The effect of philosophy education with children (P4C) on the critical reading skills of secondary school students

This research aims to examine the effects of Philosophy for Children (P4C) education on the critical reading skills of sixth grade middle school students. In the study, an unequal groups pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The participants consisted of 33 sixth grade students studying in a public school in the Marmara region. The research was completed in a 12-week period, during which time the students in the experimental group received Philosophy for Children education. The "Critical Reading Assessment Package", which aims to measure critical reading skills, was used in data collection and the evaluations were made according to the graded scoring key in this package. The obtained data were analyzed with an independent sample t-test. The analysis results show that philosophy education for children significantly improves the critical reading skills of sixth grade students. When the informative and narrative texts were examined separately, it was concluded that philosophy education for children has positive effects on critical reading skills. These results reveal that P4C is an effective method in increasing the critical reading skills of students. In line with these results, it is recommended that the effect of P4C training on critical listening be investigated in addition to critical reading.