Towards the end of the seventies of the twentieth century American philosopher Matthew Lipman and his colleagues developed a method of philosophical inquiry with children and the youth, which, according to the author, allowed to supply inefficient system of education in the areas of supporting intellectual and social development of children. The Philosophy for Children scheme was aimed to develop critical thinking skills, reasoning, argumentation and dialogue. The idea of philosophizing with children in school has become an inspiration for many educational experiments carried out in various parts of the world. An important part of these experiments is the scheme’s evaluation, the aim of which is to investigate the effectiveness of the method and its impact on intellectual, emotional and social development of children. The article analyzes the 4 selected European researches, concerning the measurement of the impact of philosophical investigations on the development of children cognitive competence. It presents the basic methodological assumptions, the course of study and the results and conclusions of experiments. All of these experiments demonstrate the positive impact of methods to support the intellectual development of children. Despite this, the method is still seen only as an educational experiment and there is not wider application in education. From the analysis of research reports one can conclude that there is a need for in-depth and systematic study of the method of philosophical inquiry in education, inclusion in the study area, not only the effect of the impact of the program on children’s competence but also on the competence of teachers and broadly understood culture of the school.

Tinkering (with) bricolage. Reconstruction of selected philosophical and methodological assumptions of Joe L. Kincheloe’s concept

The bricolage as philosophical inquiry is a critical-constructivist research perspective proposed by Joe L. Kincheloe. It’s practical implementation assumes the use of various philosophical tools to help clarify the process of inquiry and provide insight into the assumptions on which it conceptually rests (Kincheloe, 2008). The considerations undertaken in this article are aimed at the characteristic of the philosophical and methodological assumptions that co-create it. Their reflective reception determines the possibility of a reliable use of the bricolage in the practice of academic research. The undertaken reconstruction was directed by the following research question: What epistemological – ontological – methodological preconditions make up the practice of research using the bricolage, in line with Kincheloe’s concept? Its material basis was the collection of books and articles listed in the bibliography. A detailed, though certainly not exhaustive answer to the research problem posed is presented in three thematically separated parts of the article. In chapters one and two, I describe the epistemology and ontology of complexity. In chapter three, I draw attention to an active view of research methodology. The contents presented in the article, although thematically arranged, intertwine, leading to the representation of selected aspects of the bricolage.