The Community of Philosophical Inquiry in Question: Examining the Role of the Facilitator in Deliberative Discussion

Authors

Ashley G. Lucas, Towson UniversityFollow
Andrea Milligan, Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of WellingtonFollow
Sondra Bacharach, Te Herenga Waka, Victoria University of WellingtonFollow

Abstract

This article examines the democratic hopes for the community of philosophical inquiry (CPI), a mode of deliberative discussion, when social justice is both the topic and the goal of discussion. It shares insights from a CPI that was used as an intersubjective research method (Golding, 2015) to enable the authors to interrogate their assumptions about "teaching for social justice." The "bake sale" was a recurrent metaphor employed by the group to reject thin conceptions and pedagogical practices of social justice. However, the inquiry became blocked at a level of externalized analysis and arguably perpetuated injustice. This article uses the productive force of the authors’ failures to consider the methodological and facilitative conditions that could have promoted a deeper interrogation of teaching for social justice. In affirming calls for greater attention to the dynamics of race, positionality, and power in CPI (e.g., Burgh & Yorshanky, 2011; Chetty, 2017, 2018; Chetty & Suissa, 2017; Reed-Sandoval & Sykes, 2017; Vansieleghem & Kennedy, 2011), we argue that facilitators seeing themselves and the CPI as "being in question" (Biesta, 2017) is central to the viability of the CPI to pursue social justice aims.

Recommended Citation

Lucas, A. G. , Milligan, A. , Bacharach, S. (2024). The Community of Philosophical Inquiry in Question: Examining the Role of the Facilitator in Deliberative Discussion. Democracy and Education, 32 (1), Article 2.
Available at: https://democracyeducationjournal.org/home/vol32/iss1/2