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Thinking as Method 
 

Philip Cam   

 
 
 

Abstract: John Dewey is well-known for claiming that school education is all about developing the 
ability to think. There is nothing else for schools to do so far as students’ minds are concerned. Thinking 
is not only the aim of education for Dewey, however, but the means of achieving it. This is not because 
it is the method to be preferred. Rather, as Dewey understands it, thinking is method so far as intelligent 
learning is concerned. In ‘Thinking as Method’ I examine these extraordinary claims and show how 
Dewey’s own discipline of philosophy provides a model for them. 

 

    n Democracy and Education, John Dewey introduces the topic of thinking in education 
with the following resolute passage:  
 

No one doubts, theoretically, the importance of fostering in school good habits of thinking. 
But apart from the fact that the acknowledgement is not so great in practice as in theory, 
there is not adequate theoretical recognition that all which the school can or need do for 
pupils, so far as their minds are concerned…is to develop their ability to think.1 
 

It is important to note that Dewey almost immediately goes on to make similar remarks about 
thinking in relation to methods of teaching and learning:  
 

The sole direct path to enduring improvement in the methods of instruction and learning 
consists in centring upon the conditions which exact, promote and test thinking. Thinking 
is the method of intelligent learning, of learning that employs and rewards mind.2 
 

This claim is all the more striking once you realise that Dewey is not recommending thinking as 
the method to adopt, as if it were the one most suited to the purpose. Rather, he says that 
“thinking is method, the method of intelligent experience in the course that it takes.”3 In sum, 
then, developing the ability to think is to be the sole aim of school education as well as the 
method of getting there. 
 

We need to know in more detail what Dewey takes thinking to be, if we are to really make 
sense of its identification with “the method of intelligent learning” or of “intelligent experience 
in the course that it takes”. Only then will we be able to understand what is involved in the idea 
that thinking must reign over aim and method in education. Working out what this amounts to 
may also be aided by seeing how, in more recent years, Dewey’s home discipline of philosophy 

                                                           
1 John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1966), p. 152. 
2 Ibid., p. 153. 
3 Ibid. 

 

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has been reconstructed in such a way as to supply a generic model of thinking applied to the 
classroom. It has the additional benefit of providing us with a more contemporary illustration of 
Dewey’s conception of aim and method.  

 
I should make it clear at the outset that my aim here is not to vindicate Dewey’s sweeping 

claims, but to see what they involve and to underline their continuing relevance to thinking 
about pedagogy. More is to be gained from recovering what is of lasting value in his ideas than 
from trying to defend them up to the hilt.   

 
The Development of Thought 

 

Dewey was inclined toward the idea of a recapitulation of the historical development of 
thought in the development of the individual.4 He claimed that thought passed through a 
succession of stages in its history and that such modes of thought can also be seen in the 
development of the individual. These stages can be traced by considering the extent to which 
society has insisted on certain verities or welcomed doubt and open inquiry. At the one end, we 
have a society based on settled beliefs and fixed ideas that are meant to regulate conduct, 
discourage doubt and ward off uncertainty, while at the other we find the constant challenge to 
knowledge claims that we find in science and in an open and inquiring society.  

 
Along the way, Dewey alights on discussion as the social source of departure from a world 

of fixed ideas. There comes a time, he says, when ideas inevitably come into conflict with one 
another, and produce uncertainty in regard to belief and conduct. This calls for a different 
attitude of mind. It favours dialogue over dictates and sows the seeds of reflection both in society 
and the individual. Indeed, Dewey suggests that dialogue and discussion aimed at resolving such 
conflicts, or finding a way forward, is the means by which reflection is born. While social in 
origin, this mode of thought becomes internalised, forming a habit of mind in the individual:  

 
No process is more recurrent in history than the transfer of operations carried on between 
different persons into the arena of the individual’s own consciousness. The discussion which 
at first took place by bringing ideas from different persons into contact, by introducing them 
into the forum of competition, and by subjecting them to critical comparison and selective 
decision, finally became a habit of the individual with himself. He became a miniature social 
assemblage, in which the pros and cons were brought into play struggling for the mastery—
for final conclusion. In some such way we conceive reflection to be born.5 
 

If true, this theory has considerable educational implications for both theory and practice, 
as we will see. For now, however, let us simply note that, on Dewey’s account, it marks a 
new stage in the development of logical thought.6  
 
                                                           
4 See ‘Some stages of logical thought,’ in Dewey’s Essays in Experimental Logic (New York: Dover, 1954), pp. 116-
138. Dewey’s account of the history of thought might be criticised these days as excessively Eurocentric, but we 
may set that aside for present purposes. 
5 Ibid., p. 123. 
6 While Dewey is here concerned with the development of what he calls ‘logical thought’, his conception of the 
logical is so wide-ranging that it encompasses the whole field of what he elsewhere takes to be thinking in 
education. 



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From here, Dewey proceeds to mark out two further stages of development. First, we have 
the kind of thinking that attempts to resolve problems and give meaning to experience by 
reasoning with reference to established principles. This marks the difference between a mere 
exchange of views and rational discussion. If there are general principles, bodies of law, or tenets 
of faith, upon which the parties can agree, then disagreement or uncertainty about particular 
cases may be resolved by appealing to them. We see this in ancient societies that developed bodies 
of law or incorporated organised religions. Indeed, we may say that the rise of the rule of law, 
both civic and religious, marks a turning point in the history of thought. This method of 
resolution is still in evidence today, of course. For illustration, we need look no further than our 
courts of law, where the determination of a case involves an examination of its particulars with 
regard to the relevant laws.  

 
In more narrowly logical terms, this is the kind of thinking associated with syllogistic 

reasoning and such things as geometrical proof from axioms. Aristotle and Euclid are obvious 
touchstones for this in Greek antiquity, but the deductive mode of logical thought is very much 
with us still, including in formal education. Mathematics, in particular, is a core area of school 
education that provides an extensive training in deductive reasoning.   

 
Beyond deduction or proof from first principles, Dewey finally comes to the development 

of inductive reasoning from evidence, associated with the growth of science. The role of inductive 
reasoning in science has since become a matter of controversy, but that need not detain us here. 
The fundamental shift concerns the primacy of experience, rather than of first principles, 
axiomatic truths, or dogma, in the quest for knowledge. Even though subjecting ideas to the test 
of experience was nothing new, the extensive development of scientific methods of investigation 
and discovery raised it to heights undreamt of before the modern age.  

 
While science in all its variety has advanced these methods in sophisticated ways, Dewey’s 

ultimate concern is with the cultivation of this mode of thought in everyday life. Given the role 
of education in the cultivation of thought, nowhere is this concern more pressing than in the 
kind of thinking to be developed in schools. In Dewey’s day more than our own, knowledge 
acquisition in school education was essentially a matter of “quiescent acceptance”—a form of 
knowledge transfer reminiscent of the first of Dewey’s four stages in the development of thought. 
To this, Dewey opposed the educational method of gaining knowledge though active 
investigation, or inquiry-based experiential learning—a mode of knowledge acquisition in keeping 
with the age in which he lived.  

 
It is important to note that these so-called stages of development are to be understood as a 

matter of growth rather than of outright replacement as one stage succeeds another. That is as 
true of society as the individual. Social stability would be threatened if everything were constantly 
open to question. Discussion remains commonplace in both formal and everyday settings. Issues 
and problems are still resolved by reference to rules and principles. As for the individual, even 
the quintessential scientific researcher, whose working life is dedicated to empirical investigation, 
will still have settled attitudes and beliefs, carry on discussion about sundry matters, and engage 
in deduction. Having said this, Dewey clearly believed that a mind unschooled in the mode of 
thought that crystalised in scientific method was a poor fit for the modern world. This becomes 
all the more apparent when we turn to his views about thinking in education. 

 



  

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The Nature of Reflective Thought 

 

Having looked at Dewey’s conception of thought from a developmental point of view, let 
us see how thought is supposed to operate as “the method of intelligent experience in the course 
that it takes.” This is the form of thought upon which Dewey’s educational aims and methods 
turn, with other kinds of thought being merely ancillary. So, we had better be clear about its 
nature.    

 
Dewey wrote extensively about this mode of thought. The main work is his monumental 

and much neglected Logic: The Theory of Inquiry.7 For our purposes, however, we could not go 
past the book on this topic that he wrote with education in mind, entitled How We Think.8 This 
work is still of considerable educational value more than 100 years after it was written. I will take 
the opportunity to highlight some of its lessons in the next section, but first let us explore the 
conception of thought on which the book centres. Dewey calls it ‘reflective thought’ and defines 
it as the “(a)ctive, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of 
knowledge in light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends.”9 

 
We can easily discern the kinds of activities involved in reflective thought as thus defined. 

First, there are the characteristics of being active, persistent and careful in the consideration of 
some matter. Activity here does not mean merely that thinking is going on, but suggests an 
energetic or lively engagement; persistence implies a determination to keep at it until the matter 
has been adequately dealt with; and carefulness connotes being attentive and meticulous in the 
manner of its consideration. This is the way in which the facts of the case are to be sought for, 
studied, and reviewed.   

 
We can also immediately see that reflective thought is highly inferential. On the one hand, 

there is consideration of the grounds upon which the belief or knowledge in question is based. 
Logically speaking, these supply the premises on which the proposition before us is taken to 
depend. Consideration of them involves judging both their reliability and the degree of support 
they lend to the conclusion. On the other hand, attention is paid to that proposition’s 
implications, what it signifies, leads to, or suggests. Of special note in this direction of inference 
are those consequences that must attain for the proposition in question to be sustained. They 
offer both the prospect of further support and the potential for rejection.  

 
Beyond this, Dewey claims that there is an underlying pattern to episodes of reflective 

thought, regardless of the context in which they occur. It is the pattern of thinking that we need 
to nurture in the classroom in order to satisfy his educational objectives. In the simplest terms, 
reflective thought begins with (i) a felt difficulty that (ii) leads to an analysis of the problem, is 
followed by (iii) suggestions for its resolution, (iv) reasoning about their implications, and then 
(v) testing this against experience or a wider knowledge base, so as to find a way forward and 
resolve the difficulty. Let us look briefly at each phase of this process. 

 

                                                           
7 John Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt, 1938). 
8 John Dewey, How We Think (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991). 
9 Ibid., p. 6. 



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(i) The first thing to notice is that reflective thinking does not occur unless there is 
something that we feel the need to reflect upon. Doubts as to the truth of some matter, concern 
arising from an unforeseen problem, the feeling that there is an issue with a proposal, uncertainty 
as to what course of action to take—these are among the familiar ways in which felt difficulties 
arise. If we do not have doubts, are not aware of problems or issues, or are blind to the possibility 
of alternatives, then we are not motivated to reflect. 
 
(ii) It is always possible for people to respond to these concerns in other ways. Doubts may 
be met by appeals to authority, problems downplayed, issues set aside, and actions undertaken 
from habit or on impulse. If we are to reflect on these things, however, then we need to be clear 
about the difficulty that confronts us. Why has the doubt arisen? What exactly is the problem or 
issue? What is causing uncertainty in this situation? In other words, rather than dismissing our 
concerns or shutting off inquiry, we need to suspend judgment, stay our hand, and analyse the 
matter.    
 
(iii) From analysis, we turn to the question of how to respond. How are we to resolve this 
doubt? What solutions might there be to this problem? How could we best resolve the issue? 
What alternatives are open to us? While analysis provided conditions that any proposed response 
will need to satisfy, this phase of reflective thought consists in coming up with ideas that look to 
fill the bill. It consists in ferreting around, seeing possibilities, or following up leads, in order to 
firm up suggestions. 
 
(iv) In order to more clearly see what suggestions amount to, we need to reason about them. 
If we are to determine whether a suggestion is true, a solution sound, or an alternative acceptable, 
as the case may be, then we need to know what it implies. A suggestion may look to bolster a 
belief, but turn out to depend on unjustified assumptions when we consider it more closely.  
Something that appeared to be a genuine solution to a problem may have serious problems of 
its own, which we would likely have discovered if only we had thought the matter through more 
carefully in the first place. What seems to be the best alternative may, upon further consideration, 
turn out to have unwanted implications that change our minds.   
 
(v) The evaluation of suggestions, to which I have just alluded, represents a further phase of 
the process of reflective thinking. It involves such things as checking whether the implications of 
our proposals or hypotheses are consistent with what we already know, as well as gathering 
further facts that bear upon the issue. It some cases it will turn on the outcome of experiments 
in carefully controlled conditions. In everyday life as in science, all such efforts are directed at 
resolving the matter to which we have responded. After all, that is the aim of our inquiries and 
the reason we go to such pains in the first place.    
 

Educational Implications 

Having outlined Dewey’s account of the development of thought and described the process 
of reflective thinking, in which it has its flowering, let us turn to their educational implications.  
Dewey’s account of the development of thought underscores its social basis. Nowhere is this 
clearer than in the role that he assigns to discussion. The suggestion that the historical origins of 
reflective thought lie in discussion, and that it is the root of reflection in the individual, could 



  

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hardly be of greater educational significance. If true, discussion should be a prominent feature 
of school education, particularly in the early years.  

 
It is worth noting that this internalisation of social practices by the individual, is of a piece 

with Vygotsky’s well-known claims about children’s development.  According to Vygotsky:   
 

Every feature of the child’s cultural development appears twice: First on the social level, and 
later, on the individual level; first between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child 
(intrapsychological)…. All the higher psychological functions originate as actual relations 
between human individuals.10 
 

While Dewey’s hypothesis takes us into familiar educational territory, it is the internalisation of 
a particular form of social discourse that interests us here. On the inter-psychological level, we 
are dealing with collective deliberation and decision-making in which the participants contribute 
their ideas and subject them to critical comparison. On the intra-psychological level, this 
transforms into a way of thinking in which the individual looks at things from different points 
of view, or considers various possibilities, in attempting to address issues or problems and 
evaluate ideas. The educational task, then, is to make collective deliberation so integral to 
teaching and learning that it establishes this habit of mind in the individual.  
 

The attempt to do this must contend with other forms of discourse that have traditionally 
dominated interaction in the classroom. In their narrowest form, they involve the teacher as the 
dominant speaker, with student response limited to answering a teacher’s question or making 
requests for assistance. More broadly, they are characterised by the ubiquity of teacher-student 
interactions, and the dearth of exchanges between students. These traditional forms of 
interaction are appropriate so long as the teacher is primarily the conveyor of set material, but 
not when the development of reflective thought comes to the fore. Appropriate forms of 
discourse need to be methodically integrated into teaching practice for it to take hold.  

 
To focus on collaborative inquiry is not to downplay the idea that education is essentially 

concerned with attaining a knowledge of subject matter. On the contrary, it is to call for more 
robust engagement with it. To raise questions about some matter, explore its problems and 
issues, see what its particulars assume and imply, and explore related concepts and ideas, is to 
treat the subject as something to be thought about and not just so much stuff to be committed 
to memory. Given time constraints, of course, there is going to be an inevitable trade-off between 
depth of understanding and the amount of material that can be covered. Even so, to sacrifice 
depth of understanding on the altar of accumulated information is a travesty of education and 
an insult to intelligence. At its extreme, it is to adopt quiz-show criteria as a standard for 
education.  

 
The same is to be said for modes of thought that predate the ascendence of modern ways 

of thinking. Of particular note is the emphasis traditionally placed on deductive operations in 
mathematics. There is no question of neglecting deduction, but rather of ensuring that it feeds 

                                                           
10 L.S Vygotsky, Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, edited and translated by M. Cole, 
V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner and E. Souberman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 57. 



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into reflection. That may be anything from students using it to deal with practical problems 
embedded in their studies, to application to both experimental and theoretical problems in the 
science curriculum. To treat mathematical operations as tools for thought is to appeal to “the 
method of intelligent experience in the course that it takes.” It is the antithesis of teaching them 
as operations to be carried out as if the student were to do nothing more than simulate a 
computational device.  

 
This observation about mathematics has parallels in other subject areas when it comes to 

developing students’ powers of reflective thought. If the danger in teaching predominantly logical 
subjects like mathematics is the neglect of application to a wider domain of investigation, then 
those concerned with proficiency of performance, as in the early years of reading and writing, 
can all too easily concentrate on the development of technical proficiency to the neglect of 
reflection. If the development of skilled performance in such things is not a matter of thoughtful 
engagement, says Dewey, then it “makes the subjects mechanical, and thus restrictive of 
intellectual power.”11 Dewey reinforces this point by making a claim about the tie between the 
way that skills are acquired and their subsequent use. “Practical skill, modes of effective 
technique, can be intelligently, non-mechanically used,” he tells us, “only when intelligence has 
played a part in their acquisition.”12 This may be overstatement on Dewey’s part, but the general 
tenor of the remark is well-taken.  

 
Dewey also points to the danger in other subjects of amassing information to the neglect 

of thought and judgment. Again, this is not to downplay the need for students to be informed. 
Students ignorant of some matter can no more adequately think about it than they can make 
informed judgments. “But there is all the difference in the world,” says Dewey, “whether the 
acquisition of information is treated as an end in itself, or is made an integral portion of the 
training of thought.”13 It makes an enormous difference to pedagogy, of course, but Dewey’s 
point is really another variant of his thesis about the relationship between acquisition and use. 
According to Dewey, information must be acquired with the aid of intelligence if it is to be used 
that way. That is a bold claim, but Dewey could settle for a lesser one. Schooling that concentrates 
on the acquisition of information coupled with scant attention to the capacity to think about it 
will produce a markedly different outcome in the capacity to use that information in a context 
that calls for more than recall. That hypothesis is pretty much guaranteed to be true.   

  
As Dewey notes, it is no more possible to have students investigate every proposition that 

comes before them than to impart all the information that may be relevant to a subject. It is 
rather that, in designing and implementing a curriculum, we need to blend these things together 
in such a way as to ensure that we develop the ability to think. To keep the outlines of that 
outcome in clear sight, we could hardly do better than focus our minds on Dewey’s own 
summation of it, according to which it is the office of education “to cultivate deep-seated and 
effective habits of discriminating tested beliefs from mere assertions, guesses, and opinions; to 
develop a lively, sincere, and open-minded preference for conclusions that are properly 

                                                           
11 Dewey, How We Think, p. 51 
12 Ibid., p. 52. 
13 Ibid. 



  

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grounded, and to ingrain into the individual’s working habits methods of inquiry and reasoning 
appropriate to the various problems that present themselves.”14 

 
A great deal more could be said about the educational implications of Dewey’s account of 

thought. In the limited time available here, however, it is better to supplement these brief 
remarks with an illustration of classroom practice that will give concrete form to what has been 
said so far. I am referring to a program of Philosophy for Children, which has diversified in many 
ways as it has spread around the world, but was begun by the philosopher and educationalist, 
Matthew Lipman, who knew Dewey and was inspired by him.  
 
Philosophy as a Model 

 

The guiding idea behind Lipman’s work is that of the classroom as a Community of 
Inquiry. In more familiar terms, it involves inquiry-based teaching and learning in which students 
think about subject matter collaboratively. While Lipman’s model of inquiry is primarily drawn 
from philosophy rather than science, his treatment of the inquiry process resembles Dewey’s and 
the tools of inquiry that he introduces are sufficiently generic to find a place in almost any school 
subject. On the community side, the Community of Inquiry centres on discussion. Emphasis is 
placed on class discussion, but Lipman also makes frequent use of small group discussion and 
discussion in pairs.  

 
Dewey never thought of using philosophy to help place thinking at the heart of school 

education, and it is Lipman’s great insight that Dewey’s home discipline could be reconstructed 
for that purpose. While he must be given the credit for having worked this out in both theory 
and practice, the debt to Dewey is evident. It is no coincidence, for example, that Lipman’s most 
extensive treatment of thinking, Thinking in Education, takes its title from the chapter on that 
topic in Democracy and Education.15 The book is a sustained attempt to show how Dewey’s quest 
can be realised. The debt is also freely acknowledged in Lipman’s autobiography, A Life Teaching 
Thinking,16 with Lipman being drawn to philosophy by reading Dewey and then seeking out his 
guidance in New York late in Dewey’s life when Lipman came to Columbia.  

 
For present purposes, however, we may focus on the practical workings out of Dewey’s 

quest in Lipman’s philosophical novels and the voluminous teacher’s manuals that he and his 
colleagues developed to accompany them.17 These formed the basis of the workshop programs 
that he and his colleagues at the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children ran 
for decades and used to promulgate Philosophy for Children around the world. The novels are 
driven by dialogue and discussion between children, which is stimulated by philosophical 
problems and issues that arise in their everyday lives. In thinking about these things together—by 
asking questions, examining the evidence, coming up with ideas, and reasoning about them—
Lipman’s fictional characters provide a model for children in the classroom. The novels also 
                                                           
14 Ibid., pp. 27-28. 
15 Matthew Lipman, Thinking in Education (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 
16 Matthew Lipman, A Life Teaching Thinking (Montclair, NJ: IAPC, 2008). 
17 Lipman’s novels include Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery, Pixie, Kio and Gus, Elfie, Lisa, Suki and Mark, each coming 
with an extensive manual to guide their use in the classroom. For publication details and a brief description of 
most of these works, see my article on “Philosophy for Children” in Oxford Bibliographies. 



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include scenes from the classroom, providing Lipman with the opportunity to depict the teacher 
as a co-enquirer, prompter and guide, who helps children to explore issues and ideas, rather than 
presenting them with cut-and-dried material. 

 

  Inquiry’s basic pattern:                      Dewey                                Lipman                                                                                       
               
 
 
  STIMULATING 
 
 
 
 
INITIATING 
 
 
 
 
 
SUGGESTING 
 
 
 
 
REASONING  
& ANALYSIS 
 
 
 
  
EVALUATING 
 
 
 
 
CONCLUDING                                                                            
  
                                                                         

 

Figure 1 

 

Formulating 
problems, issues 

and questions  
 

Implications 
Assumptions 

Meanings 

Initial 
problematic 

situation 

Ideas 
Conjectures 
Hypotheses 

Evidence 
Criteria 

Counterexamples 

 

 

Conclusion 
Resolution 

Implementation 

C
re

at
iv

e 
Ph

as
e 

C
ri

ti
ca

l P
ha

se
 

The teacher introduces 
stimulus material 

Students raise 
questions and set 

agendas 

 

Students make initial 
suggestions in answer 

to a question 

Students explore ideas 
and implications of 

their suggestions 

Students evaluate their 
suggestions in light of 
reasons and evidence 

 

Students reach 
conclusions and reflect 

on them  



  

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That Lipman’s model of thinking and its development in the individual is primarily social, 
takes us back to Vygotsky, and that influence cannot be denied.18 Even so, when confronted with 
Lipman’s work, we cannot help but think of Dewey’s claim about discussion being the origin of 
reflective thought and of the pattern of inquiry outlined in How We Think. Let us return to the 
latter, setting the pattern of inquiry formulated by Dewey alongside the process of classroom 
inquiry to be found in Lipman (see Figure 1). I will provide some illustrations along the way. 

 
Just as Dewey says that inquiry begins in a problematic situation, Lipman has the teacher 

stimulate inquiry by introducing a chapter or section of a philosophical novel seeded with issues 
and problems in situations with which students can identify. Here’s a snippet from Pixie: 

 
Anyhow, my chin was resting on my hand, and my elbow was on the desk. 
I don’t know how long I sat like that, but it must have been a long time. All of a sudden, I 
remembered I was in class. And then I realized something funny. Do you know what? 
My arm had gone to sleep. 
I still can’t figure it out. If all of me was awake, how could part of me be asleep? 
It was asleep, all right. I couldn’t use it. It just sort of hung down off my shoulder. I couldn’t even 
feel it, except maybe a little tingle. 
Have you ever had your arm go to sleep? Isn’t it weird? It’s like it doesn’t even belong to you! How 
could part of you not belong to you? All of you belongs to you! 
But you see, that’s what puzzles me. Either my body and I are the same, or they’re not the same. 
If my body and I are the same, then it can’t belong to me.   
And if my body and I are different, then who am I? 
It’s beginning to sound like I’m the one who’s some sort of mystery creature!19 
 
For Dewey, the inquirer next needs to identify the problem or issue and see what needs to 

be asked about or looked into if an adequate solution or resolution is to be found. For Lipman, 
the critical step in this phase of classroom inquiry is question formation. A question here is a 
probe into a problem domain. To ask such a question is to put your finger on a problematic 
aspect of the situation that will direct the course of inquiry. This may be done as a whole class, 
or in small groups, as befits the situation, and results in students setting their agenda.  

 
How could part of you not belong to you? (Roberto, Nathan, Ryan) 
Is your arm being asleep like you being asleep? (Ebony, Ross, Liam) 
What does it mean to say that you belong to yourself? (Jay, Andrew, Anne, Sophie) 
Are we the same thing as our bodies? (Natalie, Dan, Amber) 
Could there be a person who had no body? (Mike, Abbey, Rachael) 
Are you still you when you go to sleep? (Seth, Roger, Naomi) 
Could Pixie have a different body and still be Pixie? (Daniel, Alan, Banjo) 
Who am I really? (Elspeth, Dorothy, Clair) 

 
Depending on the case, the class may be asked to explore connections between their questions, 
to identify underlying themes or issues, or to vote on which question or group of questions they 
would most like to discuss.   
 
                                                           
18 See Matthew Lipman, Natasha: Vygotskian Dialogues (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996). 
19 Matthew Lipman, Pixie (Montclair, NJ: First Mountain Foundation, 1984), pp. 5-6. 



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Lipman is well aware that teachers may need to supplement student’s questions in order 
to more fully explore matters. His manuals are full of discussion plans on almost every 
conceivable topic devised for that purpose. Many of the questions in the sample above circle 
around the question of what makes you the person that you are, and here is a set of 
supplementary questions that the teacher could use to extend that discussion, if necessary.   

 
DISCUSSION PLAN 

 
What is it that makes you you? 20 
 
Would you still be you if 

a. you had a different name? 
b. you had a different face? 
c. you had a different body? 
d. you had a different mind? 
e. you had different fingerprints? 
f. you had different parents? 
g. you were born and raised in China? 
h. everyone in the world thought you were someone else?  

 
Once the investigation into these matters gets underway, both Dewey and Lipman 

recognize that we enter into a cycle of making suggestions and evaluating them by way of 
evidence, reason and analysis. This is to say that the exploration and evaluation of suggestions in 
an inquiry is not usually a single step-wise sequence. It tracks backwards and forwards as 
suggestions encounter difficulties and fresh suggestions are made. Moreover, episodes of 
reasoning, analysis and the pursuit of evidence may come to the fore at almost any time in the 
conduct of inquiry. In the classroom context, discussion may reveal that the very question being 
addressed is in need of clarification, for example, or a suggestion might employ a concept that 
needs to be better understood before we can evaluate it. Again, an argument against a suggestion 
may be immediately forthcoming, or students might not alight on crucial implications until the 
discussion is well underway. Similarly, while students may present their evidence in making a 
suggestion, it can take a good deal of digging around for relevant facts to emerge. The thing that 
matters here is not so much the ordering of these things, but the fact that they serve interlocking 
functions in evaluating a suggestion.    

 
Lipman is mindful of the fact that reasoning and analysis are skilled performances and that 

students need a good deal of practice to develop those skills. His manuals are replete with 
exercises to help develop conceptual and reasoning skills. Let me extend the text from Pixie for a 
few more lines to give the context for an example of conceptual exploration: 

 
Afterwards, when I talked to Isabel about it, she said, “Pixie, you worry too much. Look, 
there’s really no problem. Your body belongs to you and you belong to your body.” 
“Sure,” I said, “but do I belong to my body in the same way that my body belongs to me?”21 

                                                           
20 Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp, Looking for Meaning: Instruction Manual to Accompany Pixie (Lanham, 
NY: University Press of America, 1984), p. 23. 
21 Matthew Lipman, Pixie, p. 6. 



  

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Here’s the exercise, where Lipman takes up the word ‘way’ and has students try to discern its 
uses in varying linguistic contexts: 
 

EXERCISE 

 
Ways22 

 

Match the way that the word “way” is used in the expressions on the left with the phrases on the 
right. 

 

Finally, here’s an example of a reasoning exercise. It relates to confusion about family 
relationships that arises a little later in Pixie: 
 

EXERCISE 

 
 Inferring family relationships23 

 
1. If Mary is the sister of Alex, is Alex the sister of Mary? 
2. If Carl is the older brother of Gwen, is Gwen the older sister of Carl? 
3. If Debbie is Frank’s niece, is Frank Debbie’s uncle? 
4. If Toby is Edgar’s cousin, is Edgar Toby’s cousin. 
5. If some of your cousins are boys, does that mean that 

a. all your cousins are boys? 
b. some of your cousins are girls? 

                                                           
22 Lipman and Sharp, Looking for Meaning, p. 26. The influence of Wittgenstein on meaning and use is evident 
here. Those who have an eye for it will be able to detect a wide variety of philosophical views and ways of working 
in Lipman. 
23 Lipman and Sharp, Looking for Meaning, p. 90. 

1. As the President arrived, the police made way for him. 
2. Ed said, “Jim’s nice, but I don’t like some of his ways.”  
3. The baby screamed, and his mother said, “He just 

wants to have his way.” 
4. Jack said, “The way up the mountainside is very 

rough.” 
5. China is a long way from Chile. 
6. Within a few minutes, the ship was under way. 
7. “Well,” Jill exclaimed, “that sure is the way of the 

world.” 
8. “You skate your way,” said Joanne, “and I’ll skate 

mine.” 
9. Frank said, “You go this way, Cindy, and I’ll go that.” 
10. “Out our way,” said Marie, “the weather’s real bad.” 

a. a means of passing from one 
place to another, such as a road 
or path 

b. forms of conduct 
c. the usual or customary manner in 

which things happen 
d. a method or manner of doing 

something 
e. direction 
f. an opening, as in a crowd 
g. a district, region or area 
h. the beginning of a movement, as 

of a train being “under way” 
i. wish or desire 
j. distance 

 



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c. none of your cousins are girls? 
d. none of the above? 

6. There are two brothers. Mike and Luke Jones. Each has a sister. Does that mean there are 
two brothers and two sisters in the family? 

7. If you are your mother’s oldest daughter, must your sister be your mother’s youngest 
daughter? 

8. If you are an only child, does that mean that your father’s father is your only grandfather? 
9. If you are the youngest of 20 children, does that mean that you have sisters? 
10. Are your grandmothers related to one another? 

 
In coming to the final phase of the inquiry process, l should take the opportunity, however 

belated, to draw attention to a difference between Lipman and Dewey that could hardly be 
overlooked.  The essentially verbal nature of Lipman’s approach to classroom inquiry is obviously 
at variance with Dewey’s use of practical activity. Anyone acquainted with Dewey’s Laboratory 
School at the University of Chicago will be aware of his reliance on workshops where students’ 
inquiries largely approach problems hands-on and work with materials to address them. The 
results here often take physical form. In Lipman’s case, the outcome of an inquiry is more likely 
to be a better understanding of an issue, appreciation of a different point of view, or having 
changed one’s mind about something on the basis of reason and evidence.   

 
Dewey’s insistence on application in the training of thought is of a piece with his resolve 

to connect what happens in school with the life of the child and the society beyond it. I mention 
this because Lipman also went to some lengths to connect what children discuss in the classroom 
with their lifeworld. This is to say that, in the wider scheme of things, the outcome of Lipman-
style inquiries is not simply an intellectual training for academic purposes, but one that has more 
general bearings on their conduct beyond the classroom. So, the contrast with Dewey is not so 
great as it may seem.  

 
In sum, we can see that Lipman has followed Dewey very closely. He has adhered to 

Dewey’s Vygotskian thesis that reflection grows out of discussion and, more broadly, to the idea 
that thinking and inquiring together is the means by which students learn to think and inquire 
for themselves.24 Looking at the overall educational outcome, it would be reasonable to sum up 
by saying that Lipman’s project is clearly a Deweyan one.  

 
Although a mere after-word here, it is to those who have projected a line from Dewey 

through Lipman into the contemporary world of education that we must turn in order to 
appreciate the extent to which Philosophy for Children has carried the torch for Dewey. This is 
not the place to even begin to give an account of the extensive literature that comes out of this 
movement. The best I can do is to point to a selective survey of the literature as a starting-point 
for anyone who is interested.25 Beyond that, are the numerous organisations and countless 
schools and individual classrooms around the world where his influence is felt. Through 
adaptation and creative reworking, the movement that has grown out of Lipman’s work is 
evidence that Dewey’s quest to place thinking at the heart of school education is still alive and 
well.   

                                                           
24 It is typical of Lipman that even strengthening exercises like the ones above are meant to involve discussion. 
25 See Philip Cam, “Philosophy for Children,” in Oxford Bibliographies. 



  

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References 

 

Cam, Philip. Philosophy for Children. Oxford Bibliographies. 
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396577/obo-
9780195396577-0387.xml?rskey=N6Ktfh&result=1&q=Philosophy+for+Children#firstMatch 
Dewey, John. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. New York: Henry Holt, 1938. 
Dewey, John. Essays in Experimental Logic. New York: Dover, 1954  (originally published in 1916). 
Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. New York: Macmillan, 1966 (originally published in  
     1916). 
Dewey, John. How We Think. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991 (originally published in  
     1910). 
Lipman, Matthew. Pixie. Montclair, NJ: First Mountain Foundation, 1984. 
Lipman, Matthew. Thinking in Education. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 
Lipman, Matthew. Natasha: Vygotskian Dialogues. New York: Teachers College Press, 1996. 
Lipman, Matthew. A Life Teaching Thinking. Montclair, NJ: IAPC, 2008.   
Lipman, Matthew and Sharp, Ann Margaret. Looking for Meaning: Instruction Manual to Accompany 
     Pixie. Lanham, NY: University Press of America, 1984. 
Vygotsky, L.S. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Edited and  
     translated by M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner and E. Souberman. Cambridge, MA:  
     Harvard University Press, 1978.       
 
Address Correspondences to:  
Dr. Philip Cam  
Honorary Associate Professor, School of Humanities and Languages,  
University of New South Wales, Australia 
email: p.cam@unsw.edu.au 

     

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396577/obo-9780195396577-0387.xml?rskey=N6Ktfh&result=1&q=Philosophy+for+Children#firstMatch
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396577/obo-9780195396577-0387.xml?rskey=N6Ktfh&result=1&q=Philosophy+for+Children#firstMatch

