introduction

This paper identifies a significant opportunity for research with regards to obstacles to the implementation of in Philosophy for Children (henceforth P4C). Research focussing on teachers’ perspectives, particularly in relation to their beliefs and values, is an area of P4C which is underdeveloped and may hold the potential for new findings. A greater understanding of classroom teachers who utilise P4C practices in schools has been under researched and provides an opportunity for researchers to identify teachers’ understandings and perceptions of P4C. This paper will show that identifying the beliefs and values that inform teachers’ practice is important to school leaders, policy makers, and P4C academics. This kind of research would glean information from teachers’ experiences which influence their beliefs and values, and the impact that those beliefs and values may have for their understanding and practice of P4C in their classrooms. This paper will talk through the context of recently implemented educational policies in the state of Victoria in Australia, although many of the issues which will be discussed are applicable beyond this specific context.

p4c and its current educational status

P4C is the practice of engaging young people in philosophical dialogue. The central pedagogical tool of P4C is the community of inquiry, in which students work together to generate and attempt to answer philosophical questions through reasoned communal dialogue. P4C is a method of learning that is underrepresented in schools, and especially in the primary years of schooling (^{Hand & Winstanley, 2008}, p. xiii). Few schools offer regular and structured P4C at all, and in those schools that do offer it there is significant variation in how it is conducted. This is because there are “few if any universally-agreed-upon criteria for its proper conduct” (^{Gregory, 2009}, p. 338).

For over a decade there has been a growing body of evidence indicating that P4C has positive effects on children. P4C around the world has been developed and many approaches have been scrutinised through empirical studies. Through these empirical studies - as well as through anecdotal evidence from teachers and schools - there is substantial evidence that P4C provides a great deal of benefits to children which they may not otherwise receive. There is evidence indicating that P4C has positive effects on children in relation to:

In October, 2016, in the UK, the Education Endowment Fund has just provided funding of nearly $2 million to test a program of P4C across 200 schools (^{Education Endowment Foundation, 2016}) to provide further empirical evidence of the benefits of P4C.

Yet despite all of these positive benefits for children who are exposed to P4C, it is still a niche section of the education community. There are very few schools in Victoria which incorporate P4C into their curriculum (^{Victorian Association of Philosophy in Schools, 2017}). Therefore, there must be something missing from P4C that is turning teachers, schools, and governments away from incorporating it into their curriculums. The benefits of the practice are too significant for educators to ignore, yet that is exactly what they seem to be doing. This paper proposes that a research focus on teachers’ perspectives will offer significant insight into this area.

^{Haynes and Murris (2011)} have previously suggested insight into some of the reasons why teachers might find P4C difficult, including that: “teachers lack familiarity with both content and methods of philosophy” (p. 286); “teachers may hesitate to adopt deeper approaches that take time to establish, such as PwC [Philosophy with Children]” (p. 286); “the rigour of philosophically building on ideas causes anxiety to some PwC educators with little philosophy in their educational background. The democratic practice and respect for children that the theory presupposes often generates discomfort and disturbance with all educators” (p. 290); and that “educators can be anxious about not knowing the questions in advance, and can be reluctant to regard children as experts in respect of their experiences” (p. 295).

Recently, Murris (2016, p. 195) has spoken about the challenge in understanding teachers who come into P4C anew. She says that:

the deeper challenge, as elsewhere, involves preparing teachers for the uncertainty and insecurity involved in planning for lessons that democratically accommodate children’s own questions and ideas, and that draw on pedagogies with which they are unfamiliar. This includes a lack of familiarity with planning lessons as a holistic endeavour that does not involve specifying goals and objectives in advance, but enacting a range of flexible, ongoing hypotheses generated in the interactions with past experiences, the material, as well as the needs and interests of, for example, the children and parents.

Haynes and Murris (2011) posit that teachers may not want to engage with P4C because they lack confidence, are anxious and unfamiliar, and do not understand the practice. It is important for the P4C community to incorporate the voices of classroom teachers of P4C into academic discussion, and to engage in research opportunities which aim to capture those voices. This will provide insight into how teachers experience implementing P4C in the classroom, on the ground floor, rather than exclusively from the expert, academic, or researcher’s perspective.

victorian context

This research is particularly timely in the state of Victoria in Australia, as in 2017 the a new curriculum was introduced that requires teachers in public schools to engage with philosophy from foundation (~5 years old) to year ten (~16 years old). In particular, philosophy finds itself embedded in the capabilities which are to be integrated across all learning areas. These capabilities are described as are “a set of discrete knowledge and skills that can and should be taught explicitly in and through the learning areas, but are not fully defined by any of the learning areas or disciplines” (^{VCAA, 2016a}). These capabilities are Critical and Creative Thinking, Ethical Understanding, Intercultural Capability, and Personal and Social Capability (^{VCAA, 2016b}). Therefore, these four capabilities are designed to be weaved throughout all of the discrete learning areas (English, math, humanities, etc.), which suits the P4C approach as an approach that can find stimuli from any learning area and incorporate philosophical problem solving with those areas of learning. Moreover, updates from July 2017 to the Principles of Learning and Teaching (PoLT) in the Victorian plan explicitly reference Matthew Lipman and the Philosophy for Children program, as well as more modern developments in P4C from Clinton Golding. The Principles also state that classrooms should be turned into communities of inquiry (^{State Government of Victoria, 2017}). In addition, because 2017 is the first year that the Victorian Curriculum has been in use, there is no evidence (yet) to suggest that it has had any significant impact on teachers’ actual classroom practice. There is little research about how teachers might approach incorporating the capabilities, despite the requirement to do so. There is also little research about how teachers might approach P4C or community of inquiry in Victorian government schools, despite the government mandate.

Critical and Creative thinking are terms used by Lipman and Bynum (1976) historically and also in modern P4C writing (^{Murris, 2017}) to describe what P4C aims to achieve, and ethics is a primary branch of the philosophical tradition in general and is also important specifically in P4C education (^{Cam, 2012}, 2016; ^{Pietzner, 2014}, p. 144). P4C practitioners have also written about the benefits in relation to intercultural understanding (^{Camhy, 2007}; ^{de la Garza, 2009}; ^{Haynes, 2008}, p. 133; ^{Jewell, 2005}) as well as personal and social capabilities (^{Haynes, 2008}, p. 130; 159; D. ^{Kennedy, 1990}, p. 27; ^{SAPERE, 2006b}; ^{Sharp, 2009}; ^{Topping & Trickey, 2007c}; ^{Trickey & Topping, 2006}; ^{Weber, 2009}, p. 320). These capabilities have significant links to P4C. Teachers, schools, and policy makers can look to the P4C movement for knowledge about how one might approach addressing these capabilities in school. Indeed, it might be expected that educators will begin to turn more to P4C to address these kinds of new interdisciplinary or cross-curricular standards for schools. Because of this, it is important that P4C practitioners are ready and knowledgeable about how to bring new schools into the fold. One aspect of this is understanding how classroom teachers engage with the practice, and how new teachers who are learning P4C methods might be expected to interact with the practice. Therefore, research which seeks out ordinary classroom teachers’ perspectives on P4C is a key instrument for understanding these nuances, and one which is currently under-researched in the field.

beliefs and values of teachers in education

Recent educational literature has defined teachers as agents of change (^{Menter & Hulme, 2013}; ^{Priestley, 2011}; ^{Sinnema & Aitken, 2013}) and pedagogical toolmakers (^{Turvey, 2013}). Biesta and Tedder (2006, p. 137) say that achievement in policy and curriculum change “will always result from the interplay of individual efforts, available resources and contextual and structural factors as they come together in particular and, in a sense, always unique situations”.

Recent research into teacher agency will help with understanding the kind of research that this paper is advocating in a P4C context. Priestley, Biesta, and Robinson (2013, p. 151) conducted research which focussed on

the role of teachers’ values and beliefs in the achievement of agency, and on the role of relationships. Values and beliefs partly concern the discourses through which teachers make sense of the situations in which they act (the cultural aspect of the practical-evaluative dimension), partly articulate their short-term and longer-term aspirations (the projective dimension), and partly stem from their personal and professional histories (the iterative dimension).

Focusing on the role that teachers’ beliefs and values play in the practice of P4C is similarly important to the research above. This P4C focussed research should also attempt to understand how teachers make sense of the situations in which they act and their goals for students in utilising P4C in their classrooms. Rather than looking at teacher agency in general as Priestley et al. (2013) have done, P4C research should more specifically aim towards how teachers’ beliefs and values influence the practice of P4C. This research will reveal how teachers’ beliefs and values impact upon P4C practices in classrooms and show the extent to which teachers connect these practices with recent policy changes (such as those discussed in the previous section of this paper).

The beliefs and values teachers inhabit in relation to P4C are central to understanding the practice in the classroom environment. More broadly in education, it has been suggested that teachers’ understandings of teaching and learning play a central role in addressing students’ needs, “yet we know very little about how and why teachers do the things they do in classrooms, or about how to help them make the best decisions for their students” (^{Marble, Finley, & Ferguson, 2000}, p. 3). It has also been suggested that teachers interpret policy changes (such as the new Victorian Curriculum and Principles of Learning and Teaching) in different ways based on their experiences, beliefs, students, and school culture (^{Marble et al., 2000}, p. 4), and that teachers are often the ones who have responsibility for implementing change (^{Dinham, 2016}, ch. 11). This means that the implementation of P4C practices addressing the four new capabilities and Principle Four of PoLT will vary greatly from teacher to teacher and may be quite different from the expectations of the policy makers. This raises important issues about the capacity to support collegial school-level decision-making in times of policy change (^{Menter & Hulme, 2013}, p. 136). Teacher-participants from a study into recent Scottish curriculum changes “talked of ‘double vision’ and ‘different worlds’” (^{Menter & Hulme, 2013}, p. 142), indicating that the perspectives of teachers and those of policy makers are not always aligned, and changes in curriculum practices should be understood from teachers’ perspectives as well. “Hayward et al. (2007) reasserted the dangers of imposing reform without providing rich opportunities for teacher engagement” (^{Menter & Hulme, 2013}, p. 142). In P4C, there is also this obligation to include ordinary teachers’ perspectives and gauge their understanding, interpretation, and beliefs about the practice in order to fully service the benefits of P4C referenced earlier in this paper.

Teachers’ beliefs and values about P4C may impact the way they approach it in the classroom. In other areas of education this has shown to be the case and result in a significant impact on the teaching and learning practices of those teachers. Johnstone (2017) showed that teachers’ beliefs about streamed classes significantly affected their approach to teaching those classes. While Niyozov and Pluim (2009) argued that in the case of Muslim students in Australian schools, teachers’ perspectives should greatly inform policy, research, and practice, and are an important perspective to seek out due to the effect that those beliefs have on practice. Research into teachers’ beliefs and values about P4C is currently insufficient to comprehensively understand teachers’ perspectives. Teachers’ perspectives are important when implementing policy change to understand how the changes may impact and influence teachers in their everyday practice.

Recent research from Bråten, Muis, and Reznitskaya (2017) has also investigated similar issues to how teachers’ beliefs and values affect their teacher practice and student performance. Their research focussed on the “extent to which teachers’ thinking about knowledge and the process of knowing, termed epistemic cognition within educational psychology (Greene, Sandoval, & Braten 2016), may impact students’ construction of deep understanding and the recommended processes to achieve it ( i.e., argumentation and dialogue)” (p. 253). This is not strictly about beliefs and values, but epistemic cognition involves how teachers think about their teaching, as well as about knowledge in general, which is intimately related to the beliefs and values teachers hold. Bråten et al. (2017, p. 254) suggest that the epistemic cognition of teachers may interfere with students’ thinking and understanding in collaborative dialogic reasoning, which would include the P4C approach. Moreover, it is also suggested that the instructional activities and assessments teachers utilise with students are guided by the epistemic aims of the teacher (^{Bråten et al., 2017}, p. 256; ^{Buehl & Fives, 2016}), while there is also research revealing a coherence between teachers’ beliefs and science knowledge, student learning, and instructional practices (^{Bråten et al., 2017}, p. 259), as well as teacher beliefs being able to positively predict mathematical achievement in students (p. 260). This research focussing on teachers’ epistemic cognition in reasoning dialogue closely suggests that “teachers’ roles in facilitating or constraining students understanding in such instructional contexts [reasoning dialogues] also need to be further researched through comprehensive implementation data” (^{Bråten et al., 2017}, p. 265). Although this research is primarily discussing the ‘epistemic cognition’ of teachers in the context of ‘reasoned argumentation’, teacher beliefs and values strongly inform how teachers think and perceive teaching, learning, and knowledge (epistemic cognition), and also that collaborative reasoning dialogue and argumentation is closely related to the P4C model as it has been presented in an earlier section of this paper.

Also in the same article by Bråten et al. (2017) is evidence that supports the statements mentioned earlier by Haynes and Murris (2011) about teacher difficulty in implementing P4C. Although the article does not specifically reference P4C, it discusses facilitating classroom dialogue related to reasoning and argumentation, which is closely aligned to P4C. Bråten et al. (2017) say that this “poses a serious challenge for both new and experienced teachers” (p. 256), that more research is required to “explain why teachers still may find it challenging to teach deep understanding by engaging students in argumentation through inquiry dialogue” (p. 257), and that “engaging students in reasoned argumentation through classroom dialogue also poses new challenges to many teachers” (p. 265; cf. (^{Alverman & Hayes, 1989}; ^{Hammer & Schifter, 2001}; ^{Juzwik, Sherry, Caughlan, Heintz, & Borsheim-Black, 2012}). This research supports the claims made in this paper that researching the beliefs and values of teachers in P4C will provide useful insight into how teachers use, understand, and implement P4C is classrooms, which will in turn give clarity to how P4C might engage with more teachers, train teachers in the practice, and convince teachers, schools, and governments to implement the practice.

recent research on the beliefs and values of teachers in p4c

It has been noted above how it is important to understand teachers’ perspectives on their classroom practice in education in general, but teachers’ perspectives in P4C more specifically are also of great importance. Canuto (2015) argues that “it is a major concern as to how [P4C] teachers will become effective facilitators of such a classroom environment” (p. 2). Scholl (2014) also claims that research is needed to understand the relationship teachers have towards P4C, including an understanding of the “impact of teaching Philosophy on pedagogy, the resources required to facilitate and sustain such change, including the necessary dispositions required to teach Philosophy, and the critical junctures in pedagogical change associated with teaching Philosophy” (p. 89). Teachers’ beliefs about pedagogy, their values in relation to philosophical dispositions, and the changes that their teaching practice undergo are some of the features which may be expected to result from qualitative research into P4C teachers’ perspectives, and particularly with a focus on their beliefs and values. The concerns voiced here by these P4C practitioners and researchers are ones which are likely to be addressed through research into ordinary teachers’ perspectives.

Within the field of P4C, there has been some recent research related to teachers’ beliefs and values, but there is more research required to fully understand this relationship. Both Newell-Jones (2012) and O'Riordan (2015) have conducted research which gathered teachers’ beliefs about P4C. Both of these research studies focussed on implementing P4C in schools first, as a research directive, then later interviewed teachers in an attempt to understand their perspectives on the intervention. Research about teachers participating in a particular P4C intervention which asks teachers to begin implementing P4C practices in their classrooms, will differ significantly from research which targets teachers who have already, under their own or their school’s initiative, begun to implement P4C in their classes. Both of the aforementioned studies focussed on teachers’ perspectives as a secondary research goal. Both studies’ primary focus was on the results of the intervention. For Newell-Jones (2012), the primary outcomes of the research were related to the benefits students received (based on teacher judgements) from the intervention of P4C in their classes. And secondarily, teachers’ perspectives were sought to determine factors which acted as barriers and factors which promoted embedding P4C in the class. While some of the interview data revealed insights related to the beliefs and values of the teachers participating in the intervention, this was not a focus and therefore did not record a significant amount of data about these features. Similarly, the research of O'Riordan (2015) focussed on an intervention where teachers were asked to begin to implement P4C in their classes. O'Riordan (2015) stated that her goal in this research was to “understand the considerations which bear upon curricular action” (p. 30) in relation to implementing P4C. She also set out to test the veracity of the claim of Leat (1999) who says that “teacher efficacy (i.e. teachers’ beliefs about their ability to positively influence student outcomes) is a measure of the chances of implementing change” (p. 399). In doing this she used teacher interviews to examine the factors that teachers perceived to determine the effectiveness of the implementation of P4C in their own classrooms. This is similar to that of Newell-Jones (2012) with a focus on the barriers and promoters of implementing P4C during the intervention. These studies on their own are insufficient to provide clarity to many of the suppositions made by Haynes and Murris (2011) earlier, as well as other researchers in this area who similarly claim that teachers struggle to facilitate open-inquiry-type discussions (^{Alverman & Hayes, 1989}; ^{Juzwik et al., 2012}; ^{Nguyen, Anderson, Waggoner, & Rowel, 2007}; ^{Reznitskaya & Wilkinson, 2017/2018}). How teachers feel about a lack of familiarity and the rigour of P4C, about any anxiety that may be present due to the uncertainty of facilitating a philosophical discussion, and the length of time required to build a community of inquiry are facets of teachers’ perspectives which are not drawn out in the studies discussed in this section.

a gap in p4c research

Both the Newell-Jones (2012) and O'Riordan (2015) studies focused on, and revealed, primarily external factors for barriers and enablers to the implementation of P4C. Yet there is also a need for research that focuses on the internal locus of teachers in their relationship with P4C. In this internal focus, research may reveal features on the other side of the coin to Newell-Jones (2012) and O'Riordan (2015) in determining barriers and enablers to the implementation of P4C. While they have focussed on determining these barriers and enablers in terms of external factors such as a lack of time, lack of resources (Newell-Jones, pp. 10-11), or professional development (O'Riordan, pp. 32-33), research into teachers’ perspectives may shine light on the internal factors about their relationships with P4C. These internal factors may lead to research questions such as what do teachers believe P4C is and why it is useful (possibly at different levels of experience, e.g. after level 1 training)? Research questions such as how does P4C sync up with other areas of teaching will provide insight into teachers’ perspectives on practice. And research questions which ask teachers to reflect on their P4C practice will help to draw out any deep seeded beliefs and values teachers have in relation to P4C, for example, how do teachers plan and reflect on P4C sessions. This question connects strongly with the Haynes and Murris (2011) discussion from earlier which posited a potential anxiety and unfamiliarity with P4C practices, and these dispositions may be revealed in research into individual teacher reflections and planning for P4C.

Wilkinson et al. (2017) have recently conducted research that supports the need for further research into how beliefs and values impact teaching practice. Their research focussed on how professional development in inquiry dialogue may impact teachers’ epistemological beliefs. However, prior to understanding how teachers’ beliefs and values may be modified through professional development, it is necessary to understand the role that teachers’ beliefs and values currently play. Wilkinson et al. (2017) state that modifying teachers’ existing practices is a serious challenge, that facilitating inquiry dialogue may require substantial shifts of teacher beliefs and practices (p. 69), that teachers’ discourse practices are notoriously resistant to change, and ultimately, that “more research is needed to clarify the nature of the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and their discourse practices” (p. 78).

Different beliefs about elements of P4C may affect the way that P4C is implemented in the classroom. For example, a belief that P4C is a critical thinking skills program may act as a barrier to its continued practice if critical thinking skills become hard to target and assess for the teacher in philosophical dialogue. Biesta (2011, p. 310) warns against the instrumentalization of P4C as merely a thinking skills program, and so such a belief may impact teaching and learning. A belief that strong teacher directedness is the way to practice P4C may also act as a barrier to the continued use and impact of P4C in a class if the teacher-directed style is having a negative impact on students. P4C advocates generally espouse a method that “balances teacher-direction and free discussion” and resolves problems by co-inquiring with their teacher (^{Golding, 2014}, p. 79), so a solely teacher-directed approach may have a significant effect on the class. A belief that P4C is only useful insofar as it develops critical thinking skills may also act as a barrier if the P4C dialogues in class tend to move more towards the development of caring thinking skills, which are usually a goal of P4C practitioners, but if a teacher were to only care about critical thinking skills this may act as a barrier for P4C. Poulton (2014, p. 1240) has conducted research showing that caring thinking skills tend to be developed first in a philosophical community of inquiry. These points also touch on the ideas of Haynes & Murris (2011) from earlier in their supposition that teachers may not fully understand the practices of P4C and are therefore hesitant to adopt its methods. Alternatively, beliefs and values related to the positive impact of dialogic learning, about facilitating a space for children to think for themselves, or a commitment to democracy in the classroom may all act as internal enablers related to the beliefs and values of teachers who practice P4C in their classes. These kinds of beliefs and values would be expected to be found in research which primarily focussed on ordinary teacher’s perspectives, and this data on the beliefs and values of P4C teachers may reveal trends amongst teachers who practice P4C in their classes, or links between certain beliefs and values with P4C.

It is important to broaden to picture of research that Newell-Jones (2012) and O'Riordan (2015) have begun. Their research has provided some insight into teachers’ perspectives on the implementation of P4C, but given the continual growth of P4C, most noticeable in the Victorian policy changes referenced above, there ought to be a full picture of teachers’ perspectives on P4C practices in their classrooms. This will help to get policy makers, P4C practitioners, and classrooms teachers closer in sync with one another, and allow a better understanding of the relationship between teachers and P4C, that will further service any future policy changes which bear upon P4C, as well as provide guidance for any teachers and school looking to begin their P4C journey.

conclusion

An analysis of the beliefs and values teachers hold about P4C schools should be seen as an important research focus going forward. The outcome of such research will help to broaden the understanding of how teachers’ practice of P4C is influenced by their beliefs and values, and how their beliefs and value align with any curriculum changes lending themselves to P4C practices. This may reveal details about the connection between policy makers and teachers, and between P4C researchers and teachers. There is currently insufficient data to form a complete picture of ordinary teachers’ perspectives of P4C, but if the P4C community wants to gain a fuller picture of its practice in classrooms, it must first engage with the beliefs, values, and overall perspectives of their classroom teachers. Recent educational policy changes in the state of Victoria, Australia have moved to include more focus on P4C. This paper has detailed reasons why teacher beliefs and values are especially important during this time of educational change. An understanding of how teachers perceive and understand these changes and how they enact them in the classroom helps P4C practitioners, researchers, and policy makers in ensuring P4C practices are rolled out consistently and effectively. Teachers’ perceptions and understandings play a vital role in the implementation of any educational change, and data is needed to ensure that those teachers on the ground have a connection with the methods and practices of P4C sufficient to implement it in ways associated with best practice in the field. Teachers beliefs and values have a significant impact on their practice and more research is needed to reveal the impact that teachers’ beliefs and values have on their practice, understanding, and interpretation of P4C.