The experience of doing philosophy with children from the voices of the teachers

Abstract

In this paper, we inquire into teachers' representations about the experience of carrying out philosophy proposals with children. To do so, we first propose to specify the implications of what we call philosophical scenes; we define the teaching of philosophy as a philosophical problem and then we characterize the practice from a polemic about its denomination as philosophy for children or philosophy with children. In order to survey these representations, we conducted six in-depth interviews with teachers who have extensive experience in this practice, and from an analysis of the interviews we emphasize the power of reflection on the experience. We recovered in the narratives the revision of their own training, of the idea of planning and of the way in which infancy breaks in. Finally, we emphasize the recognition of the transformative nature do philosophy with children  reported by the teachers.