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Philosophical Inquiry Among Hearing-Impaired Students Ron B. Rembert In November 1981, the Regional Day School for the Deaf in Fort Worth, Texas, provided the setting for the first of several philosophical discussions among hearing-impaired students. These discussions, which stretched over a 2-year period, arose initially from the reading and interpretation of a philosophical novel for children, Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery (Lipman, 1974), a book that challenges students to develop and use certain thinking skills. The development and use of various thinking skills was the primary objective of the efforts to launch a Philosophy for Children program at the Regional Day School for the Deaf. This report highlights the problems and prospects of (a) implementing the program, (b) practicing the program, (c) extending the program, and (d) evaluating the program. The Philosophy for Children program created by Matthew Lipman of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) at Montclair State College in New Jersey set the stage for the project. Lipman established the IAPC in 1972 to promote the development of thinking skills through philosophical discussion among students in grades 3-10. The classroom discussions emerge from reading and studying philosophical novels for children in which the characters discover the power of logic and the benefits of thinking analytically. The benefits become most apparent when the students accept the challenge to think about thinking-the metacognitive goal underlying the entire program. In implementing the program with hearing-impaired children, this author 's greatest difficulty was in preparing for discussion sessions rather than mere question-and-answer activities. The distinction between these two types of activities rests upon the different set of expectations defining each activity. For example, the teacher of the experimental group established the expectation that the emphasis during discussions would be placed on the exploration of complex concepts such as thinking, dreaming, hoping, and imagining, rather than on the regurgitation of simple definitions of these terms. In addition, the teacher established the expectation that each student act as a participant who follows the line of questioning required in exploring complex concepts, not as a competitor who strives only for personal success or achievement. The six hearing-impaired students in the experimental group embraced these expectations but faced some problems in satisfying them. Strategies for helping the students overcome such problems included (a) using a speSpecial thanks to Mr. William Moffatt, principal at the Regional Day School for the Deaf (Fort Worth, Texas), and Mrs. Rose Marie Schweitzer and Mrs. Jane Braswell, two teachers at that school, for their help and their encouragement in launching the Philosophy for Children program. The complete version of this paper is available in microfiche or hard copy from ERIC Document Reproduction Service. Ask for Document No. ED 247 724. 185 Effects of Cognitive Intervention Programs cial set of exercises on ambiguity to help students anticipate the range of meanings of complex concepts, (b) devoting entire discussions to a single philosophical question whose final answer never emerges, and (c) building ideas upon the ideas of previous students in an effort to draw all students into the inquiry. In practicing the program, the students met for two 45-minute sessions each week throughout one school year. Thinking-skill exercises focusing upon issues of ambiguity, immediate inferences, cause-and-effect reasoning , the drawing of distinctions, inductive reasoning, or conceptual analysis established the agenda for the discussions. However, many philosophical issues for which no exercises had been planned surfaced spontaneously during the sessions. Whether prepared before the class or generated during it, the exercises stemmed from those contained in Lipman, Sharp, and Oscanyan's Philosophical Inquiry: An Instructional Manual to Accompany Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery (1979). An attempt was made to extend the Philosophy for Children program to the general curriculum. The goal was to make conceptual analysis and inductive reasoning into integral parts of the school program. Thinking-skill exercises were adapted to be used with a social studies text, The United States and Its Neighbors (Helmus, Arnsdorf, Toppin, & Pounds, 1982). The exercises focused attention upon certain logical confusions embedded in the discussions about world exploration in general and the discoveries of the Vikings in particular. This phase of the program proved successful. In evaluating the program, students were asked to complete an Analytic Thinking Questionnaire created by Dr. Ron Reed (1979), director of the Analytic Thinking Program at Texas Wesleyan College. The majority of students in the experimental group at the Regional Day School for the Deaf reported the following...

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