The Effectiveness of Teaching philosophical thinking to Children on Academic Stress and Self-Control and Critical Thinking in Sixth Grade Students

The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of teaching philosophical thinking to children on academic stress, self-control and critical thinking of sixth grade students. The current research was a quasi-experimental study of pretest, post-test with control group. The statistical population of this study was all sixth grade elementary school boy students in Mahallat in the academic year 2019-2020. The study sample consisted of 44 people who were selected by convenience sampling method and responded to the questionnaires of Ang and Huan (2006) Academic Expectation Stress Questionnaire (AESI), Tanji and Boomister (2004) Short Form Self-Control Questionnaire and Saso Critical Thinking Questionnaire (2013). The experimental group was subjected to the implementation of the philosophical thinking training program for ten one-hour sessions (one session per week) before the start of the classroom in Seyedabadi Elementary School of Mahalat city by the researcher. The content of the training sessions was taken from the book "Excuses for Thinking: A Method for Developing Philosophical Thinking in Children and Adolescents" by Mehbooba Speedkar (2015).​ The collected data was analyzed using multivariate covariance analysis and SPSS-22 software. The results showed that the significant level of the group effect (removing the possible effect of pre-test scores) for the critical thinking variable (F=19.30 and P=0.00) and its components critical openness (F=4.21 and P=0.04) and Reflective skepticism (F=8.26, P=0.00), self-control (F=20.05, P=0.00), and academic stress (F=22.52, P=0.00) and its components, stress caused by personal expectations of oneself. (F=5.97 and P=0.02) and the stress caused by parents/teachers' expectations (F=3.15 and P=0.05), is smaller than the alpha significance level equal to 0.05 can be concluded that teaching philosophical thinking to children as an effective intervention has an effect on the variable of academic stress, self-control and critical thinking of students.
Keywords: teaching philosophical thinking for Children, Academic Stress, Self-Control, Critical Thinking
Introduction: Human's natural environment is such that he should adapt himself to it. The surrounding environment can reveal some psychological variables in humans, on the other hand, by training skills, people can become aware of the psychological variables in their existence and use them well in situations and solve many challenges on their way. Today, various ways and methods have been invented to teach people, each of which has special characteristics. One of the new educational methods that has been welcomed by education professionals in recent years is the method of teaching philosophy to children. This new approach teaches children how to think. The program for teaching philosophy to children has clear goals; making the mind to activate and function is one of these goals; This work is done by challenging the obvious, learning principled thinking and structural interaction and acting on them. In the field of education, increasing children's epistemological understanding by teaching them philosophy can affect the individual's performance in academic fields. The present study was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of teaching philosophical thinking to children on academic stress, self-control and critical thinking of sixth grade students.
Materials and methods: This research is specific and objective in terms of its practical purpose and results and has a practical aspect. The current research was a semi-experimental type of pre-test, post-test with a control group. The statistical population was all the male students of the sixth grade of Mahalat city in the academic year of 2018-2019. The sample was 44 people who were selected by available sampling method and to collect data, Ang and Hwan's academic expectations stress questionnaires were used. (2006), Tanji, Baumeister, and Boone's (2004) short form self-control and Sasso's (2013) critical thinking answer. The experimental group underwent the philosophical thinking training program for ten one-hour sessions. The content of the training sessions was taken from the book "Excuses for Thinking: A Method for Developing Philosophical Thinking in Children and Adolescents" by Mehbooba Speedkar (2015). In each session, the intellectual stories of Philip Kam, translated by Shahr Tash and Rashtchi were used. The themes of the stories included anger, aggression, friendship and respect, which made students question. The introductory session was dedicated to introducing the program and explaining the objectives of the program, then exercises were presented to familiarize the students with the method of implementing the program. During the sessions, parts of the stories were read by one of the students, and then they were asked to write down their questions about the stories so that at the end of the story, they could talk about the questions by presenting reasons. In this way, a discussion was formed that made it possible to reach the research community. After the end of the sessions, the final tests were performed for both groups and the difference in the collected scores was analyzed using multivariate covariance analysis with SPSS-22 software.
Discussion: Before running the covariance analysis, the assumptions of the statistical method were checked. The findings showed that the significance level of the variables of critical thinking, self-control and academic anxiety is more than 0.05, so it can be concluded that the variance of the samples is homogeneous. Also, the scores of the groups in critical thinking, self-control and academic anxiety have a normal distribution; and the homogeneity of the regression slope was confirmed. Next, the results of covariance analysis showed the significant level of the group effect (removing the possible effect of pre-test scores) for the variable of critical thinking (F=19.30 and P=0.00) and its components critical openness (F=4.21 and P=0.04). P) and reflective skepticism (F=8.26, P=0.00), self-control (F=20.05, P=0.00), and academic stress (F=22.52, P=0.00) and its components stress caused by Personal expectations from oneself (F=5.97 and P=0.02) and stress caused by parents/teachers' expectations (F=3.15 and P=0.05) are smaller than the significant alpha level (0.05). .
Results: Finally, teaching philosophy to the students in this research made them identify the inconsistency in the discussion and make logical conclusions by recognizing the harmony between the two sentences, the spirit of criticism and criticism was created in them so that they can to judge, criticize and evaluate others and finally go to self-correction by making better decisions or choices in self-criticism; Therefore, according to the results, this study shows that the implementation of the philosophy program for children has significant effects on the development of critical thinking, curiosity and questioning, self-control and preventing children's academic anxiety. According to the results obtained from this research and the positive effects of the philosophy program for students on questioning and critical thinking, self-control and preventing children's anxiety, it seems that this program can improve the structure of the educational system that aims to foster Questioning and critical thinking people have a positive effect. In other words, teaching philosophical thinking to children as an effective intervention has an effect on the variables of academic stress, self-control and critical thinking of students.