The Effect of Philosophy for Children Educational Program on the Reasoning Skills of the Fifth Grade Elementary School Boy Students

Abstract

The present study tried to investigate the effect of philosophy for children program on the reasoning skills of fifth grade male students. The research method applied here was quantitative, with a quasi-experimental design, while pretest and posttests were used with a control group. Population included all male students of fifth grade in Tehran in the academic year of 2017- 2018. A school named Fajr-e- Danesh, in Tehran/ district 5, was selected based on the Multi-stage sampling method (two-stage cluster sampling and random sampling). The school had 4 fifth-grade classes. Two classes were selected randomly. Then, from those two, a class was chosen again randomly as experimental and the other as control group. The New Jersey reasoning test in both control and experimental groups was performed by the researcher. The main teaching task in control group was the classroom teacher's responsibility. But to teach the experimental group, the P4C program was performed by the researcher. New Jersey reasoning test (pre-test, post-test) was carried out. The test consists of 50 multi-choice questions in logical analogies, representing 22 skills in the field of reasoning. Findings of the study showed that the post-New Jersey argument test was performed by the researcher on each student.

Keywords

• philosophy for children
• reasoning skills
• elementary education
• fifth grade elementary school students