for use are suggested.