A Community of Philosophical Inquiry: the Strategic Reform of Classroom Teaching and Learning

Pattamasiri Teeranurak
Thailand

Applying child-centred approach to learning in the classroom is one of the most popular issues in current education reform in Thailand. Although everyone is enthusiastic about the reform in teaching and trying to use various methods and activities in the classroom, the outcome of applying child-centre principles is still unsatisfactory. First of all, it is difficult to introduce the child-centred approach in the classroom, since the teacher is not really interested in changing the learning convention in the classroom. Secondly, the teacher is accustomed to the act of spoonfeeding the students with hard facts and rarely gives them a chance to express their opinion. At the same time, students also expect to learn passively from the teacher, since they have been cultivated in the Thai culture in which the act of obedience and respect towards adults is highly valued. For these reasons, the child-centred approach in learning and teaching in Thai education is not as successful as it should be.

To be sucessful, education reform should starts with the change of the teacher's roles. The teacher should no longer be the sole authority or the only decision-maker in the classroom. The students should be allowed to have an opportunity to participate in the learning process and learn how to think for themselves. The researcher uses the community of philosophical inquiry approach as an instructional tool to create new roles for the teacher, and this helps the children to become more effective participants in the whole learning process. In addition, the researcher realizes that the community of philosophical inquiry approach is in line with the Thailand Education Act 1999, which aims to develop learners to be "smart, good, and happy." It is one way to improve the effectiveness of the child-centred concept implementation in Thailand.

This research project aims at collecting both quantitative and qualitative data. The purpose of this research is to study the effect of using instructional process based on a community of philosophical inquiry approach and two traits of personality, the introvert and the extravert, on thinking skills. The sample consised of sixty students of the first graders from different private primary schools in Thailand. Thirty students were assigned to a control group-fifteen students with introvert personality and the other half with extravert personality. The Thinking Skills Test developed by the researcher and Comrey Personality: Form A (CPS) was used as a quantitative instrument. The two qualitative instruments, observation and dialogue-recording forms, were developed to record learning behaviors of children during instructional processes and role-play activities.

The instructional process consisted of 5 components: principles, objectives, contents, instructional procedure and evaluation. The instructional process was designed to integrate the community of philosophical approach into the ordinary curriculum. Three instructional procedures were: 1) instruction for contents; 2) preparation for a community of inquiry: A) learning to work together B) learning to be a good speaker C) learning to be a good listener D) learning how to reason; 3) development of a community of philosophical inquiry: A) creating classroom atmosphere conductive to inquiry B) doing philosophy C) doing exercises for philosophical inquiry practice and 4) doing exercises for contents learning.

The research results are as follows:
1) The findings of this study indicated that there was a significant difference at .01 level of the average scores of thinking skills between the experimental group and the control group. Additionally, there were no significant differences between the two traits of personality and thinking skills scores at the .01 level. It was also indicated that the thinking skills of the first graders as measured by the thinking skills test could be developed through a community of inquiry in the classroom. Moreover, this instructional process had a positive effect on thinking skills of both introvert and extravert personality.
2) Students were able to think more deeply by expressing deeper thinking in discussions and get a much greater depth of understanding of the subject matter.
3) Both introvert and extravert students became more active in the inquiry, asked more questions, and were more aware of their own thinking.
4) Classroom conversations and dialogues were not channeled through the teachers, the process by which all the students gradually learned to become more interactive with one another.