Thingking Tools

2
Collaborative Inquiry for the Classroom
ACER Press
First published 2006
by ACER Press
Australian Council for Educational Research Ltd
19 Prospect Hill Road, Camberwell, Victoria, 3124
Copyright © Philip Cam 2006
All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Copyright Act 1968 of
Australia and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.
Edited by Ronél Redman

Cover and text design by Anita Adams
Typeset by Anita Adams
Printed by Hyde Park Press
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Cam, Philip, 1948- .
Twenty thinking tools.
Bibliography.
For primary and secondary school students.
ISBN 978 0 86431 501 4.
ISBN 0 86431 501 5.
1. Philosophy - Study and teaching (Primary). 2.

Philosophy - Study and teaching (Secondary). I. Title.
372.8
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Explanatory Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Theoretical Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Practical Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
The Tools of Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Introductory Toolkit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
The Question Quadrant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Reasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Agreement/Disagreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Distinctions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Borderline Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Thought Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Thumbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Intermediate Toolkit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67
Agendas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Counterexamples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Generalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Discussion Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Advanced Toolkit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .89
Fact, Value, Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Deductive Reasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Reasoning Diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Disagreement Diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
The tools in this book have been classified using the system below. It is
important to ensure that your students demonstrate a basic proficiency with the
more elementary tools before proceeding to those at the next level. In general,
the rate of progression will vary with the educational stage of the students, with
older students being able to progress to the Intermediate and Advanced Tools
more quickly. Progression will also depend on the amount of time and effort
devoted to acquiring proficiency in the use of the tools, and on whether or not
attention has been paid to their acquisition in earlier years. While I have linked
the tools to different educational stages, students of any age will need to acquire
facility with the Introductory, Intermediate and Advanced Tools, in that order.
Teachers should also note that most of the tools can be used in elementary, as
well as more sophisticated, ways.
Introductory
These tools can be introduced to students at any age and level of
attainment. They are particularly suitable for students in their early
school years.
Intermediate
The Intermediate Tools can be introduced to students once they
have learned to use the Introductory Tools. They are particularly
suitable for students in their middle primary years.
Advanced
The Advanced Tools require some logical sophistication
and/or a capacity to reason abstractly. They are
particularly suitable for secondary school students, but
may also be introduced to experienced students in the
final year of primary school.
iv Twenty Thinking Tools

Suppose for a moment that students were to graduate from our schools
almost entirely innumerate. Imagine the outcry. Now picture them turning
out to be more or less illiterate and how appalled the community would be.
By contrast, students actually do leave our schools basically insocratic, and it is
barely noticed. Given that until now there has not even been a word such as
‘insocratic’ to stand alongside ‘illiterate’ and ‘innumerate’, it is hardly surprising.
Yet I am referring to something quite comparable and so basic that it demands
the most serious attention.
I derive the word ‘insocratic’ from ‘Socrates’. Socrates was fond of engaging
people of all ages in dialogue aimed at getting them to think for themselves
about the central issues of life. He held that the unexamined life was not worth
living, and that the kind of open-minded inquiry in which he engaged with
his fellows was really the best way to live. In coining this term, I do not suggest
that we should be engaging students in Socratic dialogue in the classroom.
Were you to inspect Socrates’ practices closely, you might not altogether agree
with his methods, and you might even wonder whether the specific kind of
knowledge that he sought actually is central to a good life. Yet there can be no
doubt that the ability to think about the issues and problems that we face in
our lives, to explore life’s possibilities, to appreciate alternative points of view, to
critically evaluate what we read and hear, to make appropriate distinctions
and needful connections, and generally to make reasonable judgements are
among the attributes of anyone who has learnt to think effectively in life.
People who cannot adequately think for themselves in these ways are to that
extent insocratic. And my claim is that our education system systematically
fails to teach people to think for themselves to any significant degree.
Introduction 1
We attempt to teach people to reason mathematically and to read
fluently—though there are perennial calls for schools to teach these things
better than they do. We try to teach people to comprehend the various
subject matters that form the basis of the school curriculum—although this
comprehension tends to rely heavily on memory work and basic routines.
Yet virtually no attention is given to teaching people to think well in the
context of their lives away from school, in those everyday social, familial and
personal contexts in which the great bulk of decisions and actions take place.
There is a Reading Recovery program, but no Thinking Recovery to rescue
the ‘insocratic’ student. And the kind of attention that we normally pay to
thinking in the curriculum has at best a diffuse effect when it comes to these
contexts, and for the most part provides no preparation at all.
This is a source of social and personal tragedy. All too often individuals,
families, organisations, communities and sections of society live with the
consequences of poorly thought-out decisions, faulty reasoning, biased
judgements, unreasonable conduct, narrow perspectives, unexamined values
and unfulfilled lives.
If only people were better at asking appropriate questions,

articulating problems and issues, imagining life’s possibilities,
seeing where things lead, evaluating the alternatives open to
them, engaging in discussion with one another, and thinking
collaboratively, then we would all be so much better off.
A wide-scale improvement in such abilities would be no panacea, no

cure for all the ills that life presents, but surely it would be one of the most
significant educational achievements that we could envisage in combating the
problems of life and society. To draw a medical parallel: no developed society
would tolerate unchecked endemic disease in the way that we suffer the
consequences of widespread poor thinking in our society. Something needs to
be done.
This book is designed to assist teachers to begin to rectify the situation. It
provides a practical means of helping students to improve their ability to think
about problems and issues of all kinds.
2 Twenty Thinking Tools

When introduced to students through classroom discussion
and small group activities, and reinforced by regular use,
the array of tools outlined in these pages will prove useful
throughout a lifetime.
Many of the tools that I have assembled will be somewhat familiar to

you and your students, but it is one thing to use such tools in a relatively
uneducated and intuitive way, and quite another thing to have an explicit and
well-schooled knowledge of their use, so that the user both knows what tools to
reach for and how to use them effectively. It is not sufficient for students to be
brought up to respond to the teacher’s requests to give an appropriate reason for
something, for example. They need to develop the habit of giving and seeking
reasons when it is appropriate to do so. They need to do it knowing what they
are about and to do so with increasing sophistication and skill.
In the kind of classroom activity that I recommend, you will find that there
are countless occasions when students will instinctively make an intellectual
move, or when you will be able to request them to do so. Underlining these
moves when they occur, requesting them and explicitly reinforcing their use
are an essential part of the practice. In addition, however, I have found it a
great advance to give students activities that explicitly introduce and reinforce
the tools used to make these intellectual manoeuvres. This book provides the
teacher with the kinds of resources that are needed.
Introduction 3
Introducing the toolkits
It is never too early to begin to
teach our students to think, and we
should start early if we want to have
a truly formative influence. Yet teachers
can adapt most of the activities included in
this book to suit students of just about any age.
Regardless of age, students who start off with an empty
toolbox will, with work and support, gradually assemble a kit of
tools. As a general guide, the tools have been divided into three groups. They
comprise the Introductory Toolkit, to which we can add a set of Intermediate
Tools, and then a further set of Advanced Tools. The Introductory Tools are
definitely foundational and need to be acquired first, and reinforced until they
become a normal part of the thinking process. The Intermediate Tools can
then be introduced as and when you feel that your students are ready for them.
Advanced Tools are intellectually more difficult, and many students are likely
to find some of them beyond their powers until they reach secondary school.
The table on the next page gives a list of the tools to be found in each of
the three kits. Any elementary discussion will make some use of most of the
tools in the Introductory Kit. Discussion cannot proceed without problems
or questions. While the teacher may introduce them at the beginning in the
early grades, it is desirable to move to students’ questions as soon as possible,
and then you are likely to find The Question Quadrant very useful in helping
to improve the quality of their questions. Again, you cannot have an inquiry
without students’ Suggestions, and the inquiry will have no critical edge unless
it involves the exploration of Agreement and Disagreement through the give and
take of Reasons. These become tools to be used in conducting discussion. It
will also be natural for students to introduce Examples and make Distinctions
as they proceed. Yet it is important to distinguish between students happening
to introduce examples or to make distinctions during discussion, and teaching
students about the various uses of examples or introducing them to the art
of making distinctions. They need to learn to use such things as tools to do
thoughtful intellectual work. So the teacher might place particular emphasis on
learning to make distinctions over several sessions, for example, and supplement
it with exercises in distinction-making so that students become reasonably
proficient in the elementary use of that tool. Similarly, the use of Thought
Experiments, Borderline Cases and a device like Target can be introduced in turn.
I recommend that teachers introduce the reflective device that I call Thumbs
early on, as it provides students with the opportunity to review their practice
and to think about how they might improve it.

Once you begin using students’ questions as a basis for discussion, you
will soon discover the benefits of working with Agendas. I also recommend
that teachers make use of Discussion Maps as soon as they begin to introduce
students to the Intermediate Tools, in order to help keep track of the growing
complexity of discussion. The explicit use of Counterexamples, Criteria and
Generalisation, which can be introduced in succession, also makes demands on
the mapping process.
Fact, Value, Concept gives students an Advanced Tool for analysing questions
and uncovering further questions that may be necessary for the purposes of their
inquiry. The introduction of formal Deductive Reasoning and the various kinds of
diagrams that can help them structure and track discussion completes the set of
Advanced Tools that this book provides. When introducing diagrams, teachers
should begin with Reasoning Diagrams, and only proceed to Assumptions and
Disagreement Diagrams when this basic device is well understood.
Introductory Intermediate Advanced

Tools Tools Tools
The Question Quadrant Agendas Fact, Value, Concept
Suggestions Counterexamples Deductive Reasoning
Reasons Criteria Reasoning Diagrams
Agreement/ Generalisation Assumptions
Disagreement Discussion Maps Disagreement Diagrams
Examples
Distinctions
Borderline Cases
Target
Thought Experiments
Thumbs
Introduction 5
There are three general pieces of advice about introducing these tools that I
should give you at the outset:
1 There is no substitute for discussion: While many of the tools can be

introduced to students through exercises and specially devised activities,
resist the temptation to treat these tools as things that can be taught
without students learning to use them in discussion. Class discussion and
small group activities involving discussion should be the primary means
by which students learn to use the tools. Here I am rejecting the common
assumption that you can effectively teach thinking skills on their own apart
from dealing with rich content and engaging students in genuine inquiry.
My reasons for insisting on this will become apparent in the following
section on the theoretical background to this work, but for now suffice it to
say that it is by this means that the tools will most readily enter into ways of
thinking that your students come to habitually employ.
2 Maintain a balanced approach: Any moderately successful discussion will

incorporate intuitive attempts by students to make a variety of intellectual
moves, providing you with opportunities to call attention to them and to
teach their proper use. But be careful not to place too heavy a cognitive load
on your students. It interferes with the process of consolidation and the
joy they take in discussion. You need to strike a balance between allowing
discussion to proceed and diverting attention to intellectual procedures.
Hold off on introducing students to new tools until those previously
introduced have passed through the initial learning phase and your students
are using them habitually. In the learning phase, there will be a need for
regular intervention, which will diminish as the use of a tool becomes part
and parcel of the students’ discussions. If you attempt to introduce too
much intellectual apparatus too quickly, you will overburden the discussion
with intervention.
3 Make the tools as visible as possible: Be sure to make the tools as visible
and concrete as possible. Particularly for younger students, I recommend
that you use the idea of a toolbox and ask them to visualise it. When first
acquiring a tool, get them to think of placing it in their box, and then
subsequently ask them to think of reaching for it as the need arises. You
can even build a Thinking Tools Box as a teaching aid and keep cut-outs
of the tools in it. You should encourage your students to identify the tools
that they use by name, and have the names of the tools they are learning
to use posted up in the classroom. It will help if you also display examples
of the students’ work in such a way that they can readily identify their own
successful use of the tools.

This book follows John Dewey (1966, 1997) and Matthew Lipman (2003)
in emphasising the centrality in school education of learning to think. Both
these philosophers of education belong to what we may call the tradition of
reflective education, in which learning to think lies at the core of educational
aims and practices. Furthermore, both writers understand thinking as a
process of inquiry.
Dewey’s model of inquiry owes much to the patterns of thought in
experimental science, although he applied it to inquiries into matters of value as
well as matters of fact. Indeed, Dewey was particularly concerned with the need
to develop an inquiring intelligence in regard to values, and he thought that we
had much to learn in our deliberations and disputes over values from modes of
thought that have been successful in science.
Lipman’s model of inquiry draws more heavily on philosophy, a discipline
that pays a great deal of attention to good thinking and its improvement.
Lipman emphasises such things as conceptual exploration and logical inference,
which are central to philosophical thinking, and he pays much less attention to
experimental testing, which is the mainstay of scientific inquiry.
I am not overly concerned with these differences between Dewey and
Lipman, however, and have generalised on the inquiry process in such a way
as to minimise their significance. In doing so, my aim has been to construct a
toolkit that covers the most important moves in thinking that we need to have
at our command if we are to think effectively in everyday life.
Both Dewey and Lipman also lay stress on the notion of community. Dewey
had a particular notion of community in mind that was tied to democracy.
Dewey’s idea of democracy does not centre on representative government, but
Theoretical Background 7
on the ways in which people relate to one another in their everyday lives and
the kinds of arrangements that facilitate their relations. In short, it centres on
an ideal of community life. For Dewey, democracy is a way of life marked by
inclusiveness in the range of interests to which it caters and the maximisation
of free cooperative interplay between individuals, as well as between the various
groups that make up a community. Relations and arrangements that give
everyone’s interests due consideration, not setting some people’s interests over
and above those of others, are to that extent democratic, as are those that allow
individuals and groups to fully and freely engage with one another, as opposed
to being excluded or coerced.
According to Dewey, a scheme of education that befits democracy and
contributes to its growth ought to foster this form of community life. No matter
how much attention is paid to topics in civic education and suchlike, if the system
of school education, individual school and classroom practices, and interpersonal
relations in our schools are exclusive, discriminatory, hierarchical, authoritarian or
cliquish, the development of democratic citizenship is undermined.
The tie between education and a democratic way of life also underlies
Lipman’s conception of the classroom as a Community of Inquiry. Here the
classroom is thought of as a pluralistic community, centred on dialogue and
collaborative activity, in which all of its members have an active and equitable
share. Through discussion and dialogue, students learn to actively listen to one
another, to share their views, to build on each other’s ideas, to consider a variety
of opinions and perspectives, and to explore their disagreements reasonably.
Lipman’s classroom forms an inclusive cooperative community in which
communication and inquiry sow the seeds of democracy.
The Community of Inquiry forms the guiding ideal of classroom practice
advocated in this book. A brief introduction to the general practices and
procedures of collaborative classroom inquiry follows in the next section,
Practical Beginnings. These practices and procedures will be reinforced
throughout the book.
This kind of collaborative inquiry encourages the social communication
and mutual recognition of interests that Dewey identifies with a democratic
way of life. Such an engagement develops the social and intellectual dispositions
and capacities needed for active citizenship, while liberating the powers of the
individual. That is to say, in learning to think together in these ways, students
acquire the forms of regard and the practices of social exchange that help to
sustain an open society at the same time as they learn to think for themselves.
These two things go together.

On the one hand, we are developing in students the kinds of attitudes,
habits and capacities that characterise people who have learnt to think for
themselves, such as:
• an inquiring outlook coupled with an ability to articulate

problems and issues
• a tendency to be intellectually proactive and persistent
• a capacity for imaginative and adventurous thinking
• a habit of exploring alternative possibilities
• an ability to critically examine issues and ideas
• a capacity for sound independent judgement.
On the other hand, by having students learn to think together, we are also
developing social habits and dispositions, such as:
• a habit of actively listening to others and of trying to

understand their viewpoints
• a disposition to give reasons for what you say and to expect
the same of others
• a habit of exploring disagreements reasonably
• a disposition to be generally cooperative and constructive
• a disposition to be socially communicative and inclusive
• a habit of taking other people’s feelings and concerns into
account.
These interlocking individual and social outcomes build on the tradition of

reflective education, while mirroring John Dewey’s vision of a more deeply
democratic way of life. They form a package of outcomes that are achievable
by systematically implementing and building on the educational practices
recommended in this book.
The practices being recommended also have a theoretical basis in the work
of the educational psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978, 1986). Vygotsky tells us
that a person’s social and intellectual development is primarily a process in
which the interpersonal communicative functions of language are transmuted
into verbal thought. Vygotsky calls this process ‘internalisation’, by which he
means the transformation between an interpersonal communicative function
and an individual psychological use. According to Vygotsky, this transformation
and incorporation of the social is a universal feature in the development of all
the so-called higher cognitive functions:
Every feature in the child’s cultural development appears twice:

first on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first
between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child
(intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to
logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher
psychological functions originate as actual relations between
human individuals. (Vygotsky 1978, p. 57)
When it comes to developing children’s capacities to think, it would be a

natural implication of Vygotsky’s remarks to suggest that children come to
think for themselves through the internalisation of social practices. And this
provides a way of understanding the relationship between thinking together
and thinking for oneself in the Community of Inquiry. For example, learning
to ask questions of others as a move in collaborative inquiry can be seen as
a prelude to becoming reflective by asking oneself questions. Learning to
explore reasons with others can be seen as the social scaffolding by means of
which students come to ask themselves for reasons. Learning to consider the
viewpoints of others—rather than merely asserting one’s own—forms the
basis for coming to consider alternatives to one’s own first thoughts and to
generally being prepared to explore a range of views and possibilities in one’s
own thinking. In general, learning to think for oneself is, on this view, to
convert the practices of open collaborative inquiry into ways of thinking for
oneself through the process of internalisation.
Vygotsky is better known to teachers for what he calls ‘the zone of proximal
development’. This zone is defined by the difference between what a student
can do unaided and what he or she can do with prompting or with scaffolding
provided by an adult, or by more competent peers. The zone of proximal
development focuses on the student’s potential, and instruction proceeds ahead
of the actual level of development, drawing on socially available functions

that are in the process of being assimilated. Working within the zone of
proximal development is therefore not just a matter of shifting students ‘out
of their comfort zone’. It also requires a supply of interpsychological practices
that can be progressively internalised by the student. This places a premium
on interpsychological or social training with the tools that students can be
encouraged to gradually transmute into their own repertoire of thinking
practices. Given its emphasis on students learning to think for themselves
through intellectual-cum-social interaction, and the scaffolding provided in
this context by both the teacher and more competent peers, the Community
of Inquiry thus provides a rich Vygotskian learning environment.
These brief remarks are meant to convey something of the theoretical
background to what is otherwise a practically oriented book. I hope that I have
said enough to alert the busy classroom teacher to its intellectual underpinnings.
It is all too easy to lose sight of this larger perspective in the busy daily work of
teaching. If you take the time to reflect on these theoretical remarks and bear
them in mind when attempting to put this book into practice, then your effort
will be much rewarded.
The basic pattern of inquiry
What I am about to describe is by no means an invariable procedure. It is a
framework for inquiry that can be adapted to different circumstances, entered
into at various points, and augmented in many ways. Like most live inquiries,
actual inquiries in the classroom are likely to include all sorts of deviations
from this basic model. Nevertheless, the following is a pattern with which you
will become familiar.
The basic pattern of inquiry

INITIATING SUGGESTING REASONING EVALUATING CONCLUDING
& CONCEPTUAL
EXPLORATION
problematic problem ideas, implications, evidence, tests, conclusion,
initial situation formation, conjectures, assumptions, criteria resolution,
agenda setting hypotheses meanings implementation
CREATIVE PHASE CRITICAL PHASE

Introducing a problematic situation
Inquiry begins with a problematic situation. In daily life we find ourselves
in such a situation when something unexpectedly goes wrong and we don’t
know why, or when we encounter difficulties or problems that are out of the
ordinary, or when something peculiar or puzzling happens that we cannot
explain or fully comprehend.
When it comes to the classroom, a problematic situation may be either
actual or fictional. It may be generated by a literary narrative, say, or by a
newspaper report. Whatever its source, it is essential for the situation to be one
that students will see as problematic. Unless their curiosity is aroused, inquiry
will not begin. Routine matters—problems that the students acknowledge to
have established right answers, and issues that students view as just another
teacher-set task—will not do. You need material that calls for thinking. This
means material that will help to generate genuine questions in students’ minds.
It means problems where there may be many different possible solutions rather
than one single correct response. It means issues where students can be expected
to have a variety of opinions that would be worth exploring.
Unless we are dealing with very young students, it is generally not good
practice for teachers to begin with problems or questions that we have
formulated ourselves. We need to provide the opportunity for students to do
that. A standard approach is to present students with material that can be
used to get them to raise issues or that provokes them to ask questions that
can be used as a basis for inquiry. Such material will typically treat whatever
subject matter it contains as problematic and in need of further explanation
or understanding. It may challenge students’ attitudes, values, beliefs or
conceptions. It may raise alternative possibilities or invite consideration of
different points of view. In any event, it needs to be the kind of material that
will encourage students to ask questions, to seek explanations and to offer
their own thoughts and opinions. The material will need to be sufficiently
related to their experience and interests to enable them to draw on personal
understandings and feelings. Quality children’s literature is often of this
character, and appropriately chosen social or other issues from the media,
from the local environment, or from the students’ daily lives can also be used.
Stories and other materials that have been expressly written for the purpose of
classroom inquiry will obviously fit the bill, and I have included a selection of
this material under Classroom Resources in the Bibliography (see pp. 115–16).
Practical Beginnings 13
Initiating inquiry
Collaborative learning that typically moves between class discussion and
discussion-based small group activities requires the right kind of physical
arrangement. While small group activities can be carried out at desks or on
the floor, as appropriate, class discussion really requires a circle. If students are
going to learn to respond to one another, they need to be able to see each other
face-to-face. It is not a good idea to have students at their desks or to adopt the
formation that is familiar in primary schools of grouping students on the floor
in front of the teacher. You do not want to have something as elementary as the
physical setting working against what you are trying to do.
Now you are ready to initiate a problematic situation. Don’t forget that
having the ability to alight upon a problem, to articulate it, to formulate
appropriate questions and to separate out the issues is integral to a capacity
to inquire. Therefore, whatever material you choose—a picture book, story,
artwork or other image, a documentary film, newspaper article, local issue—it
should be used to raise issues and prompt discussion among your students.
Teachers will need to provide much more scaffolding for very young
students, of course. With students who are just beginning to learn to articulate
problems or to ask questions when called upon to do so, the teacher may need
to help them to probe the stimulus by raising appropriate questions for them
to address. For example, if I were going to have a discussion with very young
students based around Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, I might begin
by asking whether they think that the butterfly in the story is the same living
creature as the caterpillar. And we might concentrate on the use of Reasons
in order to think about that issue in our discussion. Then we might proceed
to think about whether we will be the same people as we are now when we
grow up, or whether we will have changed so much that we will have become
different people. In other words, I will have alighted upon an aspect of the story
that is likely to stimulate the students’ curiosity, and then built on their sense of
puzzlement in getting them to think about themselves.
Once students are able to ask their own questions, however, it is usually best
to get them to do so. When you do this for the first time, gather your class into
a circle and tell everyone that today they will have the opportunity to discuss
whatever it is that you are going to present. Tell them that while you are reading
the story or presenting other stimulus material, you want them to be thinking
about a question they might ask. The question can be about an issue that the
material raises, something that they see as a problem, something in it that
puzzles them or with which they may not agree, or indeed anything that the
material prompts them to think about that they would really like to discuss.
Tell them that you are looking for good ‘meaty’ questions, ones that will get
people in the class to think hard about some problem or issue.

If your students are slow to come up with questions at first,
give them a little time; then take the questions as they arise
and write them on the board or on a sheet of butcher’s
paper. It is a good idea to write the students’ names next to
their questions for future reference and to give them a sense
of ownership. You may need to ask students to clarify or
otherwise improve their questions as you go, and to invite
other students to help someone who is having difficulty
formulating their question. However, don’t reject any serious
attempt to ask a question at this stage. Be inclusive and show
your students that you value their questions.
When your students have become familiar with this practice, you should
vary the procedure. For example, you might divide the class into pairs or threes
and have each pair or threesome negotiate a question among themselves and, if
they are able, write it with a felt pen on a strip of paper. This will actively involve
all your students in the process of question formation and should improve the
quality of the questions asked. You might like to adopt the practice of having
your students keep a reflection book in which they record questions about their
lives that occur to them in the course of the day, and which they bring to class
for discussion. Once they have mastered the basics, you will be able to help them
make their questions more deeply exploratory, as will be explained later when we
come to the device referred to as The Question Quadrant.
When students are familiar with the Introductory Tools, it is usually a
good idea to invite them to draw connections between their questions in the
way described under Agendas later in the book. While individual questions
can be connected in all sorts of ways, depending on the material with which
you began, you will often find that questions are connected to central topics,
concepts or underlying themes. Giving your students the opportunity to
bring out the connections between their questions helps them to organise
those questions into a more coherent agenda and to get their bearings in the
problem domain. Use coloured markers or some other coding scheme to make
their connections explicit, then ask them whether they can supply a word or
a phrase that captures the topic, theme or concept and add that to the board.
While students sometimes find this difficult to do at first, do persevere, as they
will quickly get better with practice. They will soon be able to supply deeper
connections in place of more superficial ones; and they will see that sometimes
questions are logically connected, so that, for example, it would be important to
try to answer one question before turning to another with which it is connected.
Having assembled the questions, the students are ready to begin their
discussion. They will almost certainly have generated many more questions than
can be discussed in the time available, and may well have generated sufficient
inquiry starters to keep the class going for several sessions. Provided that interest
is maintained, that is all to the good. You do not need to start every session by
generating questions, and next time you may begin by asking the students to
provide a brief review of their previous session and then invite them to take
up the discussion from where it left off, or to proceed to other questions that
remain to be discussed.
There may be an obvious or natural starting point for

discussion, but more often than not the students will have
grouped the questions into several larger issues or themes—any
one of which might serve as a starting point. It is often a good
idea, therefore, to get a sense of the class’s interest in different
groups of questions, and a simple way of doing this is to ask
them to vote for the issue or theme that they would most like
to discuss. You may find that the centre of interest is not where
you had supposed.
While your students are just beginning to learn what makes a question good
for inquiry, you might proceed more directly by yourself selecting a question
(or group of questions) that seems to have real promise. The discussion will
almost certainly fall flat if you don’t alight upon a question of substance. Having
said this, it can be useful briefly to address a question or two that can be easily
answered; or to consider one where different hypotheses might be suggested
that lead nowhere, because, for instance, there is no way of testing them out.
It helps students to get a sense of the difference between these kinds of
dead-end questions and those that open up a really stimulating discussion.
Quite reasonably, teachers often feel that they would like the time to reflect
on the chosen topic or question before commencing discussion. This is often
a good idea. Among other things, it provides the teacher with the opportunity
to formulate some supplementary questions or to devise an exercise or an

activity that might be useful in extending the discussion once it is underway. It
is therefore quite common for teachers to take the process described above up
to this point in one sitting, and then to come back to discussion on the next
occasion, allowing time for further preparation.
Generating suggestions
The first object of discussion is to generate ideas, hypotheses, conjectures or
expressions of opinion—or what I call Suggestions, in short. That is to say,
there is some question, problem or issue under discussion and we are looking
for possible answers, explanations, solutions, or remedies in response. If the
question with which we began is one appropriate for inquiry, it will leave
room for various possible responses of this kind. Attending to these different
possibilities is crucial, because it enables us to move on to the business of
reasoning, analysis and evaluation that is needed in order to reach a considered
judgement or conclusion.
Just how the discussion proceeds will depend to some extent on what kind
of question is under discussion. One standard beginning is to ask the questioner
to address their question in a preliminary way. It may be helpful for the
questioner to explain what prompted their question, to clarify it if need be, and
also to offer further thoughts if he or she has any. By now, other students will be
ready to respond. Since we are looking for a variety of opinions, different points
of view or alternative ideas or possibilities, it is important to allow a number
of students to speak briefly at this stage. During the process, students can be
encouraged to build on each other’s ideas, to express agreement or disagreement,
to offer alternatives, or simply to try out an idea. Some clarification of their
ideas may be needed, including making distinctions and connections of various
sorts between the suggestions themselves. While it is right and proper for
students to express their differences and disagreements by giving reasons for
them, you should ask students to put aside detailed debate on any suggestion
for the moment, until some alternatives have been collected.
We need different points of view, rival hypotheses, or alternative ideas in order
to suspend judgement in the community as a whole. The suspension of judgement
is central to the intersubjective practice of inquiry. It may be that some students
begin with fixed ideas about the matter under discussion, but the fact that other
students express different ideas, or that alternative possibilities are suggested, means
that the community has not made up its mind and discussion will ensue.
Let us take, for example, the following suggestions from a secondary
classroom in which students are addressing the question of what makes an action
fair. In this case the suggestions were generated by discussion in small groups.
An action is fair if it treats people as they deserve
to be treated.
An action is fair only if it treats everyone equally.

What makes an action fair? •
An action is fair enough if it does no one any harm.
An action is fair if everyone’s interests are taken

into account.
The students making these suggestions may not necessarily be committed to

them. They may be just thoughts that came to mind, or an idea that seemed
reasonable at the time, to which other alternatives or more refined statements
might be added in due course. In whatever spirit they have been put forward,
clearly a lot more will need to be said in order to develop and evaluate
these suggestions properly if we are going to reach a considered judgement,
irrespective of whether we arrive at a consensus in the end.
Given these various possibilities, intersubjective suspension of judgement
occurs and students are drawn into examining their ideas by testing them
against their experience, comparing and contrasting the different possibilities,
and exploring disagreements. And as they continue to work in this way with
one another, they gradually internalise this pattern in their own thinking,
and habitually suspend judgement in their own thinking in order to explore
alternative possibilities and different points of view.
Conceptual exploration and reasoning

It may not be immediately apparent what students’ conjectures, tentative
explanations, suggestions, suppositions and so forth come to. In order to tease
out the meaning of such things, they may need to explore the connotations of
the concepts that they employ, as well as to draw out the implications of the
claims that they make. These are intimately related activities. For example,
the deeper meaning of a suggestion may not be clear until the concepts being
employed are more fully grasped—just as its import may only become apparent
when the students reason about its implications. This raises the twin topics of
conceptual exploration and reasoning.
Conceptual exploration
In order to get an initial feel for conceptual exploration, let us go back to the
question we were considering a moment ago: What makes an action fair? You

can hardly imagine proceeding very far with this question without people
coming up with examples of actions that they take to be either fair or not fair,
and this almost inevitably leads into controversy about one case or another.
This is because the question with which we began effectively calls on us to state
the criteria for saying that an action is fair; and like just about all of the central
concepts we employ when we talk about things of importance to our lives,
the tacit criteria that govern the concept of fairness turn out to be somewhat
uncertain and surprisingly contentious.
So first of all we need to make our unspoken criteria explicit, and then we
need to examine them. This may not result in a consensus about the meanings of
concepts we employ, but it will enable us to more deeply understand the import
of our ideas and to better appreciate where we stand in the intellectual terrain.
Distinction-making is one basic kind of conceptual move. Here we insert
a divider between things that might otherwise be treated as the same. This can
bring greater clarity and precision and save us from a multitude of errors. In the
discussion of fairness, for example, one group’s suggestion was that an action is
‘fair enough’ if it does no one any harm. We may well want to ask whether the
notion of something being ‘fair enough’ is the same as something being fair.
After all, to say that something is fair enough is often just to say that it is merely
sufficiently justified to be acceptable in the circumstances. To be ‘fair enough’ is
therefore, arguably, to be only good enough to be allowed to pass. And qualified
fairness is not what we were asking about. It could therefore be important to
distinguish being fair from merely being ‘fair enough’. In the case in point, even
were an action fair enough so long as it did no one any harm, ‘not doing harm’
may be too weak a constraint to ensure that an action is completely fair.
Distinction-making is to be found whenever we try to sort out ambiguities
or vagueness in the meanings of words.
For example, in the suggestions made about fairness, when it is said

that an action is fair if it takes everyone’s interests into account, does
‘interests’ mean ‘those things that we are interested in pursuing’
or, alternatively, ‘those things that contribute to our happiness
or welfare’? Or does it perhaps mean something else? How we
understand a word like ‘interests’ in this context is crucial to the
issue. After all, it is one thing to claim that considerations of fairness
require us to consider the welfare of all the individuals affected
by our actions in deciding what we should do, and quite another
to claim that an action cannot be fair unless it takes into account
whatever people are interested in doing.
Conceptual exploration also involves paying attention to connotations
and other conceptual connections. This can be as simple as seeing that words
belong to clusters or families of words that have bonds of meaning, that form
conceptual oppositions, or are ordered along some dimension. Consider, for
example, the suggestion that an action is fair if it treats people as they deserve
to be treated. We usually speak of what people deserve in the context of
reward and punishment. ‘To get what you deserve’ is to get your just reward
or punishment. In the context of fairness, ‘punishment’ and ‘reward’ belong
to a cluster of terms that have to do with appropriate penalties (according to
offence) and the differential treatment of people (according to merit), including
such words as ‘payback’, ‘retribution’, ‘forfeit’, ‘compensate’, and ‘prize’, ‘award’,
‘reward’ and ‘entitlement’. On the face of it, they belong to a different family of
ideas than those tied to equality.
So those who suggested that an action is fair if it treats people as they
deserve to be treated appear to be looking at fairness from a different angle than
those who said that an action is fair only if it treats everyone equally. (In more
advanced discussions, we might refer to the distinction between retributive and
distributive justice.) Perhaps, with some work, these two perspectives can be
made to align, but there is certainly a difference between them. It is a difference
that we can begin to articulate by exploring the connotations of the words being
used, and that is a very useful conceptual exercise.
Conceptual exploration also includes categorical thinking in

which systematic distinctions and connections are made in
organising some subject matter. This is the kind of thinking
that belongs to classification or taxonomy, which is as essential
to organising the display shelves in a supermarket as it is to
scientific work. However, categorical thinking is important for
all kinds of purposes.
Perhaps the most elementary task of this kind is to divide a set of things
into those that have some property and those that do not. Suppose that we had
a set of scenarios involving various actions, some of which are clearly fair, others
of which are clearly not fair, and some of which we could argue either way. In
attempting to categorise each of these scenarios as either FAIR or NOT FAIR
we need criteria. Our criteria are our reasons for saying that one action is fair
or that another is not, which are implicit in the judgements we make about the
various cases. Unearthing and scrutinising our criteria can be a demanding task.

We may use a variety of criteria, some of which may be more important than
others, and which may conflict with one another in certain circumstances. This
can lead to uncertainty and disagreement. We may need to determine whether
the features we are relying on are ones that something must have in order to be
categorised in a certain way, or ones that identify only some things of that kind;
or whether one criterion takes precedence over another when they come into
conflict, and so on.
From a seemingly simple task of categorisation, therefore, we can find
ourselves facing intellectually sophisticated and demanding issues. How far
students pursue such matters will depend on their age and experience as well
as their interests, but the possibilities of categorisation tasks are rich and
rewarding.
In sum, conceptual exploration gives us a clearer, more coherent view
of just about any rich and complex subject matter. When it comes to the
classroom, acquiring some basic tools for conceptual exploration—and
learning how to use them effectively—paves the way for deeper understanding
in all areas of the school curriculum. This provides strong grounds for saying
that the art of conceptual inquiry ought to be built into the learning process
throughout the school years.
Reasoning
Reasoning is an extensive topic that forms the subject matter of both formal
and informal logic, and yet it is hardly touched upon in school education.
The fact that scant attention has been paid to reasoning in school education is
sufficient to explain why most teachers were not trained to be aware of patterns
of reasoning, and often have difficulty in determining when those patterns are
valid or fallacious.
This would not be such a disaster if poor reasoning skills did not get people
into all sorts of difficulties in their lives. The fact is that muddle-headed and
fallacious reasoning, and such things as jumping to conclusions, acting on
unwarranted assumptions and failing to appreciate consequences, can be costly
and dangerous. Even so, in a general book such as this, I cannot hope to do
more than alert teachers to the importance of this topic and to provide a starting
point for dealing with it. By introducing a few simple reasoning tools that are
particularly useful in the context of inquiry, I hope to give teachers who are
unfamiliar with the teaching of reasoning the confidence to begin to tackle it and
an appreciation of its importance, so that they will want to extend their repertoire.
Going back to the basic pattern of inquiry, it is obvious that in order to
fully understand and evaluate what has been suggested, we need to see what
else either must, or would likely, be the case if our suggestions were to be
accepted. Notice that these implications are of two kinds. First, there are those
propositions that simply follow from our suggestions, in the sense that if the
suggestions are true then the implications must also be true. They are said to be
logically implied. Secondly, however, there are those implications that follow
with only some likelihood or degree of probability. Let us look at these in turn.
From some propositions others simply follow. For example, from the
claim that an action is fair only if it treats everyone equally, it follows that
any action that fails to treat people equally must be unfair. This implication
is important because we can now cast about for an example that treats people
unequally but which seems to be fair. Someone might suggest, for instance,
that when a younger brother or sister is required to go to bed earlier at night
than their sibling, this is unequal treatment and yet it is fair (or fair enough!)
given that they are younger. If this were accepted, it would provide what is
called a counterexample to the original claim, which would have to be revised
or given up. I am not saying, of course, that everyone is likely to agree that such
treatment is indeed unequal (or that such a policy is fair). We would certainly
need to look at what ‘equal treatment’ means here. It may well be argued that
being different in age is itself a difference that makes a difference—‘equal
treatment’ implying that like cases should be treated alike, rather than that
different cases should be treated the same.
Take a second example: From the claim that an action is fair when
everyone’s interests are taken into account, does it follow that an action cannot
be fair unless it takes everyone’s interests into account? To some people’s
surprise, the answer is that it does not follow. It is a common fallacy to think
that it does. For students to come to see that this is a fallacy in reasoning, and
why that is so, would be progress indeed. Later in the book, we will be learning
about how to teach students to avoid this kind of fallacy.
In learning to reason, we come to take account of the way that words such
as ‘if ’ operate, and so to be mindful of what statements containing ‘if’ clauses
do and do not imply. Students who were used to thinking about their reasoning
would also immediately notice the difference between ‘if ’ and ‘only if ’ as they
occur in the suggestions in our example. To say that an action is fair only if it treats
everyone equally, implies that if an action does not treat everyone equally then it
is not fair. By contrast, the claim that an action is fair merely if it treats everyone
equally does not have this implication. To think that it does is to fall for the fallacy
in reasoning that we met a moment ago. Students who are practised in reasoning
are alert to such implications and choose their words carefully.
Most of the implications that students need to think about in examining
their ideas do not follow from them in the manner of what is known as
deductive logic. One thing is thought to imply another because they are
regularly found to accompany each other, or because there is some thread of
evidence linking them, or simply because this is what we have been brought up
to believe. Reasoning here covers a great deal of territory with which students
will become increasingly familiar as they learn to find their way in inquiry.
This includes learning to probe around in a situation where there may be more
than one live possibility, rather than assuming that the most salient possibility

is the only one. It involves learning to take the full range of circumstances into
account, rather than focusing on a single aspect or looking at something from
only one point of view. It includes learning to trace out the likely consequences
of different possibilities in order to properly compare and evaluate them. It
involves learning to be critical rather than gullible in judging reasons and
evidence that are proffered by sources that may not be reliable. It extends to
students learning to look for evidence in their own experience and that of their
classmates, and not just to accept blindly what is handed down on authority
from the adult world.
By learning to do such things, students are learning to make

more reasonable judgements. This means that they will
be able generally to make good judgements about things
of importance in their lives. They will be less susceptible
to manipulation and better able to judge the evidence for
themselves. In learning to explore reasons and evidence
through collaborative inquiry, they will become both less
dogmatic and more balanced in their judgements. They will be
more willing and able to develop shared understandings and to
actively contribute to decision-making in familial, social and
workplace settings.
Good judgement, in all its complexity, ought surely to be a central outcome of

school education, and learning to reason well forms a large part of its development.
So reasoning is something to which we should pay very close attention.
Evaluating and concluding

The process of analysing our ideas and drawing out their implications is
intimately connected with their evaluation. We often draw attention to an
implication of some suggestion just because we see it as problematic. For
example, we may reason as follows: ‘If the suggestion put forward were correct,
then we would expect to find certain evidence. But there is no such evidence. So
the suggestion is doubtful.’ This is a common form of reasoning used to give a
negative evaluation of some suggestion. Again, someone may wish to explore a
particular concept because they feel that a suggestion relating to it is misleading,
ultimately incoherent, a mere truism, or not really distinct from some other
suggestion that has already been rejected. In short, in an inquiry process,
reasoning and conceptual exploration are primarily directed towards evaluation,
with which they are very much entwined.
While acknowledging this interrelatedness, it is important to keep these
things separate for the purposes of teaching the tools of inquiry. Students
need to be able to focus on their evaluative tools in order to learn to use them
effectively. They need to learn to be careful in giving and evaluating reasons, to
develop skill in employing evaluative criteria, to make effective use of examples
and other evidence, to search for counterexamples, and generally to see what is
involved in evaluating suggestions.
Similar remarks apply to reaching conclusions, which is the last phase in the
basic pattern of inquiry. Reasoning is a process directed towards a conclusion,
and so it obviously incorporates something of this last phase within it. Once
again, however, it is important to distinguish between them. Even though
we may have reached a conclusion by faultless reasoning, this does not show
that the claims with which we began are true, and if someone calls them into
question we will need to go back and more carefully consider them. Even more
strikingly, we may reason to some conclusion which, on reflection, turns out to
be inconsistent with our own experience, so that we have cause to doubt our
initial assumptions. Or we may reason to some conclusion, while they reason to
a quite different conclusion on other grounds, and together we are left to weigh
competing considerations by criteria, which themselves may turn out not to be
entirely agreed upon.
In sum, the conclusion of an inquiry is generally not the same thing as the
conclusion of any particular piece of reasoning. It is more usually the outcome
of evaluating many lines of thought and different points of view.
It cannot be stressed too heavily that the conclusions we arrive at in
classroom inquiry are very often not unanimous. Resolutions may be partial
or vary between students because of unresolved disagreements and different
understandings, albeit ones that are better informed, more reasonable and less
opinionated than would otherwise be the case. This lack of consensus is hardly
surprising, given that we are often dealing with perennial questions of meaning
and value that do not have anything like single correct answers. Educators who
are used to dealing with questions that have settled correct answers sometimes
feel uncomfortable with such questions, and may even regard the lack of
authoritative or agreed-upon answers as a mark of the educational futility of
addressing them. Yet such questions are among the most important ones that
we face in our lives and our answers to them can make a significant difference to
the kind of society in which we are to live.

Open intellectual questions about freedom, right action,
fairness, personhood, beauty, truth, and the like, tend to
remain open in the sense that every society and generation,
and indeed every individual, ends up answering them for
themselves. This is not to say that anything goes, or that it is
all just a matter of opinion. Our answers can be more or less
intelligent, well thought out, insightful, compassionate and life
enhancing, or they can be more or less obtuse, stymieing or
pernicious.
Nor do we avoid these questions by adopting ready-made responses that

were the work of earlier generations. This is simply to unreflectively adhere
to answers that were themselves reflections on the conditions of life in other
times and places. We do not emulate those who produced them merely by
resting on their answers, but rather by engaging, as they did, in a reflective and
thoughtful life.
Evaluation is fundamentally of two kinds, being either logical or evidential.
By ‘logical’ evaluation I mean testing for such things as the coherence of our
ideas and their consistency with one another. Evidential evaluation, by contrast,
is the evaluation of suggestions and their implications in terms of background
knowledge, predictive success, personal experience, and the like. We may speak
here in terms of logical and evidential criteria. Coherence and consistency
are logical criteria that any suggestion would need to satisfy. Any suggestion
(idea, conjecture or hypothesis) that is found to be incoherent would need to
be modified or abandoned. A conjecture might be perfectly coherent in itself,
however, and yet inconsistent with some other conjecture that has been made.
Therefore the two conjectures cannot both be true, so that at least one of them
must be false. In this case, the logical demand for consistency is an important
part of the evaluative process that can help to point the way forward. It may
send us looking for evidence of one kind or another to sort out the matter.
In fact, what we have just described is a commonplace in science, where
the implications of competing hypotheses are subject to assessment through
controlled experimental test and the analysis of data. Science makes use of
reasoning to derive testable predictions from hypotheses or theories, and then
uses experimental procedure and systematic observation and analysis to check
whether they conform to the evidence.
One of the distinctive features of classroom inquiry is that it uses student
experience as evidence. Students draw on their experience to back up their
claims. A simple case might involve students giving an example from their
own experience. Examples are an elementary evidential tool that can be used
in the evaluation of many suggestions. We need to be mindful, however,
that experience is a complex construction that varies from one student to
another—along with individual differences in intellectual and social maturity,
competence, temperament, likes, dislikes, interests, family life, friendships,
social circumstances, and all of the happenstance of their individual histories.
Thus for students to test their ideas and understandings against each other’s
experience, and to develop new thoughts and ideas by reflecting on their
combined experience, is an important part of the learning process. By sharing
their experiences and reflecting on them, students are learning to open
themselves up to a wider range of experience, to become more sensitive to the
experience of others, and to take a more objective view of their own experience.
Experience also provides students with a valuable source of what I referred
to earlier as ‘counterexamples’. A counterexample is an example that shows
that a general claim is mistaken. If someone were to say, for example, that
Indigenous people are all lazy folk who don’t try to do anything for themselves,
students will know of Indigenous people who do not fit this stereotype. Even
if this does not come through personal acquaintance, it may come from other
forms of experience, such as television or the Internet. Many Australian students
could cite the Olympic athlete Cathy Freeman, for instance. She supplies a
counterexample to the generalisation that was made, and forces the student who
made it to reconsider what they said. Counterexamples provide an important
evaluative tool for the purposes of inquiry, and students can become quite adept
at drawing counterexamples from their own experience.
Students engaged in classroom inquiry often find that in order to evaluate
their suggestions they need information that they do not have to hand. Such
background knowledge provides an important source of evidential material that
can be used for evaluation. This includes information that might be supplied by
the teacher, knowledge derived from textbooks or library resources, through the
Internet, and so on.
It is a matter of some significance that in the context of the

classroom Community of Inquiry such facts are not delivered to
students as so much information simply to be memorised. They
are not unwanted pieces of information being crammed into the
heads of students, but information that they seek. They become
sought-after facts—facts that enter into their deliberations, facts
that are needed to make informed judgements. They become, in
short, materials with which to think.

In this context, facts and information become meaningful because they
are used in these ways. They are useful facts rather than so much unusable
information.
In seeking information, students must make judgements about the
reliability of their sources. Are they trustworthy? Are some sources more
authoritative than others? Do the sources provide unquestionable knowledge, or
are they merely reliable guides? If the latter, just how likely is the information to
be correct? Moreover, what standards of proof or evidence should we require in
one context or another? And how should we decide these things? Such questions
lead us into that branch of philosophy known as epistemology, or the theory
of knowledge, and thus into a philosophical discussion in its own right. Since
questions as to what constitutes knowledge and how can we come by it hover
about all inquiry, students will need to engage in epistemological discussion
from time to time. More generally, however, it is important for students to
develop their critical faculties in evaluating sources of knowledge or evidence,
and not to uncritically treat all sources as equal or to favour some sources over
others for reasons that do not stack up.
It is often a good idea to conclude an inquiry with a short reflection
session on what has been accomplished. This is not an occasion for teachers
to summarise the conclusions that have been reached. It would be better to
ask the students what they have learnt from their inquiries, than to try to state
the outcomes yourself. Since there is often room for a range of reasonable
judgements, be prepared for a variety of responses. While many students are
likely to agree on what has been discovered, others may express a somewhat
different view, or even outright disagreement. In any case, it is important to
note that such summing up addresses only one aspect of the inquiry. It is useful
to ask the students questions that lead the class to reflect on both the process
and the outcome of various aspects of their inquiry. Note that Thumbs provides
a tool for such reflection (see pp. 61–63).
Different kinds of inquiry differ in their methods of evaluation and the
outcomes that they are expected to deliver. The experimental method evaluates
scientific hypotheses by conducting critical trials or tests to see whether
predicted observable consequences materialise, and then draws theoretical
conclusions accordingly. Practical suggestions are evaluated in everyday life by
criticism and formulation into plans that we implement, and often continue
to monitor and evaluate further down the track. Conceptual suggestions, such
as that an action is fair only if it treats everyone equally, are more likely to be
evaluated against actual and possible cases that could provide counterexamples,
the conclusion being the adoption or revision of some idea. Some cases,
therefore, conclude with the concrete implementation of suggestions; other
cases result in theoretical confirmation or repudiation; and yet others bring
about a shift in our understanding, the practical bearing of which may be
indirect and diffuse.
While the last kind of result is more common in the classroom, it is important
for students to put their results into action in one way or another. Most notably,
in the educational context, this means the students seeking to apply what they
have learnt to other school work: written, verbal, graphic, dramatic, and so on.
That is to say, the work that they have done through collaborative inquiry should
make a difference to the quality of their work overall.
It is important to see what happens, therefore, when collaborative inquiry is
integral to teaching and learning in a school. Since this is unfortunately all too
rare, we still have a lot to learn in this regard. Although the results to date are
somewhat limited, we can be much encouraged by the fact that where persistent
immersion in collaborative inquiry has been implemented throughout a school,
we see significant improvements in both academic outcomes and social attitudes
and behaviour. And where this kind of work has been systematically carried out
over several years, the results can be quite dramatic. (For example, look at the
results from Buranda State School in Queensland, Australia, available from the
school through www.burandass.qld.edu.au)
TLFeBOOK
It is somewhat artificial to conceive of tools of inquiry as belonging to a
particular phase. We may begin by raising questions, respond with suggestions,
and go on to reason about them and explore them conceptually, until by a
process of evaluation we arrive at a conclusion. However, we may need to
explore the central concepts that lie behind a question before we go on to make
suggestions, or find that exploring a concept only raises further questions. Just
as obviously, questions may arise at any point in the inquiry, distinctions may
need to be made at various times, and we may need to attend to assumptions
built into questions or reason about examples. So while we may think of our
tools as featuring most prominently in specific phases of inquiry, the same kind
of work may need to be carried out in many places as the inquiry proceeds.
Therefore it may be more useful to think of our tools of inquiry in terms of the
functions that they perform.
A division of the tools contained in this book is set out in the table on the
next page according to their primary function. Some of the tools are used for
working with questions, others are used for reasoning, for conceptual exploration
or for evaluation, and so on. Even then, it is worth noting that some of the tools
could almost equally well be classified under more than one heading. To arrange
questions into Agendas, for example, is to group them under some theme or topic,
which is itself a way of conceiving of them, and therefore is a conceptual activity.
Similarly, Disagreement Diagrams provides a way of keeping track of the reasoning
that occurs in a disagreement, so that it is equally a tracking tool; and to give and
consider reasons is at once to justify or evaluate as well as to reason.
The scheme provided is a useful one all the same. It recognises that in our
classroom inquiries we basically engage in the following kinds of intellectual
work: we raise questions, hypothesise or suggest, reason with each other, engage
in conceptual exploration, and evaluate claims and suggestions. For each of
these broad kinds of tasks there are tools to assist us, whether we are beginners
or more advanced students.
The Tools of Inquiry 29

QUESTIONING TOOLS CONCEPTUAL TOOLS
The Question Quadrant Distinctions
Fact, Value, Concept Borderline Cases
Agendas Target
Thought Experiments
HYPOTHESISING TOOLS Criteria
Suggestions
REASONING TOOLS
EVALUATIVE TOOLS Generalisation
Reasons Deductive Reasoning
Agreement/Disagreement Reasoning Diagrams
Counterexamples Assumptions
Examples Disagreement Diagrams
TRACKING TOOLS META-INQUIRY TOOLS

Discussion Maps Thumb
We also need to keep track of the proceedings of course, as well as to reflect

on how well we are going and how we might make improvements. These are
needs that Discussion Maps and Thumbs are designed to satisfy.
In the remainder of the book you will find an introduction to each of
the twenty thinking tools provided for use in the classroom. For ease of
reference, they have been grouped according to whether they are Introductory,
Intermediate or Advanced. That is to say, first you will find an Introductory
Toolkit, and then you will be able to add to it successively. If you are working
in early childhood education, do look at the Intermediate Tools, some of
which you may be able to adapt to your purposes as things progress. If you are
working with primary school students who are just beginning on this kind of
work, you are likely to find that you progress to some of the Intermediate Tools
quite quickly. If you are a secondary teacher, you should eventually be able to
introduce the Advanced Tools, but you will need to ensure that the ground has
been well prepared.
John Dewey made the extraordinary claim that ‘all which the school can
or need do for pupils, so far as their minds are concerned ... is to develop their
ability to think’ (1966, p. 152). Since by ‘think’ he meant ‘inquire’, it was the
development of inquiring minds to which he referred. Even if Dewey’s claim
may be criticised for blithely ignoring a whole raft of outcomes that look to be
legitimate ones for school education, he was certainly right to stress the central
place of developing students’ ability to think. And although our schools are in
many ways much closer to Dewey in this regard than those he addressed some
ninety years ago, we still have far to go. I hope that this book may in some small
way help us to continue to move in Dewey’s direction, and accordingly I wish you
every success in your attempts to improve the quality of your students’ thinking.

It is a common procedure in the Community of Inquiry to organise discussion
around students’ questions that have been prompted by reading a text. While
it is also normal procedure to accept questions of all kinds that students raise,
the effectiveness of this procedure largely depends on the quality of students’
questions. The problem is that all too commonly students ask questions that are
not very deep and do not readily lead to the kind of discussion that is desired.
If only we could teach them to ask better questions—really meaty inquiry
questions—we would be off to a far better start.
In thinking about this issue some years ago I developed a simple scheme
for classifying students’ questions. This scheme is what I call ‘The Question
Quadrant’. Teachers to whom I have introduced the scheme have found it a
very useful device for sorting out questions in their own mind. Moreover, when
some variant of The Question Quadrant is introduced to students as an exercise,
it almost immediately improves the quality of their questions and thereby
provides a much more productive basis for discussion. The Question Quadrant
that I have been using for categorising questions with teachers is explained
below, followed by suggestions of how it can be introduced into the classroom.
Four types of questions

Pooh and Piglet can be seen trudging along a snowy track. The day is clear but the
sun is low and it casts a yellowish-orange glow over the scene. Piglet is wrapped in
woollens and a scarf, while Pooh has nothing on but an old short-sleeved top that is
several sizes too small for him. Piglet says to Pooh touchingly, ‘We’ll be friends forever,
won’t we Pooh?’ ‘Even longer,’ Pooh replies.
Here are some questions about this little scene:

1 Is the season summer or winter?
2 Who is dressed more warmly, Pooh or Piglet?
3 Who wrote the stories about Pooh and Piglet?
4 What are the names of the other characters in those stories?
5 Where are Pooh and Piglet going?
6 Why isn’t Pooh dressed more warmly?
7 Is it important to have lifelong friendships?
8 Can something last even longer than forever?

The questions above are of various kinds: some are ‘open’ questions and some are
‘closed’. An open question does not have a settled answer, whereas a closed question
does. If there are facts to hand that settle the answer to a question beyond all
reasonable doubt, say, or if the answer is a matter of general knowledge, then the
question is normally regarded as closed. This applies to the first four questions on
our list, two of which demand nothing more than what is generally thought of as
reading comprehension, while the other two refer to matters of general knowledge.
When I say that these questions are closed, I do not mean that they need to
be settled in the minds of every person who reads the passage or has it read to
them. The first question, for instance, might not be settled in a reader’s mind
for all sorts of reasons. The reader might not know the relevant facts of climate,
for instance, or be uncertain about where Pooh and Piglet live. Even such a
straightforward question is settled only in the context of relevant background
knowledge and assumptions. Nonetheless, the question is almost certain to be
regarded as closed because on standard background assumptions the scene is set
in winter. Similarly, it is easy to imagine someone tossing up as to whether the
answer to the third question on our list is A.A. Milne or, say, Kenneth Grahame
(author of Wind in the Willows), so that the question is not settled in their
mind. Once again, however, the question can be regarded as closed because
there is no serious dispute that A.A. Milne wrote the stories about Pooh and
Piglet. There is a single, established correct answer in this case.
Stories leave many things indeterminate. It need never be explained to us
why Pooh is out walking on a winter’s day dressed only in a short-sleeved top.
We might be left to guess. Perhaps it is because he already has a warm furry
coat. Maybe the top is the only thing that he has that isn’t too dirty to wear. It
could be that, being a Bear of Very Little Brain, it simply didn’t occur to him to
dress for the weather. Such suggestions may be more or less plausible or fitting,
but neither the text nor the background knowledge and assumptions that we
bring to it need rule them out. They are open possibilities.
Questions 5 and 6 on our list ask us to imagine such possibilities. Although
they provide very elementary examples of open imaginative questions, it is easy to
see that they can help to fulfil a very important educational function. Imaginative
exploration of the possibilities within a story is a means to its interpretation. We
engage in it whenever we make guesses about what a character will do, where
their behaviour is likely to lead, what possibilities are open to them, or how a
plot will turn. We also do exactly the same thing in daily life when we attempt
to discern people’s motivations, try to predict how they would behave in a given
set of circumstances, or think about our own life’s possibilities. Obviously we
can do these things either more or less intelligently and with varying degrees
of insight and understanding. In the long run, the difference between a well-
developed capacity of this kind and a poorly developed one will have such far-
reaching consequences for our lives that we should pay considerable attention to
its development. The nurturing of such a capacity is one of the benefits that the
study of literature can confer, and this alone provides a quite compelling reason
to give students ample opportunity to study it.
Introductory Toolkit—The Question Quadrant 33

The final two questions on our list are open questions of a rather different
sort. They are ‘larger’, more general questions about what we should value in
life and our conceptions of what is possible. And while there is little point in
arguing in favour of one imaginative possibility over another (such as Pooh’s
warm furry coat rather than his forgetfulness being responsible for his state
of attire), the same is not true of these last two questions. Here a proper
exploration will require us to critically examine what we say, to discuss our
disagreements, and test out alternative points of view. We will need to do
such things as: clarify what we are saying, give and evaluate reasons, examine
assumptions, draw relevant inferences, make necessary distinctions and
connections, examine concepts, and appeal to appropriate criteria. In short, in
order to address these final two questions we will need to engage in intellectual
inquiry. Hence we may call them ‘inquiry questions’.
Let me summarise the discussion so far by means of The Question Quadrant.
I do not claim that it exhausts all possible questions that students might raise,
or that its compartments are completely watertight. Nevertheless, I have found
it good enough for practical purposes. The particular version shown below
assumes a set of questions that are stimulated by a text, and somewhat different
labels would obviously be needed if some other form of stimulus were used
to generate the questions. This is a complication that can be set aside for the
present purpose.
TEXTUAL
QUESTIONS
Is the season summer or winter? Where are Pooh and Piglet going?
Who is dressed more warmly, Why isn’t Pooh dressed more
Pooh or Piglet? warmly?
READING COMPREHENSION LITERARY SPECULATION
CLOSED
OPEN
QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS
FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE INQUIRY

Who wrote the stories about Is it important to have lifelong
Pooh and Piglet? friendships?
What are the names of the other Can something last even longer
characters in those stories? than forever?
INTELLECTUAL
QUESTIONS

It is hardly surprising that if we want to stimulate inquiry in the classroom, then
open intellectual questions would serve us best. Once students have some idea
of these requirements, they are unlikely to ask very many closed questions. If
they do ask questions of basic comprehension, they will need to be addressed.
In all probability they can be answered by other students in the class, before
moving on. Again, questions of background factual knowledge might arise,
but students will quickly come to see that they are more properly addressed by
asking the teacher, by a trip to the library or by an appropriate web search. The
persistent problem is that many children continue to ask questions of the kind
that I refer to here as ‘literary speculation’, which can occupy a great deal of
discussion time with very little pay-off as far as intellectual inquiry is concerned.
The question is how we can get our students to raise a greater
preponderance of questions that naturally belong to the lower right quadrant.
Experience gives us reason to believe that an effective way of doing so is simply
to introduce them to the distinctions between questions that we find in The
Question Quadrant.
Introducing students to The Question Quadrant

I don’t propose that you begin paying attention to students’ questions by
introducing them to The Question Quadrant—just as in the first year of school
when children are only beginning to learn to ask questions, you are unlikely
to begin the process of inquiry with their questions. But I have included The
Question Quadrant among the Introductory Tools because once you have
ventured into using students’ questions as a basis for inquiry, and had mixed
results, it is probably time to turn to this tool.
In order to introduce The Question Quadrant to students you will first of all
need a version that they can readily understand, and this will vary somewhat
depending on the age of the students in your class. Rather than ‘closed’, you
might want to have ‘There is one right answer’; and rather than ‘open’, you
might have ‘There may be many possibilities’. One teacher told me that she
uses ‘Look and see questions’ in place of ‘Reading comprehension’, ‘Ask an expert
questions’ in place of ‘Factual knowledge’, ‘Use your imagination questions’ in
place of ‘Literary speculation’ and ‘Thinking questions’ in place of ‘Inquiry’.
When working with The Question Quadrant in the classroom, I like to lay it out
on the floor with such labels on pieces of card.
As an introduction to The Question Quadrant, you might first discuss the
various kinds of questions with your students, using a made-up example or two
that they can easily relate to for each of the quadrants. Then give your students
some further made-up questions to sort out for themselves. You might do this as
a whole class, but when the students are sufficiently confident you could divide
them into small groups, with each group being given a minute or two to sort
out a number of questions for themselves. (If you give all the groups the same
questions they will more easily be able to discuss any disagreements between the
groups when they report back.)
Introductory Toolkit—The Question Quadrant 35

Once the students are familiar with the device, you can get them to think
about their own questions in terms of The Question Quadrant. As an example,
below is a set of questions and labels that I used with an upper-primary school
class who had read a story by Philip Guin called ‘The Knife’ from my book
Thinking Stories 1 (1993a, pp. 42–48). Most of the questions came from the
students themselves, but I added a couple of others for the purpose of the
exercise.
THE ANSWER IS IN THE BOOK JUST USE YOUR IMAGINATION

Did Carl plan to steal the knife If Carl had taken the knife home
from Beecham’s hardware store? what would his parents have done?
Did Mr Beecham turn Carl in to What would Mr Beecham have done
the police? if he saw Carl steal the knife?
ONE RIGHT MANY DIFFERENT

ANSWER POSSIBILITIES
Does the law allow children who Did Mr Beecham do the right thing
steal to be sent to jail? in his proposal to Carl, or not?
Are hardware stores allowed to How can stealing ever be all
sell knives to children? right?
ASK SOMEONE WHO KNOWS YOU REALLY HAVE TO THINK
THE ANSWER ABOUT IT

The creative phase of inquiry relies on generating suggestions for possible
answers to questions, ways to solve problems or to resolve issues. By suggestions
I mean the various species of thought that we call proposals, speculations,
conjectures, hypotheses, explanations and ideas. These are our first attempts
to apply our broader experience, background knowledge or more general
understandings to the matter in hand.
As such, suggestions have a vital role to play in the inquiry process. If
the answer that we sought were clear to see, then there would be no need for
inquiry. We would have our answer already. But where this is not the case,
we need to move beyond the given by thinking of possible ways in which the
situation presenting itself may be understood, unravelled, resolved or explained.
This is the role that suggestions perform. Suggestions are intermediaries
between questions and conclusions or resolutions. To inquire is to question,
and to question is to seek answers. As stabs at answers, suggestions are still
exploratory—they are not yet conclusions or resolutions, but only provisional or
working ideas. They are like keys tentatively inserted into locks in the hope that
they might work.
In the context of inquiry, different kinds of suggestions correspond to
different kinds of questions, of which the following are the most common:
• Explanations: Suggestions as to possible explanations are answers to questions
about how we should understand matters of fact or why they are so. They are
attempts to interpret something or to account for it. Explanatory suggestions
include conjectures or hypotheses put forward to account for the facts of
a case or as starting points for investigations that aim to either confirm
or disprove such possibilities, as well as assumptions made in support of
an interpretation of events and generalisations from which we may draw
explanatory conclusions.
• Proposals: Proposals are suggestions as to possible courses of action in response
to practical questions about what we are to do. Proposals loom large in
everyday affairs, but are often less carefully scrutinised than prudence would
advise. By engaging students in collaborative inquiry we can help them to
develop the habit of considering their options and being somewhat more
circumspect when conditions require.
• Value judgements: Value judgements are suggestions about right conduct or
preference in answer to evaluative questions calling for a consideration of
appropriate norms and standards. Both questions and responses are most
often framed in terms of ‘ought’, ‘should’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’ and other such
Introductory Toolkit—Suggestions 37
indicators. To say that value judgements may act as suggestions is to indicate
that, in the context of inquiry, values are something to be inquired into and
not just dogmatically asserted. This is especially so when it comes to areas of
disagreement about values.
• Meanings: Attempts to define a term or to analyse the meaning of a concept
are suggestions made in response to conceptual questions. Such suggestions
are a starting point for conceptual exploration.
As with students’ questions, the quality of their suggestions is a cardinal
determinant of the outcomes that they achieve. So it is a discouraging thought
that, while teachers may often be delighted by the fertility of their students’
suggestions, the production of suggestions seems to be one of those things that
can be encouraged but not taught. The fact is, however, that, once their interest
is engaged, students will spontaneously come up with suggestions. The teacher’s
task is to provide the means by which students can learn to improve the quality
of their suggestions. Fortunately, this is something that we can do. Implausible
suggestions, unworkable proposals, wild conjectures and naïve hypotheses can be
discovered to be such when they are carefully considered by the class, because they
involve such things as false or unwarranted assumptions, erroneous implications,
failure to fit with the evidence, or likely but undesirable consequences.
By learning to subject their suggestions to systematic scrutiny your students
will gradually internalise habits of thought that help them to discard more
obviously unworkable ideas with increasing ease. Of course, nothing can
substitute for a rich store of knowledge and understanding, and in many areas
students’ suggestions will inevitably betray their relative lack of experience.
By critically examining their suggestions in the light of what knowledge and
experience they do have, however, your students will definitely improve the
quality of their suggestions over time.
The other major factor in using suggestions in an inquiry is the importance
of alternative possibilities. Open intellectual and practical questions generally
leave room for alternative possible answers for which something can be said.
Even when, at the end of the day, there must be a unique right answer or truth
of the matter, we are unlikely to discover it without considering at least some of
the more likely possibilities. In many practical matters and in questions of value,
however, there is no such thing as the right answer or the solution to our problems,
but rather there are alternative possible courses of action and ways of living.
Almost all actual problems and issues that we face in our lives are of this nature,
and wisdom lies in seeing the range of possibilities and then choosing well.
While we should make it a rule to actively explore the problem domain, at
any given point in the inquiry it remains a matter for judgement whether there
are further significant alternative suggestions that we ought to bring forward.
Sometimes we discover that we need to look for another possibility after an
initially plausible suggestion runs into serious difficulty. At other times we
discover that the difficulties with one or more suggestions themselves suggest
a new possibility that does not suffer from those defects.

Whatever happens, all suggestions put forward by students in the spirit
of inquiry deserve to be taken seriously, even if a brief airing is often all that
is needed for them to see which ones are worth taking forward. Obviously,
you may be aware of important possibilities or other points of view that have
not occurred to your students. And as teachers we sometimes have in mind
particular possibilities that we would like our students to suggest, but which
do not seem to be forthcoming. You need to exercise caution in such cases.
If a suggestion is important and does not come up, you might eventually and
tentatively introduce it—‘Suppose that someone were to suggest the following
...’, ‘What do you think of that?’
In collaborative inquiry-based learning, suggestions are tools that students
use to make progress with an issue or headway with a problem. In pointing
out a direction that an inquiry might take, offering a suggestion is like
indicating that we should try a certain path when hiking across unfamiliar
territory. Just as with hiking, one cannot sensibly offer such a suggestion
without taking in the general lie of the land, having a sense of how that
path will help us to get to our destination, and of how it compares to other
alternatives that present themselves.
Introductory Toolkit—Suggestions 39
One of the most elementary tools of inquiry is the giving of reasons for claims
made. So in inquiry-based learning, from the very beginning, we need to
encourage students to give reasons. We might even begin the very first inquiry
session in the early years by teaching students to use the word ‘because’ to give
a reason. Of course, many students will intuitively use the word to give a reason
when asked to do so, but we want everyone in the class to have the word in
their toolkits so that they can consciously reach for it in order to give reasons.
We need to make reason-giving a move that they consciously and deliberately
make, and ask others to make, when that seems appropriate.
In order to establish reason-giving with young children, I might begin with
the following activity.
• I will tell the students that I am going to ask them about their all-time
favourite movie, or perhaps their favourite television show, or whether they
think that dogs or cats make better pets—anything, in fact, for which they
can be expected to have preferences or opinions, and for which they might
be able to supply a reason. I will not tell them about the word ‘reason’ or
anything like that, but simply say that I want them to be thinking about
which one is their favourite and why that is their favourite.
• I will also tell them to listen for a magic word that people might use when
they say why something is their favourite.
• Then I will go around the class and ask various people what is their favourite,
and then why that is their favourite.
• Often I will repeat what they say and maybe emphasise the word ‘because’
when it gets used. When it begins to become apparent to the students that
this is the word, I will stop to ask who can guess the magic word. I will have
this word prepared on a sheet of card and ‘magically’ lay it on the floor when
students name it as the word for which they have been listening.
• I will then ask the students what people went on to do when they used the
word ‘because’. After a brief discussion we will see that they went on ‘to say
why’ or to give a reason. I will also have the word ‘reason’ on a sheet of card
and lay it on the floor.
• I will conclude by saying that when we come to discuss the story or whatever
it is that we are going to talk about today, I want them to keep the word
‘because’ handy because they might need it to give a reason for what they say.

• At the end of the class I might ask the students what we started off with today,
and have them tell me about ‘because’ being a reason-giving word. Then I will
end by telling them that I want them to imagine that they have a toolbox on
the floor beside them and to pretend to open it up and look inside. ‘Look,’ I
will say, ‘it is empty! There is nothing inside.’ I will then ask them to pick up
the word ‘because’ and put it in their toolbox. So that when in future they
need to give a reason for something they can reach into their box and grab the
magic word.
• I will also tell them that we will be placing more tools in our box as we go
along, so that by the end of the term we will all have a kit of tools that we can
use in order to talk and think about things.
because
Do bunyips exist?
In the Community of Inquiry, giving and evaluating reasons is a collaborative
affair. Often students can be broken into small groups to explore reasons for
what they want to say, and then they can present their reasons to the class as
a whole for further deliberation. Depending on the age of the students, each
small group might be given a sheet of butcher’s paper and asked to write their
reasons down on the paper for presentation to the class.
The following illustration comes from a middle primary class who were
discussing the question ‘Do bunyips exist?’—a question raised in response
to reading the children’s picture book The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek by the
Australian author Jenny Wagner (Puffin Books, 1990). For the uninitiated,
bunyips are mythological Australian creatures said to be found in billabongs
or lagoons in the Australian bush. The illustration represents one small group’s
reasons for saying that bunyips do not exist, together with the beginnings of
the class’s evaluation of their reasons.
Introductory Toolkit—Reasons 41
How do we know when
a report is reliable?
reliable
no photographs of bunyips
no reports of bunyips
bunyip pictures are different in different books
‘bunyip’ sounds like a vegetable
We all look different

but we exist. ???
One of the students in the class objected to the claim that there were no reports
of bunyips, saying that his cousin had told him that she had seen a bunyip
when she was camping with her family over the summer. Several students were
not prepared to accept this report at face value, some saying that it was a tall
tale and others that the cousin may have caught a glimpse of something else and
mistaken it for a bunyip.
In light of this, the class decided that they needed to distinguish between
reliable and unreliable reports of bunyips and the group whose reason it was
agreed to modify their claim by saying that there were no reliable reports of
bunyips. The student who had related the report of the bunyip was not quite
willing to give up on the issue, however, and insisted that, while his cousin
could have been mistaken, his classmates were not there and so they could not
say that she had made a mistake.
This led to a student asking how we can tell whether a report is reliable, and
the quick-witted teacher thanked the student for her question and added it to
the board. It was something she said that the class might like to discuss later.
Another student ventured that just because bunyip pictures look different in
different books does not mean that there are no bunyips. ‘We all look different,’
he said, ‘but we exist.’ While some students seemed to think that this was a good
point, others suggested that the reason why bunyips look different in different
books is because they are made-up creatures, and the fact that we all look different
from one another is no reason to say that the original reason is not a good one.
Throughout all of this, I was sitting quietly at the back of the class waiting
to see what would be said about the last reason on the list—that ‘bunyip’
sounds like a vegetable, presumably by analogy with ‘turnip’ or ‘parsnip’.
Unfortunately we didn’t get to that one.

I make no particular claim for the quality of this real-life example, and
introduce it only to recommend the general procedure that the teacher used.
The use of small groups is an excellent vehicle for an initial consideration
of reasons. Having to communicate to one another what they think, and to
collaborate in coming to a written formulation of their reasons, fully involves
the students in the consideration of reasons. When the small groups then
present their reasons to the class as a whole, each group gets to test out their
reasons with their classmates and to think about the broader spectrum of
reasons that other groups have raised. The mix of small group activity and
whole class discussion is one that I generally recommend, and the activity we
have been viewing on reason-giving and the follow-up evaluation gives us a clear
example of how to make that mix work.
I have treated reason-giving and evaluation as an introductory topic in order
to suggest some simple ways of getting started in this area. Later we will move
from simple reason-giving to more complex reasoning, where students attempt
to provide evidence for the truth or falsity of a claim by relating it logically to
other claims.
Before we come to these more sophisticated tools, however, it is important
that students become used to the elementary business of giving reasons where
it is appropriate and also to be expecting this of one another. In developing
inquiring minds, nothing is more powerful than hearing others say things that
fascinate or surprise you and to want to know why they say what they do. And
then, sometimes, to begin to wonder why you think what you do, and whether
what you think can be justified by good reasons.
Introductory Toolkit—Reasons 43
It may seem odd to suggest that agreement and disagreement can be thought
of as a toggle-headed tool, but the reasoned expression of agreement and
disagreement is central to the dynamics of collaborative inquiry, and their
vigorous combination gives the process much of its critical edge.
Agreement and disagreement are the basic alternative responses to a
suggestion. When students express their agreement with someone’s suggestion,
they are normally expected to supply reasons that add to its plausibility; just as
when they express their disagreement, they are expected to give reasons for their
reservations. So discussing a suggestion involves a critical evaluation on the basis
of reasons both for and against it.
The interplay of agreement and disagreement gives direction to the
proceedings. For example, a succession of students may build a case for a
suggestion, but then students who do not agree begin to make observations that
pull us in the opposite direction. Students who come to a decision in a small
group then discover that another group has reached a different conclusion;
and now they find themselves together at a fork in the road, with each group
having to respond to the other’s reasons for heading down a different path.
In collaborative inquiry, agreement and disagreement represent patterns of
convergence and divergence in thought that enable us to tack back and forth
into the wind, and give our inquiry its forward movement.
Debate versus inquiry

It is important to note that the dynamics of an inquiry differs from that of a debate.
In a debate, opposing teams present arguments either for or against a proposition.
One must play one’s part in arguing the case that one’s team has been assigned,
regardless of one’s own opinions and the suggestions that one might otherwise
make. The object is to win the debate, not to offer helpful suggestions no matter
where they may lead. In debate, one expresses agreement with one’s team members
and disagreement with the opposition. It would be an act of treachery to do the
reverse and a sign of weakness to not know where one stood. Debating points often
do not depend on soundness of argument, but on rhetorical devices designed to cut
the ground from under the opposition and to sway the audience to one’s side. These
are the tactics of lawyers and politicians and which—for better or worse—are deeply
entrenched in the way that they conduct their affairs.

By contrast, in inquiry we are free to express our agreement or disagreement
as we see fit, provided that what we say is constructive. We do not take sides
on an issue except when we feel we should, we may speak both for and against
a suggestion as we continue to deliberate, and may change our minds if reason
dictates. Rather than striving to see our opinions prevail, we are reflecting on
them in the hope that we may receive instruction.
It would be misleading to suggest that in an inquiry people should never
express opinions or give reasons other than those they hold. Someone may
disagree with a proposition in order to play devil’s advocate, for example,
and insofar as this helps to put that proposition to the test it can be an
entirely legitimate role to play. The danger of this and similar stances in
the classroom is, of course, that they can become a kind of game. Students
who delight in contradiction or who constantly play the sceptic, may bring
a sense of fun to the proceedings, but their input needs to be tempered by
recognition that inquiry is an attempt to make headway with the matters
under discussion.
There will also be occasions when a suggestion that is either generally agreed
to or else dismissed in the classroom may be regarded quite differently by some
members of the broader community. Students may need to be reminded of this,
so that a wider range of considerations is canvassed. Often the teacher can draw
attention to such considerations simply by asking the students whether they can
think of someone who might express a different opinion or look at the matter in
a very different way. If all else fails, the teacher may proceed to identify the view
in question and ask the students to consider it.
There can be many shades of agreement and disagreement. Students
may say that they ‘kind of ’ agree or disagree with what someone said, or
that they both ‘agree and disagree’. In such cases students need to tell us the
respects in which they concur or differ. Students expressing partial agreement
may be sympathetic to the proposition being put, but wish to improve on
it in some respect; or they may wholeheartedly agree with the proposition,
but for significantly different reasons than those previously given. Likewise,
students who qualify their disagreement may want to express only some shade
of difference in the proposition or emphasise the importance of a different
reason. Students who both ‘agree and disagree’ with what someone says are
usually making much the same kinds of moves. They may wish to agree with
the proposition being put, but to disagree with the reason given in support; or
they may agree with a statement in some respects but not in others, thereby
wanting to improve on it.
In whatever way students qualify their expressions of agreement and
disagreement, the development of these more nuanced judgements is
to be encouraged. It represents a move away from an ‘I’m right/you’re
wrong’ mentality to one that recognises that we can often arrive at better
understandings and more reasonable decisions by looking for points of
agreement and disagreement rather than by making blanket judgements.
Introductory Toolkit—Agreement/Disagreement 45
As your students learn to explore their disagreements thoughtfully they will
be acquiring the habit of dealing with their differences without recourse to the
destructive tendencies that otherwise so readily prevail. Verbal abuse, physical
violence, ostracism and gang rivalry all involve an element of antagonism built
on differences of one kind or another. It is therefore a social imperative that
we learn to deal with our differences on the basis of being reasonable with one
another, and learning to explore disagreements through the give and take of
reasons is a means of doing just that.

The giving of examples is such a familiar way of supporting what we say,
that little comment may seem to be required. Even so, it is well worth
giving some thought to the various uses of examples in inquiry, as well as to
distinguishing the use of examples from the merely anecdotal remarks that
students may make.
An example is sometimes an illustration. As such it is an attempt to explain
a general claim or to make a concept clear. Having introduced the term ‘iconic
architecture’, for instance, I might offer the Sydney Opera House and the Eiffel
Tower by way of illustration. Both structures are national icons, I might say, and
are examples of the kind of architecture to which I refer—they help to make the
meaning of my expression clear. When the terms being employed in classroom
discussion are none too clear, it can be helpful to ask students what they mean
by requesting them to give an example.
Again, if I were introducing the claim that monumental architecture is an
expression of a culture’s most deeply held beliefs and values, I might illustrate
it by reference to medieval cathedrals or, perhaps, to New York’s former World
Trade Center. In this case I am using examples that illustrate a general statement
in order to explain its meaning. Once again, it can be very helpful if students
give examples to illustrate general claims that they make. It is also worthwhile
for the teacher to ask other members of the class if they can add further
illustrative examples. This enlarges the meaning of what has been said and helps
to construct a common understanding.
My examples of monumental architecture actually do double duty. They are
meant not only to illustrate my claim but also to provide evidence that what I
say is true. They both exemplify and support my assertion. Evidential support
is a common reason for introducing examples. If someone says that global
warming is a reality, they might cite the disintegration of Antarctic ice shelves in
evidence. In that case, the breakup of the ice shelves is offered as an example to
prove what they say.
Care must be exercised when an example is used in evidence, as it might
not be typical or representative. That something is sometimes so does not
mean that it is always or even normally the case, and we need to take care that
we are not led astray by examples that we already have in mind just because
they appear to confirm what we are saying. When students supply examples
in support of a claim, it is therefore often useful to ask them whether they can
think of other examples that might provide contrary evidence. By encouraging
students to search for evidence against a claim as well as to provide evidence for
Introductory Toolkit—Examples 47
it, you are teaching them to evaluate claims critically. When appropriate, we
need to remind our students that the critical evaluation of their claims is a key
requirement of inquiry.
Sometimes a single contrary example can be sufficient to defeat a claim.
Only one clear contrary case is required for us to reject a categorical assertion
that something is always the case, or that it is never the case. Such knockdown
examples are called counterexamples and are of sufficient importance to
be regarded as a thinking tool all on their own. Counterexamples will be
introduced later.
More general or abstract talk about a subject matter needs to be brought
into contact with relevant firsthand experience wherever possible in the
classroom. This will help your students to make sense out of the things that they
are discussing, and encourage them to think about their own lives in the context
of their learning. Examples drawn from experience are one way of making such
meaningful connections and should be encouraged.
Given that your students are engaged in inquiry, however, it is important that
the sharing of experience is a means of pursuing the inquiry and does not relapse
into some other form of discourse that deflects us from our objectives. Insofar
as drawing examples from experience is concerned, it may be necessary to ask a
student whether they are giving an illustration or providing evidence, as the case
might be, or merely engaged in the anecdotal retelling of some experience that
the discussion brought to mind. Sometimes such anecdotal material can form the
basis of an example, of course, but it is very important that students understand
this and learn to treat it accordingly. It is the difference between students who are
reminded of something that happened to them and then simply proceed to tell
the class about it, and students who say that they can provide an example from
their own experience and then proceed to tell the class.

Drawing a distinction is one of the most common things that we need to
do in inquiry. We can all make distinctions, of course, but it is one thing
to be able to do so implicitly, and quite another thing to understand how
distinctions work and to learn to use them effectively.
While there are many ways in which we can learn to draw distinctions, I
have found that giving students exercises similar to the examples on page 50 is
an excellent way of helping them to learn to make the right kinds of moves in
their thinking. Once again, it is important to note that exercises of this kind are
to be used as a supplement to, and not a substitute for, drawing appropriate and
useful distinctions in discussion.
We make many distinctions effortlessly and almost without notice. But
sometimes we fail to distinguish between things that are different in ways that
matter. This can be because the relevant differences are subtle or complex, or
because the things with which we are concerned are normally lumped together,
or simply because we are inattentive and do not bother to think with sufficient
care. By paying attention to the kinds of processes involved in distinction-
making, we can help our students to handle more difficult cases, to think
critically about the distinctions that other people draw, and to be more attentive
to the need to make distinctions with care.
We usually draw distinctions between things that are the same or similar in
many respects, but that we need to keep apart for certain purposes. We would
be puzzled by the suggestion that we need to draw a distinction between things
that appear to be quite unrelated. ‘Let’s draw a distinction between a fish and
a bicycle.’ This may all be very well as an attempt at humour, or just fine as
an exercise in creative imagination, but it is definitely deviant as distinction-
making. Given that a distinction is normally a way of dividing things that are
similar, we can draw a distinction by stating it as a difference within a shared
domain. To say that red and green are different colours is to acknowledge a
shared domain—that is, colour—within which we wish to mark a distinction,
just as we might say that circles and squares are different in shape.
Of course, it is not always so easy to say just what the things we wish
to distinguish have in common. To take an example from below, what is it
that entrances and exits have in common? A satisfactory answer may not be
immediately obvious and we will have to think about it.
To proceed to make a distinction is to identify the property or properties
within the specified domain in which the things in question differ. To take
another simple example from below, we might say that a pebble and boulder are
Introductory Toolkit—Distinctions 49
both pieces of rock, but that they differ in size—size being the relevant property.
A pebble is a small piece of rock, while a boulder is a much larger one. That is
a simple statement of the distinction. Of course, once again, it can be far more
difficult to specify the property in question. Suppose that someone asked you to
distinguish between a fort and a prison. It is not entirely obvious what property
to alight upon. Here is one possibility. Prisons and forts are both enclosures
designed to make it difficult to breach their boundaries, being distinguished
by the fact that a fort is an enclosure designed to prevent those on the outside
from getting in, while a prison is an enclosure designed to keep those on the
inside from getting out. Variations on this theme are also possible. For example,
we could say that a fort protects those on the inside from those on the outside,
while a prison protects those on the outside from those on the inside.
The following exercise is designed for middle to upper primary students to
learn to pay attention to both the domain within which a distinction is made
and the property that distinguishes the things in question. In distinguishing
between a knife and a fork, for instance, it is not sufficient to say that a knife
has a blade but a fork has prongs. While that is true, a more complete answer
is that they are eating utensils that differ in these respects. Of course, we might
also make the distinction in other ways, such as the differences in the purposes
for which they are used. It is important to remember that there isn’t just one
way to make a distinction.
You might work on a couple of examples with the whole class and then have
students work on examples in pairs. It is useful to ask different pairs to work on
the same examples so that they will be able to examine differences in their results.
Drawing distinctions: The same but different
Can you state some respect in which the following pairs are the same and some
other respect in which they are different? For example, a brother and his sister
might be said to have the same parents, but to be of the opposite sex.
1 a mother and father 8 an entrance and an exit

2 slippers and shoes 9 a rifle and a cannon
3 a lake and an ocean 10 a fort and a prison
4 pushing and pulling 11 a door and a gate
5 a hill and a mountain 12 a nail and a screw
6 a pebble and a boulder 13 a planet and a moon
7 a tunnel and a cave 14 a genuine reason and an excuse

One of the most useful tools for conceptual exploration is the problematic
or borderline case. If we wish to think about what makes something fair, for
example, it can be very helpful to consider cases that are neither obviously fair
nor clearly unfair.
• Suppose that Maria stole something from you, and so you stole something
from her. Was that fair?
• Robert works very hard at school, although he nearly always receives poor
marks. Is that fair?
If you were to present these cases to a group of ten-year-olds and to ask them
whether they were fair or not fair, you would almost certainly provoke mixed
reactions. Disagreement or uncertainty among the members of your class would
be an indication that these cases do not sit altogether comfortably within their
collective understanding of fairness. Such cases will therefore encourage students
to consider reasons for and against counting them as fair, and that will lead to a
deeper understanding of what it means for something to be fair.
We can even use a borderline case as a provocative stimulus, discussion
of which will lead to open intellectual questions. Consider an example: The
photograph below shows an elephant from northern Thailand that has been
taught to paint by holding a brush in its trunk. Such elephant paintings do
not appear to represent anything, but they often contain pleasing, colourful
patterns, which look somewhat like the works that some artists make. At the
elephant camp where I took this picture, the paintings were on sale under a sign
that read ‘Elephant Art’. In fact, there is a worldwide market for ‘elephant art’
and there have been numerous exhibitions of their work.
Introductory Toolkit—Borderline Cases 51

Do you think that the paintings produced by elephants might properly be
regarded as works of art? They present us with a problematic or borderline case
from which many questions arise that make us think about what we should say.
For example:
• What does the elephant understand about what he is doing? Is the elephant’s
painting just a mindless, mechanical scribble? And could a mindless scribble
be a work of art?
• Suppose that the elephant has been trained merely to move the brush back and
forth. Could that be enough for the elephant to be an artist or the work to be art?
• Does a work of art have to be produced by an artist?
• Do you have to be a person in order to produce art?
Were the class of ten-year-olds to discuss the question of whether an elephant’s
paintings could be works of art, they would very soon be likely to find
themselves raising such questions and thus beginning to address the more
general question: What is art? The students’ reasons for saying that elephant
paintings either are or are not art will begin to reveal possible criteria for
something to count as art. The students are likely to be uncertain about these
criteria and at least some of the criteria that they suggest will certainly be
contentious, and require careful consideration of different points of view. But
then the question ‘What is art?’ does not have a settled right answer. It is one of
those open intellectual questions to which many different answers can be given,
albeit that some answers reveal a deeper understanding than others.
By having to really think about the concept of art in this way, your students
will be trying to come to a more considered view of what makes something art
and thereby deepening their understanding of it.
Such a discussion could be extended through a small group activity with what
I call ‘Floor Sets’. Suppose that you have prepared three cards which read ‘ART’,
‘NOT ART’ and ‘?’. These might be laid out on the floor inside your discussion
circle, with ‘ART’ at one end, ‘NOT ART’ at the other, and the question mark in
the middle. Each small group of three or four students could then be given a card
with a more-or-less borderline case on it, such as the following:
a bower bird’s nest a photograph an idea
a spider’s web rocks shaped by the weather
graffiti sprayed on a wall an architect’s drawing
a colourful hat a drawing made by a computer a child’s scribble
52 Twenty Thinking Tools Copyright © Philip Cam 2006

The groups may be given a few minutes to discuss whether the thing in
question should be placed with ‘ART’ or with ‘NOT ART’. If they are
uncertain or cannot agree among themselves, then it will need to be placed
with the question mark. After they have had time to deliberate, you can ask one
group to place their card where they think it belongs and to give their reasons
for placing it there. Then you can open the case up for discussion. You can
then move from group to group, as time permits, gathering reasons for calling
something art, or denying that it is art, as you go. By the end you should have
unearthed and discussed a large range of criteria for calling something art. You
can even label them ‘criteria’ if you like, because as the students advance we will
be introducing them more formally to thinking about criteria.
With a little thought you can find borderline cases for the application of
any large and contestable concept. Whether it is beauty, goodness, fairness,
friendship, existence, evil, intelligence, personhood, bullying, freedom, right,
bravery, racism, knowledge, or what have you—all these concepts can be
explored in this way. I will leave you with a set of scenarios for the concept with
which I began: justice.
JUST UNJUST ?
1 Maria stole something from you, and so you steal something from her.
2 Chi found some money in the playground and handed it to the teacher. As no
one came to collect the money, the teacher let Chi keep it.
3 Jackson pulled the cat’s tail, and the cat scratched him.
4 No one would own up to having broken the classroom window, so the whole
class was made to clean up the schoolyard.
5 Bethany knew who had broken the window, but she wouldn’t tell. So the
teacher punished her.
6 Although Robert worked very hard at school, he nearly always received
poor marks.
7 Leah writes wonderful stories without even trying. She won the school
writing prize.
Introductory Toolkit—Borderline Cases 53

By thinking about borderline cases, we can discover many of the criteria
that implicitly govern the application of our concepts, yet we can also make
good progress by considering a wider variety of cases. These may range from
paradigm cases, to questionable or borderline cases, to what we may loosely call
contrary and ‘crazy’ cases of the concept in question.
While we used a range of borderline cases in the previous discussion of art,
if we were using the Target tool we would keep just a few of them, replacing the
others with paradigm cases—works like Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of Mona
Lisa or Michelangelo’s statue of David—and one or more crazy cases, such as
a sneeze, say, or a snail’s trail. We would then attempt to place these cases on
a target, with the paradigm cases in the bullseye, the borderline cases in the
surrounding circle, and the crazy cases in the outside ring. The use of such an
array of cases helps us to triangulate the concept in question.
While borderline cases can help us to unearth the criteria that we
unselfconsciously use in applying our concepts, it is often useful to compare
borderline cases with paradigm cases. For example, suppose we were discussing
the concept of ‘being alive’, and were considering ‘seeds’ as a borderline case.
Someone may say that seeds cannot be alive because they lie dormant until
the conditions are right for them to germinate. This suggests that something
cannot be alive if it is dormant. We can discuss this suggestion by returning to
our paradigms. We might ask whether anyone can think of something that is
obviously alive (a paradigm case) but may be dormant. If we can find such a
case, we can say that being dormant does not prevent something from being
alive. This may prompt someone to think of a hibernating bear, lying dormant
in the depths of winter. The bear is alive, but dormant. So merely being
dormant does not disqualify seeds from being alive.
On the other hand, that a particular paradigm case has what seems to be a
significant attribute that is lacking in a borderline case, does not automatically
discount the borderline case. Someone might say that a playful puppy is obviously
alive because it is always running around. But there are paradigm cases of living
things that do not move about like the puppy. Plants are alive, for instance, but
they do not run around. So we need to be careful not to become too fixated upon
a particular case. Paradigm cases can vary in significant ways, and a wider survey
may reveal that certain attributes are not really essential to the concept.

‘Crazy cases’ are crazy because we suggest that they fall under the concept
when it is perfectly clear that they do not. To suggest that stones are alive
is to invent a crazy case. Stones may contain living things, but they are not
themselves alive. When we attempt to say why stones are not alive, a long list
of candidates suggests itself: Stones are not born and do not die; they do not
produce baby stones that mature and grow up; they do not gain sustenance
from their environment; and so on. Each of these reasons is a potential
requirement for something to be alive. By asking what seems to be missing
in the case of a stone, we have generated a broad spectrum of attributes to
consider. It can therefore be quite a good idea to introduce a crazy case early on,
as a brainstorming exercise. It is important to note that this is the sole purpose
of the crazy case, and it is beside the point for someone to try to argue that a
crazy case really could be a genuine case.
With some concepts it is useful to introduce a contrary case rather than
a crazy case. If we were exploring the concept of ‘justice’, for example, it
would be silly to invent a crazy case; but a contrary case—a case of manifest
injustice—would be instructive. We could then ask why that would be a clear
case of injustice, and our answers would once again yield a provisional list of
the criteria that define our concept of justice. With the concept of ‘being alive’,
we can use both crazy cases and contrary cases. Here a contrary case is simply
something that is no longer living—a piece of fish, for instance. Contrary cases
are obviously restricted to those concepts that have genuine opposites, such as
justice and injustice, alive or dead, good and evil, knowledge and ignorance,
and beauty and ugliness. So it is useful to note at the outset whether your
concept is of this kind.
As with concepts generally, a concept like ‘being alive’ has a history. In this
case, our understanding of what makes something alive has been very much
influenced by the growth of scientific knowledge. Yet, like ancient and primitive
animists, young children are likely to believe that all kinds of things are alive.
They may begin by taking anything that moves to be alive, later restrict the
concept to anything that moves of its own accord, and only with the acquisition
of scientific knowledge come to think about life in terms of biological criteria,
such as metabolism and reproduction. Again, children are likely to assume that
their toenails are alive because they grow, and only later (if at all) learn to think
of them as accumulations of dead cells. While it is obviously an important
educational task to inform students’ understanding of significant concepts
through the delivery of conventional curriculum content, it is also important
for them to develop their powers of conceptual thinking. Target is a tool that
will assist in this process.
A word of warning: Sometimes students get into a debate about whether or
not a case has a given attribute. For example, in discussing whether their hair is
alive (which anyone without the relevant scientific knowledge is likely to think
of as a problematic or borderline case), your students might get into a dispute
about whether the cells that make it up are living or dead. While the discussion
Introductory Toolkit—Target 55
should motivate them to go and check the facts from an authoritative source,
their newfound knowledge will avail them little so far as exploring the concept
of ‘being alive’ is concerned. They may establish that their hair is not alive
because it is made up of dead cells. But that does not tell them much about
the concept of ‘being alive’. In other words, the work with Target is conceptual
rather than factual. So beware of getting sidetracked into disputes of this kind.
One final tip: As proposed criteria are suggested, do make a list of them on
the board. You can always modify them or cross them off your list as you move
along. With more advanced students you might also make notes about various
criteria, as to whether the attribute specified by a criterion is:
• necessary: anything that falls under the concept must have the attribute
• merely common: paradigm cases commonly, although not invariably, have the
attribute
• sufficient: having the attribute, or set of the attributes, is all that is required for
something to fall under the concept.
Sometimes you may even be able to arrive at a set of both necessary and
sufficient conditions for something to satisfy the concept in question. At other
times, however, you will not be able to do so, and not necessarily because the
discussion was not up to the task. Many concepts are not plausibly construed
in that way. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said about the concept
of ‘games’, the things that fall under our concepts often bear only a family
resemblance to one another, and we should look for similarities or analogies
rather than trying to construct a watertight category.
I will leave you with a target for the concept of ‘being alive’, a concept
which is especially fascinating to younger children, and which has been much
studied by researchers, famously including the developmental psychologist
Jean Piaget in his classic work The Child’s Conception of the Mind. I have
mixed together a range of cases that I would invite students to pin on
the target, giving their reasons for placing them where they do, and thus
beginning our discussion.

not alive
?
alive
an apple your hair a playful kitten
the wind a stone a piece of fish
toe nails an egg about to hatch the sun
a seed thoughts a hard-boiled egg
Twenty Thinking Tools Copyright © Philip Cam 2006 Introductory Toolkit—Target 57

One way of testing out an idea is to conduct a thought experiment, that is, to
imagine a scenario or situation that will enable us to test the idea against our
intuitions. For example, the seventeenth-century English philosopher John
Locke was interested in the topic of personal identity and, in particular, what
makes you the same person over time. He held that being the same person
depends on the persistence of your consciousness and not the persistence of
your bodily form. In testing out this claim against our intuitions he asks us to
imagine that the soul of a prince enters into the body of a cobbler whose soul
has just departed. This soul ‘with all its princely thought about it’ ensconced
in the cobbler’s body is the same person as the prince, says Locke, who is
responsible for any actions previously committed by the prince but not those
of the cobbler. To outward appearances, of course, he is the same man as the
cobbler. But, says Locke, this only shows that the bodily being or man is not
the same as the person; and we need to distinguish between being the same man
and being the same person over time and changing circumstances.
Locke’s thought experiment is reminiscent of the folktale in which a
handsome young prince is turned into a slimy old frog that can be transformed
back into the prince only by the kiss of a beautiful princess. To suppose
that the frog really is the prince, as children so readily do, is effectively to
entertain Locke’s thought that the person of the prince persists through these
transformations, and therefore to distinguish the person of the prince from the
bodily form that misfortune has cast upon him. (For a modern version of this
story with a humorous twist, see Babette Cole’s Princess Smartypants, Hamilton,
1986.) The prince is that inner being who suffers from his predicament and is
all too well aware of the need to convince the princess of his true nature. Of
course, if Locke is right, it is also not the true nature of the person of the prince
to be a handsome young man; and no doubt this is something that the princess
will discover as the years go by when they live together happily ever after.
In any event, such a story can be used as a thought experiment with quite
young children to help them test their preliminary suggestions regarding the
significance of physical and psychological factors in maintaining our identity
as persons over time.

While such ready-made thought experiments can help students to test out
their ideas, they should also be encouraged to construct their own thought
experiments. Typically these will begin with a student saying, ‘Let us imagine
that ...’ or ‘Just suppose ...’, followed by a scenario in which some suggestion
that has been made can be tested against their intuitions.
Here is an elementary example from a Year 6 classroom in which the
students are discussing the topic of value:
Lorena: I think you should value whatever comes, whether it’s good or bad,
because if something bad comes and it’s your fault, you can learn
from your mistakes.
Kirin: I want to challenge that. Just imagine that you burnt down your
house. Everyone in it was killed. Value that!
Here Kirin’s dramatic scenario provides a challenge to Lorena’s claim that we
should value the bad things that happen in life along with the good. ‘Just
imagine …,’ says Kirin, as he introduces a made-up but entirely conceivable
situation in which Lorena’s claim seems hard to sustain. In this case, Kirin’s
simple thought experiment is also meant as a counterexample to Lorena’s general
claim, which may encourage her to modify it in order to take account of what
he has to say.
Here is another example from a Year 5 classroom: The students had been
discussing whether it is ever acceptable to lie, and Max expressed the view that
you should always tell the truth because you will only cause more trouble by
lying. Other students suggested that sometimes ‘little white lies’ don’t matter,
and that whether or not you should tell the truth depends on the situation. A
couple of students tried to convince Max that sometimes you really ought to
lie—or at least not tell the truth—such as when telling the truth might hurt
someone’s feelings. Here is how one student put it:
Introductory Toolkit—Thought Experiments 59

Cathy: Max, well picture this. There is this kid who likes you but you do not like
him. He asks you if you want to come over. Do you lie?
Like Kirin, Cathy is appealing to Max’s intuitions regarding a readily imagined case.
She supposes that, when he thinks about it, Max will find that his intuitions agree
with hers. It is a simple thought experiment that, again like Kirin’s, is supposed to
supply a counterexample to Max’s claim that we should never tell a lie.
As a final example, let us look at a more extended discussion of imagined
possibilities that test our intuitions about some idea or claim. In this case a
Year 4/5 class is discussing whether we could have a mountain that is half on
the earth and half on the moon. The question comes from a set of questions
designed to provoke the students to try to imagine possibilities and thereby to
conduct thought experiments. (See ‘What can happen and what can’t happen?’
in Lipman and Sharp, 1984.)
Some students think that they can imagine a mountain that is half on the
earth and half on the moon, but some say ‘you can’t’. One student who thinks
that it can be imagined says, ‘You can imagine a mountain so big that it goes
right up and touches the moon.’ This meets with the response: ‘That wouldn’t
be half on the moon. A mountain that went up and touched the moon wouldn’t
be half on the moon.’ ‘Okay,’ comes the reply, ‘but you could have a mountain
that was solid all the way from the earth to the moon.’ After some discussion,
the student adds, ‘It would be a solid shaft.’ Another suggests: ‘It would be
like a stalagmite and stalactite that joined into a column.’ ‘But would that be
a mountain?’ someone asks. ‘Yes,’ it is asserted. ‘It would be one mountain
because it was one column.’ ‘But it doesn’t have a top,’ insists the questioner.
‘Does a mountain have to have a top?’ asks the teacher. The students have
different opinions about this. One says, ‘No, a mountain could go on forever.’
In reply, another says that even if a mountain went on forever, it must have a
bottom. And that is a problem for the mountain that is being imagined as a
shaft or a column. ‘Where would the bottom be?’
After further discussion, someone suggests a new possibility for a mountain
that is half on the earth and half on the moon. ‘You can imagine,’ says the
student, ‘a mountain that was cut down the middle from top to bottom, and
one half taken up to the moon.’ This case meets with general agreement until
someone says, ‘That would make two mountains—one on the earth and one on
the moon.’ The teacher asks why we would say that, and the student responds,
‘They would be physically separate, and so they would be two mountains.’
Other students suggest that whether we should say it is one mountain or two
mountains depends on what we think about a range of similar cases, such as
whether, if one half of a building were moved to another site, that would be
two buildings or just two halves of the building in different places. And so the
discussion continues.
This playful imaginative thinking is a kind of conceptual exploration. By
examining what can and cannot be imagined or conceived, the students are
exploring the possibilities and limits of their concepts.

(How did we go today?)
The final tool in the Introductory Toolkit is designed to assist students

to reflect on their inquiry, both in terms of surveying its outcomes and
evaluating its conduct. It is therefore a tool that can be employed whenever
we need to evaluate progress, but in the classroom it is most often used to
round out a session.
It takes the form of a question or series of questions, to each of which
students respond with a ‘thumbs up’, ‘thumbs down’ or ‘thumbs in-between’.
This means either that some aspect of our performance was good, bad or
indifferent, or that we agree with, disagree with, or are undecided about
the matter in question. The teacher and students can then use these simple
indications as a starting point for exploring individual evaluations and
differences of opinion, thus reflecting on the inquiry—conducting an inquiry
into the inquiry, if you like—as an aid to consolidation and a guide to the
direction of further inquiry. It can also lead to suggestions from students about
aspects of their practice, thereby functioning as a tool for self-evaluation and
improvement that uses the student’s assessment of their past conduct to direct
future conduct.
Teachers can use Thumbs to direct attention to any aspect of the inquiry
they would like their students to consider. It should normally be used to canvass
a mixture of what are called ‘procedural’ aspects and ‘substantive’ aspects of the
inquiry—although the distinction between them is sometimes moot.
• Procedural aspects are those that belong to the process or method of inquiry,
such as the general order in which inquiry proceeds, the management of an
agenda and keeping on track, or how we proceed to answer a certain kind of
question or use a particular tool. In terms of learning, the focus here is on the
acquisition of procedural knowledge—what we are learning to do.
Introductory Toolkit—Thumbs 61
• Substantive aspects go to the subject matter of inquiry, including the questions,
issues or problems dealt with, the suggestions that are made, the concepts
explored and the conclusions reached. Here we focus on discursive knowledge
and understanding—what we can discern as a result of our inquiries.
On the procedural side, the teacher may wish the students to attend to
anything from not calling out and learning to take turns in discussion, to the
ordered use of specific tools, such as exploring the concepts that we need to
understand before we attempt to answer certain questions, or avoiding the
tendency to become too narrowly focused on giving and evaluating reasons for
some suggestion without bothering to think about possible alternatives. Here
the teacher may ask questions such as the following:
• How well did we share the discussion today?
• Have we learnt to use counterexamples?
• Do we always explore concepts when we need to?
• Are we sufficiently aware of alternative possibilities?
On the substantive side, we will want to see what we have learnt from
the inquiry so far, and we may wish to draw attention to certain aspects of a
problem that we have dealt with or highlight a particularly significant insight or
finding, as well as to identify further matters that still need attention. This may
involve questions such as:
• Were all the questions on our agenda genuine inquiry questions?
• Did we achieve depth in our discussion?
• Have we arrived at a satisfactory answer to our question?
• Do you have a better understanding of such-and-such a concept?
It is possible to straightforwardly ask students to summarise what they
have learnt from the class, of course, or to explain a particular concept, or to
define what is meant by a counterexample, and so on. While that approach can
be productive, Thumbs is specifically designed to fit with the inquiry process.
It asks students to express an opinion that they can be expected to justify in
the same terms in which the inquiry itself was conducted. Because students
are unlikely in most cases to have come to total agreement about matters of
substance, Thumbs enables them to distinguish those aspects of the problem or
issue that are still live from those that are settled, and this provides them with
both a measure of collective progress, as well as a guide to the direction that
further inquiry might take.
Thumbs also affords them the opportunity to reflect on how well they are
progressing with overall procedures and particular tool use so that they may aim
at improvement. It is tailor-made to provide that support.
Reflection leading to self-correction is a natural extension of the inquiry
process. By spending a few minutes at the end of the class thinking about what
we did during it, we can help our students to become more reflective about
their behaviour and to learn to take responsibility for improving or correcting
it. If Sally’s thumb is down when the teacher asks about whether we listened
well today, and she says that this is because when she was making a contribution

some other students were talking among themselves, then the teacher can agree
that Sally has provided a good reason for having her thumb down. Now that a
student (and not the teacher) has raised the problem, the question about what
we should do to deal with it can be thrown back to the students themselves,
who will usually have sensible suggestions to make. In this way, the students
become involved in formulating rules and managing practices, rather than
simply having them laid down and enforced by the teacher.
Obviously the sophistication of the questions that get asked under Thumbs
will vary with the age and experience of your students, and the things that you
highlight will depend on the state of progress and your students’ particular
needs. You might also ask only one or two questions or you might ask several,
again depending on the circumstances. The following list is therefore offered
only as a further indication of the kinds of questions that you might ask, and
you will need to exercise judgement in framing such questions for your class.
Some Questions for Reflection

Procedural questions
1 Did we listen well?
2 Did we build on one another’s ideas?
3 Did we search for alternative possibilities?
4 Did we look at different points of view?
5 Did we explore our disagreements reasonably?
6 How well did we use such-and-such a thinking tool?
7 Did everyone get a chance to contribute?
8 Did we generally manage to stay on track?
Substantive questions
1 How good were the questions that we asked today?
2 Did we come up with really good ideas or fruitful suggestions?
3 Did we sufficiently examine the concepts that we used?
4 How good overall were the reasons that we gave for what we said?
5 Did we make good progress in answering our question(s)?
6 Did we resolve any significant problem or issue?
7 Did we deepen our understanding of any significant idea?
8 Are there other matters that still need to be resolved?
Twenty Thinking Tools Copyright © Philip Cam 2006 Introductory Toolkit—Thumbs 63

Notes

Introductory Toolkit—Notes 65
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Earlier I said that inquiry begins with a problematic situation to which we
respond with curiosity, concern, doubt, hesitation or puzzlement. As we begin
to inquire, the interest that we take in the situation becomes more articulate and
results in the formulation of problems or questions, which provide the agenda
for our deliberations. Sometimes our agenda is limited to a discrete problem
or a particular question, while at other times it may deal with a number of
interrelated matters.
An agenda is a means of establishing the focus and scope of our inquiry. It
is a tool that we use to bring order to the proceedings. It can also be a tool for
limiting or manipulating an inquiry, of course, as when an inquiry has been set
up with unduly narrow terms of reference, or an agenda is hijacked by special
interests. Setting aside such misuse in the wider community, there are several
tasks that deserve our attention when establishing and following an agenda in
the classroom. Problems, issues or questions need to be identified, clarified and
arranged in order, and as we proceed we need to allow for further elaboration in
our agenda and adjustments to its scope.
• Identification: Students need to learn to accurately identify a problem or issue.
This involves being able to articulate it by describing it, giving an example of
it, or relating it to other issues or problems. It also involves being sensitive to
the possibility that characterisations may be incomplete, misleading, biased,
or based on dubious assumptions. We need to acknowledge these possibilities
because inquiries that are based on poorly articulated problems or issues are
unlikely to produce fruitful results.
• Clarification: The problem may be obvious to everyone, or the question may
be clear; but, where this is not the case, inquiry should not proceed until
an attempt has been made to clarify things. If students initially offer vague
characterisations or ambiguous questions, they should be asked to supply:
– further details
– more carefully qualified statements
– more precisely worded questions.
• Ordering: Where an agenda consists of a number of items, it needs to be
organised and not left as a rag-tag collection of things. This may mean
that issues need to be separated, problems ordered according to priority, or
questions grouped according to topic or placed in a logical sequence.

• Elaboration: Further thought may reveal that our problem or issue should
be broken down into a number of constituent parts, or the question with
which we began may lead to a series of subsidiary questions that need to be
addressed. This is normally the case when we attempt to address problems
or to answer questions of any complexity. This means that we need to
keep a careful eye on the agenda. As one question leads to another, or we
successively investigate different aspects of a problem, it is all too easy to lose
our way. This often means that we need to map or otherwise keep track of the
discussion in terms of the unfolding agenda.
• Adjustments of scope: While we need to ensure that we stick to our agenda, we
must also be prepared to adjust it as we proceed. We may discover that our
initial formulation was too narrow and identified only part of a larger or more
general problem or issue with which we need to deal. Or we might discover
that we can dispense with some part of our initial agenda because it is not as
relevant as we had assumed.
Except with very young children, I have recommended the use of students’
questions as a standard procedure for inquiry in the classroom. Here an agenda
is a question or series of questions that addresses a problem, issue or other item
of interest. When teachers use narrative or other complex material to stimulate
questions, students are likely to respond with questions that cover a range of
topics unless the general topic has been set in advance. In any event, it will
almost certainly be necessary for the students to group their questions according
to the issues or problems that have been raised, and thereby to begin to arrange
them into various possible agendas. An obvious way of doing this is to ask
your students whether they can see connections between their questions and to
identify the problem, issue or theme that connects them.
As students’ suggestions gain acceptance, some scheme can be used to
identify them on the board. The following is an example from an upper primary
classroom, where students have identified several agendas in questions sparked
by a story. Notice that the agenda dealing with ‘growing up’ lies within the
broader one of ‘change’, showing that the students are interested in change,
both in terms of personal development and at the general (metaphysical) level
of what it is and how it occurs.
Intermediate Toolkit—Agendas 69
Students group their questions
1 How does change occur? (Angela)
2 Do you suddenly grow up or does it happen in stages?
(Annie-Kate)
3 Why did the adults think that what the children had to say
wasn’t important? (Tim)
4 What is change? (Serena)
5 How can you change in such a short period of time? (Kris)
6 Why is noise pollution? (Melody)
7 Is anyone superior to anyone else? (Tom)
8 Does the way you see things now change when you grow up?
(Carlos)
9 Is change a living thing? (Emily)
10 How do you define intelligence? (Miriam)
11 Why do adults respect other adults more than they do
children? (Aaron)
12 Why is it that children have to respect their elders if the
adults aren’t known to respect the younger ones? (Sharon)
CHANGE GROWING UP AGE AND RESPECT POLLUTION INTELLIGENCE
When proceeding in this way, the questions that initially frame each topic may
need further ordering. For example, on the topic of ‘growing up’, Kris’s question
relates most closely to the story entitled ‘Bizzy Road’ (in Cam, 1997a), in which
a girl experiences a sudden burst of social and emotional growth. He seems to
be questioning whether so sudden a change is possible. Annie-Kate’s question
leads on from this to ask, more generally, whether growing up is something that
happens suddenly or in stages; while Carlos’s question about whether growing
up changes your perception of things, relates to what it is like to be a grown-up
rather than about how quickly it occurs. This would be a natural order in which
to address these questions, and with a little thought and experience these upper
primary school students will be able to work that out.
Sometimes the agenda is set by a single question, as with Miriam’s question
about how to define intelligence. For the purposes of discussion, however,
we might end up dealing with a single question, even when there are more
questions on the agenda. Tom’s question, ‘Is anyone superior to anyone else?’,
could make for a rich discussion all by itself, and if the students had a particular
interest in that question there would be nothing wrong with sticking to it.

Since we would almost certainly be making use of several sessions to discuss the
various topics that have been raised, we could always begin by restricting our
agenda if that were thought to be desirable.
In regard to scope and elaboration, it can be very useful for the teacher to
take the time between sessions to develop some follow-up questions that might
help the students to broaden the scope of their discussion or to more deeply
probe various aspects of the topic. We can call a set of such additional questions
a ‘Discussion Plan’. While it takes time, real effort and some experience to
develop a well thought-out Discussion Plan, it is worth your while to develop
the practice. It provides the opportunity for you to question these matters more
systematically, and the additional depth of your questioning will help to guide
your students to question and explore more deeply. Look, for example, at the
following Discussion Plan that builds on Annie-Kate’s question.
DISCUSSION PLAN: Growing up

1 Do you suddenly grow up or does it happen in stages?
(Annie-Kate)
2 Do things sometimes happen to young people that make them
suddenly grow up?
3 Have you now reached a certain stage in the process of
growing up?
4 At what stage are people completely grown up?
5 Do some people never really grow up?
6 On the basis of what we have said so far, what is it to
‘grow up’?
7 If you could, would you choose to be like Peter Pan and never
grow up?
Intermediate Toolkit—Agendas 71
A class of third graders had begun reading a story called Elfie (Lipman 1988b),
but were not yet sure about the identity of the central character. Was Elfie a
little girl, an animal of some sort, or perhaps an elf?
This raised the question, ‘What is Elfie?’ In discussion the following episode
ensued, which is transcribed almost verbatim.
Susan: I think that Elfie is a rabbit.
Teacher: Why do you think that Elfie is a rabbit, Susan?
Susan: Well, because it says here that Elfie curled up into a ball to sleep. And
that is what rabbits do.
Robin: That doesn’t prove anything, Susan.
Susan: I think it proves that Elfie is a rabbit.
Robin: No, it doesn’t. What about kittens? They curl up into a ball to sleep,
and they’re not rabbits.
Tom: I agree with Robin because I curl up into a ball to sleep and I am
certainly not a rabbit.
I was observing this class and wondered what the teacher would do at this
point. She was relatively new to classroom inquiry, and didn’t seem sure what
to say. After asking Susan what she thought of what Robin and Tom had said,
she simply passed on. While that was perfectly understandable, she missed a
golden opportunity to draw attention to the students’ reasoning, and after the
class I recommended that next time she should return to this little exchange.
On my understanding of it, Robin and Tom implicitly took Susan’s reasoning
to be as follows:
1 Elfie curls up into a ball to sleep.
2 Rabbits curl up into a ball to sleep.
3 Therefore, Elfie is a rabbit.
In reply, they show that by the same form of reasoning Susan would have to
accept that kittens are rabbits and that Tom is a rabbit. You might as well say,
for example, that:
1 Kittens curl up into a ball to sleep.
2 Rabbits curl up into a ball to sleep.
3 Therefore, kittens are rabbits.

Since kittens are obviously not rabbits, there is something wrong with
Susan’s reasoning. Here Robin’s parallel reasoning provides a counterexample
to Susan’s reasoning. It shows that Susan’s way of reasoning is not reliable,
because by that form of reasoning it is possible to end up concluding
something false from premises that are true. So Susan’s reasoning cannot prove
what she takes it to prove.
Here is a simpler way of looking at the matter. What could Susan be
thinking? She appears to have in mind the following general claim: If something
curls up into a ball to sleep, then it’s a rabbit. Robin’s and Tom’s responses are
counterexamples to this general claim. They show it to be false.
This gives us two ways of defining counterexamples:
1 A counterexample is an example which demonstrates that a general claim
is false.
2 A counterexample is reasoning of the same form as the original, showing
that form of reasoning to be invalid because in the parallel example the
premises are known to be true and the conclusion to be false. (We will
look at this way of talking about reasoning more formally under Deductive
Reasoning later on.)
Children as young as these third graders can learn to supply counterexamples.
Although they may have more difficulty with the second formulation than
the first, it is clear that at least some of the students in this class are able to
intuitively supply counterexamples to what they take to be erroneous reasoning,
and so there seems little reason to suppose that they could not come to supply
what is needed in simple cases, consciously and deliberately.
Exercises are useful in giving students practice in constructing
counterexamples, and with a little thought teachers should be able to devise
them. For example, take the following two general claims to which our third
graders could probably provide counterexamples. All they need do is to find
an example of the thing in question that does not have the attributed feature.
A counterexample to the first would be any kind of flightless bird, such as a
penguin or an ostrich; and for the second we might cite mammals such as the
whale or the dolphin.
A bird is a creature that flies. Mammals have either two or four legs.
Intermediate Toolkit—Counterexamples 73
Note that for a counterexample we want something that is an example of the
kind of thing mentioned in the generalisation that does not have the feature in
question. So an airplane would not be a counterexample to the first claim, for
instance. Beginning students sometimes succumb to this confusion, so be on
the lookout for it.
Here are a couple of examples of the kinds of reasoning that could be used
to help students learn to construct counterexamples. Just as in the case taken
from the classroom, remember that we need parallel reasoning that takes us from
premises we may assume to be true to a conclusion that we know to be false.
1 Gabriel has wings.

2 Birds have wings.
3 So Gabriel must be a bird.
1 Sonya believes that Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world.
2 Knowing something involves believing it.
3 So Sonya knows that Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the
world.
Hint: Substitute ‘The Space Shuttle’ for ‘Gabriel’ in the first example. In the
second example, for the statement that Mount Everest is the highest mountain
in the world you can substitute a false statement that Sonya might be assumed
to believe, such as that Mt Kosciusko is the highest mountain in the world.

A criterion is a more or less decisive reason that we appeal to in making
judgements or decisions. In employment, for example, applicants for a position
are evaluated against a set of criteria, which are the considerations we appeal to in
ranking them and making an appointment. If someone were to dispute a decision,
properly speaking that could only be because they thought the stated criteria were
not adhered to or because they disagreed with the choice or relative weighting of
the criteria. When such disputes arise, we attempt to justify (or sometimes revise)
our judgements by reference to the criteria, or to justify or revise the criteria
themselves. Criteria are therefore tools that we need to examine and refer to if we
are to come to reasoned agreement through deliberation.
While just about anything might serve as a criterion in the right context,
examples of some common kinds of criteria may be helpful in clarifying the idea.
Aims: Committees sometimes reject proposals because they lie outside the aims
of the organisation that they represent. Here the organisation’s aims provide
the criterion for making a decision.
Codes: Clubs may impose dress codes. Such codes provide criteria that
determine acceptable standards of dress.
Definitions: The taxation department has a definition of taxable income that is
used in determining the amount of income tax payable. This is a criterion
the tax department will appeal to in cases of dispute.
Evidence: Courts admit the testimony of witnesses as evidence in the
determination of verdicts. Subject to admissibility and examination, the
evidence of witnesses is a criterion members of a jury will appeal to in
determining their verdict.
Ideals: Judges at a cat show appeal to ideals of breeding, condition, temperament
and behaviour in awarding prizes. The cat that comes nearest to satisfying
these criteria in the judges’ estimation will win first prize.
Norms: Having an IQ either greater than or less than 100 is a criterion used to
judge whether a person is either more or less intelligent than the average.
Policies: Claims against an insurance company may be rejected because they are
not covered by the policy that was in force at the time. Being covered by the
policy is an essential criterion used in determining claims.
Purposes: A manufacturer may refuse to repair or replace a damaged product
because it was used for purposes other than those for which it was designed.
A statement of that condition or criterion was no doubt included in the
manufacturer’s warranty.
Intermediate Toolkit—Criteria 75
Rules: Board games have rules that determine which moves are admissible. In
cases of dispute, players should refer to these criteria.
Standards: Dietitians use the Recommended Dietary Intake in evaluating
diets. These standards provide dietitians with criteria for making their
recommendations.
Testability: Following the philosopher Karl Popper, we might adopt the criterion
that what makes a hypothesis scientific is whether it is testable.
Tests: Medical laboratories conduct tests on specimens to assist doctors in
diagnosing their patients. A positive test result is a decisive factor in forming
a doctor’s opinion.
In making a judgement or reaching a decision, criteria can be decisive in a

variety of ways, of which the following are among the most important:
• A criterion can be a necessary condition: A criterion can be an essential or
necessary condition in the sense that nothing which fails to satisfy the
criterion can be classified as a thing of that kind or evaluated in that way. For
example, no belief can be said to amount to knowledge if that belief is not
true. Being true is a necessary condition for a belief to amount to knowledge,
and therefore it is essential for this criterion to be satisfied before someone can
be said to know something rather than merely to believe that it is the case.
• A criterion can be a sufficient condition: A criterion can be a sufficient
condition for making a determination all by itself. Being a prime number
other than 2, for instance, is sufficient for being an odd number. A number
satisfying that criterion is guaranteed to be odd without further ado. (By the
way, notice that being a sufficient condition does not make it a necessary one.
There are plenty of odd numbers that are not prime numbers—e.g. 9.)
• A criterion can establish something with certainty: The criteria that are said to
govern the application of our concepts are held by some philosophers to be
those conditions which establish with certainty that something is the case. On
this understanding, a criterion amounts to a condition that is both necessary
and sufficient. For example, the criterion for having been found guilty in a
court of law is the pronouncement of that verdict. The return of the verdict
is both necessary and sufficient for having been found guilty. It is therefore
the criterion that we use. (It is worth pointing out that in the case of a guilty
verdict, the jury must have found the accused guilty before the verdict was
delivered. Otherwise it could not deliver that verdict. This illustrates the fact
that a criterion of something is not the thing itself, but the means we use to
determine that it is so.)
• A criterion can be a very reliable condition: Sometimes factors that we can
generally rely on in making a judgement or reaching a decision are regarded
as criteria. In this broader use of the term, things such as natural signs and
distinctive characteristics may be treated as criteria because they are such very
good indicators. That a solution turns a litmus paper red, for instance, is such
a reliable sign of it being an acid that we use it as a criterion for establishing
the presence of an acid in the laboratory.

• A criterion can be a desirable condition: When it comes to evaluative
judgements, we sometimes also treat merely desirable conditions as criteria.
By ‘desirable’ we do not mean something that is ‘wholly desirable’, which in
that case would be tantamount to a necessary condition, but rather we mean
a condition that is nevertheless desirable to some significant degree. In setting
out an advertisement for employment, for example, we may list what we
regard as desirable criteria in addition to the essential criteria for appointment
to the position. These admittedly lesser criteria are criteria nevertheless.
Absolute and comparative judgements

Criteria are used to make both descriptive and evaluative judgements that
may be either absolute or comparative in nature. This gives us four types of
judgement:
• absolute descriptive judgements
• comparative descriptive judgements
• absolute evaluative judgements
• comparative evaluative judgements.
Thus, in turn, we may judge that some action was a punch, that it was a harder
punch than some other punch, that the punch was totally unjustified, and that
it was less justified than some other punch.
Absolute descriptive judgements rely on categorical criteria and form the
basis of classification. For something to be a mammal, for instance, is for it to
be included in a class of things that satisfy certain classification criteria (warm-
blooded, vertebrate, suckles its young, etc.). At least for current purposes, we
may think of such criteria as essentially definitional.
Criteria that are used as a basis for descriptive comparison allow us to refer
to relative positions on some scale. When we say that boat X is bigger (broader-
beamed or more buoyant) than boat Y, the criteria for our judgement are at
least implicitly scalar. To judge that boat X is bigger than boat Y is to place
them on some scale that enables us to compare them in length or tonnage, or
it may be that we have only some implicit and vague scale in mind. Scales may
be rudimentary or sophisticated, rough or exact, and qualitative or quantitative,
but in all these cases we implicitly rely on what we may call ‘scalar’ criteria.
It must be admitted that this simple division leaves room for exceptions
and anomalies. For example, consider judgements about family relationships,
such as that X is a cousin of Y. For X to be a (first) cousin of Y, X must be Y’s
mother’s or father’s brother’s or sister’s child. (Did you get that?) In this case the
criterion is the definition of what it is to be a cousin, and X and Y must satisfy
that definition if they are to be cousins. Given that the criterion is definitional,
we might expect that the judgement is absolute. Yet ‘cousin’ is a relational
notion, albeit not a scalar one. Here we may say that the judgement is relative
rather than comparative. (Hence we call our cousins relatives.)
Again, consider the commercial classification of medium eggs. While hens’ eggs
have a natural weight range, and some eggs naturally fall in the middle of that range,
Intermediate Toolkit—Criteria 77
to regard a medium egg as one in a precise weight range is to impose a classification
standard for commercial purposes. This is a conventional classification imposed on
the natural variability of hens’ eggs, and hence a classificatory criterion that ought
to support an absolute judgement. Yet surely the notion of a medium egg implies
that some eggs should be described as smaller and others as larger by comparison,
‘medium’ being a comparative notion. Such cases are of considerable interest. It
appears that by designating a band on the weight scale as the criterion for what
counts as a ‘medium’ egg, we have turned a comparative scalar notion into one that
can be used to make an absolute judgement.
Similar remarks can be made about criteria in regard to both absolute and
comparative evaluative judgements. Suppose that Peter insists on action X being
morally right and action Y being morally wrong, while Paula claims that Y is
merely morally less acceptable than X. Peter’s evaluation is absolute, while Paula’s
is comparative. Let us also suppose that Peter and Paula agree that the relevant
criterion for making their evaluative judgements is the maximisation of pleasure
and the minimisation of pain, and they also agree that X maximises pleasure and
minimises pain, while Y fares somewhat less well in this regard. They regard this
criterion differently, however, with Peter taking ‘maximises pleasure and minimises
pain’ to define the category of right action, while Paula conceives of the criterion
as presenting us with a scale of wellbeing along which actions may be spread. So
Peter and Paula are in agreement about the facts of the case, but their different
conceptions are producing different kinds of evaluative judgements.
Some kinds of criteria naturally lend themselves to absolute or categorical
judgement, while others tend to support relative or comparative judgement.
Reverting to my earlier examples, we categorically reject something because it
is inconsistent with our aims, outside the code, incompatible with policy, or
banned by the rules. While these kinds of criteria often admit of borderline
cases—where, for example, it is not clear whether something is incompatible
with policy or banned by the rules—one aim of such things as policies and
rules is generally to enable clear-cut decisions wherever possible. They provide
grounds for absolute judgement. By contrast, when deciding which product
to buy or who to believe, we typically need to make comparative judgements,
and the criteria to which we appeal are very often what I have called ‘scalar’.
Products may vary in their suitability to our purposes and we will need to weigh
the evidence for competing claims. Short of finding a product that is absolutely
ideal—there being, as we say, no comparison—or of obtaining positive proof as
to who is right, our judgements will rely on criteria that allow for degree.
By now you may have quite rightly formed the opinion that dealing with
criteria can be complex and tricky. We would not expect any but the most
advanced secondary students to learn to examine their criteria and knowingly
employ them in all the ways that I have set out above. Yet criteria are implicit
in all judgements and decisions, and it is therefore important for us to learn to
use these tools well. Even in the early years of school, it is entirely possible to get
students to make explicit the criteria that they are tacitly using in applying some

concept or making a comparative judgement. We can begin by having students
construct a list of criteria without necessarily worrying about such things as
necessary and sufficient conditions. And we can introduce our younger students
to the difference between absolute or categorical judgements and comparative or
relative ones. By such means we can lay foundations on which we can build.
I will leave you with an exercise (adapted from Cam, 1993b) designed for
middle-to-upper primary school students that is meant to help them draw out
and discuss the criteria they use to say that something counts as stealing. This is
an exercise in conceptual exploration where the criteria are made explicit by the
students through the consideration of a number of simple scenarios. Sometimes
a scenario will provoke a ‘that depends’ response from students, but that is just
fine. Once they specify what the case depends on and why, they will again have
supplied a tentative criterion.
The teacher should establish a list of suggested criteria and add items
to the list as they arise, allowing for discussion of any difficulties or
disagreements. The exploration is likely to include discussion of the role of
such things as intention, permission, ownership and dishonesty in making
something a case of theft. I would normally carry out such an exercise
through discussion with the whole class.
EXERCISE: Stealing
Are the following examples of stealing? Be ready to give a reason for your answer.
Stealing Not stealing ?
1 You borrow something and forget to
return it.
2 You are lent something that you never
intend to return.
3 You use someone’s things without asking.
4 You take something that you know the
owner doesn’t want any more.
5 You give away something that belongs to
someone else.
6 You cheat on a test by copying your
neighbour’s work.
7 You find something that someone in your
class lost and you keep it.
8 You take something belonging to someone
else, mistaking it for your own.
9 You pick fruit from a neighbour’s tree that
is hanging over your fence.
10 You secretly eat a big piece of your little
sister’s Easter egg.
Twenty Thinking Tools Copyright © Philip Cam 2006 Intermediate Toolkit—Criteria 79
Generalisation is often viewed negatively. We are likely to be critical of people
who have a habit of making sweeping statements, or who are prone to making
ill-informed and rash generalisations, or are inclined to view people and
situations in stereotypical terms. Such generalisations have a deservedly bad
name, and the habits of mind that underlie them ought to be countered by any
socially responsible system of education.
Yet generalisation is also a vital means of making sense of our world by
learning from experience. In generalising, we abstract recurrent patterns from
experience that we can apply to future conditions. Without such powers we
would be trapped in endless particularity and have no systematic understanding of
our world. Generalisation attains formal expression in laws and rules that help to
guide conduct, informing the moral and social domain as well as scientific inquiry
and technological development. Such guides represent the cumulative and often
hard-won wisdom derived from the experience of success and failure in the past.
Educationally, we want students to make warranted generalisations and
not to make unwarranted ones. This means that they need to become used to
seeking the grounds that may be supposed to warrant generalisations and to
engage in the process of evaluating them. In order to do that, however, students
first need to become aware when generalisations are being made and to become
clear about what kind of generalisation is involved. Let us look at this in terms
of the following remarks:
Johnny: Dogs make better pets than cats.
Alison: Migrant kids can’t speak English properly.
William: The planets are solid balls of matter.
Emily: Fish can’t fly.
Hee-Min: It is wrong to tell a lie.
All of the above are general statements. They are statements that make some
claim about groups or classes of things, rather than about some particular thing.
For example, Johnny is comparing dogs to cats, not Fido to Fluffy. If need be,
you should construct an exercise or two in which students are asked to pick out
general statements from statements about particulars to ensure that they are
familiar with the distinction.
Such general statements are often implicitly of the form ‘All X’s are Y’s’ or
of the form ‘No X’s are Y’s’. For example, William’s claim is an implicit ‘All’

statement, while Emily’s pronouncement is naturally interpreted as the ‘No’
statement that no fish can fly. Most people would take Hee-Min to imply that
it is always wrong to tell a lie, making her remark implicitly an ‘All’ statement.
Can we analyse Johnny’s and Alison’s assertions as ‘All’ or ‘No’ statements?
Here we may need to ask what they had in mind. Does Johnny mean to say
that dogs always make a better pet than cats, or merely that they usually do?
Does Alison mean to imply that no migrant kid can speak English properly, or
that it is almost always or perhaps generally the case? When we are dealing with
general statements, it is particularly important to become clear about whether
the statement in question is to be interpreted as an ‘All’ or a ‘No’ statement, or
whether it is to be qualified by ‘almost always’, ‘usually’, or whatever. This initial
step of clarification can save a great deal of confusion, and it can help students
read more critically and think more carefully about what they say.
Commonly such general statements are formed by what is called ‘induction’.
That is to say, the general claim is inferred from knowledge of particular cases that
fall within the person’s experience or other learning. William might know that the
earth is a solid ball of matter and that so is Mars. So he might suppose that all the
planets are alike in that respect. Emily might think that fish can’t fly based on the
kinds of fish that she knows. (By the way, do so-called flying fish fly?)
In other cases the basis of the claim is very unlikely to be induction, or
at least not one that the claimant has made. When Hee-Min claims that it is
wrong to tell a lie, for instance, she is almost certainly just asserting a rule of
conduct that she has been taught. Even if this rule of conduct has a distant basis
in our collective experience of the consequences of truth-telling and lying, it is
not likely to be the student’s warrant. Still, students could easily supply plenty
of examples where it seems clear that it would be wrong to lie in order to supply
the generalisation with inductive support.
One standard way of testing a generalisation is to search for
counterexamples. For instance, if Hee-Min means that it is always wrong to
lie, then we might test her claim by considering cases where it might not be so
clear that it is wrong to lie. Would it be wrong to lie if telling the truth would
do great harm, for example? What if she could save the life of a friend only by
telling a lie? Such questions are likely to reveal counterexamples to the claim
that lead to its modification. In the same way, a student might site Saturn or
Uranus as counterexamples to William’s claim, or someone might remind Alison
that Hee-Min is a migrant who has a good command of English.
Counterexamples can defeat ‘All’ and ‘No’ kinds of generalisations.
Other kinds may need to be tested by a variety of other means. We may need
to assemble the evidence, or to find out whether expert opinion is agreed.
Sometimes a thought experiment may reveal what would be the case if the
generalisation were either true or false. If Hee-Min’s statement were meant as
the claim that lying is generally wrong, for instance, we might ask: What would
our world be like if people couldn’t generally be trusted to tell the truth? Would
the world be different in ways that we would not like? Would it be sufficiently
disagreeable to show that it would generally be wrong to lie?
Intermediate Toolkit—Generalisation 81
Inquiry begins with a problematic situation, then seeks its resolution through
a pattern of systematic exploratory activity. I have provided an outline of the
exploration process in terms of students:
1 raising, analysing, organising and selecting inquiry questions
2 generating suggestions as to alternative possible resolutions of whatever
matter is in question
3 drawing out the implications of their suggestions through reasoning and
conceptual exploration, and
4 comparing and evaluating various alternatives in order to form reasoned
judgements or resolutions.
While this is the basic pattern, actual inquiries will naturally vary in emphasis
and detail. No matter what actual shape an inquiry takes, it is vital to keep
track of the proceedings. It is all too easy to forget where a discussion has
come from or where it was supposed to be going. We can lose sight of the
fact that we were discussing a particular question, and be left wondering how
we got onto some topic that seems only distantly related to the matter with
which we began. We may become so involved in a dispute over a suggestion
that we omit to think about significant alternative possibilities that were
raised. In fact, the danger of becoming entangled in our subject matter in
ways that thwart the inquiry is ever-present. One tool that can assist us to
avoid such problems is a Discussion Map.
While there is no rigid formula for mapping a discussion, and the details
will vary with the intellectual terrain, a Discussion Map should always reflect
the pattern of inquiry. Thus we need only consider the basic pattern of inquiry
in order to construct the outline of a general Discussion Map. It will follow
the same sequence of initiating, suggesting, reasoning, analysis, evaluating,
and concluding. More concretely, it will lead from a question to suggestions,
to indications of their relevant implications and meanings, coupled with
evaluations based on relevant criteria, with the whole affair culminating in
a judgement or conclusion.

QUESTION
SUGGESTIONS
REASONING AS TO CONSEQUENCES, MEANINGS, ETC.
EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVES
CONCLUSION
The map of a particular session might deal with only a part of this process, of
course, and it may also ignore all sorts of details and subsidiary inquiries within
the overall inquiry process, recording only its larger results.
Earlier I gave the example of a group of secondary students who decided to
inquire into the question, ‘What makes an action fair?’ On that occasion, after
some preliminary discussion, the class broke into small groups, and each group
was asked to come up with a brief written response to that question in the form
‘An action is fair if …’ There was considerable discussion in most of the groups
about what their short statement should contain, with various suggestions being
made and then discarded as seemingly better alternatives presented themselves.
Because this activity asked for an answer to the question, in effect it invited
each group to hold a rapid-fire mini-inquiry and to come up with at least a
somewhat considered conclusion. Yet the details of those mini-inquiries were
not recorded, even though some of the deliberations that occurred undoubtedly
informed later discussion. At this stage the class’s Discussion Map included only
the question and the students’ preliminary answers. These partially considered
conclusions then became suggestions requiring further examination when the
group next met.
What makes an action fair?
An action is An action is An action is An action is fair

fair if it treats fair only if it fair enough if if everyone’s
people as they treats everyone it does no one interests are
deserve to be equally. any harm. taken into
treated. account.
Intermediate Toolkit—Discussion Maps 83

In another small group case illustrated earlier, middle primary school students
had raised the question, ‘Do bunyips exist?’, and a small group was working on
the suggestion that they do not exist by assembling reasons in its support. In
this case the students effectively reasoned that if there were bunyips, then:
1 we would expect there to be photographs of them
2 there should be reported sightings of them
3 they would not be depicted as such different kinds of animals in different
books
4 they wouldn’t have a ‘made-up’ name.
Therefore, the lack of photographs and reports, the different depictions and
the curious name are all reasons to suppose that there are no bunyips. What
this group of students actually recorded, however, was just the list of reasons
that they presented to the class. This written record should be seen as part of a
Discussion Map that will also include the reasons that other groups of students
have given as to whether bunyips exist or not. If the inquiry is to be really
thoroughgoing, no final conclusion can be reached until all of these reasons
have been assembled and conjointly evaluated; and even then we may come to
only a broad consensus, with universal agreement being hard to attain.
Do bunyips exist?
Bunyips do not exist
• no photographs of bunyips
• no reports of bunyips
• bunyip pictures are different in different books
• ‘bunyip’ sounds like a vegetable
Sometimes subsidiary inquiries must of course be mapped. An obvious

instance is when a concept is examined in preparation for answering a question
that employs it. Let us look at this as a final illustration. In the following case,
the students began with the question, ‘How can stealing ever be all right?’
but almost immediately moved to the subsidiary question, ‘What is stealing?’
They explored this subsidiary question as a whole class using the exercise on
stealing that I included in the section on Criteria, with the teacher scribing
the main points on the board. (In more advanced classes, by the way, students
can become quite proficient transcribers of class discussion.) This transcription
formed a significant part of the class’s Discussion Map, with further reference
being made to it when discussion returned to their initial question.

How can stealing ever be all right?
What is stealing?
Suggestions:
• knowingly taking something that isn’t yours
• taking someone’s things without permission
• taking someone’s things without their knowledge
• to take something dishonestly
Criteria: is deliberate, involves property, lack of permission, secrecy (usually),
dishonesty
Conclusion: Stealing is deliberately and dishonestly taking property that isn’t
yours, without permission and usually without the owner’s knowledge.
Twenty Thinking Tools Copyright © Philip Cam 2006 Intermediate Toolkit—Discussion Maps 85
Notes

Intermediate Toolkit—Notes 87
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Inquiry questions are of various kinds. Some concern matters of fact about
which there is either total ignorance or dispute; others concern matters of
value, particularly where there is uncertainty or disagreement regarding proper
conduct; and yet others are questions about the adequacy of our reasoning and
the connections between ideas. Inquiry questions may also involve a mixture of
the above, and cannot be adequately addressed without first sorting them out.
Before proceeding to such complexities and suggestions for dealing with them,
let us first review these different kinds of questions in a little more detail.
Factual questions
Science provides us with the most successful procedures that we have for inquiry
into matters of fact. Procedures for systematic observation and recording,
laboratory techniques, experimental method, mathematical modelling,
statistical analysis and all the trappings of quantitative method provide scientific
inquiry with enormous predictive and explanatory power.
In this book, however, we are not concerned with scientific inquiry,
but with trying to develop an inquiring outlook in social and intellectual
contexts away from science, and attempting to bring at least a modicum of
resourcefulness and rigour to everyday judgement and decision-making. This
does not mean that these other endeavours have little to learn from science. On
the contrary, our generalisation of the inquiry process is modelled on science
in many respects. Yet insofar as questions that arise in the kind of classroom
inquiry with which we are presently concerned turn out to be about matters
of fact, they are unlikely to be settled by students using sophisticated empirical
methods. The more usual resources for settling such questions are factual
information that is presented in the curriculum, general knowledge brought
into the classroom, and students’ personal experience. These are the ready
sources of evidence for your students, albeit ones that they need to use with
appropriate caveats and caution.
It is important for students to distinguish between the kinds of factual
questions that they can answer with some assurance and those that they cannot.
Partly this has to do with learning to judge the worth of evidence and learning
to be careful in drawing conclusions from it. In addition, however, many
students are prepared to argue endlessly over questions about matters of fact

that they obviously cannot settle, and may need to be reminded of the need
to avoid such lengthy and fruitless disputes. Even so, we should not entirely
abandon speculation. For example, the domain of metaphysics appears to deal
with speculative questions concerning matters of fact about which there is
endless dispute. Traditional questions about the existence of God, the relations
of mind to body, and the existence of freedom in a deterministic world, for
example, look to be about matters of fact, even though philosophers and
theologians seem unable to settle them. Such questions are important to many
people and may arise in the minds of students. That students are unable to
arrive at definitive answers to such questions does not mean that they are not
worth discussing. Given the perennial nature of these questions, we should
value reasoned disagreement and the development of a thoughtful attitude
towards such matters above mere conviction.
Questions about values

Questions about values are of various kinds, which include those of an ethical
nature as well as those that belong to aesthetics, but extend to all matters of
preference and what we may call ‘pro’ and ‘con’ attitudes. Some values are
not subjects for inquiry because it is unproblematic whether a person has one
preference rather than another. One child prefers vanilla ice cream and another
prefers chocolate, one person likes colourful attire while another prefers muted
tones, and so on. Even so, there is such a thing as having good taste or poor
taste, and tastes can be relatively untutored or more educated. So we need
to distinguish matters of preference that require no justification from those
that call for deliberation and reflective judgement. The latter are amenable
to inquiry, and the development of good taste and more mature aesthetic
judgement can be aided by such means.
Ethical questions are a major stimulus for values inquiry in the classroom
and, indeed, collaborative inquiry can be a vehicle for moral education. To
have students inquire together into ethical issues—to think together about all
kinds of matters concerning character and conduct—is to enrich their ethical
understanding. They learn to apply their intelligence to ethical predicaments,
to think about the role of both principles and consequences in ethical debate,
and to make more considered ethical judgements. Given its collaborative
nature, such an activity also develops and strengthens ethical behaviour more
directly. For example, students who are learning to listen to one another, to
develop the trust and respect that enables them to say what they think, and to
explore points of view with which they may not agree, are developing social
dispositions and interpersonal abilities that we may call ethical. So engaging
students in collaborative ethical inquiry combines a reasoned approach to
ethical subject matter with the development of abilities and dispositions that
build moral character.
Advanced Toolkit—Fact, Value, Concept 91

Conceptual questions
Just as factual questions are concerned with how things actually stand, and
questions of value are concerned with how we should stand towards things,
logical and conceptual questions deal with relations between propositions and
distinctions and connections among ideas. Relations in the latter domain are, of
course, in many ways answerable to those in the former. Erroneous conceptions
can misrepresent how things actually stand, faulty reasoning can suggest
that things must be thus-and-so when they may not, and we can both fail to
distinguish things that are actually distinct and make distinctions where none
exist. However, logical and conceptual relations may also govern how things
otherwise stand. We reason in order to control or reconstruct our world. We
arrange our affairs according to how we conceive of them. And we behave as we
think proper according to our understanding. The interdependence of objective
relations, our agency, and our reasoning and conceptions lies at the heart of
inquiry. We ultimately rely on our reasoning to run true and our conceptions to
be both fitting and productive in regard to the ends that we are trying to achieve.
So questions about whether certain things should be held distinct for
particular purposes, or by what criteria we should judge something to fall in a
certain category, or whether we can assert a given proposition on the basis of
certain reasons or evidence, are among the most common in inquiry and a great
deal of attention needs to be paid to them.
Sorting out the questions

Two basic steps are required to sort out inquiry questions once we have identified
them as such.
First, we need to determine whether a given question is primarily a question
about a matter of fact, one that concerns values, or whether it is a logical or
conceptual question. I say ‘primarily’ because, as I remarked above, questions
may be mixed; and that is something we will come to in a moment. To ask
into which of these three categories a given inquiry question at least initially
falls, may seem to be a bit like asking whether something is animal, vegetable
or mineral in the old parlour game. What happens in the parlour game if I
am thinking of, say, a number? Numbers do not fit into any category on offer.
So can we be sure that all inquiry questions will fall into one (or more) of my
three categories? Well, insofar as a question can be answered by reference to
actual or possible experience, by gathering evidence, conducting an experiment,
employing principles, standards, norms or criteria, or by thinking about
reasoning, it can be so classified. And if nothing of this sort can help us to
answer the question, it is unclear how any kind of inquiry could answer it at
all. Again, to ask whether a question is about matters of fact or of value may
appear to be philosophically presumptuous, in assuming that values are not facts
and that there is a clear divide between the two. Nothing of the kind is being
presupposed, however. We can distinguish between these different kinds of

questions without worrying about whether we are dealing with different classes
of facts or different kinds of things altogether, or indeed whether the distinction
is always clear-cut.
Secondly, having decided that a given question is first and foremost of one
kind, we need to determine whether it also involves or gives rise to questions of
other kinds. Suppose that we were addressing the question, ‘Do animals think?’
While we may suppose that this is primarily a question about a matter of fact,
we could hardly begin to answer it without first discussing the conceptual issue
of what we are to understand by ‘think’. If we want to know whether animals
can do something, then first we must be clear about what that something is. So
there is a subsidiary question of concept here, which we might express as ‘What
do we mean by think?’ or just ‘What is it to think?’ And as I suggested, there
is a logical ordering here. We had better have at least a crack at answering this
question first.
Sometimes questions about concepts do not require us to engage in an in-
depth exploration of big ideas. They may be merely requests for clarification
that can be satisfied by a more careful wording or appropriate qualification. On
the question whether animals think, for instance, someone might suggest that
we had better be clear about what we mean by ‘animals’, too. After all, what
is to stop us from straightforwardly saying that some animals think because
humans are animals and we think? Presumably, though, the questioner meant
to ask whether non-human animals think, and would be prepared to amend the
formulation accordingly. Even then, further clarification may be needed. And
is the question asking whether non-human animals in general think, or whether
any of them do? In any event, clarification should always be carried out as soon
as the need arises.
It can be useful to keep track of question types and any amendments or
subsidiary questions on the board. With the sample question, for instance, I
might end up with the following, where ‘F’ means that the question is factual
and ‘C’ means that the question is conceptual:
any non-human
Do animals think? (F)
What do we mean by ‘think’? (C)
The following is an exercise in sorting out inquiry questions that I might give to
a group of senior secondary students. You might find it useful to try some of the
questions for yourself.
Advanced Toolkit—Fact, Value, Concept 93

Sorting out inquiry questions
We can generally divide inquiry questions into three categories:
• factual
• evaluative, and
• conceptual.
Simply put,
• a factual question is one that can be answered by uncovering or mustering
the appropriate facts;
• an evaluative question requires us to consider what would justify certain
values or preferences;
• a conceptual question asks what we are to understand by certain words or
concepts.
Sometimes questions that are primarily of one kind involve or imply questions
of another kind. For example, even though the question, ‘Can animals think?’ is
primarily a factual one, we cannot answer it without first addressing the question
‘What do we mean by think?’, and that is a conceptual question. Sometimes,
too, we need to clarify a question before we can answer it, because we are not
sure precisely what the question is asking. In the above example, does ‘animals’
refer only to non-human animals? And are we being asked whether animals in
general can think or only whether some of them can think?
Can you say whether each of the following questions is primarily factual (F),
evaluative (V) or conceptual (C)? Where appropriate, identify any matters that
require clarification and any implied subsidiary questions of the above three
kinds that would also need to be addressed.
1 Do animals think?
2 Should we never tell a lie?
3 What do we mean by a ‘true friend’?
4 Is the universe infinite?
5 Is euthanasia sometimes justified?
6 Are apples alive?
7 Are bananas still yellow in the dark?
8 What would it mean to say that history is fiction?
9 Is the world in reality nothing like the way it appears?
Answers: (1) F, (2) V, (3) C, (4) F, (5) V, (6) F, (7) F, (8) C, (9) F
94 Twenty Thinking Tools Copyright © Philip Cam 2006

Deductive reasoning is fuelled by the desire to preserve truth when we reason.
If we start from some statement or proposition of which we can be certain, then
deductive reasoning provides us with a tool that can guarantee that what we
conclude will also be true.
Provided we stick to the paths it marks out, deduction provides a surefooted
way of moving ahead. In these respects, the deductive method is very different
from the inquiry method. Inquiry does not make headway by supposing that
we have a stock of certain knowledge from which we can derive other truths in
turn. Rather, it employs suggestions or hypotheses that can be put to the test,
providing us only with a means of ensuring that our conclusions will be more
defensible as we move along. Even so, deductive reasoning is a valuable tool in
the inquirer’s kit. Implicitly, we use deductive reasoning when we argue that
a hypothesis should be rejected because it is not consistent with the evidence,
for example, and we use it to explain something when we argue that, given the
observed conditions, it follows from our hypothesis.
While deductive reasoning has been the mainstay of the discipline known as
‘formal logic’ since the days of Aristotle, modern systems of deduction began to
develop only in the late nineteenth century. Aristotelian or syllogistic logic deals
with relations between what are known as categorical statements—statements
such as ‘All rabbits are furry creatures’ and ‘No furry creatures are things that can
fly’. (This is a logician’s somewhat cumbersome way of stating what would more
naturally be expressed as ‘No furry creatures can fly’. As we will see shortly, such
awkwardness has its uses.) Modern logic starts with logical approximations of
words such as ‘not’, ‘and’, ‘or’ and conditional expressions such as ‘if … then …’
and ‘if and only if’, which it defines in terms of patterns of truth and falsehood
that arise when they operate on statements. For example, if we conjoin two
statements together with ‘and’, we get a conjunction; and a conjunction will be
true if both of its conjuncts are true, otherwise it will be false. From such humble
beginnings very powerful systems of deduction can be built.
You may be relieved to know that I am not about to offer you a systematic
introduction to either ancient or modern formal logic. When it comes to
discursive classroom inquiry, these systems do not offer sufficient pay-off for
all the work required to master them in even an elementary form. Yet it is
worthwhile for students to acquire some of the fundamental ideas in formal
deductive logic, as well as logical competence in elementary forms of deductive
reasoning, by the time they begin secondary school. It is worth understanding
Advanced Toolkit—Deductive Reasoning 95

that the validity of such reasoning depends on its form rather than its content,
for example, and it is certainly worthwhile for students to be able to distinguish
between the most basic forms of valid and fallacious reasoning.
We can give students an elementary competence with deductive reasoning
by paying attention to just a few common forms of reasoning when they occur
in discussion, and by making students familiar with these patterns through
exercises. I prefer to do this through the most basic and easily discernible forms
of what is known as conditional reasoning.
First, however, I want to explain the idea that the validity of a deductive
argument depends on its form rather than its content. So let us go back to the
categorical statements with which I began:
All rabbits are furry creatures.

No furry creatures are things that can fly.
At the moment we are not concerned with whether these statements are true,
but only with what could be said to follow from them. If the statements are or
were true, is there any other statement that would have to be true as well? Once
we put it this way, there is an intuitively obvious conclusion that we can draw:
No rabbits are things that can fly.
Now the deduction of this conclusion from what we may call the above two
‘premises’ can easily be shown, intuitively, to depend not at all on the fact that
these statements are about rabbits, furry creatures and things that can fly. They
may just as well have been about planets, balls and pyramids, or indeed about
anything at all. In order to see this, we only need to replace the relevant words
systematically with letters.
So let us replace ‘rabbits’ with the letter ‘A’, ‘furry creatures’ with the letter
‘B’ and ‘things that can fly’ with the letter ‘C’. This time we will also put the
conclusion under the other two statements and separate it by a line—the
equivalent of saying ‘therefore’—to indicate that it has been deduced from
them. We may call the resulting schema the ‘form’ of the argument.
All A are B.
No B are C.
No A are C.
I might have demonstrated this with a Venn diagram or some other convention,
but I take it that within a few moments nearly everyone can see that the third
line follows from the other two just as surely as in the original argument. Yet the
choice of letters was arbitrary, even though they were substituted systematically.
And since that choice was arbitrary, I may now substitute new words for the

letters in turn. By substituting, say, ‘whales’, ‘toffee-apples’ and ‘diamonds’,
we can derive the following argument:
All whales are toffee-apples.
No toffee-apples are diamonds.
No whales are diamonds.
Once again, it is intuitively easy to see that the conclusion follows from the
premises. Any systematic substitution of common nouns for the letters ‘A’,
‘B’ and ‘C’ would have had the same result. So the connection between the
premises and the conclusion of the argument does not depend on what the
statements are about, but rather on the form of the argument itself.
Let me clarify what is meant by saying that the conclusion ‘follows’.
In deduction, when we say that the conclusion follows, we mean that it is
impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. This also
allows me to explain the use of the word ‘valid’ when used in deduction. A valid
argument is one that gives this guarantee: An argument is said to be valid if and
only if it is impossible for all of the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false.
Finally, then, we may say that an argument is valid in virtue of its form.
Having introduced the idea of the form of an argument and the concept of
validity, let us now return to the topic of conditional reasoning. Like the rest of
us, children are forever using the conditional, which is commonly expressed in
English by ‘if … then …’:
• ‘If I am kept in after school, then my mum will throw a fit.’
• ‘Well, if I were you, then I would apologise to Mrs McDonald. Otherwise
she’s sure to keep you in.’
There are many variations of this so-called conditional form, including:
• implicit terms (‘If she tries to keeps me in, [then] I’ll just leave.’)
• implicit conditions (‘Then you’ll get into even more trouble.’)
• the substitution for ‘if ’ or ‘then’ of logically equivalent expressions (‘Whenever
I get into trouble, my mum throws a fit.’), and
• reversal in the order of the clauses (‘My dad throws a fit, if I get into trouble.’)
In all of its variations, the conditional consists of an antecedent or ‘if ’
clause and a consequent or ‘then’ clause. A wide array of relationships may
be expressed by this means—including conceptual and logical relationships,
causal relationships, correlations, temporal sequences and mathematical
relationships—and conditional expressions commonly feature in an extensive
range of human acts, such as prediction, promising, warning and bargaining.
Conditionals express a movement in thought from one condition to
another, where one condition is taken to be dependent on the other. Therefore
it is the natural form with which to begin reasoning. Not only that, the
conditional also lends itself to deductive inference, because in deduction we
are saying, in effect, that if the premises are (or were) true, then the conclusion
must be (would have to be) true, too. So the conditional is a good vehicle for
introducing students to deductive forms of argument.

There are two basic forms of valid deductive argument that begin with the
conditional. One involves affirming the antecedent and the other denying the
consequent. These forms are of great antiquity and traditionally go by their
Latin names, which I may as well introduce.
Modus ponens Modus tollens
If P, then Q If P, then Q
P Not Q
Q Not P
Modus ponens
Modus ponens provides us with a simple form of reasoning for both prediction
and explanation. In prediction, we argue from
1 the supposition that if a given condition obtains, then a certain result can
be expected, and
2 the fact that the condition is found to obtain (is observed, or whatever), to
the conclusion that the result can be expected.
Here is an example:
If the pea is not under this cup, then it will be under that one.
Ah, huh! The pea is not under this cup.
The pea will be under that one.
In explanations using modus ponens, we deduce a statement of the circumstances
to be explained from what we already know (have observed, or whatever),
together with an explanatory hypothesis. For example:
If you eat green bananas, then you’ll have a stomach-ache.
You ate green bananas.
You have a stomach-ache.
Of course, we usually do not bother to spell things out in this way. If a boy
suffered a stomach-ache after he had eaten green bananas, we might explain
it simply by saying that it was because he had eaten the bananas. By making
the underlying conditional explicit, however, we have drawn attention to the
generalisation on which the explanation depends.
This can be important because, just as in science, the generalisations that
people rely on in everyday explanation are often in need of scrutiny. This
is particularly true when it comes to explanations that rely on questionable
attitudes and values. Explanations that appeal to racist and other prejudices
provide all too many examples. For example, for a child to say that some newly
arrived immigrants did something ‘stupid’ because they are migrants, might well
rest on the prejudicial assumption that migrants are by nature stupid. (By the
way, the generalisation that ‘All migrants are stupid’ is logically equivalent to
‘If someone is a migrant, then they are stupid.’)

Modus tollens
Now let us look at some examples of modus tollens.
We all know the story of the princess and the frog. Having been turned into
a frog by an evil spell, the prince can be changed back again only by the kiss of a
beautiful young princess. We may imagine the following exchange between the
prince and the princess:
Princess: You’re not a handsome young prince. You’re just a slimy old frog.
Prince: But I am a prince, I tell you.
Princess: If you’re a prince, then I’m a roast duck.
Here the princess is claiming that the frog is obviously not a prince, and she
implicitly appeals to modus tollens. That is to say, she reasons as follows:
If you’re a prince, then I’m a roast duck.
Obviously, I’m not a roast duck.
You’re not a prince.
Young children would have no difficulty in following the princess’s reasoning,
and therefore in understanding modus tollens. In fact, they are probably already
familiar with some version of the princess’s argument. My father used to say
to me, ‘If that’s true, then I’m a monkey’s uncle.’ He obviously expected me to
draw the intended conclusion, and therefore to follow his reasoning.
For a second example, we may turn to hypothesis-testing in science. We test
an experimental hypothesis by arguing that if the hypothesis is true, then we
should obtain certain observable results. And if we do not obtain those results,
then doubt is cast on the hypothesis. The example is drawn from primary school
students who are testing the hypothesis that it is after mid-day by observing
changes in the length of shadows:
If it is after mid-day, then the shadows should be lengthening.
The shadows are not lengthening, but shortening.
It is not after mid-day.
Associated fallacies
These two forms of valid reasoning have invalid counterparts. To say that they
are invalid is simply to say that they are not valid, or in other words that the
truth of the conclusion is not guaranteed by the truth of the premises. These
‘fallacies’, as they are known, have the following forms:
Fallacy of denying Fallacy of affirming
the antecedent the consequent
If P, then Q If P, then Q
Not P Q
Not Q P

The problem with the ‘Fallacy of denying the antecedent’ is that conditions
other than those stated by the antecedent may be sufficient for the fulfilment of
the consequent. Thus, suppose that one were to argue as follows:
If you build your house of sticks, then the wolf will be able to blow it down.
You do not build your house of sticks.
The wolf will not be able to blow it down.
The conclusion does not follow, of course, because it is possible for the premises
to be true and the conclusion to be false, which is, of course, what happens in
the story when you build your house of straw. Fallacious reasoning can be very
dangerous.
The problem with the ‘Fallacy of affirming the consequent’ is, once again,
that conditions other than those stated by the antecedent might be sufficient to
ensure the consequent. Here is an example:
If the miller’s daughter can spin straw into gold, then there’ll be gold in the morning.
There is gold in the morning.
The miller’s daughter can spin straw into gold.
Once again, we can see that the argument is clearly invalid. The premises can be
true while the conclusion is false—which is exactly what happens when it turns
out to be Rumplestiltskin rather than the miller’s daughter who can perform
the trick. We fall for the fallacy of affirming the consequent whenever we fail
to consider possibilities other than the one we had in mind for explaining the
known condition. The danger in doing so is that we will think that what we
know or can observe confirms our theories, when those facts are really subject to
a quite different explanation. Like the miller’s daughter, we can be in for a long,
rough ride when this happens.
I have set out these rudiments of deductive reasoning in the hope that you
will consider it worthwhile introducing them to students. As mentioned earlier,
by paying attention to such reasoning when it occurs in discussion and giving
students associated exercises, you will be helping them to learn to reason well,
and to avoid at least some invalid forms of reasoning that can prove to be both
expensive and dangerous.
In the concluding exercise you are asked to decide whether a given
argument is valid or not. It is the kind of exercise that might be given to Year 6
or 7 students. I have included answers at the bottom of the page, but do avoid
looking at them until you have satisfied yourself. If you manage to get all of
the answers right, I can assure you that you have learnt something. When these
examples have been presented to groups of untutored teachers, the results have
been close to what one might expect by chance.

Which of the following arguments are valid and
which are not?
1 If there is a red sky tonight, then tomorrow will be a shepherd’s delight.
There is a red sky tonight.
Tomorrow will be a shepherd’s delight.
2 If you eat an apple a day, then you will keep the doctor away.
You do not eat an apple a day.
You will not keep the doctor away.
3 If it is good for the goose, then it is good for the gander.
It is good for the gander.
It is good for the goose.
4 If people were meant to fly, then they would be born with wings.
People are not born with wings.
People were not meant to fly.
3 Invalid (affirming the consequent) 4 Valid (modus tollens)

Answers: 1 Valid (modus ponens) 2 Invalid (denying the antecedent)
Twenty Thinking Tools Copyright © Philip Cam 2006 Advanced Toolkit—Deductive Reasoning 101
Whenever someone argues for a claim by offering a number of reasons for it
or by engaging in a chain of reasoning, we need to be clear about the form of
support that is being presented. If the relationship between a claim and the
reasons being offered in support of it is not clear to us, then we are not able to
properly assess the case that is being made. A Reasoning Diagram is a simple
tool for inspecting someone’s reasoning in order to become clear about the
relation between claims and supporting reasons. It is therefore a tool that often
comes in handy when reasoning occurs in the conduct of inquiry. I particularly
recommend its use in the senior secondary school.
The basic convention of a Reasoning Diagram is an arrow that leads from
a reason given in support of some claim to the claim that it supports. In the
simplest case, a Reasoning Diagram consists of just one such arrow connecting a
reason to the claim that it supports.
supporting reason
claim supported
If arguments were always so simple there would be no need for Reasoning

Diagrams. The need may arise, however, when two or more reasons are offered
in support of a claim. In that case we need to be clear as to whether each reason
offers independent support for the claim or whether it is only their combined
force that offers the support. This may turn out to be important in assessing the
argument that is being put, because in one case we may still have been given
some good reasons for accepting the claim even if others do not stand up to
scrutiny, but in another case the whole argument may fall with the dismissal of
any one of its supporting reasons.
Let us examine a couple of examples. To keep things simple, I have focused
on arguments where just two reasons are given in support of some claim.
First, suppose someone were to argue that where asylum-seekers enter
the country unannounced, it is right for the government to apply a policy of

mandatory detention. The reasons given for this might be that it is easier to
deport them if their application for refugee status fails, and that it serves as a
deterrent to others who might contemplate similar action. These two reasons are
clearly independent of one another. If one reason collapses, the argument can
still rest on the other. The overall argument will be weaker, of course, but this is
only to say that the total weight of such an argument is the sum of the weights
of each of the reasons that are given. In a Reasoning Diagram, each independent
reason is presented with an arrow showing its support for the claim.
acts as a deterrent to others allows ease of deportation
A government policy of mandatory detention is right.
As the diagram indicates, it is generally not necessary to fully transcribe

statements of the reasons given during classroom discussion. Provided that we
are clear about what statements are being made, phrases will usually suffice. The
statements do need to be clear, of course. In the present case, we may want to
know whether ‘a policy of mandatory detention’ refers to a specific government
policy or to a general conception, for example, and it may not be clear what is
meant by saying that such a policy is ‘right’.
Now suppose that someone were to argue that a government policy of
mandatory detention is wrong, because it is inconsistent with international
conventions on human rights, which the government has a duty to uphold. We
may need considerable clarification here. For instance, to what international
conventions on human rights is the speaker referring? And is the duty they
are supposed to imply a legal responsibility or a moral one? Such clarifications
aside, however, it is important to note that the word ‘which’ does not qualify
the conventions spoken of, but rather acts as a conjunction. It is being argued
that mandatory detention is inconsistent with certain international conventions
and that governments have a duty to uphold those conventions. The statement
about government duty is not an independent reason for objecting to a policy
of mandatory detention, however, but is meant to make its alleged inconsistency
with international conventions something that the government should not ignore.
In order to distinguish the form of this argument from that of the previous
one, we may adopt the convention of using the plus sign (+) together with a
bar and a single arrow to indicate the interdependence of the reasons that are
offered in support of the claim. We will call these reasons ‘dependent’ reasons
as opposed to the ‘independent’ reasons in the first example.
Advanced Toolkit—Reasoning Diagrams 103

inconsistent with international governmental duty to
conventions on human rights
+ uphold those conventions
A government policy of mandatory detention is wrong.
It is obvious that many other patterns are possible, including using the same
reason in support of different claims, and using claims for which support has
been given as support for yet other claims, in turn. The following looks at an
example of the latter kind.
Suppose that the person who was arguing in favour of a mandatory
detention policy was challenged about whether such a policy is in fact
an effective deterrent. That person might then claim that the number of
unannounced arrivals has fallen in countries where such a policy has been
adopted, which has not been the case elsewhere. Right now we are not
concerned with the truth of these claims or how they might be verified, but
only with the structure of the argument given. Two points need to be made.
First, support is being provided for one of the reasons previously given. That is
to say, we have buttressing of an existing reason. Secondly, this further support
consists of two claims that depend on each other to provide a reason for
accepting that the policy acts as a deterrent. The entire argumentative structure
can therefore be represented as follows:
reduction of arrivals where no reduction of arrivals where

the policy is in place
+ the policy is not in place
acts as a deterrent to others allows ease of deportation
A government policy of mandatory detention is right.
Reasoning Diagrams are not necessary when the relations between

supporting and supported claims is evident to those engaged in the discussion,
and to habitually set them out in this way would be unduly laborious. However,
they can be an invaluable tool for helping those putting the argument to
become clear about just what argument they are advancing, as well as an aid to
clear-headed critical discussion of the actual argument put forward.

In conducting inquiry we investigate assumptions in two different contexts.
On the one hand, we attend to assumptions that appear to be mistaken
or questionable. This is a process of exposing things that have been taken for
granted and probing them to see whether our concerns are justified.
On the other hand, we also sometimes tentatively make an assumption for
the sake of argument. This is to use an assumption as a tool. We deliberately
make an assumption in order to see what follows. This is usually because we
are attempting to find our way between rival suppositions or hypotheses. If we
were to suppose this, then certain consequences would follow; whereas were
we to suppose that, then things would be different. Or when considering some
particular matter, we might make an additional assumption and then check to
see whether that would make a significant difference to how things turn out.
Uncovering assumptions
While the assumptions that we uncover are not themselves tools of inquiry,
we can use our tools to help uncover them. In particular, we can use Reasoning
Diagrams to help reveal what is being assumed when someone argues for a
conclusion that does not seem to follow automatically from their premises. Since
that is common in everyday reasoning, this move has the potential for wide
application. Let us see what is involved by working our way through an example.
Suppose someone were to argue that democratic government is the best
form of government because it maximises freedom. We may set this out as a
Reasoning Diagram.
Democratic government maximises freedom.
Democratic government is the best form of government.
Many questions arise here, including: What is meant by ‘freedom’? By what

means can we make relative judgements about its measure? Is it true that, of
all forms of government, democracy promotes freedom more than any other?
Does the person who put this argument mean to refer to all possible forms of
government or only to actual forms of government? We would obviously have
a lot of work to do in order to evaluate this argument.
Advanced Toolkit—Assumptions 105

Aside from these things, however, we can also sense that the conclusion does
not follow from the speaker’s premise in the way that the conclusion does follow
from the premises of a valid deductive argument. There is, we might say, a ‘gap’
between the reason given and the claim it is meant to support. This indicates
that something is being assumed. The most plausible assumption is the thing
that best plugs the gap.
What we are looking for, of course, is not just any means of plugging the
gap. The presenter might come up with additional independent premises, for
instance. But that would be to present further argument. We need to stick to
the argument given, if we wish to see what it assumes. In fact, we need to look
for some dependent reason that is already implicitly assumed. That is to say, we
are looking to replace the question mark in the following Reasoning Diagram:
Democratic government + ?
maximises freedom.
There are various ways of plugging this gap. For example, we could always make
the argument deductively valid by converting it to modus ponens. This involves
merely the addition of a conditional statement that allows us to validly deduce
the conclusion.
Democratic government + If a form of government

maximises freedom. maximises freedom, then it is
the best form of government.
This manoeuvre is not very informative. In effect, all it tells us is that the
original argument depends on the assumption that the best form of government
is one which maximises freedom. But we don’t need to complete a Reasoning
Diagram in order to work that out. We know it already.
In order to see more deeply into what is being assumed, we need to plug the
gap in the original argument with something more informative. For example,
consider a couple of alternative suggestions for plugging the gap:

Nothing else matters beside freedom when it comes to good government.
Freedom is to be prized above all other things that government can deliver.
These statements are equally good at plugging the gap that originally existed
between the premise and the conclusion. When added to the Reasoning
Diagram, either one would allow us to deduce the conclusion. Both of them
are also more informative than our first attempt to plug the gap, because they
tell us why the best form of government is one that maximises freedom. They
supply explanations as to why the claim that democratic government maximises
freedom may be supposed to imply the conclusion that it is the best form of
government. One statement says that this is because, when it comes to good
government, nothing else matters beside freedom. The other says that it is the
best form because freedom is the most valuable thing that government can
deliver. These are substantial claims and they are obviously not equivalent.
It would make a difference to suppose that the argument depended on one
statement rather than the other.
Finally, we need to acknowledge that some explanations are more plausible
than others. By saddling the argument with the claim that nothing beside
freedom is of value, we would be making it depend on an obviously false
assumption. If this were what the presenter had in mind, the argument would
not be worthy of further consideration. Our second suggestion fares much
better in this respect. While it is certainly debatable whether freedom is to
be prized above all other things that governments can deliver, it is not an
altogether implausible suggestion. With further investigation, it might even
turn out to be an acceptable one. So plausibility provides a third criterion for
fixing on a given assumption.
We may now summarise the things to be taken into account when
attempting to uncover a premise that is implicit in the presentation of an
argument. If we are going to stick with the original argument and make the
most of it, we need to look for a claim that could plug the gap between the
premises and the conclusion of a Reasoning Diagram that is:
• a dependent premise
• explanatory or informative
• the most plausible alternative.
Making and testing assumptions

Let us return now to assumptions as tools. To tentatively assume something in
an inquiry is to make a supposition for the purposes of testing out an idea. It is
equivalent to suggesting a hypothesis. We temporarily take the supposition on
board in order to see whether it can illuminate or resolve a problem or difficulty.
Given this, nothing in particular needs to be said about making assumptions
that does not apply to hypotheses in general. An assumption is an investigative
tool the value of which lies in what it can help us to predict and explain.
Advanced Toolkit—Assumptions 107

In testing an assumption, we look to its implications. We want to know
what it implies and whether those implications are acceptable in one way
or another. This means that testing an assumption involves hypothetical
reasoning: If the assumption is correct, then things should be thus-and-
so. From a logical point of view, the rejection of an assumption involves
reasoning by modus tollens: If the assumption were correct, then things would
have been thus-and-so. But things turned out not to be thus-and-so. So the
assumption was not correct.
Things are a little more complicated when an assumption turns out to be
justified. An assumption may straightforwardly be proved to be correct, or it
may only be justified to the extent that it conforms to the evidence we have so
far and we have no other cause for rejection. ‘We assumed that it would rain,
and so it did.’ Here our assumption proved to be correct and that is the end of
the matter. ‘Mr Treasurer, are we justified in assuming that the economy will
improve?’ ‘Yes, all the signs are there.’ Here the assumption is justified only to
the extent that those signs have been predictive in the past, and provided that
what the treasurer says about the signs is true. Even if justified in the context,
our assumption might not be correct. To think that it must, is to fall for the
fallacy of affirming the consequent: ‘If the economy is about to improve, then
there should be such-and-such signs. All the signs are there. So the economy
is about to improve.’ This argument is not deductively valid, as we saw. It is
possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false.
Note: See Deductive Reasoning (pp. 95–101) for more about modus ponens,
modus tollens and the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

Strictly speaking, a disagreement involves a difference of opinion. It always
involves some proposition that one party affirms but another denies. If one
student or group of students is merely inclined to support a given view, while
another student or group is leaning towards a contrary view, then there is only
a potential disagreement; and if students are merely exploring the pros and
cons of some claim, then we do not even have that. However, the technique
introduced below for exploring disagreements can be used in these contexts as
well. All it requires is a claim that someone might argue either for or against,
and reasons that might be given in support of either stance.
This tool is a variant of the Reasoning Diagram introduced earlier. Just as
Reasoning Diagrams are based on the relation between a claim and a reason
given in support, a Disagreement Diagram is based on reasons that are given
both for and against some claim. We already have the convention of using
an arrow to indicate a relation of support between a reason and a claim, and
we may adopt the further convention of using a ‘bow and arrow’ to indicate
a reason given to reject that claim. Hence the simplest case of a Disagreement
Diagram would consist of just one arrow and one bow and arrow pointing at a
claim that is in dispute.
supporting reason reason for rejection
claim
When people express a difference of opinion, however, they are more often
not only disputing some claim, but also arguing in favour of incompatible
claims. This would be the case if, for example, I am arguing that we should
go away for the weekend, while you are arguing that we should stay at home.
Given that we can’t both stay at home for the weekend and go away, we are
arguing in favour of incompatible propositions, each of which excludes the
other. We may represent the situation as follows:
Advanced Toolkit—Disagreement Diagrams 109

supporting reason supporting reason
We should go away. We should stay at home.
In such cases we need to be sure that we really do have a disagreement on

our hands. If I were arguing that we should go to the mountains and you were
arguing that we should go to the beach, then it may be that we are not actually
making incompatible suggestions. Depending on the circumstances, we might
be able to do both. So we did not really have a disagreement to begin with, but
only confusion as to the implications of our proposals. So before launching
into a Disagreement Diagram, do check to see that the ‘disagreement’ really does
conform to one or other of the above patterns.
There are two basic steps in beginning to construct a Disagreement Diagram:
1 Identify the claim or pair of incompatible claims on which the disagreement
rests.
In the case of a single claim, it will form the conclusion of the proponent’s
argument, just as its denial will be the conclusion of the opponent’s argument.
In the example given to illustrate how to use Reasoning Diagrams to uncover
Assumptions, we would begin with the following single claim:
In the case of incompatible claims, the arguments will have the respective claims
as their conclusions. Going back to the example used to introduce Reasoning
Diagrams, we would begin to construct a Disagreement Diagram as follows:
A government policy of A government policy of

mandatory detention is right. mandatory detention is wrong.
This seems to be the natural way to represent the disagreement, as arising from
support for incompatible claims rather than being directly a dispute about the
acceptability of a single claim.
2 Next we build the supporting arguments for both sides of the argument,
using the tool of Reasoning Diagrams.
In other words, the Disagreement Diagram will be a combination of the relevant
Reasoning Diagrams. In terms of the earlier disagreement about mandatory
detention, in the first round of discussion we would have produced the
following Disagreement Diagram.

acts as a allows ease of inconsistent with human + governmental
deterrent deportation rights conventions duty to uphold
the conventions

Actual disagreements are often more complex than my simple sketch

suggests. It is very common for people who disagree with one another about
some claim to also disagree about the relevance, strength, truth or acceptability
of one or more of the reasons given in support of the opposing view. While this
adds further complexity to a diagram, it does not introduce anything other than
further layers of argument that end with a bow and arrow pointed at the claim
that is an additional source of dispute.
In the example above, if someone were to argue that the kind of policy
under discussion was not actually inconsistent with international conventions
on human rights, for instance, then the reasons or evidence they assembled
would constitute a counterargument whose bow and arrow would be directed at
the premise claiming that the policy is inconsistent.
further
counterargument
acts as a allows ease of inconsistent with human + governmental

deterrent deportation rights conventions duty to uphold
the conventions

Finally, when constructing a Disagreement Diagram, students may disagree

about whether various inferences really can be drawn from reasons that are
given. Unless it is being claimed that a piece of reasoning is simply fallacious
(see Deductive Reasoning, pp. 95–101), such disagreements are about whether
Advanced Toolkit—Disagreement Diagrams 111

some reason given in support of a claim rests on one or more ungrounded
assumptions. In that case, first of all we need to uncover those assumptions
(see Assumptions, pp. 105–08) and add them to the diagram. Then we can see
whether they are subject to objection by further counterargument.
While such diagrams can become quite complex, they will be no more
complicated than the arguments actually being put, and they will actually
assist students to reason more carefully and constructively when they explore
their disagreements.

Notes
Advanced Toolkit—Notes 113

Further reading
Baron, Joan Boykoff & Sternberg, Robert J (eds) 1987, Teaching Thinking Skills:
Theory and Practice, WH Freeman and Company, New York.
Bennett, Deborah J 2004, Logic Made Easy, WW Norton & Company,
New York.
Cam, Philip 1995, Thinking Together: Philosophical Inquiry for the Classroom,
Hale & Iremonger/PETA, Sydney.
Dewey, John 1966, Democracy and Education, The Free Press, New York.
Dewey, John 1997, How We Think, Minolta, Dover Publications Inc, New York.
Fisher, Robert 1993, Teaching Children to Think, Simon and Schuster
Education, Hemel Hempstead.
Haynes, Joanna 2002, Children as Philosophers, Routledge Falmer, London.
Kelley, David 1988, The Art of Reasoning, Norton and Company, New York.
Lipman, Matthew 1988a, Philosophy Goes to School, Temple University Press,
Philadelphia.
Lipman, Matthew 2003, Thinking in Education, 2nd edition, Cambridge
University Press, New York.
Lipman, Matthew, Sharp, Ann M & Oscanyan, Frederick S 1980, Philosophy in
the Classroom, Temple University Press, Philadelphia.
Matthews, Gareth B 1980, Philosophy and the Young Child, Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Matthews, Gareth B 1984, Dialogues with Children, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Mass.
Paul, Richard 1994, Critical Thinking, Hawker Brownlow Education, Highett,
Victoria.
Pritchard, Michael S 1985, Philosophical Adventures with Children, University
Press of America, Lanham, MD.
Splitter, Laurance J & Sharp, Ann M 1995, Teaching for Better Thinking: The
Classroom Community of Inquiry, Australian Council for Educational
Research, Camberwell, Victoria.
Thouless, Robert H 1974, Straight and Crooked Thinking, Pan Books, London.
Vygotsky, Lev 1978, Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological
Processes, Harvard University Press, Boston.
Vygotsky, Lev 1986, Thought and Language, Revised edition, MIT Press,
Boston.
Wilks, Sue 1995, Critical and Creative Thinking: Strategies for Classroom Inquiry,
Eleanor Curtain, Armadale, Victoria.
Wilson, John 1971, Thinking with Concepts, Cambridge University Press.

Classroom resources
Cam, Philip 1993a, Thinking Stories 1: Philosophical Inquiry for Children, Hale
& Iremonger, Sydney.
Cam, Philip 1993b, Thinking Stories 1: Teacher Resource/Activity Book, Hale &
Iremonger, Sydney.
Iremonger, Sydney.
Iremonger, Sydney.
Cam, Philip 1998, Twister, Quibbler, Puzzler, Cheat, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney.
de Hann, Chris, MacColl, San & McCutcheon, Lucy 1995, Philosophy with
Kids, Longman, South Melbourne, Victoria.
Golding, Clinton 2002, Connecting Concepts, Australian Council for
Educational Research, Camberwell, Victoria.
Lipman, Matthew 1981, Pixie, Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for
Children, Montclair State College, Montclair, NJ.
Lipman, Matthew 1983, Lisa, University Press of America, Lanham, MD.
Lipman, Matthew 1986, Kio & Gus, Revised edition, Institute for the
Advancement of Philosophy for Children, Montclair State College, Upper
Montclair, NJ.
Lipman, Matthew 1988b, Elfie, Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy
for Children, Montclair State College, Upper Montclair, NJ.
Lipman, Matthew 1992, Harry Stottlemeier’s Discovery, Australian adaptation
prepared by Laurance Splitter, Australian Council for Educational Research,
Camberwell, Victoria.
Lipman, Matthew & Gazzard, Ann 1988, Getting Our Thoughts Together:
instructional manual to accompany Elfie, Institute for the Advancement of
Philosophy for Children, Montclair State College, Upper Montclair, NJ.
Lipman, Matthew & Sharp, Ann Margaret 1983, Ethical Inquiry: instructional
manual to accompany Lisa, University Press of America, Lanham, MD.
Lipman, Matthew & Sharp, Ann Margaret 1984, Looking for Meaning:
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2

Collaborative Inquiry for the Classroom

Copyright © Philip Cam 2006

Edited by Ronél Redman

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

ISBN 0 86431 501 5.

1. Philosophy - Study and teaching (Primary). 2.

Visit our website: www.acerpress.com.au

iv Twenty Thinking Tools

If only people were better at asking appropriate questions,

A wide-scale improvement in such abilities would be no panacea, no

2 Twenty Thinking Tools

Many of the tools that I have assembled will be somewhat familiar to

4 Twenty Thinking Tools

Introductory Intermediate Advanced

1 There is no substitute for discussion: While many of the tools can be

2 Maintain a balanced approach: Any moderately successful discussion will

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8 Twenty Thinking Tools

• an inquiring outlook coupled with an ability to articulate

• a habit of actively listening to others and of trying to

These interlocking individual and social outcomes build on the tradition of

Every feature in the child’s cultural development appears twice:

When it comes to developing children’s capacities to think, it would be a

10 Twenty Thinking Tools

The basic pattern of inquiry

CREATIVE PHASE CRITICAL PHASE

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14 Twenty Thinking Tools

There may be an obvious or natural starting point for

16 Twenty Thinking Tools

An action is fair only if it treats everyone equally.

An action is fair if everyone’s interests are taken

The students making these suggestions may not necessarily be committed to

Conceptual exploration and reasoning

18 Twenty Thinking Tools

For example, in the suggestions made about fairness, when it is said

Conceptual exploration also includes categorical thinking in

20 Twenty Thinking Tools

22 Twenty Thinking Tools

By learning to do such things, students are learning to make

Good judgement, in all its complexity, ought surely to be a central outcome of

Evaluating and concluding

24 Twenty Thinking Tools

Nor do we avoid these questions by adopting ready-made responses that

It is a matter of some significance that in the context of the

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28 Twenty Thinking Tools

The Tools of Inquiry 29

TRACKING TOOLS META-INQUIRY TOOLS

We also need to keep track of the proceedings of course, as well as to reﬂect

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Four types of questions

Here are some questions about this little scene:

32 Twenty Thinking Tools

Introductory Toolkit—The Question Quadrant 33

FACTUAL KNOWLEDGE INQUIRY

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Introducing students to The Question Quadrant

Introductory Toolkit—The Question Quadrant 35

THE ANSWER IS IN THE BOOK JUST USE YOUR IMAGINATION

ONE RIGHT MANY DIFFERENT

36 Twenty Thinking Tools