Effectiveness of Philosophy for Children on Academic Intrinsic Achievement Motivation Based on Philosophical and Mystical Stories: Examining McClelland's Hypothesis

Document Type : Scientific- research

Authors

1 * M.A. in Educational Research. Yasouj University. Faculty of Humanities. Educational Sciences and Psychology Dep. Yasouj.Iran.

2 ** Assistant professor of Curriculum Development. Yasouj University. Faculty of Humanities. Educational Sciences and Psychology Dep. Yasouj. Iran.

10.30465/fabak.2025.9657

Abstract

 
Abstract
    McClelland introduced children's stories as an indicator of achievement. Most researchers emphasize the effectiveness of philosophy for children(P4C) regardless of the type of story. This study aimed to investigate McClelland's hypothesis regarding the effect of the type of story on the motivation of children's academic achievement. For this purpose, two studies were conducted. In the first study, the effectiveness of P4C was investigated based on philosophical stories, and in the second study, the effectiveness was based on mystical stories. The research method was a quasi-experiment based on comparing two pre-test and post-test groups. The intrinsic motivation scale of academic achievement by Wigfield and Cambria designed for elementary school was used as a tool. The subjects included sixth-grade girl students. Data analysis was done using the covariance analysis method (ANCOVA). The findings of both studies showed that in the community of philosophical inquiry (CPI), philosophical stories  compared to mystical stories  had a significant impact on children's academic achievement. As a result, McClelland's hypothesis was approved and the effectiveness of philosophy for children is influenced by the type of story investigated in the CPI.
Introduction
Mysticism and philosophy are considered to be ancient dualities that have been extended to the level of Western and Eastern thought. For example, Nisbet (2003) believes that Eastern thinking is more collectivist, intuitive, dependent, and holistic, and Western thinking is more individualistic, analytical, independent, and detailed, and these characteristics predict the behavior of the people of a society is considered. Researchers also emphasize cultural characteristics and their relationship with people's ideas and their perception of the world (Cromer, 1993; Lloyd, 1990; Nakamura, 1964). Corbin considers the West a symbol of sensory matter and the East a symbol of the intelligible or divine world. For example, philosophy was born in Greece, not China, and the Greeks thought of matter as consisting of discrete bodies or atoms, while the Chinese tended to see matter as continuous matter (Becker, 1986). Such a contrast is effective in the knowledge and way of looking at the human being and the world, which can be traced in the stories written for children.  McClelland (1923-1998), who focused on the issue of motivating progress, realized that children's stories and their content are one of the indicators of the progress of any country, which was the tool of Lipman's work in the circle of exploring philosophical stories. McClelland realized that there is a positive and significant relationship between the stories in different continents and the themes within them with the achievement motivation. McClelland hypothesized that there is a relationship between the type of stories of a country and the development motivation of the people of that country. Therefore, the problem of the current research stems from the confusion between mystical and philosophical stories in research related to the field of philosophy for children in Iran and considering these two types of stories as one. Therefore, the main question of the current research is: Is the effectiveness of community of philosophical inquiry (CPI) on children's inner motivation influenced by the type of story (philosophical or mystical)?
Method
The research method was quasi-experimental with a pre-test-post-test design and a control group. Before the implementation of the plan, both experimental and control groups were pre-tested. Then, the philosophy for children was implemented as an intervention in the experimental group, but the control group did not receive this intervention (philosophy for children). In the end, both groups of subjects participated in the post-test. Due to the existence of an independent and dependent variable, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to compare before and after the experimental procedure (Van Breukelen, 2006). The pre-test and post-test were measured by the internal motivation scale of children's academic progress (Wigfield and Cambria, 2010). Finally, the data was analyzed with the help of SPSS version 19 software by observing the parametric assumptions. In the first study, philosophical stories (by Matthew Lipman), and in the second study, mystical stories (Rumi) were used. The 40 girl students in the sixth grade of primary school in the CPI (20 people in the experimental group and 20 people in the control group) and 40 people in the learning circle of mystical stories (20 people in the experimental group and 20 people in the control group) and They were randomly replaced in two experimental and control groups.
Results
The results of the first study showed that teaching P4C had a significant effect on academic motivation. However, in the second study, teaching philosophy to children was not effective. The findings of the present research showed that the type of story has a significant effect on academic motivation. The findings showed that philosophical stories had a significant effect on academic motivation compared to mystical stories. On the other hand, what was clearly visible in the CPI of philosophical stories compared to mystical stories was that the subjects were more eager to participate; They were more curious and asked more diverse questions. Whereas, in the CPI of mystical stories, the subjects were less eager to participate, their questions were convergent, and they had less of a critical and creative relationship with mystical stories.
Discussion and Conclusion
Perhaps one of the reasons for this difference is the content of the style of philosophical stories compared to mysticism. Mystical stories are not challenging, they have a linear and simple plot, they are suggestive and inductive, they do not follow the issue critically, they are not questionable, the end of the story can be guessed easily, and the concepts are not compatible with children's understanding. However, the philosophical stories are unpredictable and divergent and invite subjects to an intellectual challenge in a horizontal inter-subjective discourse. Russell in his book "Mysticism and Logic", considers insight and intuition, which are the basis of mysticism, as the introduction to reasoning and analysis, but with the stipulation that intuitive perceptions are not indicative of the truth in any way, but maybe wrong and since the role of intuition is more persuasive than argumentative, it is more likely to be wrong. On the other hand, Iranian mystical stories are the result of the themes of mystical poets, such as Rumi's poems, which are full of mystical explanations, in which the position of mysticism is higher than philosophy, and the feet of reasoners are always hard and unyielding.
 
 

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