The effects of philosophy for children on theory of mind and creativity of 48-72 month-old children

In this study, the effects of Philosophy for Children on theory of mind (ToM) and creativity of 48-72-month-old children were investigated. Philosophy for Children (P4C) approach was founded by Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp in 1970's, and then a thinking training program was developed with the same title. In the current work, Matthew Lipman's Philosophy for Children (P4C) was preferred because of its applicability to preschool children. Unbiased selection of a study group in educational researches is generally impossible, thus this study was designed as quasi-experimental. This research designed according to the model of pretest-posttest nonequivalent control groups as three groups, one being experimental and two being control groups. P4C was applied to the children in experimental group for a total of 32 sessions each lasting 45 minutes for 14 weeks. The education was offered in three sessions per week in the first 4 weeks, and in two sessions per week in the following periods. The control groups were not treated. The P4C applications at experimental group were conducted by the researcher. The study group of the research, was comprised a total of 76 children, who were 48-72 month-old attending a state preschool education institution in Çukurova, the central district of Adana, in the academic year of 2015-2016. There were 31 children in the experimental group. There were 21 children in the control group 1, and 24 in the control group 2. The preschool was preferred because the middle socio-economic level families' children attend this institution. The data collection instrument was determined as the "Torrance Test of Creative Thinking Figural Form A" (TTCT) for measuring the creativity, and as "The Unexpected Content Task, First Order False Belief Task, and Second Order False Belief Task" for measuring the theory of mind. The demographic information of children and families was obtained by using "The Personal Information Form" developed by the researcher. The data gathered in the study was assessed in a structure from general to specific in line with the general purpose and sub-purposes of the research. The data was firstly transferred into the SPSS 20.0 software. In the analyses, it was examined whether the scores of experimental group, control group 1, and control group 2 in the ToM development tests and the TTCT Figural Form A differentiate in pretests and posttests. Scores related to the variables were obtained by conducting the Kruskal Wallis test when the assumption of normality is not met, and by using the one way analysis of variance (one way ANOVA) in cases of normal distributions. Moreover, the scores received by the children in experimental, control 1, and control 2 groups from the pretests and posttests were compared by using t-test and the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. Also, the Spearman Correlation Coefficient was used to identify the relations between the scores obtained by the children in the study group from the TTCT Figural Form A and the ToM development test. According to the research findings, there was a statistically significant difference between the children's total scores in the ToM posttest and in the ToM subtest (except the unexpected content task) in favor of the treatment group (p<.01). In addition, it was observed that the ToM posttest and subtest scores (except the unexpected content task) of the children in the treatment group were higher at a statistically significant level than the pretest scores of the latter (p<.01). Similar results were also obtained in the creativity test of this research. It was found that there was a statistically significant difference between the total scores of the children in experimental group and control groups from the creativity posttest, and their scores from the creativity sub-dimensions, in favor of experimental group (p<.01). Besides, a statistically significant increase was observed in the total creativity scores of children in the treatment group and in the latter's scores of creativity's sub-dimensions including fluency, originality, abstractness of titles, elaboration, resistance to premature closure, and list of creative forces (p<.05). In this study, it was detected that there was not any statistically significant correlation between the pretest and posttest scores of the creativity and the ToM, and there was a positive and mid-level significant relationship only between the creativity and ToM pretests scores of the children in the control group 2 (p<.01). According to the research results, the Philosophy for Children has positive effects on the theory of mind and creativity of the 48-72-month-old children. Keywords: Preschool education, philosophy for children, teaching thinking, creativity,theory of mind.