PHILOSOPHY FOR CHILDREN

Multidimensional Thinking
in a Community of Inquiry
vs. Critical Thinking

FARZANEH SHAHRTASH
RAHNAMA EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING, TEHRAN, IRAN

Abstract
John Dewey’s most basic assumption was that learning improves
to the degree that it arises out of the process of reflection. Dewey
initially used the terms ‘critical thinking’ and ‘reflective thinking’
interchangeably by putting critical thinking as the main part of
reflection. As time went on, terminologies concerning reflection
proliferated, spawning a host of synonyms such as “Critical
Thinking,” (CT) “Problem Solving,” “Inquiry” and “Higher
Order Thinking” (HOT). Reflective thinking now refers to the
whole process of thinking, while critical thinking is simply a type
of thinking accompanied by creative thinking. The “Community
of Inquiry” (COI) however, is both cognitive and affective. It
includes empathy and insights that make students more
competent in making good judgments. The Philosophy for

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture XXI.3 (2017): 14-43.

Budhi XXI.3 (2017): 14-43. 15

Children (P4C) movement adopted the COI methodology to

enhance the dialogical and multi-dimensional thinking skills to
help students do philosophy instead of merely learning about
Philosophy.

Key words: reflective thinking, Inquiry, critical thinking (CT),

“Community of Inquiry” (COI), “Philosophy for Children” (P4C)

T he reflective model of thinking dates back at least as far as the

time of Socrates 2,500 years ago. He discovered a method of
questioning that led people to realize that they could not rationally
justify their confident claims to knowledge. Confused meanings,
inadequate evidence, or self-contradictory beliefs often lurked
beneath their empty rhetoric. 1 Most of our real problems,
however, are complex and controversial. Although we can never
be certain that our beliefs or judgments about controversial issues
are true or correct, we can come to defensible conclusions about
such problems. Controversial issues often do not have clear-cut
solutions and cannot be identified by merely using inductive or
deductive logic. These issues are better solved by using reflective
judgments.

Reflective Thinking
Reflective judgments “involve integrating and evaluating data,
relating those data to theory and well-formed opinions, and

1 See http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/a-brief-history-of-the-idea-of-critical-

thinking/408
16 FARZANEH SHAHRTASH

ultimately creating a reasonable or plausible solution.”2 In the face

of uncertainty, “people’s assumptions about what and how
something can be known, provide a lens that shapes how
individuals frame a problem and how they justify their beliefs
about it.” 3 This is precisely because reflective thinking involves
both thinking about the “how” or the procedures, and about the
“what” or the content of its subject matter.
According to Dewey, reflective thinking starts by facing a
controversial issue or problematic situation which means admitting
the state of genuine doubt (a state of disequilibrium) and trying to
reach a fixed belief (a state of equilibrium). This idea can be traced
back to Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory of the “Community of
Inquiry.” According to Peirce,
The irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive
for the struggle to attain belief. It is certainly best for
us that our beliefs should be such as may truly guide
our actions so as to satisfy our desires; and this
reflection will make us reject any belief which does
not seem to have been so formed as to insure this
result. But it will only do so by creating a doubt in the
place of that belief. With the doubt, therefore, the
struggle begins, and with the cessation of doubt it
ends. Hence, the sole object of inquiry is the
settlement of opinion.4

2King and Kitchener, Developing Reflective Judgment, xvi.

3King and Kitchener, Developing Reflective Judgment, xvi.
4 C.S. Peirce, Philosophical writings of Peirce, J. Buchler ed. (New York: Dover Publications,

Inc., 1955), 10.

Budhi XXI.3 (2017): 14-43. 17

Reflective thinking involves a state of hesitation and mental

difficulty, in which thinking originates, and an act of searching,
hunting, and inquiring to find materials that will resolve the doubt,
settle, and dispose the perplexity. Demand for the solution of a
perplexity should be the steadying and guiding factor in the entire
process of reflection.5 Dewey noted that true reflective thinking is
uncalled for in situations in which there is no controversy or
doubt, no concern about the current understanding of an issue, or
in which absolute, preconceived assumptions dominate.6
Further experience may problematize previous knowledge or
beliefs giving rise to a reconsideration of this knowledge or these
beliefs and creating a ‘continuity’ in inquiry. This continuity is
troublesome because it involves a willingness to endure a condition
of mental unrest and disturbance.
Dewey argues that the human being “who lives in a world of
hazards is compelled to seek for security” and the perennial
assumption has been that it is certainty, in the form of fixed and
eternal truths that can provide such security. 7 He believes that
humans are very fallible creatures, yet capable of inquiry, reasoning,
forming concepts and dialogue—but always in need of an
intellectual humility that helps one realize that “one can always be
wrong.” Therefore, absolute certainty is not something we can ever
attain.8

5J. Dewey, How We Think (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1933), 9–11.
6King and Kitchener, Developing Reflective Judgment, 6.
7 J. Dewey, The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action

(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1930), 7.

8 Dewey, The Quest for Certainty.
18 FARZANEH SHAHRTASH

According to Dewey, a person makes a reflective judgment to

bring closure to situations that are uncertain. There is no way to
apply a formula to derive a correct solution and no way to prove
definitively that a proposed solution is correct. He argues that
problematic issues or those which are inadequate for making
judgments when there is an inadequate database, cannot be
answered by formal logic alone, but should be resolved by a
thinker who identifies a solution to the problem that temporarily
closes the situation. Part of the process of forming a reflective
judgment involves identifying which facts, formulas, and theories
are relevant to the problem and then generating potential solutions.
These strategies must then be evaluated for their relevance and
validity by the thinker. The thinker who engage in reflective
thinking must evaluate the potential solutions to the problem in
light of existing information that might be incompatible and
unverifiable with formal logic being insufficient for such purposes.
Instead, other criteria are employed. These include coherence of
the argument, better consistency with other data and arguments,
more intensive explanatory powers, plausibility, and so on.9
A fitted version of truth is when “It harmonizes with all other
judgments; false when it is in contradiction to some other.” 10
However, because “there is no simple criterion or rule for
determining truth which can be applied immediately to every
judgment, . . . the only criterion is relation to the whole body of
acquired knowledge . . . so far as it is realized.”11 But since the
process of acquiring knowledge is an ongoing progress, there is

9 King and Kitchnere, Developing Reflective Judgment, 7.

10 J. Dewey, Psychology (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1886), 217.
11 Ibid., 218.
Budhi XXI.3 (2017): 14-43. 19

always flexibility and room for novel judgments as long as the

whole system of knowledge can account for them.
When truth cannot be verified, the mind “waits for evidence”
and “learns to assume a state of suspended judgment.”12 Through
this process of trial and error, individuals cultivate the ability for
critical judgment so that they do not make rash decisions yet can
still act with prudence and timeliness. As Dewey puts it, “The
essence of critical thinking 13 is suspended judgment; and the
essence of this suspense is ‘inquiry’ to determine the nature of the
problem before proceeding to attempts at its solution. This, more
than any other thing, transforms mere inference into tested
inference, suggested conclusions into proof.” 14 The reflective
judgment process or stages of inquiry process is enumerated by
Dewey as follows:

Table 1: Different definitions of inquiry process

Reflective Judgment Process15 Stages of Inquiry16

1. Selecting a controversial issue 1- Feeling of difficulty or

as the problem for inquiry puzzlement
2. Setting the agenda for inquiry 2- Doubt
3- Formulation of the problem
3. Formulating hypotheses
4- Hypothesis (making up a
4. Evaluating hypotheses through theory)
reasoning 5- test the hypothesis

12 Ibid., 219
13 Reflective judgment and critical thinking in Dewey (1933, 1938) are used
interchangeably; King and Kitchener, Developing Reflective Judgment.
14 J. Dewey, The Collected Works of John Dewey: The Middle Works 1899-1924, vol. 16, ed.

J.A. Boydston (Carbondale, Souther Illinois: University Press, 1978) 238–239.

15 F. Shahrtash, P4C-Science Educaion: Scientific Literacy in Primary School Science (Jinju,

Gyeongnem, South Korea: Gyeongsang National University, 2016).

16 A. Sharp, Breaking the Vicious Circles, 240.
20 FARZANEH SHAHRTASH

5. Testing hypotheses or ideas to 6- Discovery of counterexample

making good judgment 7- Revising the hypothesis
6. Make habits of actions based 8- Application of revised
on good judgment in further hypothesis to life situation
similar situations

“[This] does not follow that one judgment is as good as

another . . . there is a craft to good thinking and like any craft, we
can learn it and in practicing it, we can get better at it, more
refined, more insightful, more subtle, and more wise.” 17 In
reflective thinking, the term ‘warranted assertion’ is preferred to
the terms belief and knowledge” 18 in reflective thinking. The
process is guided by the need for a solution to the problem and is
characterized by an interaction between the basis of the proposed
solution and the reasoning of the thinker. The process is imperfect
not only because of limitations of the available information but
also because of the limitations of the thinker.
Reflective thinking requires the continual evaluation of beliefs,
assumptions, and hypotheses against existing data and against
other plausible interpretations of the data. The resulting judgments
are offered as reasonable integrations or syntheses of opposing
views involving ongoing verification and evaluation. Judgments
derived from the reflective thinking process are more likely to be
valid and insightful than are beliefs derived from authority,
emotional commitments, or narrow reasoning. Reflective judgments
remain open for further scrutiny, evaluation and reformulation,

17 M. Lipman and A. M. Sharp, Interview by S. Naji and S. Karimi, ed., “P4C &

Rationality in the New World,” 2006.

18 J. Dewey, Logic, The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1938), 8–9.
Budhi XXI.3 (2017): 14-43. 21

and are open to self-correction. Reflective thinking is called for

where there is awareness of a real problem or when there is
uncertainty about a solution.19

Judgment Education
The development of judgment abilities is a mutual task among
philosophy and science educators and is a part of scientific literacy
objectives. A science-literate person should know what kind of
knowledge is relevant to personal decision-making as well as the
nature of the reasoning required for resolving dilemmas. From a
scientific literacy point of view, this does not mean turning
everyone into a scientific expert, but enabling them to fulfill an
enlightened role in making choices which affect their environment
and to understand in broad terms the social implications of debates
between experts.
Judgment education sees future citizens not as producers of
scientific knowledge, but rather, as critical consumers. 20 Dewey,
influenced by Frobel—American practitioner of Socratic
education—believed that children need to learn to take charge of
their own thinking and to engage with the world in a curious and
critical spirit.21 For Dewey, thinking was the method of intelligent
learning, “learning that employs and rewards the mind.”22 Dewey’s
most basic assumption was that learning improves to the degree
that it arises out of the process of reflection.

19 King and Kitchener, Developing Reflective Judgment, 8.

20 J. Osborne, “Science for Citizenship,” in J. Osborne and J. Dillon, eds., Good
Practice in Science Teaching: What research has to say, 2nd ed. (Bershire, England: McGraw
Hill Open University Press, 2010), 46–68.
21 M.C. Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 2010).

22 J. Dewey, How We Think (Chicago: D.C. Heath & Co. Publishers, 1910), 180.
22 FARZANEH SHAHRTASH

Dewey was mostly alone in his concern about pedagogical

change. He defined education as the fostering of thinking rather
than just transmitting knowledge. It was not enough to merely
teach for an update in factual knowledge, just as it was not enough
to teach just for reasoning or for truth. Dewey saw that teaching
for thinking had to be teaching for precise, open-minded, fair-
minded thinking. He visualized education as the operative leading
edge of an enormous social reform aimed at revising society into a
world order in which people lived democratically. “In reality, the
reflective model is thoroughly social and communal. Its aim is to
help us form better judgments so that we can proceed to modify
our lives more judiciously.”23
Dewey’s Socratism was an argumentative technique in the
classroom; it was a form of life that carried on with other children
in the pursuit of an understanding of real world issues and
immediate practical projects. It means that socratic questioning
grows from real events as “points of departure.” 24 Dewey never
addressed systematically the question of how Socratic critical
reasoning might be taught to children of various ages. Thus, his
proposal remains general and in need of supplementation by the
actual classroom teacher who may or may not be prepared to bring
this approach to life.25

Critical Thinking
Deweyan contributions to the critical thinking (CT) movement
are not limited to reflective thinking but involve a conception of

23 Lipman, Thinking in Education, 25–26.

24 Nussbaum, M. C., Not for Profit.
25 Ibid.
Budhi XXI.3 (2017): 14-43. 23

philosophy as criticism. Dewey locates philosophy as a special non-

scientific form of inquiry that is concerned with the judgment of
value—a judgment of judgment, a “criticism of criticism.” 26 The
term reflective thinking and CT are sometimes used
interchangeably, even by Dewey.27 For example, the definition of
reflective thinking is much the same as Lipman’s definition of CT.
28
He argues that thinking facilitates judgment, relies on criteria,
self-correcting, and sensitive to context. Similar to Dewey, Lipman
used CT and Reflective Judgement interchangeably. Critical
thinking simply helps us avoid acting unreflectively.29
Gradually, these two terms became separated30 with reflective
thinking used by different names in psychology, education, and
philosophy. 31 Ennis, Glaser and Lipman see CT as a process of
inquiry or problem solving, while others such as Salmon assume
CT as logic or a hypothetico-deductive method. Both approaches
are limited by assuming that CT consists of a set of skills or general
principles that one can apply in order to solve problems and that
learning those skills and how to use them will lead to CT. For the
latter perspective, “uncertainty does not really exist.” And they see
a close relationship between such thinking and the scientific
method.32
The typical description of CT and the conception of reflective
judgment are different in two ways: “(1) the epistemological
assumptions on which the thinking person operates, and (2) the

26 Sharp, Breaking the Vicious Circles.

27 King and Kitchener, Developing Reflective Judgment, 8.
28 M. Lipman, Thinking in Education, 212.
29 Lipman, Thinking in Education, 47.
30 King and Kitchener, Developing Reflective Judgment, xix.
31 M. Lipman, Thinking in Eduction.
32 King and Kitchener, Developing Reflective Judgment, 9.
24 FARZANEH SHAHRTASH

structure of the problem being addressed. Both are concerned with

Dewey’s observation that awareness of uncertainty must exist prior
to the initiation of reflective thinking. Therefore the impulse
should conclude that the situation is problematic before further
observation.”33 The origin of these differences might be rooted in
the fact that the reflective judgment model focuses on thinking
about ill-structured problems, which is neglected by those who see
CT as merely a process of problem solving.34
In the latter half of the twentieth century, the slogan of
progressive educators was that schools needed to teach through
CT—thinking that did not violate the principles of experimental
science or of formal, or even of informal logic. The aim of CT is to
improve the quality of our beliefs, judgments, and decisions. CT is
not a new method of intellectual inquiry but is essential as a tool of
inquiry. As such, CT is a liberating force in education and a
powerful resource in one’s personal and civic life. While not
synonymous with good thinking, CT is a pervasive and self-
rectifying method of thinking. What educators call CT is known in
professional fields as “professional judgment.” This is one of the
links between liberal education and professional education.35
Expert consensus defines CT as a “purposeful, self-regulatory
judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and
inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual,
methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon
which that judgment is based. CT is essential as a tool of inquiry.”36

Ibid., 8.
33

Ibid., xix.
34
35 Peter and Noreen Facione, “Critical Thinking as a Reasoned Judgment, The

Album,” in Insight Assessment and the California Academic Press (2002).

36 P. A. Facione The Delphi report executive (California Academic Press, 1990).
Budhi XXI.3 (2017): 14-43. 25

Thus, educating good critical thinkers means developing CT skills

that nurture those dispositions which consistently yield useful
insights and which are the basis of a rational and democratic
society.” Examples for CT dispositions are as follows: open- and
fair-mindedness, inquisitiveness, flexibility, a propensity to seek
reason, a desire to be well-informed, and a respect for and
willingness to entertain diverse viewpoints. An effective approach
to teaching CT in schools and professional development programs
must include strategies for building intellectual character
(disposition or habitual way of acting or “personal attributes” 37)
rather than relying exclusively on strengthening cognitive skills.38

Philosophy for Children (P4C)

P4C program has gone through many changes since it was first
introduced by Lipman and his colleagues in the 1970s. P4C was
initially developed as a ‘thinking skills program.’ According to
Marzano, “Such philosophers as Matthew Lipman holds that the
development of rational thinkers should be the primary goal of
education.”39 Gregory admits these changes and says, “It’s true that
the advent of P4C coincided with the critical thinking movement
in education, and it is correct that the study and promotion of excellent
thinking has been the cornerstone of Lipman’s work.”40
We can distinguish the earlier reflective model, shaped by the
pedagogical philosophy of Dewey, from the later model,

37 Dewey, How We Think.

38 Ibid.
39 R. Marzano, et al., Dimensions of Thinking: A Framework for Curriculum and Instruction

(Alexandria: ACSD: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1998).

40 M. Gregory, “Philosophy for Children as a Process and a Content Approach to

Philosophy Education: A Response to Judith Suissa,” Murris Symposium, South Africa,

2008.
26 FARZANEH SHAHRTASH

characterized by P4C. 41 This new paradigm emphasizes that

reasonableness is “the result of a combination of reasoning and
judgment.” As Santayana says, “all judgments have a kernel of
reasoning and all reasonings have judgment as their natural
fruition.”42 The term “reasonable” is different from both “rational”
and “prudential” judgments, which relied heavily on the notion of
self-interest. The term “reasonable” presupposes that ethical
inquiry will result in a settlement that takes the interests of
everyone in the community into account, including, of course,
one’s own. 43 Since in ethical disputes, the controversial issues
cannot be easily resolved, people should make compromises and
employ trade-offs that allow each of the parties to save face and
retain self-respect.
Lipman argued that the ethical inquiry approach in education
should be centered on the cultivation of reasonableness. According
to Lipman, a judgment education should appeal to reasonableness,
which is identified as reason tempered by good judgment.44 The
aim of judgment education should be helping students become
more thoughtful, imaginative, reflective, considerate, and reasonable
individuals 45 along with being “more capable of exercising good
judgment.”46 Judgment education does not aim for rational beliefs,
but it wants to cultivate “ethical, social, political, and aesthetic

41Lipman, interview by S. Naji.

42Lipman, Thinking in Education, 274.
43 M. Lipman, “Philosophy for Children: Some Assumptions and Implications,”

Ethics in Progress 2, no.1 (2011).

44 Lipman, Thinking in Education, 11.
45 M. Lipman, A. Sharp and F. S. Oscanyan, Philosophy in the Classroom (Philadelphia:

Temple University Press, 1980).

46 M. Lipman, A Life Teaching in Thinking, 107.
Budhi XXI.3 (2017): 14-43. 27

judgments and help the children to apply them ‘directly to life

situations’.”47

Community of Inquiry (COI)

COI involves both the individual and the collective, which Kant
characterized as the idea of “logical common sense” which is
specified by three maxims: (1) to think for oneself; (2) to think
from the standpoint of everyone else; and (3) to always think
consistently. The first is the maxim of an unprejudiced way of
thinking, the second of a broadened way of thinking, and the third
of a consistent way of thinking.”48
COI is a model of reflective thinking that forms a community
of individuals who are dedicated to the use of similar procedures in
their pursuit of identical goals.49 Communal inquiry is not possible
unless there is some agreement about acceptable methods of
inquiry. COI follows both Dewey’s logic of inquiry and his
phenomenology of inquiry, wherein inquiries, following Peirce,
begin with a problem, question, or doubt and must aim at a
solution or resolution. Both the logic and phenomenology of
inquiry are genuinely felt—something in which the inquirer actually
has a stake. 50 In the COI pedagogy, “students can learn the
principles and the uses of argumentation and informal logic, as well
as habits of democratic interaction, by engaging in this kind of
dialogue with a strong facilitator who both models the virtues
[both skills and dispositions] and evokes them from students

47 Lipman, Thinking in Education, 279.

48 Ibid., vii.
49 Pierce, Philosophical Writings of Pierce.
50 Gregroy and Grange, “Introduction: John Dewey on Philosophy and Childhood,” 13.
28 FARZANEH SHAHRTASH

through [higher order] questions and observations.” 51 Lipman

integrates the elements of ‘dialogue,’ ‘inquiry,’ and ‘community’
within the domain of philosophy, as a dialogical community of
inquiry. In this dialogical community of inquiry philosophy is
redesigned and reconstructed so as to make it available, acceptable,
and enticing to children in order to help them do philosophy rather
than learn about philosophy.52
The purpose of reflecting on and expressing one’s opinions in
the COI is to critically evaluate how such opinions may be
developed into possible means for reconstructing a problem
common to all community members. Children’s initial opinions are
referred to as the ‘raw ingredients’ of inquiry because “the goal of
inquiry is to help children transform these ingredients into a more
comprehensive worldview, through reflective and self-correcting
dialogue—that is, through the activity of the community of
inquiry.”53
This kind of integration of critical and dialogical elements could
be replicated with important variations within all school subjects
by taking cues from the ongoing work of the disciplines from
which those subjects are derived. The purpose of such inquiry is to
determine the most reasonable thing to believe about the question
at hand. The methods and standards for disciplined inquiry will
vary from subject to subject. But the purpose of each session is for
students to reach one or more “reasonable philosophical judgment”

51 M. R. Gregory, “A Framework for Facilitating Classroom Dialogue,” Teaching

Philosophy 30, no. 1 (2007): 59–84.

52 K. Murris, “Can children do philosophy?”, Journal of Philosophy of Education 34, no.

2 (May 2000): 261–279.

53 L. Splitter and A. M. Sharp, Teaching for Better Thinking: The Classroom Community of

Inquiry (Melbourne: The Australian Council for Educational Research, 1995) , 169.
Budhi XXI.3 (2017): 14-43. 29

regarding questions that are ethical, aesthetic, epistemological, etc.54

This kind of communal inquiry, which is both cognitive and
affective, includes empathy and insight in order to give students
better competency in making good judgments.55
The Deweyan stages of inquiry is fundamental to understanding
Lipman’s COI process (compare to table 1).
Table 2: Lipman’s56 COI process

• Pre-reflective situation: a situation presumably acceptable as it is.

• Felt discomfort, not yet intellectualized.
• Doubt that one’s beliefs are functioning adequately.
• Formulation of the problem as one of blocked conduct.
• Offering suggestions of desirable ends that might be sought.
• Seeking out all relevant considerations; decisive considerations
become criteria.
• Ends become more tentative and realistic ends-in-view; means
become more practical means-in-view, compatible with ends-in-
view.
• Certain considerations turn out to be alternative hypotheses for
resolving the problem.
• Ranking of alternatives in terms of feasibility.
• Continuation of inquiry, following the unique quality of the
situation.
• Discovery of a working belief to replace non-functional beliefs.
Felt discomfort removed. (If “warranted assertibility can be
substituted for truth” “functional conviction” may be
substituted for “working belief”).
• Post-reflective situation: transformed situation is found acceptable.
The entire situation has been changed, and not just our
understanding of it.

M. Gregory, interview by M. F. Shaugnessy, Aug. 15, 2007.

54

A. Sharp, Breaking the Vicious Circles: Manual to Accompany Hannah (Mexico: San
55

Cristobal de las Cases, 2000), 342.

56 Lipman, “Philosophy for Children.”
30 FARZANEH SHAHRTASH

Multidimensional Thinking vs. Critical Thinking

For Lipman, the word judgment originates from the Ancient
Greeks. Socrates said that philosophy begins in wonder, and we
see that philosophers are people who search for some kind of
good judgment, truth, or meaning through history. The regulative
ideals which the Greeks applied to their activities were the true,
the beautiful, and the good. Lipman says, “The Greeks were right
to insist on balance in these matters.”57
Lipman argues that the three highest levels of Bloom’s
taxonomy (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) is a criteria one
might apply to higher order thinking. It can be also “applied to
anything and not just thinking.”58 According to Lipman, thinking
does not qualify as ‘higher order’ unless it satisfies three
specifications (critically, creatively, and caringly). There are too
many thinkers who are very logical but mechanical and diffident;
too many who are caring but illogical and unreasonable. Good
judgment requires that students become critical, creative, and
caring thinkers.59
He believes that the third leg of the HOT tripod should be a
name that suggests a responsiveness to values, a sense of what is
involved in an appropriate application of theory to a practical
situation, an understanding of the cognitive role of the
emotions—particularly those that are social in character, such as
trust, considerateness, and compassion—and a recognition of the
thinking that actually takes place when we appreciate a work of

57 M. Lipman, “Moral Education Higher Order Thinking and Philosophy for

Children,” Early Childhood Development and Care 107 (1994) : 61–70.

58 Lipman, “Moral Education.”
59 Ibid., 61.
Budhi XXI.3 (2017): 14-43. 31

art, survey a landscape, examine a snail’s shell, discriminate barely

distinguishable differences, and examine our own ‘mental acts’
and ‘mental states.’ He proposes ‘caring thinking’ for the third leg
of the tripod, with the understanding that caring thinking here
encompasses thinking that is concerned (with the predicaments
others are in), appreciative (of every arrangement of parts and
wholes), normative (suggestive of what ought to be done in moral
situations) and deliberative (in that it seeks to weigh all the factors
and take the context into account before judging).60

Figure 1: Critical, Creative, and Caring Dimensions61

60 Lipman, “Philosophy for Children.”

61 Lipman, Thinking in Education, 204–271.
32 FARZANEH SHAHRTASH

Table 3: The transformation from the Greek’s Trinity of

Truth, Beauty, and Goodness into Critical, Creative, and Caring
Thinking’ and the Branches of Philosophy and their Criteria

As regulative ideals The true The beautiful The good

As branches of philosophy Epistemology Aesthetics Ethics

As modes of judgment Saying Making Doing

As cognitive objectives Analytical Synthetic Evaluative

As modes of thinking Critical Creative Caring

Although the advent of Philosophy for Children coincided with

the CT movement in education, 62 Lipman uses the phrase
“multidimensional thinking” to refer to his famous tripartite of
critical, creative, and caring thinking—all of which children
practice extensively in P4C. P4C incorporates multidimensional
thinking into a broader method of dialogical inquiry patterned on
the pragmatist notion of the COI.63 Lipman focuses on HOT as
equal to the phrase “multidimensional thinking” composed of
critical, creative, and caring forms of thnking. Children make better
judgments in their daily lives with judgments marked by
appropriate criteria, relevance, sense and attention to context, and
also ethical, social, political, and aesthetic judgments. 64 The main

62 Gregory, “Philosophy for Children as a Process and a Content Approach to

Philosophy Education.”
63 Secondary sources cited in M. Gregory, “Philosophy for Children: Where are we

now?” in An Interview with Maughn Gregory, interview by S. Naji, 2010.

64 Gregory, “Philosophy for Children.”
Budhi XXI.3 (2017): 14-43. 33

characteristic of good judgments is therefore according to the fact

that they are the products of multidimensional thinking in a COI.
The curriculum which cultivates good judgment must involve
the fostering of critical thinking, creative thinking, and caring
thinking because it is the combination of all three that prepares the
child to make judgments that are appropriate, insightful and
relevant. Lipman designed the COI classroom for practicing
multidimensional thinking, a process of “a constant remaking,
improving, revising of all its failing parts in order to maintain the
equilibrium . . . .” 65 Thus, a COI engages children of the
community in the art of questioning which requires using
multidimensional thinking and cognitive skills. Their improvement
requires:
1. The improvement of their CT which involves the
strengthening of their logical and epistemological
prowess as well as their evaluative skills. (A
prototype of the critical thinker is the professional,
the expert, the model of good judgment.)
2. The improvement of creative thinking which
involves discovering, inventing, and perceptual
thinking. (Prototypes of the creative thinker are
scientists and artists.)
3. The improvement of caring thinking which includes
wide types of thinking such as active, affective, and
valuative thinking. (Some prototypes of the caring
thinker are the solicitous/apprehensive/anxious

65 Lipman, Thinking in Education, 197.

34 FARZANEH SHAHRTASH

parent, the considerate environmental planner, the

thoughtful and concerned teacher.
Nevertheless, Lipman confirms that he is not even certain about
whether or not his program is warranted for cultivating good
judgment. He says that the improvement of “children’s reasoning
will [not] necessarily result in their exercising better judgment, just
as it cannot be assumed that better judgments will necessarily be
followed by better actions. We are in the area of likelihood here,
not necessity.”66 Not all good judgments are the product of good
thinking, sometimes the person has the required cognitive skills
but is still weak and needs to be improved. Other times the person
uses intuition or ‘fine arts’ which is not necessarily considered the
product of good thinking.
It should be noted that Daniel T. Willingham criticizes the
position of Robert Ennis, Barry Beyer and others, that critical
thinking can be effectively taught as a general group of skills
outside the context of any particular discipline. Willingham argues
that empirical studies have not demonstrated the success of this
general skills approach, and that teaching generalized thinking skills
does not prepare students to think through and with particular
subjects. Gregory agrees with Willingham that good thinking,
beyond an elementary level, is context-specific and also believes,
paradoxically, that grounding in the tropes of critical thinking and
inquiry that have evolved within a particular discipline prepares
students to find ways to transfer those tropes to other contexts.67
Willingham recommends that teaching critical thinking “should
be taught in the context of subject matter” (in this case,

66 Lipman, Thinking in Education, 274.

67 Gregory, “A Framework for Facilitating Classroom Dialogue.”
Budhi XXI.3 (2017): 14-43. 35

philosophy); that it should not be reserved for older and/or

advanced students, that it should “draw on students’ everyday
knowledge and experience,” and that relevant strategies should be
made explicit and practiced repeatedly.68 He observes two features
of the practice of “community of inquiry” in P4C in the scientific
community which does not apply to teaching for domain-based
critical thinking: (1) making one’s thinking accountable to one’s
peers and (2) participation in a collaborative community. In short,
students in P4C learn basic logic and argumentation skills,
competency in dialogue, and what Harvey Siegel calls the
disposition of concern for good reasons, by working in the domain
of philosophy. To what extent philosophical tools and methods
may be usefully employed in other subject areas remains to be
seen, and we welcome others to join us in careful research.69

Conclusion
Although the origin of P4C and CT movements is in Socrates
and Dewey’s reflective thinking, it seems that since the late 1990s
they have sought different methods of teaching. CT remains an
approach that can be used both on its own and integrated by
different programs in both schools and universities. CT skills are
now more an integrated part of the curriculum in both schools and
universities, such as in science education, nursing courses, and
evidence-based medicine rather than as a stand-alone program.
P4C further focuses on both cognitive and affective aspects of
thinking by including multidimensional thinking which includes
critical, creative, and caring thinking. Creative thinking was

68 Ibid.
69 Ibid.
36 FARZANEH SHAHRTASH

considered an implicit part of critical thinking although it excludes

emotional thinking. P4C once claimed to be a program designed
for teaching thinking to children as a separate subject matter in
primary schools, but not anymore. This program seems to be
perfectly suitable for detecting and re-evaluating the person’s belief
system about their personal and communal life through reasoned
dialogical inquiry with their peers in any subject matter. Since
cooperative learning has become the main way of learning in
almost every aspect of education, the methodology of P4C known
as Community of Inquiry (COI) has become more popular as a
method which reflects the dialogical character of philosophical
thinking.

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