IMPROVING PRE-SCHOOLERS' REASONING SKILLS USING THE PHILOSOPHY FOR CHILDREN PROGRAMME

Research Findings: This study investigated the impact of philosophical group discussions, using the Philosophy for Children (P4C) programme, on verbal reasoning skills. The originality of the study is the implementation of P4C with pre-schoolers. Children aged 5 to 6 participated in a quasi-experiment (N = 125), where 58 children were included in an intervention group and 67 children in a control group. The data was collected using a pre- and post-test implemented with individual children. The intervention group participated in a weekly philosophical group discussion over eight months. The results show that children in the intervention group were able to give significantly more reasons that included: (1) comparison, (2) analogy, (3) justification, (4) the wording "because of that", and (5) causal connection than children in the control group if they were asked to reason their opinion. Practice or Policy: Findings suggest the value of implementing weekly philosophical group discussions based on P4C in pre-schools to promote four basic language skills and academic achievement by fostering verbal reasoning skills.