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An Interview with
Karin Saskia Murris
2009
By: Samira Pezeshkpour & Saeed Naji
Prof Karin Murris is a philosopher, counsellor and educator. She trained with Lipman and adapted his method by using picture books. She published the resource material for teachers called Teaching Philosophy with Picture Books. Karin also uses a whole range of stimuli including music, objects and pictures. She and Dr. Joanna Haynes have wrote Storywise: Thinking through Stories and Newswise: Thinking through the News. Karin is also an accredited Socratic dialogue facilitator, philosophical counselor and is currently introducing, in collaboration with Dr Joanna Haynes, Dilemma Training - a method of ethical decision making - in primary, secondary schools, detached youth work and higher education after working with the method in business and public service contexts. She is currently lecturing in Philosophy of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Q: As you are specialist on doing p4c at summerschools, what is the difference between method of doing p4c in summerschool and that of doing it in formal courses?
Karin: It depends on the type of Summerschool, but they are often voluntary, so the motivation of one’s students is different. Also, we teach them philosophy for a whole day, so you need to vary your teaching resources to include video and activities such as role play.
Q: What kind of video do you use in your classes?
Karin: Sometimes videos of picturebooks, but increasingly I use powerpoint slides of picturebooks and/or display picturebooks using a digital visualiser and speak the text myself.
Q: How do you use them?
Karin: I present the narrative as starting point for a P4C session
Q: Could you please discuss about importance of learning about mind and body for young children?
Karin: Learning about philosophical issues helps children to understand issues at a deeper level and it follows on from their natural propensity to wonder about the world and our place in it.
Q: What is the structure of Picture Books? What is the difference of these kind of book with other ordinary picture books?
Karin: In the quality picturebooks I select I look for aesthetic quality and I have noticed that they display a relationship between adult and child which is respectful of child. In picturebooks the two signsystems (text and image) and interdependent creating a complexity that makes readers think. The visual provokes to contemplate and the text compels us to read on and find out more about the narrative. Constructing meaning is very complex.
Q: Could you please introduce me a picture book?
Karin: In Storywise: Thinking through Stories we give examples of picturebooks and how we have used them. Teachers are shown how to use picture books they can buy in shops or often already have on the shelves in their school. So they are popular books often already used for literacy and then our material offers supports in the sense that it alerts teachers to the philosophical issues, concepts and ideas in the stories. For example, in David McKee’s Not Now Bernard, issues are raised such as neglect, relationship adult/child, quality of life, suicide, monster. When using what some people call the first ever picture book Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, children can raise questions about fair punishment, power, dreaming/reality or time.
Q: What is the achievement of doing p4c in Wales?
Karin: I don’t know what you mean by the question. We have introduced P4C to many schools especially in the Swansea area. It fits in nicely with the curriculum that emphasises the importance of citizenship education and thinking skills.
We know that the Picture Book are used in young children classes, how old are these children exactly?
Karin: I use picturebooks from the age of three upwards until old age pensioners! With adolescents I make sure I select them carefully and put them on powerpoint or use a visualiser.
Q: Your PhD thesis is entitled "Metaphors of Child' Mind: teaching philosophy to young children ", it seems to be an interesting subject of which we can learn more things . Could you please discuss in briefly for our readers?
Karin: In my thesis, I explore the metaphors teachers use when they evaluate children’s thinking (eg mature/immature, slow, bright etc). I trace in the history of ideas where these philosophical assumptions about children’s mind originate (Plato) and the damage this has done on respecting young children as independent abstract thinkers. I also critique the P4C programme as developed by the IAPC. by looking at its modernist, rationalist assumptions and propose a more philosophical consistent alternative by using picturebooks.
Q: You wrote me that you critique the P4C programme as developed by the IAPC. Did you published it?
Karin: Yes, I did in my PhD thesis (1997). I will also publish it in a book I am writing with Joanna Haynes that will be published in 2010 by Routledge Research in Education Series.
Q: Did you design a test to know that your student' skill is improved or not? Does it work?
Karin: A research project has been carried out using my teachers’ manual Teaching Philosophy with Picture Books (1992). The evaluation was carried out with 5 year olds and reported in Improving Reading Standards In Primary Schools Project; Final Report, Grants for Education Support and Training Programme (GETS) 1993-94. Dyfed County Council, Education Department.
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