Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1996
Journal / Book Title
Critical and Creative Thinking: The Australasian Journal of Philosophy for Children
Abstract
When children as young as four converse in groups, and when some structure is provided by an at least moderately skilled facilitator of dialogue, that critical, creative, and collaborative kinds of thinking happen more or less spontaneously, and that there is an emergent structure of argument, which forms the horizon of every critical discussion. My assumption is that it is in the nature of language as a logical and communicative structure that when we talk, and especially when we collaborate in talking about one thing over a number of turns, we spontaneously make at least some of the moves of critical thinking. The overall effect of these moves is systemic: each move is related in some way, if only as one element in a diachronic sequence, to all which came before it, and to all which will follow it. The conversation is an emergent discursive structure, continually under construction by its participants; no matter how ephemeral, chaotic, or entropic its current or final state may be, it can never lose its systemic identity.
Book Publisher
Federation of Asia-Pacific Philosophy in Schools Associations
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Kennedy, David K., "(1996) Young Children's Moves: Emergent Community of Inquiry in Early Childhood Discourse" (1996). Collected Papers of David Kennedy. 5.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/dkennedy/5
Published Citation
Kennedy, David (1996) Young Children's Moves: Emergent Community of Inquiry in Early Childhood Discourse. Critical and Creative Thinking: The Australasian Journal of Philosophy for Children 4(1): 28-42.