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Classroom dialogue can be democratic and evidence critical and creative thinking, yet lose momentum and direction without a plan for systematic inquiry. This article presents a six-stage framework for facilitating philosophical dialogue in pre-college and college classrooms, drawn from John Dewey and Matthew Lipman. Each stage involves particular kinds of thinking and aims at a specific product or task. The role of the facilitator-illustrated with suggestive scripts-is to help the participants move their dialogue through the stages of the framework and to model and prompt good social and cognitive dialogue moves within each stage, until the participants learn to become self-managed.
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© Teaching Philosophy, 2007. All rights reserved. 0145-5788 pp. 59–84
Teaching Philosophy, 30:1, March 2007 59
A Framework for
Facilitating Classroom Dialogue
MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
Montclair State University
Abstract: Classroom dialogue can be democratic and evidence critical and
creative thinking, yet lose momentum and direction without a plan for sys-
tematic inquiry. This article presents a six-stage framework for facilitating
philosophical dialogue in pre-college and college classrooms, drawn from
John Dewey and Matthew Lipman. Each stage involves particular kinds
of thinking and aims at a specific product or task. The role of the facilita-
tor—illustrated with suggestive scripts—is to help the participants move their
dialogue through the stages of the framework and to model and prompt good
social and cognitive dialogue moves within each stage, until the participants
learn to become self-managed.
In this article I present a framework I have used for facilitating philo-
sophical dialogue with children, schoolteachers and graduate students,
in my work for the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for
Children (IAPC). Within the eastern and western philosophical tradi-
tions there are a variety of purposes and corresponding methods for
dialogue.1 Philosophy for Children, as it is promulgated by the IAPC
and especially as a world movement, is catholic in its recognition of
multiple uses and methods of philosophical dialogue. Nevertheless,
notions of inquiry and of the community of inquiry from Peirce, Mead
and Dewey inform the practice of dialogue recommended in the IAPC
curriculum2 and in theoretical works by certain scholars affiliated with
the Institute.3 In line with this program, the framework I present is
meant to be an aid for conducting dialogue construed as systematic,
collaborative inquiry. I think of such inquiry as having a trajectory in
the shape of an arc, beginning with some kind of question, problem
or vague opportunity, and ending in some kind of satisfactory resolu-
tion or fulfillment.
Though philosophical inquiry has seldom been credited as a worth-
while activity for school children in this country, classroom dialogue
60 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
has been recognized as an important pedagogy for helping students
construct sound understandings of content across the disciplines.4 In
Philosophy for Children, dialogue is similarly intended as a mechanism
for children and adults to explore the complex content of philosophi-
cal issues, but just as importantly, and as a means to that exploration,
dialogue is also employed as the principle method for teaching think-
ing and inquiry.5 In my experience and that of my colleagues, children
and adults without philosophical training are nevertheless capable of
discerning ethical, aesthetic, political and other philosophical dimen-
sions of their own experience, of recognizing problematic aspects of
that experience, and of inquiring toward judgment and action intended
to resolve what is problematic in that experience. Though pragmatist
in outline, this understanding and practice of philosophy as an art of
living rather than a strictly intellectual exercise is in line with many
other philosophical schools and programs, ancient and modern.6
As will be obvious, the framework presented here is not original.
Apart from being made compatible with the curriculum and practice of
Philosophy for Children, it is based on the process of inquiry Dewey de-
scribed, especially in How We Think and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.7
While it could not be maintained that inquiry is the only appropriate
method of problem solving,8 that dialogue is a necessary component
of all inquiry, or that classroom dialogue is the best pedagogy for all
educational objectives,9 I take Dewey’s process of collaborative inquiry
to be a philosophically-informed method applicable to a wide variety
of questions, difficulties and opportunities, not only those recogniz-
ably philosophical.10 Indeed, the classroom community of inquiry has
been recommended and successfully used in primary, secondary and
college education classrooms in science,11 mathematics,12 history,13
art,14 ethics and citizenship education,15 and philosophy of education.16
Accordingly, the framework presented here is intended for structuring
group discussions across the disciplines as well as in non-pedagogical
contexts such as peer mediation, and across a range of ages and levels
of expertise. The utility of this framework is first, that it translates that
process into distinguishable stages that can serve as a simple roadmap
for classroom dialogue; second it identifies a product to be produced
or a task to be accomplished as the culmination of each stage; third, it
specifies thinking moves that are particularly important to each stage;
and fourth, it offers scripted facilitation moves to illustrate how a fa-
cilitator might prompt the kinds of work called for in each stage (see
Appendix, pp. 76–80).17 Of course, expertise in facilitating dialogue
is not a matter of following a checklist or rehearsing a script. The
framework presented here is intended rather as a roadmap for teachers
less familiar with the terrain.
A FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING CLASSROOM DIALOGUE 61
In my work in pre-school through university classrooms around the
world I have often seen classroom dialogues that are highly democratic
and that evidence many kinds of critical and creative thinking, yet tend
to be disorganized and haphazard, lacking direction and momentum,
because of a lack of a shared framework for systematic inquiry. The
framework I present here is not a substitute for the social and cogni-
tive virtues that distinguish rigorous dialogue from other modes of
discourse; it is intended to structure the exercise of those virtues so
that they can reinforce and build on each other toward a meaning-
ful resolution of the questions at hand. Regarding those virtues, the
framework can be used pedagogically: 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 and evokes them from
students through questions and observations.
The framework consists of six stages (see Figure 1, p. 62). There
is an order to the stages, but the order isn’t lock-stepped: the dia-
logue can move back and forth between stages and even jump around
among them, so long as the participants know where they are within
the framework and which tasks have been accomplished (see Figure
2, p. 63). All participants should be familiar with the stages, and
paying attention to which tasks have been completed is a good way
for the group to locate its position within the framework. Individual
participants may find one or more of the stages difficult or uninterest-
ing, given their experience and interests. Part of what makes dialogue
so meaningful and efficacious for inquiry is that it is an intersection
of the different inquiries and journeys of the participants; though the
kind of dialogue described in the framework below is only possible if
individual participants see themselves as partners in one collaborative
inquiry, if they commit to a shared agenda of questions and to shared
methods of pursuing those questions.18
The role of the facilitator is twofold: (1) to model and to call for
good dialogue moves (cognitive and social), and (2) to help the par-
ticipants keep track of how the dialogue progresses through the stages
of the framework. In her role as pedagogue the facilitator should in-
tervene with moves such as identifying assumptions overlooked by the
group, identifying important alternative views not raised by the group,
and nudging the group from one stage to the next. It is expected that
these facilitation moves will be mimicked by the participants as they
internalize the facilitator’s insights, so that the facilitator’s role be-
comes “distributed”19 throughout the group, i.e., the group gets better
at self-management and moving itself through the framework. In time,
students should be making the kinds of facilitation moves scripted
below with each other. Collective facilitation is an ideal that can’t be
62 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
forced, but that is likely to emerge when the initial facilitator is both
effective and transparent in her interventions.
The following are suggestions for staging the dialogue:
Whether the dialogue is scheduled or spontaneous it must be
prompted by some kind of stimulus, e.g., a shared reading or
viewing, the telling of an experience, a report of a current event,
the voicing of a complaint.
It is preferable that the participants are able to see and respond
directly to each other, e.g., by sitting in a circle or by means of
technology.
Participants may take turns talking by raising hands for the facili-
tator, by calling on each other (which I prefer) or by randomly
jumping in.
The dialogue should be periodically self-evaluated by the partici-
pants, especially as to social and cognitive virtues and inquiry
outcomes. The facilitator should conduct her own periodic evalu-
ations of the progress of the group, e.g., by guided observations
of video tapes, in order to diagnose strengths and weaknesses
and to offer focused practice on areas of weakness.20
Figure 1: Stages of Dialogical Inquiry
Stage 1
Identify Issues Relevant to Purposes
Stage 2
Formulate and Organize Relevant Questions
Stage 3
Formulate and Organize Hypotheses
in Response to Questions
Stage 4
Clarify and Test Hypotheses in Dialogue
and Confirm, Revise or Abandon
Stage 5
Experiment with Hypotheses in Experience
and Warrant, Revise or Abandon
Stage 6
Implement Warranted Hypotheses
A FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING CLASSROOM DIALOGUE 63
Figure 2: Procedural Flow of Dialogical Inquiry
Problems / Issues
and Purposes
Hypothesis 1
Questions • Clarified & Tested
Q. 1 Question 1
Q. 2
Q. 3 • Abandoned
Hypotheses
H. 1 Hypothesis 2
H. 2 • Clarified & Tested
H. 3
• Confirmed
Confirmed Hypothesis 2
• Tested in Action
• Revised & Warranted
Warranted Hypothesis 2
Implemented as Habit
The facilitator should not pressure the group to come to conver-
gence of opinion. Dissent and even factions can be productive, so
long as mutual respect is maintained. Disparate factions should
use the same process to test their hypotheses.
Inquiries taken through all six stages may take a few or even
several class periods to complete, which realization puts a
legitimate pressure on the community to choose its questions
judiciously.
64 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
Stage One: Identify Issues Relevant to Purposes
In classroom and professional settings alike, the community’s ability
to sustain the rigor of legitimate inquiry depends on the identifica-
tion of some problem, opportunity or other issue meaningful enough
to justify the effort. Issues ripe for inquiry may arise in any number
of contexts, but in any case what counts as an issue worth pursuing
depends on the purposes and interests of the community members, and
so these should be consulted.
As David Hildebrand recommends, following Dewey, “In any situa-
tion where there is a problem, something is felt as well as known to be
wrong. . . . That initial feeling is important because it can act as a guide
later on. When evaluating an issue, it’s important to try to empathize
with what is distinctively felt to be problematic.21 The kind of “think-
ing” involved in this stage includes emotional intelligence or “caring
thinking,”22 such as being aware of and articulating our personal and
collective interests, desires and values, relative to possible issues to
be explored. What aspects of our experience does the issue potentially
illuminate? What kind of frustration are we facing? What stake do we
have in dealing with our frustration? What do we want to know?
The product of this stage of the inquiry is an articulation of issues
to be explored in the inquiry and the purposes for doing so. Individual
and collective purposes can evolve throughout the inquiry, but an ini-
tial articulation is important, especially to guide the next stage of the
inquiry: generating questions for dialogue. Once purposes are decided,
it is possible to ask whether all significant aspects of the problem or
issue have been identified, relevant to those purposes. It may be that
purposes articulated for initial inquiries are so lasting and relevant to
subsequent inquiries that Stage One need not be repeated for every
dialogue. However, the importance of purposes should be kept in
mind, and the community should be ready to re-visit and revise initial
purposes, or to identify new ones, at any time.
The following scripted facilitation moves for identifying issues and
purposes are meant to be suggestive only:
What feelings does this prompt that call for resolution, e.g.,
frustration, confusion, curiosity, sensing something valuable?
What did we find puzzling, interesting or confusing?
What range of issues does this text/experience raise for us? What
does it make us wonder about?
(What) does any of this matter? (How) are the issues relevant
to our experience? What aspects of our experience do the issues
potentially illuminate? What’s at stake for us regarding these
issues, personally and collectively?
A FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING CLASSROOM DIALOGUE 65
What issues would be worth discussing? What do we want to
know? What do we need to decide? What kinds of judgment
seem called for?
What will our purposes be in conducting an inquiry into any of
the issues raised?
Have we identified all of the significant aspects of the problems
or issues to be explored, relevant to our purposes?
Stage Two: Formulate and Organize Relevant Questions
There are two different tasks to accomplish in this stage of the inquiry.
The first is to generate a number of questions relevant to the problem
identified. It’s generally good to begin this task as an exercise in
creative brainstorming: listing as many questions as occur to the par-
ticipants without worrying too much about relevance or redundancy.
The second task is to organize the questions into a sequence or another
order that will structure the inquiry. A good way to do this is to look
for relationships among the questions generated, such as logical priority,
redundancy, and other relationships indicated in the facilitation moves
listed below. Because discussion questions often arise in the course of
establishing purposes, stages one and two may be accomplished more
or less simultaneously.
Not all questions generated will be fruitful for dialogue. In general
(with important exceptions), three categories of questions are not fruit-
fully answered by dialogue:
Questions that we assume to have definitive answers already,
e.g., that we could find in a database or by consulting experts.
Questions that we assume we know how to answer, e.g., by
calculation, observation or experiment.
Questions that we assume can only be answered by means of
privileged access to certain kinds of truth or insight, e.g., reli-
gious or mystical.23
It is useful to make these kinds of categorical distinctions when set-
ting the dialogue agenda, and to make a plan for researching answers
to empirical questions. The order to be imposed on the remaining
dialogical questions should facilitate the purposes identified in the
previous stage, and it is good to check the revised question set against
the articulated purposes and make mutual adjustments. Because no
actual situation of dialogue and especially no classroom dialogue can
explore all relevant questions pertaining to all the issues and purposes
that can be raised around a problematic text or experience, there is
inevitably and legitimately an aspect of negotiation in the process of
constructing the agenda of issues and questions. The group must come
to an agreement about priorities.
66 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
Ordering the questions typically requires clarifying them to some
extent. Douglas Walton warns that, “If the question is confused or
badly stated, then the inquiry will go wrong from the very beginning
because those involved lack a clear understanding of the problem.”24
Too much may be made of this caution, as much of the meaning of
questions posed for dialogue is only potential and cannot be devel-
oped apart from the dialogue itself. Yet, it is undeniable that certain
“questions lack sufficient clarity or specificity to be good problems to
begin with in a well-directed inquiry that is likely to be successful,
and that “deficiencies or obstructive failures [for inquiry] can occur
. . . even during the very beginning phases of asking the question or
formulating the problem.”25
A well-ordered list of questions is the product that signals the end
of this stage of the inquiry, though additional questions may be added
to the list in the course of the inquiry. It is important that participants
be able to identify which question is being addressed at any point in
the dialogue, and for that reason it is generally best to take up—i.e.,
to generate and test hypotheses to—one question at a time.
The following scripted facilitation moves for formulating and or-
ganizing questions are meant to be suggestive only:
What questions does the text, situation, etc., raise for us?
Do our questions cover all of the important aspects of the is-
sue?
Do any of these questions suggest other questions not yet
asked?
Can we think of a question that would highlight a different
dimension of the issue?
Is there redundancy among our questions? Could some of them
be combined?
Is there an over-all question here?
Does this question have more than one part or sub-question?
Are there any “Q-Q’s” (questions inside questions)?26 Does this
question assume something that needs to be questioned itself?
Is there a logical priority to some of our questions? Do some
questions require or assume answers to others?
Is there a priority of need or importance among the questions
for us?
What other relationships are there among our questions?
Stage Three: Formulate and Organize Hypotheses
in Response to Questions
The end product of this stage of the dialogue is one or more hypoth-
eses or possible answers to one of the questions. The kind of thinking
A FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING CLASSROOM DIALOGUE 67
called for in this stage is abduction: the informed generation of likely
hypotheses.27 As with the questions, it usually works best to brainstorm
hypotheses without trying to critique them at the same time. Critiquing
hypotheses is the next stage of the dialogue. If more than one hypoth-
esis is suggested in response to a question, the hypotheses should be
organized in order of how they will be critiqued.
The following scripted facilitation moves for formulating and or-
ganizing hypotheses are meant to be suggestive only:
What are some possible answers to the question?
What’s your opinion?
What kind of hypothesis is that? Explanatory? Predictive? Evalu-
ative? Something else?
Does that hypothesis respond to all or only part of the question?
Does that hypothesis respond to more than one question?
Can we try to see the issue from another point of view?
Are any other beliefs on this subject possible?
Is there redundancy among these hypotheses?
(How) are these two hypotheses different?
Is there a logical priority to some of our hypotheses?
Are any of these hypotheses in tension or conflict with each
other?
Stage Four: Clarify and Test Hypotheses,
and Confirm, Revise, or Abandon
This stage of the dialogue has three distinct tasks to be accomplished
with regard to each hypothesis: first, to clarify it, second, to test it by
means of arguments and evidence, and third to either confirm, revise
or abandon it in light of the results of the testing. I will present think-
ing moves and facilitation moves for each task. Many of the kinds of
thinking helpful for these tasks are operations of informal logic. The
end product of this stage of the dialogue is a list of hypotheses that
have survived critique, in original or revised form.
Task 1: Clarify the Hypothesis
Two kinds of thinking moves are important to this task: clarifying
meaning and detecting assumptions. Both are important throughout the
dialogue and the scripted facilitation moves suggested for each may
be used in every stage.
A. Clarifying Meaning
Peirce argued that concepts are inherently vague and that there is no
such thing as clarifying the meaning of a concept completely or essen-
68 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
tially, only clarifying it usefully enough to accomplish some purpose.28
Though it is a common dialogical practice to attempt to “define our
terms” before discussing substantive issues, the attempt commonly
results in a proliferation of potential meanings that tend to encumber
rather than advance the inquiry. Because clarification requires a con-
text, requests for clarification should be made when an ambiguity has
arisen, at which point divergent interpretations will have consequences
for the direction of the inquiry. It is the content and movement of a
particular dialogue that makes a particular term ambiguous, and that
both reveals and constrains potential relevant meanings for it. To ask
what the term should mean at this juncture of this dialogue (this new
and tentative web of meanings) is more helpful than asking what it
means in general.
Monroe Beardsley helpfully defines vagueness of hypotheses in
terms of verifiability: a hypothesis is sufficiently clear for purposes of
inquiry if it “refers to some possible experience that can be verified
or falsified by the collection of data.29 Empirical data is not always
relevant to philosophical inquiry, but verifiability is no less a require-
ment of philosophical than of empirical hypotheses. To be meaning-
ful, at least in the context of dialogue, philosophical hypotheses must
be testable by argument or some kind of evidence. Again, however,
whether and how a philosophical hypothesis is testable in dialogue
may not be determinable in advance of the dialogue.
Thinking moves to be employed in clarifying the meaning of a hypoth-
esis include defining, restating, making distinctions, using criteria, giving
examples, qualifying and quantifying. The following scripted facilitation
moves for clarifying meaning are meant to be suggestive only:
What do you mean by _____? How are you using the word
_____? How should we define _____?
Are you saying that _____? I hear you saying _______.
What would be another way of putting that?
I didn’t understand when you said _____.
Does there seem to be anything vague or ambiguous in this
hypothesis?
What criteria are you using?
Do we need to be more specific?
Can someone else say what you understand his point to be?
Can you or someone else think of an example? How is that
example relevant?
Are you making a distinction between _____ and _____?
How is _____ different from _____?
Would you qualify your categorical premise with “all,” “most,
or “some”?
A FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING CLASSROOM DIALOGUE 69
What's the difference between what you’re saying and what she
said?
How would we go about testing this hypothesis?
B. Detecting Assumptions
Assumptions are un-articulated premises taken to be true without having
been critiqued. There is no way to eliminate all assumptions from our
intellectual work, or even to make them apparent to us.30 Nevertheless,
we can develop a knack for detecting assumptions or at least remember
to be on the lookout for them. Assumptions we identify have the sta-
tus of new hypotheses to be critiqued, i.e., clarified and tested. They
should be added as sub-hypotheses to the list of hypotheses developed
in Stage Three. The following scripted facilitation moves for detecting
assumptions are meant to be suggestive only:
Are there any hidden assumptions in this hypothesis?
Are we assuming that . . . ?
What is being assumed here?
Is that a reasonable assumption?
Why are we assuming it must be either this or that?
Why would someone make that assumption?
Are there circumstances in which your view might be incor-
rect?
Task 2: Test the Hypothesis with Arguments and Evidence
The task of testing hypotheses is generally the most complex and
lengthy stage of the dialogue. It involves a number of optional opera-
tions that interact in ways too complex and too context-specific to be
mapped out in advance. I will not attempt to explain the reasoning
involved in each operation (which would amount to a course in informal
logic), but I will suggest scripted facilitation moves for each. Again,
it is preferable to test hypotheses one by one.
A. Giving Reasons
Two broad categories of reasons are arguments and evidence, each of
which is treated in more detail below. But with younger children it
can be useful to elicit reasons without differentiating as to type. The
following scripted facilitation moves for eliciting reasons are meant
to be suggestive only:
Why? What makes you think so? What are your reasons for
saying that?
Do you agree or disagree, and why?
If someone wanted to disagree with you, what would she say?
70 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
How many different reasons can we think of?
Is that a good reason?
Are any of these reasons better than others?
B. Deductive Arguments: Categorical Inferences
Older students will be able to offer reasons in the nature of arguments.
There are many kinds of arguments that can be made for and against
a hypothesis. Two commonly useful kinds of arguments are deduc-
tive and inductive arguments (also known as necessary and probable
inferences, respectively). In this dialogical framework I include two
kinds of deductive arguments: categorical and hypothetical inferences
(or syllogisms). The task of the facilitator is not to try to elicit every
type of argument about each hypothesis, but to help participants rec-
ognize the types of arguments they are offering and how each should
be constructed and evaluated, and to suggest other useful types. The
following scripted facilitation moves for constructing and evaluating
categorical inferences are meant to be suggestive only:
Is this a categorical statement/premise?
Would you qualify your categorical premise with “all,” “most,
or “some”?
Is it true that “all”/“no”/“some” ______ are ______?
• What follows?
Are you making a categorical inference/syllogism?
Does it follow? Is this inference valid?
C. Deductive Arguments: Hypothetical Inferences
The following scripted facilitation moves for constructing and evaluat-
ing hypothetical inferences are meant to be suggestive only:
If so, then what? What are the implications?
Is this a hypothetical (if-then) statement/premise?
In what sense is it true that “if P then Q”? Is it a predictive
hypothesis (a hypothesis of correlation)? A causal hypothesis?
A categorical or definitional hypothesis?
Does anything follow from this hypothetical premise?
Are you making a hypothetical inference/syllogism?
Is this inference valid? Does the conclusion follow from the
premises?
D. Inductive Arguments
Inductive arguments make inferences to conclusions that are probable
rather than necessary. In empirical studies, inductive reasoning is used
to claim that what is true of a random sample is very likely true of the
A FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING CLASSROOM DIALOGUE 71
entire population from which that sample was drawn. The following
scripted facilitation moves for constructing and evaluating inductive
arguments are meant to be suggestive only:
Do you think you might be jumping to conclusions in this
case?
How probable do the available reasons/evidence make this
claim?
Is the evidence strong enough to support that conclusion?
Was the sample relied on to make this generalization randomly
drawn?
Was the sample relied on to make this generalization representa-
tive of the population? What are the relevant characteristics?
How big was the sample relied on to make this generaliza-
tion?
Was a control group used?
Are the risks of relying on this generalization reasonable in
relation to the stakes?
E. Arguments by Analogy
Analogies are arguments that since two things are alike in one way,
they must be alike in another way as well. The following scripted fa-
cilitation moves for constructing and evaluating arguments by analogy
are meant to be suggestive only:
What are the strengths and weaknesses of that analogy?
How are these two things or situations alike?
Is it reasonable to think that because these things are alike in
this way that they will also be alike in that way?
F. Identify and Defeat Fallacious Arguments
Fallacies are unreasonable arguments made either mistakenly or delib-
erately and deceptively. It is important that dialogue participants watch
out for each other’s fallacies, especially because thinking mistakes are
easier to notice in others than in oneself. The “distribution” among the
entire group of this alertness for fallacies is one of the most important
advantages of collaborative inquiry.
I concur with Walton that arguments are only fallacious relative to
the goals and norms of particular and distinct types of dialogue.31 What
makes an argument fallacious is not its being an illegitimate form or
type, but its illegitimate use or function in a particular dialogue. This
means that the same argument may be fallacious in one stage of the
framework and legitimate in another.32 Therefore, the following scripted
facilitation moves should be understood as examples of identifying and
72 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
defeating some arguments that would likely be fallacious in many of
the stages of the framework:
Is that source an appropriate authority?
Are we sure we aren’t supporting or rejecting a hypothesis be-
cause of who offered it?
Are we sure we aren’t supporting or rejecting a hypothesis be-
cause of peer pressure?
Are you supporting that position just because it’s a middle-of-
the-road position?
Isn’t what you’re saying now inconsistent with what you said
earlier?
Didn’t that word mean something different when you used it
earlier?
(Why) does it matter how many people agree about this?
Aren’t you distorting the other person’s position?
Isn’t that distinction really a false dichotomy?
How is that relevant?
G. Evaluating Evidence
Evidence includes facts and expert opinion made relevant by means of
an argument, i.e., as the premises of an argument. Part of the evalu-
ation of all deductive arguments must be the evaluation of the truth
of the premises, and part of the evaluation of all inductive arguments
must be an evaluation of the quality and the quantity of the evidence
in support of the generalization. In a classroom dialogue, participants
are usually limited to searching for examples and counter examples
from their own experience. This is an important means of keeping the
inquiry relevant to their lives. But if important facts are at issue some
research should be done. The following scripted facilitation moves for
evaluating evidence are meant to be suggestive only:
Can you or someone else think of an example? Are there other
examples?
We have a number of examples already; can anyone offer a
counter-example?
What would count as a counter-example to this generalization?
(How) is that evidence relevant?
Is that an established fact? How was it established?
Is that true? Is it always true? Is it true everywhere? How do
we know?
Is this something that has to be determined by expert opinion?
Where could we look for such opinion? What qualifies an expert
to have an opinion about this? Is there agreement among quali-
fied experts?
A FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING CLASSROOM DIALOGUE 73
Is this something that could only be established by empirical
research? Where could we look for such research? Are we quali-
fied to conduct it ourselves?
Is this evidence strong enough, in view of what’s at stake?
Task 3: Confirm, Revise, or Abandon Hypothesis
Hypotheses should be revised throughout Tasks 1 and 2 of this Stage,
which involves further creative thinking that can incorporate devel-
oping arguments and evidence. At any point in the dialogue it may
become clear that a hypothesis should be abandoned, but judgment
that a hypothesis has been confirmed should be postponed until it has
been tested thoroughly—thoroughness being relative to what’s at stake.
Confirmation at this stage of the dialogue means that the hypothesis is
worth testing in experience outside the dialogue. The facilitator should
urge participants toward judgments about their hypotheses with moves
such as the following:
Is that a reason to revise the hypothesis?
Is that a reason to abandon the hypothesis?
Are these arguments and/or this evidence sufficient to confirm
this hypothesis?
Have we sufficiently tested this hypothesis with our best
thinking?
Is there any other way this hypothesis might be mistaken?
Has the meaning of this hypothesis changed? How can we clarify
the new meaning?
Looking at the surviving hypotheses, have we come closer to
solving the problem or answering the question?
Stage Five: Experiment with Hypotheses in Experience
and Warrant, Revise, or Abandon
At some point in this stage of the inquiry dialogue is postponed while
the fruits of the preceding dialogue—hypotheses that have survived
dialogical critique—are given experiment in experience outside of the
dialogue circle. New meanings of old concepts should be tested in a
variety of discursive contexts, especially outside the classroom. New
empirical propositions should be tested by observation and experiment.
New value propositions such as kinds of health and friendship worth cul-
tivating should be acted on and evaluated against the resulting qualitative
experience. The lesson to be learned from this state of the inquiry is that
hypotheses established successfully in collaborative dialogue are to be
held as hypothetical and fallible until they are established meaningfully in
the wider spheres of experience that were initially judged to be problem-
74 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
atic. This stage is somewhat controversial, as not all philosophers would
agree that experimentation—particularly in non-discursive contexts—is
a proper part of philosophical inquiry. However, it is a necessary stage
of philosophical practice understood as an art of living.33
The task of this stage of the inquiry is to contrive empirical experi-
ments that will determine whether a hypothesis resolves the issue begun
with and so deserves to be implemented by reconstructing our behav-
iors. Whether it does so will depend on the purposes articulated in Stage
One. The principal kind of thinking involved in this stage is practical
reasoning, which Walton describes as “goal-directed, knowledge-based,
and action-guiding.”34 Following the experiment, the hypothesis is
again abandoned, revised, or warranted (as opposed being confirmed
by discursive testing). The following scripted facilitation moves for
experimenting with hypotheses are meant to be suggestive only:
How could we act on this hypothesis?
How can we experiment with this hypothesis, i.e., test it in our
experience outside the dialogue?
How will we be able to tell if it resolves the issue we began with?
What might we expect to observe? What kinds of consequences
would count as confirming and disconfirming the hypothesis?
What criteria can we use to evaluate our actions?
If two or more live hypotheses are mutually incompatible, how
can we test among them?
Are the risks of trying this hypothesis reasonable in relation to
the stakes?
Were the consequences of acting on our hypotheses satisfying?
Has our experimentation given us reasons to revise, abandon or
warrant the hypothesis?
Do hypotheses further revised need to be re-tested in experience?
If none of the hypotheses proved useful in experience, do our
questions need to be changed?
Stage Six: Implement Warranted Hypotheses
In Philosophy for Children it is often suggested that the final outcome
of a philosophical inquiry is an ethical, political, aesthetic, or other kind
of philosophical judgment.35 Peirce insisted, however, that the ultimate
meaning of a judgment is a habit of behavior and that the ultimate end
of an inquiry is a reconstructed habit that ameliorates a problematic
situation.36 Peirce’s insight is both an important innovation to current in-
tellectualist philosophical practices and a recollection of the therapeutic
uses of philosophy promoted by the ancients.37 It is further controversial,
in philosophy as well as in education, to suggest that children should
not only learn to think for themselves and to make their own ethical,
A FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING CLASSROOM DIALOGUE 75
political, aesthetic and other philosophical judgments, but also learn to
translate those judgments into action. The alternative, however, is to
constrict the meaning of value inquiry and judgment to the realm of
intellectual curiosity, and to recommend that children capable of making
sound judgments should not use those judgments to guide their conduct
but instead be guided solely by authoritative persons and codes.
The stage of implementation involves further practical reason-
ing about how to derive individual and collective habits out of new
philosophical judgments.38 However, both experimenting with and
implementing philosophical judgments involve more than practical
reasoning; they have an inescapable moral dimension. In asking how
new philosophical insights can be acted on and what differences they
should make in how we live, we are further reconstructing our view of
an ideal self and an ideal world. Experimentation and implementation
therefore necessarily involve these aspects of moral imagination.
Also, as Dewey explained, ends-in-view cannot be determined in-
dependently from means; the two must be mutually adjusted.39 For this
reason, though the stages of experimentation and implementation are
in one sense post-dialogical, I include them as stages of the dialogical
framework. In doing so I mean to draw attention to the interdepen-
dence of collaborative inquiry and individual reflection, of discourse
and other modes of inquiry, and of inquiry and enjoyment as modes of
experience. The ideal in all three cases is movement back and forth,
through successive and ongoing inquiry.
The following scripted facilitation moves for implementing hypoth-
eses40 are meant to be suggestive only:
What ought we to do about this?
What are the implications of our new judgments for how we
live? How should our new commitments be manifested?
How can our new understandings/values be translated into
action, especially in this time, in this place and under these
circumstances?
Are our current personal, institutional, communal and larger
social habits consistent with our new judgments? If not, what
adjustments should we make?
How can we move this agenda forward in light of current
realities?
What criteria can we use to evaluate our actions?
Reconstructed habits are ultimate but not final ends to inquiry, since
new circumstances, new evidence, newly-recognized assumptions and
other kinds of reasons may surface that bring these ends into doubt.
Doubt that is sufficiently uncomfortable or intriguing constitutes a
problem that calls for the initiation of a new arc of inquiry.41
76 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
Appendix: Reiteration of Dialogue Stages
Stage 1: Identify Issues Relevant to Purposes
Product Kinds of Thinking Facilitation Moves
Articulation of issues
to be explored in the
inquiry and purposes
for doing so
Caring thinking: be-
ing aware of and ar-
ticulating personal
and collective in-
terests, desires and
values
What feelings does this prompt, that call
for resolution, e.g. frustration, confusion,
curiosity, sensing something valuable?
What did we find puzzling, interesting or
confusing?
What range of issues does this text / expe-
rience raise for us? What does it make us
wonder about?
(What) does any of this matter? (How) are
the issues relevant to our experience? What
aspects of our experience do the issues
potentially illuminate? What’s at stake for
us regarding these issues, personally and
collectively?
What issues would be worth discussing?
What do we want to know? What do we
need to decide? What kinds of judgment
seem called for?
What will our purposes be in conducting an
inquiry into any of the issues raised?
Have we identified all of the significant
aspects of the problems or issues to be
explored, relevant to our purposes?
Stage 2: Formulate and Organize Relevant Questions
Tasks Kinds of Thinking Facilitation Moves
1. Generate
questions
2. Organize questions
into a sequence or
another order
• Creative brain-
storming
• Organizing
• Categorizing
• Noticing redun-
dancy
What questions does the text, situation, etc.,
raise for us?
Do our questions cover all of the important
aspects of the issue?
Do any of these questions suggest other
questions not yet asked?
Can we think of a question that would high-
light a different dimension of the issue?
Is there redundancy among our questions?
Could some of them be combined?
Is there an over-all question here?
Does this question have more than one part
or sub-question?
Are there any “Q-Q’s” (questions inside
questions)? Does this question assume
something that needs to be questioned
itself?
Is there a logical priority to some of our
questions? Do some questions require or
assume answers to others?
Is there a priority of need or importance
among the questions for us?
What other relationships are there among
our questions?
A FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING CLASSROOM DIALOGUE 77
Stage 3: Formulate and Organize Hypotheses in Response to Questions
Product Kinds of Thinking Facilitation Moves
One or more hypoth-
eses or possible an-
swers to one of the
questions
Abduction: the in-
formed generation of
likely hypotheses
What are some possible answers to the
question?
What’s your opinion?
What kind of hypothesis is that? Explana-
tory? Predictive? Evaluative? Something
else?
Does that hypothesis respond to all or only
part of the question?
Does that hypothesis respond to more than
one question?
Can we try to see the issue from another
point of view?
Are any other beliefs on this subject pos-
sible?
Is there redundancy among these hypoth-
eses?
(How) are these two hypotheses different?
Is there a logical priority to some of our
hypotheses?
Are any of these hypotheses in tension or
conflict with each other?
Stage 4: Clarify and Test Hypotheses, and Confirm, Revise or Abandon
Tasks Kinds of Thinking Facilitation Moves
1. Clarify the
hypothesis
A. Clarification of
Meaning: defining,
restating, making
distinctions, using
criteria, giving ex-
amples, qualifying,
quantifying
What do you mean by _____? How are
you using the word _____? How should we
define _____?
Are you saying that _____? I hear you say-
ing _______.
What would be another way of putting
that?
I didn’t understand when you said _____.
Does there seem to be anything vague or
ambiguous in this hypothesis?
What criteria are you using?
Do we need to be more specific?
Can someone else say what you understand
his point to be?
Can you or someone else think of an ex-
ample? How is that example relevant?
Are you making a distinction between
_____ and _____?
How is _____ different from _____?
Would you qualify your categorical premise
with “all,” “most,” or “some”?
What’s the difference between what you’re
saying and what she said?
How would we go about testing this hypoth-
esis?
B. Detecting As-
sumptions
Are there any hidden assumptions in this
hypothesis?
Are we assuming that . . . ?
What is being assumed here?
Is that a reasonable assumption?
Why are we assuming it must be either this
or that?
Why would someone make that assump-
tion?
Are there circumstances in which your view
might be incorrect?
78 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
2. Test the hypoth-
esis with arguments
and evidence
A. Giving Reasons Why? What makes you think so? What are
your reasons for saying that?
Do you agree or disagree, and why?
If someone wanted to disagree with you,
what would she say?
How many different reasons can we think
of?
Is that a good reason?
Are any of these reasons better than oth-
ers?
B. Categorical Infer-
ences
Is this a categorical statement / premise?
Would you qualify your categorical premise
with “all,” “most,” or “some”?
Is it true that “all”/“no”/“some” ____ are
____?
• What follows?
Are you making a categorical inference/syl-
logism?
Does that follow? Is that inference valid?
Does the conclusion follow from the prem-
ises?
C. Hypothetical In-
ferences
If so, then what? What are the implica-
tions?
Is this a hypothetical (if-then) statement/
premise?
In what sense is it true that “if P then Q”?
Is it a predictive hypothesis (a hypothesis
of correlation)? A causal hypothesis? A
categorical or definitional hypothesis?
Does anything follow from this hypothetical
premise?
Are you making a hypothetical inference/
syllogism?
Is this inference valid? Does the conclusion
follow from the premises?
D. Inductive Argu-
ments
Do you think you might be jumping to
conclusions in this case?
How probable do the available reasons/evi-
dence make this claim?
Is the evidence strong enough to support
that conclusion?
Was the sample relied on to make this
generalization randomly drawn?
Was the sample relied on to make this gen-
eralization representative of the population?
What are the relevant characteristics?
How big was the sample relied on to make
this generalization?
Was a control group used?
Are the risks of relying on this generaliza-
tion reasonable in relation to the stakes?
E. Arguments by
Analogy
What are the strengths and weaknesses of
that analogy?
How are these two things or situations
alike?
Is it reasonable to think that because these
things are alike in this way that they will
also be alike in that way?
A FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING CLASSROOM DIALOGUE 79
F. Identify and De-
feat Fallacious Argu-
ments
Is that source an appropriate authority?
Are we sure we aren’t supporting or reject-
ing a hypothesis because of who offered
it?
Are we sure we aren’t supporting or re-
jecting a hypothesis because of peer pres-
sure?
Are you supporting that position just be-
cause it’s a middle-of-the-road position?
Isn’t what you’re saying now inconsistent
with what you said earlier?
Didn’t that word mean something different
when you used it earlier?
(Why) does it matter how many people
agree about this?
Aren’t you distorting the other person’s
position?
Isn’t that distinction really a false dichoto-
my?
How is that relevant?
G. Evaluating Evi-
dence
Can you or someone else think of an ex-
ample? Are there other examples?
We have a number of examples already; can
anyone offer a counter-example?
What would count as a counter-example to
this generalization?
(How) is that evidence relevant?
Is that an established fact? How was it
established?
Is that true? Is it always true? Is it true
everywhere? How do we know?
Is this something that has to be determined
by expert opinion? Where could we look for
such opinion? What qualifies an expert to
have an opinion about this? Is there agree-
ment among qualified experts?
Is this something that could only be estab-
lished by empirical research? Where could
we look for such research? Are we qualified
to conduct it ourselves?
Is this evidence strong enough, in view of
what’s at stake?
3. Confirm, revise or
abandon hypothesis
Practical judgment Is that a reason to revise the hypothesis?
Is that a reason to abandon the hypoth-
esis?
Are these arguments and/or this evidence
sufficient to confirm this hypothesis?
Have we sufficiently tested this hypothesis
with our best thinking?
Is there any other way this hypothesis might
be mistaken?
Has the meaning of this hypothesis
changed? How can we clarify the new
meaning?
Looking at the surviving hypotheses, have
we come closer to solving the problem or
answering the question?
80 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
Stage 5: Experiment with Hypotheses and Confirm, Revise or Abandon
Task Kinds of Thinking Facilitation Moves
Contrive empirical
experiments to deter-
mine whether the hy-
pothesis resolves the
issue begun with
Practical reasoning,
hypothetical reason-
ing, moral imagina-
tion
How could we act on this hypothesis?
How can we experiment with this hypoth-
esis, i.e. test it in our experience outside the
dialogue?
How will we be able to tell if it resolves the
issue we began with? What might we expect
to observe? What kinds of consequences
would count as confirming and disconfirm-
ing the hypothesis? What criteria can we use
to evaluate our actions?
If two or more live hypotheses are mutu-
ally incompatible, how can we test among
them?
Are the risks of trying this hypothesis rea-
sonable in relation to the stakes?
Were the consequences of acting on our
hypotheses satisfying?
Has our experimentation given us reasons
to revise, abandon or warrant the hypoth-
esis?
Do hypotheses further revised need to be
re-tested in experience?
If none of the hypotheses proved useful
in experience, do our questions need to be
changed?
Stage 6: Implement Warranted Hypotheses
Product Kinds of Thinking Facilitation Moves
Reconstructed Habit Moral imagination,
practical reasoning
What ought we to do about this?
What are the implications of our new judg-
ments for how we live? How should our new
commitments be manifested?
How can our new understandings / values
be translated into action, especially in this
time, in this place and under these circum-
stances?
Are our current personal, institutional,
communal and larger social habits consis-
tent with our new judgments? If not, what
adjustments should we make?
How can we move this agenda forward in
light of current realities?
What criteria can we use to evaluate our
actions?
A FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING CLASSROOM DIALOGUE 81
Notes
My thanks to Nathan Brubaker, Peter Dlugos, James Heinegg, David Kennedy, Megan
Laverty, and Matthew Lipman, for their helpful suggestions about this article.
1. See Karel L. Van der Leeuw: “Philosophical Dialogue and the Search for Truth,”
Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children 17:3 (2004): 17–23.
2. See “The Process of Inquiry,” in Philosophical Inquiry: An Instructional Manual to
Accompany Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America,
1984): 4.
3. See Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp, and Frederick S. Oscanyan, Philoso-
phy in the Classroom, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980); Matthew
Lipman, Thinking in Education, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
and Laurance J. Splitter and Ann M. Sharp, Teaching for Better Thinking (Melbourne:
Australian Council for Educational Research, 1995).
4. See, e.g., Nicholas Burbules, Dialogue in Teaching: Theory and Practice, vol. 10
(New York: Teachers College Press, 1993).
5. Lipman, Sharp, and Oscanyan explain: “[Dialogue] . . . generates reflection. Very
often, when people engage in dialogue with one another, they are compelled to reflect, to
concentrate, to consider alternatives, to listen closely, to give careful attention to definitions
and meanings, to recognize previously unthought of options, and in general to perform a
vast number of mental activities that they might not have engaged in had the conversation
never occurred.Philosophy in the Classroom, 2nd ed., 22.
6. Pierre Hadot’s acclaimed What Is Ancient Philosophy? describes philosophy as
practiced in the ancient schools as existential modes of life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2002, trans. Michael Chase). See also Thich Nhat Hanh: Interbeing: Four-
teen Guidelines for Engaged Buddhism, 3rd ed. (Berkeley, Calif.: Parallax Press, 1998).
7. John Dewey: How We Think (1933; Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998);
and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry; published as John Dewey: The Later Works, vol. 12
(1938; Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991).
8. Michael Walzer, for instance, describes fourteen non-deliberative activities nec-
essarily involved in democratic politics, including demonstration, debate, bargaining,
lobbying, and campaigning. Politics and Passion: Toward a More Egalitarian Liberalism
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), 90–109.
9. Lipman cautions that the community of inquiry approach should be used selectively
with secondary school and college students who are ready to learn discipline-specific
expert practice (Thinking in Education [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991],
223–24). I have argued that teachers must mediate between the process of students con-
structing their own understandings and skills within a discipline and the process of experts
constructing new disciplinary knowledge and skill. “Constructivism, Standards and the
Classroom Community of Inquiry,Educational Theory 52:2 (Fall 2002): 397–408.
10. My own views on the range of “the philosophical” were aired in the article, “Are
Philosophy and Children Good for Each Other?” in Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy
for Children 16:2 (Fall 2002): 9–11.
11. Louise Brandes Moura Ferreira: The Role of a Science Story, Activities, and
Dialogue Modeled on Philosophy for Children in Teaching Basic Science Process Skills
to Fifth Graders, Dissertation (Montclair, N.J.: Montclair State University, 2004).
12. Raymond Siegrist, A Community of Mathematical Inquiry in a High School Setting,
Dissertation (Montclair, N.J.: Montclair State University, 2005); Nadia Stoyanova Kennedy,
82 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
The Role of Paradox in Argumentation and Concept Transformation in a Community of
Mathematical Inquiry: A Dialectical Analysis, Dissertation (Montclair, N.J.: Montclair
State University, 2005); Ed Elbers, “Classroom Interaction as Reflection: Learning and
Teaching Mathematics in a Community of Inquiry,” Educational Studies in Mathematics
54:2 (2003): 77–100; Marie-France Daniel, Louise Lafortune, Richard Pallascio, and
Michael Schleifer, “The Developmental Dynamics of a Community of Philosophical
Inquiry in an Elementary School Mathematics Classroom,” Thinking 15:1 (2000): 2–9.
13. Peter Seixas, “The Community of Inquiry as a Basis for Knowledge and Learn-
ing: The Case of History,American Educational Research Journal 30:2 (Summer 1993):
305–24.
14. Sally Hagaman, “The Community of Inquiry: An Approach to Collaborative
Learning,” Studies in Art Education 31:3 (Spring 1990): 149–570.
15. Gilbert Burgh, Terri Field, and Mark Freakley, Ethics and the Community of
Inquiry: Education for Deliberative Democracy (Melbourne: Thomson Social Science
Press, 2006); Josephine Russell, “Moral Consciousness in a Community of Inquiry,
Journal of Moral Education 31:2 (June 2002): 141–53.
16. Megan Laverty and Maughn Gregory, “Evaluating Classroom Dialogue: Rec-
onciling Internal and External Accountability,” forthcoming in Theory and Research in
Education 5:3 (November 2007).
17. Some of these scripted facilitations moves were adapted from the list of “Socratic
questions,” in Splitter and Sharp, Teaching for Better Thinking, 56–57; and from Lipman,
Sharp, and Oscanyan, Philosophy in the Classroom, 112–24.
18. I am indebted to Dr. Megan Laverty at Teachers College, Columbia University,
for this insight.
19. See Lipman, Thinking in Education, 139, 157.
20. Instruments for facilitating such internal and external evaluation are included in
the Philosophy for Children Practitioner Handbook (Montclair, N.J.: IAPC, 2005).
21. David Hildebrand, “Analyzing a Philosophical Text as an Example of ‘Inquiry,’”
http://davidhildebrand.org/teaching/handouts/inquiry.php, last accessed 9 November
2005.
22. See “Education for Caring Thinking,” chapter 12 in Lipman, Thinking in Educa-
tion, 261–71.
23. See Van der Leeuw’s argument that “acceptance of the Socratic method excludes
a doctrine of privileged access to philosophical truth or insight,” “Philosophical Dialogue
and the Search for Truth,” 20.
24. Douglas Walton, The New Dialectic: Conversational Contexts of Argument (To-
ronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 90. Walton is paraphrasing and citing Monroe
Beardsley, Practical Logic (New York: Prentice Hall, 1950), 522.
25. Walton, The New Dialectic, 90.
26. The phrase “Q-Q’s” was invented by one of the handiest facilitators of children’s
philosophical dialogue I have witnessed, Dr. Thomas E. Jackson, Director of the Philosophy in
the Schools Project at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. See his “Gently Socratic Inquiry,” in
Developing Minds: A Resource Book for Teaching Thinking, 3rd ed., ed. Arthur L. Costa (Al-
exandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2001), 459–65.
27. “An abduction is a method of forming a general prediction without any
positive assurance that it will succeed either in the special case or usually, its jus-
tification being that it is the only possible hope of regulating our future conduct
A FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING CLASSROOM DIALOGUE 83
rationally, and that Induction from past experience gives us strong encouragement
to hope that it will be successful in the future.” The Collected Papers of Charles
Sanders Peirce (2): Elements of Logic, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1932), 270, electronic edition by InteLex
Corp, through Sprague Library at http://library.montclair.edu/databases/philosophy
.htm, last accessed 15 November 2005.
28. A sign is objectively vague, in so far as, leaving its interpretation more or less
indeterminate, it reserves for some other possible sign or experience the function of com-
pleting the determination. . . . No communication of one person to another can be entirely
definite, i.e., non-vague. . . . [W]herever degree or any other possibility of continuous
variation subsists, absolute precision is impossible. Much else must be vague, because no
man’s interpretation of words is based on exactly the same experience as any other man’s.
Even in our most intellectual conceptions, the more we strive to be precise, the more unat-
tainable precision seems. It should never be forgotten that our own thinking is carried on as
a dialogue, and though mostly in a lesser degree, is subject to almost every imperfection of
language.” The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (5): Pragmatism and Pragmati-
cism, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1932), 505–06, electronic edition by InteLex Corp. through Sprague Library at http://library
.montclair.edu/databases/philosophy.htm, last accessed 15 November 2005.
29. The quote is Walton’s paraphrase of Beardsley, Practical Logic, without page
citation. Walton, The New Dialectic, 91.
30. Thomas C. Grey observes, “[N]o theory can ever be complete in the sense of
stating all its own operative premises, [since] behind the articulated positions alleged
to guide practice at any point, there is always a body of tacit beliefs.” “What Good is
Legal Pragmatism?” in Pragmatism in Law and Society, ed. Michael Bring and William
Weaver (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991), 19. Similarly, Richard Shusterman
writes that, “apart from the non-linguistic understandings and experiences of which we
are aware, there are more basic experiences or understandings of which we are not even
conscious, but whose successful transaction provides the necessary background selection
and organization of our field which enable consciousness to have a focus and emerge as
a foreground.Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, 2nd ed. (Lanham,
Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), 127.
31. Walton defines “fallacy” pragmatically: “In the new sense, a fallacy is a type of
move in dialogue or argumentation sequence that often goes wrong or is used wrongly
in a tricky, deceptive way in a dialogue exchange. . . . In the traditional sense a fallacy
is a general type of argument pattern or form that is presumed to be generically wrong.
In the new dialectical sense, a fallacy is a particular instance of an argument that is, in
principle, a legitimate kind of argument, but that has been used wrongly in a particular
case, according to the normative standards of dialogue appropriate for that case.The
New Dialectic, 257–58.
32. The framework I present for classroom dialogue involves what Walton calls “licit
dialectical shifts” (The New Dialectic, 200–01) among most of the normative models of
argumentation he identifies. Walton’s “negotiation dialogue,” in which the purpose of
argumentation is “to try to get a good deal,” (100) is characteristic of stages one (identify-
ing purposes and issues) and two (formulating discussion questions) of my framework.
Stages three and four (formulating, clarifying and testing hypotheses) are each typified by
Walton’s “persuasion dialogue,” “inquiry dialogue” and “information-seeking dialogue.”
These stages involve what Walton calls “mixed discourse . . . where two or more types of
dialogue are both present over the same course of argument” (218).
84 MAUGHN ROLLINS GREGORY
33. As Thich Nhat Hanh observes, “Understanding can only be attained through direct
experience. The results of [our] practice should be tangible and verifiable.” Nhat Hanh,
Interbeing, 7–8. Similarly, Richard Shusterman writes, “Working in philosophy . . . is not
merely the work of thought, for philosophy’s solutions to life’s riddles are not proposi-
tional knowledge but transformational practice. Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and
the Philosophical Life (New York: Routledge, 1997), 25.
34. Walton, The New Dialectic, 111.
35. See “Strengthening the Power of Judgment,” chapter 13 in Lipman, Thinking in
Education, 272–93.
36. “And what, then, is belief? . . . We have seen that it has just three properties: First,
it is something that we are aware of; second, it appeases the irritation of doubt; and, third,
it involves the establishment in our nature of a rule of action, or, say for short, a habit.
As it appeases the irritation of doubt, which is the motive for thinking, thought relaxes,
and comes to rest for a moment when belief is reached. But, since belief is a rule for
action, the application of which involves further doubt and further thought, at the same
time that it is a stopping-place, it is also a new starting-place for thought. That is why I
have permitted myself to call it thought at rest. . . . The essence of belief is the establish-
ment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action
to which they give rise.” Hartshorne and Weis, eds., The Collected Papers (5), 397–98,
electronic edition by InteLex Corp. through Sprague Library at http://library.montclair
.edu/databases/philosophy.htm, last accessed 15 November 2005.
37. Hadot reminds us that for the ancients, philosophical discourse originated from
an existential choice of a way of life tending toward wisdom and that it was not until
the Middle Ages that philosophy was conceived as purely theoretical (What Is Ancient
Philosophy, 3–6).
38. The implementation stage of the inquiry involves Walton’s “deliberation, . . . a type
of dialogue in which . . . parties reason together on how to proceed when they are confronted
by a practical problem or conflict, or more generally, any need to consider taking a course
of action. The most important kind of question posed in a deliberation is the ‘how’ question
that seeks out a way of doing something” (The New Dialectic, 151). Walton demonstrates
that in practical reasoning the textbook fallacy of argumentum ad consequentiam (appeal
to consequences) is no fallacy, since what is at issue is neither the truth nor the validity of
a conclusion but the practical consequences of accepting it (176).
39. Theory of Valuation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 24.
40. Most of these facilitation questions were suggested by Dr. Jen Glaser of the Man-
del Leadership Institute, Jerusalem, in her paper “Educating for Democracy and Social
Justice,” presented at the Austrian Center of Philosophy for Children 20th Anniversary
Conference, Graz, October 2005.
41. Compare Peirce: “A true doubt is accordingly a doubt which really interferes with the
smooth working of the belief-habit. Every natural or inbred belief manifests itself in natural
or inbred ways of acting, which in fact constitute it a belief-habit. (I need not repeat that I do
not say that it is the single deeds that constitute the habit. It is the single ‘ways,’ which are
conditional propositions, each general). A true doubt of such a belief must interfere with this
natural mode of acting.” Hartshorne and Weis, eds., The Collected Papers of Charles Sand-
ers Peirce (5), 510, electronic edition by InteLex Corp. through Sprague Library at http://
library.montclair.edu/databases/philosophy.htm, last accessed 15 November 2005.
Maughn Rollins Gregory, Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children,
Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043; gregorym@mail.montclair.edu
... Reznitskaya, focusing more distinctly on talk about texts in classrooms, has included some of these principles in a more narrowly defined conception of dialogic teaching, termed Inquiry Dialogue (Reznitskaya, 2012;Reznitskaya & Wilkinson, 2021). Inquiry Dialogue builds on previous models for instructional dialogue informed by sociocultural theory of learning such as Collaborative Reasoning (Chinn et al., 2001) and Philosophy for Children (Gregory, 2007). From Collaborative Reasoning, Reznitskaya takes among other things the idea of focusing on open and contestable questions, and from Philosophy for Children, she brings the idea that introducing young people to certain patterns of discourse can foster their ability to collaborate on complex issues and help them make well-reasoned judgments based on joint examination . ...
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