Chapter 14:

Educational communities of inquiry (ECOIs)

This is the first of two chapters which introduce a kind of formal discussion that should be at the core of any programme that professes to be educational, and should, indeed, be widespread in any society or community that purports to prize education and be democratic. The process involves creating and sustaining “educational communities of inquiry”, and is partly developed with some of the experience of the Philosophy for Children movement in mind.

Though we reason in our heads, learning to reason is a social activity. We learn our powers of thought from, and in the company of other people.

Initially, perhaps, our parents and others involved in our care tell us what to do and not to do, describe us to ourselves and, hopefully, give reasons, explanations and justifications. We internalize their voices, and they have particular power and influence because of our dependency upon these people, and because of the intensity of our emotional bonds with them. Later, many, many other voices come into play and the development of our reason depends upon the qualities of their’s. Some, such as our peers, or our teachers, friends, and later our lovers have more power than others.

This isn’t always such a good thing. Many of these voices, and what they think and say about us and what we are capable of – about other people, about what we should do or not do, and what to expect – become our mind chatter. If these people reason poorly, are dogmatic or prejudiced, if they use words as weapons of attack, defence and control, if they try to manipulate us with the power of love and guilt, then these are likely not only to populate our mind-chatter but often come to influence, in quite harmful ways, what we say and how we make decisions.

As we move out among other groups who perhaps talk differently, they can provide the means to challenge this early talk – or confirm it. Of course what is established early can be remarkably resistant to removal, because of the conditions of dependency under which it was learned, because of the emotional bonds involved, and because it came first. This can be a source of our continuing strength in our life – and of its difficulties.

Learning to think well, like learning many other complex activities, is partly a matter of who you associate with. If you want to be a good golf-player, or dancer, or poet, or business person, or scholar . . . then hang out with good golf-players, or dancers, or poets or business people or scholars. If you want to be good at pushing drugs, or stealing cars, or engaging in acts of terrorism, then associate with people who are adept at these things.

If you want to learn to think well, then associate with people who think well, particularly when they come together in groups. Attempting to play the game with them – getting in on the conversation – involves learning from the kinds of reasons they respond to, and learning to contribute with reasons that meet their standards. It involves internalizing their moves – thinking as they would think.

By participating in a group, you learn to internalize the give-and-take, the diversity, the flexibility, the richness that only a group can supply. One model is great, but several models learning from each other is much, much greater. You don’t even have to speak to make huge progress. Just following the discussion, responding to the moves in your head, thinking your own contributions and learning to anticipate the sorts of responses others might give – these things teach you the game.

This social character of learning to reason is vivid in the experience of sounding out an idea with a person you trust. Just expressing it in front of them – without them getting so far as to comment – is often enough for you to just know how that idea stands – you immediately sense what they would say. If you have a variety of such people, then your power is multiplied.  This isn’t merely a matter of “downloading” your thoughts or feelings, or releasing the negative emotion from unwelcome experience – it is getting good reasoning to engage.

The wisdom of peers

Acceptance in these good thinking groups is something worth seeking. To become a peer. This can mean that just sitting in and saying little as the first step, and it may take some time for you to build the confidence to participate openly. This confidence comes partly from following the game and attempting to play it in your head, and partly from becoming more engrossed in the issues of the discussion as you follow more readily, with the dawning realization that you might have things to say after all.

This often starts when someone else contributes something that you had already thought of, but you had rejected as “probably wrong” – because if it was worthy, someone else would have said it. When someone else does actually say it, and you see its willing acceptance by the others, your confidence takes a boost. But when you eventually say the thing that no one else has said, it still comes as such a welcome shock when, to your surprise, the others take it seriously.

This process is not to be pushed. There is a stifling tyranny in schoolroom discussions, sometimes seen in the idea that discussions are failures if all of the students are not participating. Not so at all. People need different amounts of time to find their feet, and their silence does not necessarily mean that nothing is going on. Sympathize with them. You are unlucky and are likely insensitive if you were not once there too. The ultimate tyranny is, of course, to be graded on your contributions.

Though some members of the group may be much better than you in these discussions, it is when they treat you as an equal, giving serious consideration to what you say, turning to you in a non-patronizing and non-paternalistic way, and particularly when other participants take up what you say, that trust is possible. Crucially, it is not just your trust of them that is the key here – it is the trust of yourself that this respect makes possible. You are able to trust your own mind and its authority – as the author of valuable ideas.

When your mind matters in a group of equals, then you can trust it too, and value what it does. You can take responsibility for it with courage and confidence. Acceptance means a recognition and acknowledgement that you are open to changing your mind, and that you can decide matters for yourself in the light of reasons you are willing to trade.

The combination here is vital. It is the growing trust and confidence in your own mind, accompanied by a willing self doubt, a responsiveness to reasons themselves, and a preparedness to change your own mind. It is this second willing part that shows that the trust and confidence is true. Stubborn clinging to convictions despite all reason, and the need to defend them regardless, are signs, not of strength but of weakness and fear. Even if the conviction you would defend still has potential merit, you will never better it simply by fighting to defend the version you already have.

When that light of trust in their own minds dawns in participants – particularly those who have been considered academically inadequate – a remarkable lift in academic performance outside these discussions can quickly becomes apparent. Students often study harder; make more effort. There is a motivational insight to be found in this too, for the possibilities of independent inquiry, and to the development of a healthy curiosity.

This is why conventional teaching is always educationally limited. It is an extension of the parent-child relationship. A part of the very initiation into language itself are the agendas of control that parents necessarily have, and that children are, perhaps always alert to, even if subliminally. These agendas of control are there, not just for the safety of the child, but because parenting isn’t the only activity that adults must cater for.

They must earn a living, run a household, cater for friends and visitors, compromise with schools, and are entitled to a life of their own – in which they need privacy, rest, recreation and intimate relationships. Children have to be “managed” to make these things possible, and these managerial agendas riddle the adult-child discourse, underpinning instructions, and much of the reason-giving and explaining. When reasons come to an end, there is often (and inevitably) compulsion.

Schools, are also riddled with agendas and control – in the setting of the curriculum, in the assessment, and through the day-to-day running of the institution. The authority of teachers is formal, by appointment, and never truly relinquished.

This results in a radical difference in how we come to take an idea or proposal from a parent, an adult authority, or a teacher, in contrast to receiving it from a peer or a colleague, or a partner. Among the latter we can engage in the idea with a freedom, with our autonomy more intact, in a way that is not possible when the transaction is suffused with authority and power, and the trappings of formal institutions.

Discussions modelled on the work in Philosophy for Children enable this difference. This is one reason for distinguishing them from conventional discussions by calling them  “communities of inquiry” – philosophical communities of inquiry.

When a philosophical discussion was running, and I, as the teacher, saw a point that I thought needed to be made – I really, really thought it needed to be made – I have sometimes made the mistake of making that point myself, in case the class missed it. On other occasions I have fought back the inclination – forced myself to wait – even for quite a long time. Invariably one of the students would make the point themselves.

The difference in effect was striking. The point when made by the student has a far more profound effect on the group than when it is made by me. This is so clear, and so important as to firmly reinforce the protocol that the facilitator must be very, very hesitant about getting involved with the content. Alarm bells and warning lights should go off, and, even though there are rare occasions when it is no doubt the right thing to do, prominent in the mind should be an awareness of the possible need to compensate for the negative effects of such involvement. Conventional schooling discussions, however, are mostly teacher-centred. The teacher is too often the final judge, the one to put the icing on the cake, the one to whom we must look for approval.

Generally speaking, if the thing is important, but the point doesn’t come up, then schedule more sessions. Eventually, if nothing happens, you can always make a challenging presentation independently – and then schedule more sessions.

This use of the challenging – or subversive – presentation needs to be managed with great care as well. It is an attempt to provoke the discussion, just like the initial presentation that might have been used to set it up. It is to challenge a point of view or consensus that is becoming settled. It is not to steer the discussion towards a conclusion that the facilitator thinks the group should reach, as if they had made a point in discussion and the group doesn’t appear to take it seriously.

It must be done under protocols that the participants are aware of, and are parties to, and it must be based on sensitive diagnostics. I will have more to say about this in a later chapter. But my simple point here is;  keep out of the discussion itself as far as possible. There is a striking lesson in this – about the conduct of discussions, and about education itself. It is a lesson all managers need to learn, and not just teachers. But you need to be running these sorts of special discussions to come to appreciate the difference. You will never get the best from group members so long as you control the discussion from a position of authority.

This highlights the difference in the role of the facilitator who sets up these discussions formally in comparison with any conventional teacher. The facilitator’s role throughout the discussion is to guide and suggest with regard to technique and skill, but not about content, no matter how difficult that may be – no matter what the urgings of the ego. The inquiry is the group’s inquiry; the agenda theirs within the general constraints of this kind of discussion. It is their minds that are at stake. To this extent, you are an outsider, and you need to remain one.

This means that the members of the group must speak to the group, and not do this through the facilitator. Nor must they look to the facilitator to confirm their contribution, to affirm the worth of their participation. That is for the group to do, by picking up on the idea, or returning attention to it. It is hard for a teacher not to respond. It is necessary to look blank, or look away, and it is very hard for students, at first, not to look to the facilitator for acknowledgement and support.

These difficulties are measures of that intellectual dependency inherent in conventional processes. Students are used to having their mental products evaluated and confirmed by the authority of their teachers. Is this the sort of thing that he or she wants? Is this a part of their agenda? This problem though is one of the many things the facilitator might need to make participants aware of in order to advance skill and encourage the group to work as a team. Seating arrangements that make it difficult for participants to see each other, forcing them to swivel around in their chairs, can make this more difficult. But sometime such neck-craning is all that is possible.

The purpose, then, is to create a group discussion in which the authority resides in the group, and not in the teacher. The role of the teacher, beyond being the initiator, moves to that of an advisor or coach on the techniques of discussion, with the aim of a diminishing role.

Though these special forms of discussion have been called “philosophical” communities of inquiry, and their philosophical content should not be in dispute, I think that, in our context, it is even more important to prioritize the educational aspect of them over the philosophical – as “educational communities of inquiry”.

The relationship between knowledge and respect

The team-work of these educational communities of inquiry, or ECOIs, has a crucial ethic that its effectiveness depends upon. Team-work is only achieved when the team itself enforces the ethic – when the team has become self-controlling and self-disciplined. Some of the essentials of the ethic have already been mentioned – that it must achieve trust, that it involves equality and mutual respect.

The ethic is essential to the capacity of the group to build knowledge. It is not just there because “we ought to be good” or “well-behaved”. Here is an instance where the purpose of justice and decency and the purpose of truth are in alignment. If we are not capable of behaving with moral integrity then we cannot hope to achieve truth, because ideas and proposals will be distorted or even suppressed in the processes upon which we must depend.

The group can hope to advance the discussion towards better ideas and solutions – better knowledge – through pursuing two processes or phases or moments. The first is the creative moment, in which new ideas, or questions, or proposals are invented and put forward. The more narrow and conventional the range of these – the smaller the pool – then the lower should be our expectations of progress. The second process is the critical moment, when the ideas on the floor are scrutinized and explored and tested. The less rigorous the testing, the less we should hope for in the way of knowledge.

Fear is the enemy of the creative moment. Anxiety and fear make it difficult to think of alternative proposals to offer. Even when alternatives occur to people, they can be reluctant to offer them if they fear the judgment of the group. This is a recipe for a very narrow and conventional pool of ideas – the more so when participants lack confidence, need approval and have a history of “being  wrong” – at least in the eyes of others.

The fact that criticism is the other major process can be inherently threatening, too. Who wants to offer something up just to have it all shot down? This can, of course, stifle criticism as well. Participants don’t want to judge, they don’t want to hurt. So far, we don’t have trust, and we don’t have a team with a common purpose of advancing understanding at all.

Basic to the ethic, then, is the rule that no contribution is to be laughed at, or an occasion for scorn. It is about the conflict of ideas, yes. They are to be tested. But it must not be about the conflict of people, conflicting over what each believes, is committed to, holds dear, must defend, is unable to have respectfully challenged.

Each is to be treated with seriousness on the basis of shared and agreed expectation that we have come together with a genuine mutual interest in improving our ideas. There can be laughter and fun, but never at the expense of someone proposing an idea. Criticism, too, has to be perceved as a part of a constructive process. When the process as a whole can be experienced as constructive – and not just a mantra about “being constructive” – then it is possible for criticism to be rigorous and real. It is possible to build collective courage in being creative and critical.

This decency and respect has a purpose that is relevant to seeking better ideas. Far too often, the idea that we have laughed at turns out to have merit once we have given it some serious attention. Our laughter is a reflection of our complacency, what is conventional and what we take for granted. The team-work involves the support and encouragement of such risk-taking.  We have to be able to trust the team in this. 

These laughter problems tends to arise “at first sight”, and so there needs to be a willingness and an expectation that we will to go beyond “first sight” when comments or proposals are made, and this means that there needs to be an expectation of explanation. Getting people to explain is greatly helped by team members, not only by asking for explanation, but by supporting the one who is asked to give it, and helping them to develop and articulate their explanation, until its merits can be fairly explored.

A clear point of progress in the development of team-work is when members help each other to get a point out. When this step is reached, it is vividly clear that participants have become able to progress beyond a preoccupation and attachment to their own ideas and experiences, and the real work of the group is beginning to reach a new level. Trust is building, too. It often happens that we find that we just can’t articulate what we thought was clear in our minds once we have begun to trust and when we begin pushing ourselves to develop and express our ideas. We allow ourselves some vulnerability, to fumble.

Helping each other can consist in a whole raft of moves including just being patient and supportive while someone searches for the words, but we can also help in other ways. “Do you mean…?” “Do you have an example or experience in mind?” “Would this be an example?” “I think Sarah might be trying to say . . .  Is that right Sarah?” This development is all the more significant as it becomes clear that members are working together to develop a point or idea, even when it runs counter to their own preferred position.

The critical phase, too, must be shorn of any sense of tearing down, just as it must be focussed entirely on the idea and not contain any judgment of the person presenting it. We should want the flaws and inadequacies of our ideas revealed, and we are more likely to be comfortable with this if we know that the attempt to find weaknesses is being done in the spirit of better ideas – including that we, as a team, will work to repair weakness, or supersede them if we can see a way. The critical and creative phases must therefore work in close partnership. We submit our thoughts to criticism, because we share a purpose of advancing our knowledge.

This is quite different from a good deal of conventional academic practice, where all too often, the critical phase completely overwhelms the creative, constructive phase. A view is introduced. Then it is demolished. Then we move on to the next view and repeat the process. Careers are built on the critical phase, and risked on the constructive phase. The critical phase is often easier to do.

Critical moves are more readily modelled and can be learned in a mechanical way. They even slavishly follow intellectual fashion – where the critical moves themselves receive little criticism. The criticisms come without any onus to suggest where we might go next. Ideas with potential are often destroyed before they can be developed. It is, after all, so very, very difficult, you know, and we have very high standards.

This support of each other includes the practice of returning to a point that was made earlier in the discussion, and again this is often best when we do it in support of another member. It is easy enough for a discussion to miss the impact or potential for a thought, as it grasps only one aspect, or the implications fail to sink in. “Could we go back to the point Amy made . . . ?” “I wonder if a point Brent made earlier might shed light on this . . . ” “Perhaps there was more to what Tess said earlier when . . . ” “Could we go back to . . .  there is something about it that struck me at the time.”

This ethic of respect and mutual support in the process of reasoning together serves the purpose of pursuing knowledge – better ideas, understandings and judgments. Participating in it is a moral education in itself, and is, perhaps, the best form of moral education, particularly when the content of discussion focuses on moral concepts and issues. Small wonder that proponents of Philosophy for Children report a decline in behaviour problems in the school environment as their programmes are developed. Inevitably, students become more prone to listen to each other carefully, to talk things through, and to censure behaviour that violates the ethic.

Why does the process touch participants so personally? Why is the idea here of the pursuit of knowledge, or better ideas, such a powerful motivator? Surely schools are all about pursuing knowledge, or gaining better ideas!

But this is quite different. It is about personal knowledge. It is about the actual concepts, ideas and beliefs that the participants care about and find problematic. This is because they are not trying to meet teacher expectations. They offer their own questions which are real to them, test out their own conclusions and their own thoughts.

When they engage in these discussions, they are not working on some intellectual toolbox assembled for them by some curriculum planner, a tool box from which they may, or may not, eventually adopt some tools as their own. They are working on their own real tool box, and on their outlook, their perspectives, their points of view. They are working the tools on the things that matter to them, or come to matter to them as the discussions, and their reflections on them in their private moments, continue to evolve.

The progress of “sailboats, tacking into the wind”

The objective is improved ideas. But what is improved may differ for each participant, just as what matters will differ, in detail, for each participant – as their experience does – as their history does. When we are seeking knowledge here, we are not seeking a consensus on what that knowledge is.

The way to observe progress and the improvement of ideas is to track the discussion. The discussion will weave, as it goes down particular paths, tacking back and forth – like a sailboat working into the wind, as Mathew Lipmann, the founder of Philosophy for Children once described it. Beginners may confuse this with a discussion that “just goes in circles”. 

But what should become evident with experience is that some arguments and lines of enquiry get dropped. We don’t go back to them because we have surpassed them, superseded them. The discussion has moved forward. Everyone may still be perplexed, but we are no longer perplexed about the things that perplexed us earlier.

Within all this, we may all end up in different positions, but they will be more advanced positions than those with which we began. And the process may not end with the session. We might have a further insight on the way home, or even days or weeks later. The discussion helps brew reflection. The growth, for each of us, will be personal – just as educational growth should be.

A second sign of progress or movement is to be found in the responses of individuals. What stirs them to comment, and in what way? What lights them up? When do you feel a point striking home, or when does a description or explanation move them? When does a consensus appear to build? What topples it? Does the discussion end with the session, or is it carried forward? What is carried forward? Debrief them. What happens – what do they say – when you pause near the end, and you ask for their experiences of the discussion. What struck them? How did they feel as the discussion unfolded? What strikes them now as they pause and look back? Is there something about the direction that we took that should be challenged? Is there something you now wish we had time to explore?

It doesn’t take much thought to realize that this process could have enormous benefits in settings other than schools. Workplaces often have toxic cultures, despite the fact that any good manager knows that to get the best from workers is to get the best from their minds. Where the intelligence, creativity and the problem-solving ability of workers is important – as it nearly always is – then it is just good economics to cultivate the best of their thinking, to get the best from their minds and to have them work together with respect.

Since these qualities need to be organizational – a matter of culture and not just a matter of smart individuals, it makes perfect sense to use the best technique to achieve this. This is the ultimate team-development tool, far superior to getting groups together to try and cross an imaginary river with a barrel, a pole and a piece of rope. The bonds built this way are more real, and more deeply communicative, and more enduring.

Toxic organizations often result from toxic management policies, but can also result from toxic relationships and attitudes among workers. It is much harder for these toxicities to be sustained in groups that have engaged regularly in these ECOIs, because the culture of the ECOIs is one of respect, and the tools of respect are learned in them, in the give and take among the very people who have had difficulty getting along.

Managers who despair of the back-biting and malicious gossip do have an option here. Many, of course would fear the opening up of discussion in this way, and their management styles would be at odds with the results. Inability to develop such discussions, or fear of them is, therefore, an excellent measure of the inadequacy of management style.

At the same time, working to develop these discussions is an ideal model for gaining insight into developing the external conditions of experience so that they have educational effects. Here we set up the physical conditions for the experiences, and we set up and establish the rules. We discuss them, and return to them, focussing firstly on beginners’ rules, and adding more as they become established.

The rules firstly create a respectful ethic, and then create conditions for effective enquiry and the development of knowledge through respectful communication. We guide the participants through a training process that liberates and empowers their participation, putting more and more into their hands.

We establish a discourse that helps them become self-conscious of what is going on, and we create a form of debriefing that enhances this, that expands their willing and effective  participation towards the development of a sense of being a team, and toward the development  of its culture.

We talk with them each informally, on the outside, like whisperers, encouraging them, noting what they said that made a difference, or even appreciating what might have been missed. We reflect one-on-one on the shared insights, encouraging the trust, the honesty, the maintenance of the emerging culture that we want to see, and to be able to depend upon. We do this truthfully. We model the vulnerability, the trust and the loyalty we look for in them. We make it safe.

© R. Graham Oliver, 2018