Ewelina Grądzka and Pieter Mostert
Affiliation: Pontifical University of John Paul II, The Philosophy Foundation
INTRODUCTION
There is a growing concern about the problem of reproducibility and replicability of research, especially in the field of psychology discussed at least since the 2010s. However, another significant issue is the problem of the reliability and rigor of research reports. It can be observed for example in the field of human-robot interaction when in many papers it is not well defined what type of ‘robot’ was investigated. Another field, we would like to focus on in our paper is the case study of using ‘philosophy for children’ (p4c) method as a base for research, mostly in developmental psychology.
P4C METHOD COMPLEXITY
Developmental psychology research is a rich and valuable source of understanding of various aspects of human growth. It is an important source for education which helps to decide on adequate policies toward children education, especially in evidence-based attitude to education. It provides information about the effectiveness of various methods. However, it has to be grounded on reliable design of the research and comprehensive reporting of the research done.
According to one of the main figures in philosophy for children movement that started the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children at Montclair State University in 1974 – Matthew Lipman (Lipman, 1986), and other authors (Trickey and Topping, 2004) there is now enough research that confirms p4c has a positive effect on the cognitive abilities across the disciplines. There were also many research in other areas like higher-order thinking skills; safe environments; civilized students; democracy in discussion or the culture of thinking in the classroom. (Ab Wahab et al., 2022) However, some claim that there is still space for further investigation since there is ‘only a few high-quality studies’. (Ventista, 2018) On the other hand, the umbrella term ‘philosophy for children’ refers nowadays not to a homogeneous method (often it is associated with the work of Matthew Lipman only) but to a wide variety of views and practices (the scope of variety can be observed in international organizations like International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children or SOPHIA- European Foundation for the Advancement of Doing Philosophy for Children). However, the reports of effect studies neglect that fact, the information about the ‘doing’ is rather sparse in most cases. (Yan et al., 2018) Lack of homogeneity constitutes a problem in the case of comparing studies which measure a certain effect but refer to different practices (‘interventions’), which have caused this effect.
Therefore, recommendations were made that there is a need for detailed information on the practice that was used in the research, which are important for readers, journal editors and peer reviewers (mostly philosophers, teachers, psychologists) to know. (Mostert, 2022; Oyler, 2019)
The most plausible reasons for the problem, to our understanding are:
Since reporting in more detail on the conditions of the research becomes a standard and we also “aim to improve the transparency of reporting and reproducibility of published results” of research conducted in relation to p4c methods like e.g. Nature in case of their Editorial Policy Checklist and Reporting standards and availability of data, materials, code and protocols.
To address this gap we, as philosophers who are at the same time practitioners of different approaches to p4c, developed ‘a checklist’. However, we consider calling it rather a ‘guideline’ because we don’t want to prescribe how researchers should report about the p4c-practice. The information may be provided in a separate appendix or in the report at the appropriate places. We hope such a ‘checklist’ will enhance the quality, transparency and consistency of manuscripts and can serve as a helpful and easy to apply guidance for writing the article.
This checklist/guideline is an attempt to help and encourage authors of articles and reports to provide the reader with the key-information about the P4C-practice that is object of the research. Such information, we think, will benefit the readers’ understanding of this practice, in comparison to their own views and approach.
A draft of the guideline/checklist has been discussed with an international group of practitioners. Now we want to discuss it with researchers and philosophers interested in psychology research, before applying it in one or more research studies.
We think that the seven headings cover the main areas of differences, which affect the actual ‘way of doing p4c’, as the object of a particular research study.
GUIDELINE/CHECKLIST Main topics From the perspective of the reader, there are seven main topics about which the authors should provide a concise description: 1. Aims and understanding of Philosophy for Children 2. Aims and understanding of the role of the facilitator 3. Format / model of the philosophical dialogues 4. Preparation and practice 5. Expertise and training of facilitators and others involved 6. Context 7. Control Group