This paper highlights the experiences of the "Philosophy for Children Programme" in Singapore. The programme attempts to create a community of inquiry in the classroom to facilitate students to discuss common philosophical issues for which there are no right or wrong answers. The initial experiences in a primary and secondary schools in 1992 were extremely difficult. Students were reluctant to discuss and teachers tended to monopolise the session, with the students giving monosyllabic answers or trying to explain their answers. As time went on, the situation improved. Both formative and summative evaluation were also carried out on the programme. While formative evaluation indicated that the programme was indeed successful, there were some problems with summative evaluation. New instruments had to be written for the summative evaluation. These instruments were successfully pilot-tested out in the Singapore programme and would be tried out in the programmes of other countries.
INTRODUCTION
EXPERIENCES IN SOME SCHOOLS
FORMATIVE EVALUATION
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES