What’s in a name? The uses of ‘Community of Inquiry’

Abstract

The term ‘Community of Inquiry’, introduced by Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp, is central to, and widely used within, the Philosophy for Children movement. However, it has not been used consistently, having at least two distinguishable meanings—a narrow-sense and a wide-sense—and possibly as many as five, if we distinguish the narrow-sense CoI session from the narrow-sense CoI pedagogy and the narrow-sense CoI group, and recognise a transcendental sense. After exploring usages of the term, together with the various meanings they carry, I will argue that, in the interests of clarity, separable meanings require separate names, and make some suggestions as to what those names might be.

Keywords

• ann margaret sharp
• community of inquiry
• matthew lipman
• ideal speech situation
• pedagogical techniques
• philosophy for children