USING PHILOSOPHY FOR CHILDREN (P4C) APPLICATIONS IN ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING INSTRUCTION: AN ACTION RESEARCH

In this research, the Philosophy for Children (P4C) method was applied to improve the argumentative writing skills of 7th grade secondary school students, and the effect of this method on the development of students' argumentative writing skills and the students' opinions on the applications were tried to be determined. Since the research requires the application of a new method to solve an identified problem, it was designed in the form of action research, one of the qualitative research methods. The application of the research was carried out in a school in the Kartal district of Istanbul over a period of 12 weeks. During the application process, researcher and student diaries, student activity sheets, video and audio recordings, photographs and interviews with students were used to collect qualitative data. "Argumentative Writing Form" and "Argumentative Writing Analytical Rubric" were used to collect quantitative data. The obtained qualitative data were analyzed with content analysis and descriptive analysis. "Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Signed Rank Test" was used to analyze quantitative data. As a result of the application, it was determined that the Philosophy for Children (P4C) method positively affected students' learning of the form and content features of argumentative writing, and that they were able to transfer the argumentative text structure elements they learned with this method to the argumentative writings they wrote on different topics. It has also been concluded that the P4C method positively affects students' skills in different areas such as thinking, speaking, daily life and communication, and provides students with the ability to organize their writings. Keywords: Philosophy for children (P4C), Argumentative writing, Thinking skills, Language skills.