How Does Philosophy in School Impact Engagement?

The Effectiveness of a Philosophy for Children Program on School Engagement — Research Summary and Practical Guidance for Educators and School Leaders

This essay summarises the key findings from Pourtaghi, Fouladchang, Azad, and Hasanvand’s 2022 study, The Effectiveness of a Philosophy for Children Program on Aspects of School Engagement, and highlights practical advice for educators and senior leaders interested in promoting engagement and well-being in their schools.

School engagement is one of the most vital elements in a young person’s educational journey, shaping not only their academic success but also their sense of belonging, motivation, and personal development. With growing concern about student disengagement and the challenges of maintaining motivation in schools, educators and policy makers are increasingly searching for effective, evidence-based strategies to enhance students’ connection to learning. Among the most promising interventions is Philosophy for Children (P4C), a programme designed to stimulate critical thinking, dialogue, and reflection through collaborative philosophical inquiry. This article explores recent research into the effectiveness of a P4C programme on school engagement, summarising its key findings and offering practical advice for educators and school leaders seeking to enrich classroom experiences and strengthen student involvement.

Research Background and Rationale

School engagement is widely recognised as one of the most crucial factors underpinning student achievement, well-being, and long-term success. Defined as a multidimensional construct, school engagement includes behavioural, emotional, cognitive, and agentic aspects. Behavioural engagement relates to participation in classroom and extracurricular activities, emotional engagement to feelings of belonging and positive attitudes towards school, cognitive engagement to investment in learning and willingness to tackle challenges, and agentic engagement to students’ active involvement in shaping their educational experience.

Low engagement is strongly associated with a host of negative outcomes including absenteeism, underachievement, and increased risk of academic failure. Given its importance, interventions that reliably strengthen school engagement are of great interest to educators, researchers, and policy makers.

The Philosophy for Children (P4C) programme, developed by Matthew Lipman, is one such intervention. Centred around the ‘community of inquiry’ method, P4C invites students to explore philosophical questions together in a collaborative, dialogic environment. Rather than simply transmitting information, the approach encourages open-ended questioning, critical and creative thinking, and the co-construction of knowledge. Previous research has linked P4C to improvements in reasoning skills, social development, and self-confidence, but this study sought to investigate its effect on specific dimensions of school engagement.

Study Design and Methods

This Iranian study utilised a quasi-experimental, pre-test/post-test design involving 128 seventh-grade boys from one secondary school in Tehran. Two classes were randomly assigned to participate in a 10-session P4C programme, while two comparable classes acted as a control group. Sessions were based on stories from Philip Cam’s ‘Thinking Stories’ and traditional Iranian tales, structured around the community of inquiry model. Each week, students read stories, identified philosophical issues, and engaged in structured discussion facilitated by a trained teacher.

School engagement was measured using the Reeve and Tseng (2011) scale, assessing behavioural, emotional, cognitive, and agentic engagement. Standard procedures for ensuring reliability and translation accuracy were followed. Data were analysed using ANOVA, as certain assumptions for ANCOVA were not met.

Findings

The results showed that participation in the P4C programme led to statistically significant improvements across all four dimensions of engagement:

• Agentic engagement (students’ active and intentional involvement) increased by around 25.2% due to the programme.

• Emotional engagement (students’ sense of belonging and positive feelings towards school) increased by 16.2%.

• Cognitive engagement (psychological investment in learning and willingness to tackle challenging ideas) increased by 14.2%.

• Behavioural engagement (observable participation and conduct) improved by 12.5%.

• In total, 28.2% of the variance in overall school engagement scores could be attributed to the P4C intervention.

These gains were evident when compared to the control group, who did not participate in P4C and received no additional training.

Mechanisms and Context

The authors argue that P4C’s effectiveness is likely rooted in the social support and positive peer relationships it fosters, along with the opportunities for autonomy, self-expression, and collaborative inquiry. By positioning students as co-creators of knowledge, rather than passive recipients, P4C nurtures intrinsic motivation and makes learning personally meaningful.

These findings are consistent with other studies (e.g., Claire et al., 2018; Filiz and Vesile, 2018; Giménez et al., 2013) demonstrating that philosophy sessions can develop critical thinking, social, and communication skills without increasing classroom disruption.

Limitations

The study’s limitations include sample size (intervention groups were larger than ideal for P4C), some loss of experimental control due to non-random attrition, and the restriction to a single school and age group. The authors recommend future studies across diverse settings and ages, and with smaller group sizes more typical of P4C best practice.

Practical Advice for Educators and Leaders

1. Integrate P4C into the Curriculum: The evidence suggests that even a modest P4C programme—ten one-hour sessions—can yield meaningful gains in engagement. Senior leaders should consider how philosophy sessions could be embedded into the wider curriculum, perhaps as a component of PSHE, English, or Citizenship lessons.

2. Use the Community of Inquiry Approach: Facilitate sessions that prioritise open-ended dialogue, questioning, and collaborative meaning-making. Arrange students in circles or U-shapes to promote equality and participation, and train staff to act as facilitators rather than traditional instructors.

3. Select Stimulating, Culturally Relevant Stories: Use diverse philosophical stories or dilemmas, including those that reflect students’ own backgrounds, to spark discussion. Stories should be chosen for their potential to provoke deep questions and allow all voices to be heard.

4. Prioritise Group Size and Session Structure: While large groups can benefit, smaller groups of 10–12 are ideal for maximising participation and depth of discussion. Sessions should be regular and follow a consistent structure: introduction, story, question generation, dialogue, and reflection.

5. Monitor and Assess Engagement: Use validated tools to assess the impact of P4C programmes on different types of engagement, and adjust implementation accordingly.

6. Foster a Supportive School Culture: P4C works best when embedded within a wider culture of respect, inclusion, and support for student voice. Encourage staff to model curiosity, openness, and care for students’ intellectual and emotional growth.

7. Extend to Other Age Groups: The study focused on 12–13-year-olds, but Lipman’s approach is suitable for both younger and older students. Leaders should consider piloting P4C in multiple year groups.

Discussion

School engagement is widely recognised as an essential ingredient in the recipe for effective education. Beyond grades or test scores, the quality of a student's engagement—how they think, feel, and act within the school environment—can shape not only their academic outcomes but also their broader personal development and social relationships. The recent research on Philosophy for Children (P4C) provides a compelling illustration of how philosophical inquiry, dialogue, and reflection can nurture deeper forms of engagement in the classroom. For teachers, these insights open new avenues for practice, reflection, and professional growth.

Engagement as a Multi-Dimensional Concept

Traditional approaches to school engagement have often emphasised visible behaviours: participation in class, compliance with rules, and completion of assignments. Yet as educational research has developed, it has become clear that engagement is far more complex. The article’s focus on behavioural, emotional, cognitive, and agentic engagement highlights the necessity of looking beneath the surface. Emotional engagement, for instance, involves students’ sense of belonging, enjoyment, and connection to school, while cognitive engagement relates to intellectual curiosity, perseverance, and a willingness to embrace challenges. The newly recognised dimension of agentic engagement invites teachers to consider how students can be active contributors, shaping the learning process rather than passively following instructions.

This holistic view of engagement should encourage teachers to reflect on their own classroom practices. To what extent are lessons structured not merely to ensure compliance or attention, but to foster meaningful emotional connections, intellectual risk-taking, and genuine student agency? Such questions invite a re-examination of what it means to be “engaged” and the ways in which engagement is nurtured or constrained by everyday classroom routines.

Philosophy for Children: Beyond Content Delivery

The Philosophy for Children (P4C) approach is distinctive in its emphasis on dialogue, questioning, and the co-construction of meaning. Instead of framing the teacher as the sole authority or source of knowledge, P4C repositions the teacher as a facilitator—someone who creates the conditions for inquiry, encourages student voice, and helps build a respectful community of learners. This shift has far-reaching implications for how engagement is cultivated.

From a practical perspective, P4C’s use of stories, dilemmas, and open-ended questions can help bring abstract concepts to life, making them personally meaningful for students. The act of listening to others, responding thoughtfully, and building on each other’s ideas provides opportunities for social learning, empathy, and collaboration. For many students, especially those who may struggle with traditional forms of assessment or instruction, the dialogic space of a community of inquiry can provide a powerful sense of recognition and belonging.

Moreover, by encouraging students to question assumptions, explore different perspectives, and reason together, P4C helps develop cognitive engagement. It challenges learners to go beyond rote memorisation and surface-level responses, nurturing a spirit of curiosity and intellectual resilience. Perhaps most importantly, it gives students a degree of agency over their own learning—inviting them to set the agenda, raise questions, and pursue lines of thought that are meaningful to them.

Practical Challenges and Opportunities

For teachers considering the integration of P4C or similar approaches, several practical questions arise. The first is time. In crowded curricula, with constant pressures to “cover content,” it can be difficult to justify regular philosophy sessions. However, the research suggests that even a relatively modest investment—a series of ten sessions—can produce measurable gains in engagement. Teachers may wish to explore cross-curricular opportunities, integrating philosophical inquiry into English, humanities, or citizenship lessons, or using it as a tool for developing oracy and critical thinking skills across subjects.

A second challenge is classroom management and facilitation. P4C asks teachers to step back, allowing students to take more responsibility for discussion and decision-making. This can feel uncomfortable for those used to tightly controlling classroom discourse. Training and practice in facilitation skills can be invaluable. Over time, teachers often find that a more dialogic classroom is not only more engaging, but also less prone to certain types of disruption, as students come to value respectful, purposeful talk.

Group size is another consideration. As the article notes, smaller groups of 10–12 are ideal for in-depth discussion, but this is rarely feasible in most schools. Teachers may need to adapt, using small group work, paired discussion, or rotating roles to maximise participation. The use of name tags and rituals of respect, as described in the study, can help build a supportive environment even in larger classes.

Finally, teachers should be prepared for some uncertainty and unpredictability. Philosophical inquiry is, by its nature, open-ended. Students may raise unexpected questions or pursue surprising avenues of thought. Rather than viewing this as a threat to order or learning objectives, teachers can embrace the uncertainty as a sign of genuine engagement—a moment when learning becomes a shared journey rather than a predetermined outcome.

The Teacher’s Role: Facilitator, Co-Learner, Model

In a classroom rooted in philosophical inquiry, the teacher’s role changes. Rather than acting solely as an expert or enforcer, the teacher becomes a co-learner and facilitator. This does not mean abdicating responsibility or expertise, but rather modelling the habits of mind—curiosity, humility, careful listening, openness to new ideas—that P4C aims to instil in students. Teachers can share their own questions, acknowledge uncertainty, and show that learning is an ongoing process for everyone.

This approach also has implications for assessment. Traditional tests may not capture the full range of skills and dispositions developed through philosophical inquiry. Teachers might instead look for evidence of engagement in the quality of students’ questions, the depth of their reasoning, the respect they show for differing viewpoints, and their willingness to revise their own ideas. Peer feedback, self-assessment, and reflective journals can all play a role.

Broadening the Culture of Engagement

At its best, P4C is more than a series of lessons—it is a way of being together in a learning community. When students feel that their ideas matter, that they are listened to, and that they have some ownership over the direction of their learning, engagement becomes a living reality rather than an abstract goal. This culture of engagement can spill over into other areas of school life, fostering more positive relationships, a sense of belonging, and resilience in the face of challenges.

For teachers, the adoption of P4C is not without challenges, but the potential rewards—for students’ engagement, thinking skills, and well-being—are substantial. It is a reminder that education is not only about delivering knowledge but about inviting young people to join in the great human conversation: to ask, to wonder, to reason, and to find their own place within it.

Conclusion

The evidence from this research strongly supports the transformative potential of Philosophy for Children in enhancing school engagement across emotional, behavioural, cognitive, and agentic dimensions. By embedding philosophical inquiry into classroom practice, schools do not merely add another programme; they create conditions where students can think more deeply, connect more meaningfully, and take real ownership of their learning. For teachers, adopting a P4C approach involves a significant but rewarding shift—from the role of instructor to that of facilitator and fellow inquirer. This change not only cultivates richer, more respectful dialogue, but also fosters students’ independence, confidence, and sense of agency.

The findings suggest that even within the constraints of crowded curricula and large class sizes, regular and thoughtfully facilitated philosophy sessions can make a measurable difference to student engagement. When students are invited to discuss real questions, to listen and be listened to, and to shape the direction of their learning, their connection to school is strengthened in ways that benefit the whole educational community. As engagement rises, so too do motivation, participation, and achievement, alongside improvements in social relationships and well-being.

For school leaders, investing in teacher training for philosophical facilitation, creating opportunities for cross-curricular inquiry, and making space for open dialogue can be pivotal strategies. While further research will be valuable, especially across diverse age groups and educational contexts, the current evidence gives a compelling rationale for making philosophical inquiry a regular feature of schooling.

Ultimately, Philosophy for Children exemplifies what is best in education: not the passive transfer of information, but the active cultivation of thoughtful, curious, and engaged young people. In a rapidly changing world where critical thinking, empathy, and collaboration are more important than ever, P4C offers an approach that is both practical and profoundly humanising. For teachers and leaders seeking to build vibrant, inclusive, and future-ready schools, embracing the spirit of philosophical inquiry stands out as both a wise and worthwhile pursuit.