Chapter 7 Philosophy for Children and the Developmental Process of Dialogical Critical Thinking in Groups of Preschool Children

The questions at the origin of this chapter are: Are children aged 5 years able to become involved in a critical thinking process, which implies a certain degree of abstraction and decentering? To what extent can an approach centered on philosophical dialogue among peers contribute to this development? The chapter describes a study of the exchanges in two groups of children aged 5 years. One group had experience with the philosophical dialogue tool, the Philosophy for Children approach, while the other group had no such experience. The analysis grid was the operationalized model of the developmental process of dialogical critical thinking, as revisited by Daniel and Gagnon, which includes four thinking modes (logical, creative, responsible, and metacognitive) and six epistemological perspectives (egocentricity, post-egocentricity, pre-relativism, relativism, post-relativism, intersubjectivity). Results of the analysis showed that 65% of the experimental group's interventions were situated in relativistic perspectives and 35% in egocentric perspectives, whereas 60% of the control group's interventions were situated in egocentric perspectives and 40% in relativistic perspectives.