According to Matthew Lipman, one of the founders of the Philosophy for Children (P4C) programme, critical thinking improves reasonableness and the exercise of good judgement, both of which Lipman takes to be necessary to sustaining a democratic society. Against his view, I argue that although critical thinking can be done well or badly, it does…

Dear friends, I am a professor of philosophy and have been teaching philosophy more than 30 years. In 1992, I started to do philosophy with children using my own methods. I had known nothing about Lipman's curriculum. I based my method only on my university experience and philosophical education, trying to do something unofficial and useful for…

Philosophy for Democracy is a research project which aims to examine whether and how Philosophy with Children contributes to the development of democratic skills and attitudes. Philosophy with Children seeks to develop children's critical thinking, their ability to judge, enhance their dialogical skills and attitudes and to contribute to their…

This study examined the development of children's decisionmaking abilities and the effects of age and gender differences on their use of probability, gain, and loss information about risky alternatives. Subjects were 158 children of 7-13 years of age who were observed during a task in which they chose among alternative gambles in a computer game.…

Two samples, the first consisting of 13 and 16-year-olds and adults, the second consisting of children from kindergarten, second and sixth grades, are interviewed to measure the cognitive processes used to evaluate the credibility of television content. Additional goals include measuring the relationship between the use of these cognitive…

This paper presents a reasoning taxonomy to explain reasoning objectives, strategies, and habits available to the advanced thinker. It begins by explaining the first part of the taxonomy, objectives of reasoning, including the need for skilled thinkers to reason with a purpose and to understand how the world works so that they can engage with it.…

Proposes three framing assumptions for the study of thinking, involving situated cognition, personal and social epistemologies, and conceptual competence. Outlines evidence consistent with these assumptions, and discusses topics in the psychology of thinking in relation to the assumptions. (Author/BJV)

With television operating as an important socializing influence, children need to become critical consumers and they can be taught the necessary evaluative skills. Explicit discussion is seen as a means of developing awareness of various facets of TV programming, e.g., the relationship of reality to content, stereotyped images presented, any bias…

While it may not be possible to change the content of television, it may be possible to modify its effects on children by making them more critical viewers. The objectives of this project are threefold: to identify processes children use, or can be taught to use, to discriminate the applicability to their own lives of varieties of television…