REPORT - Teacher Training

Report from the Advanced Practice Course -  2025

Over the September holidays VAPS held our Advanced Practice Community of Inquiry training course.  This course is designed for practitioners that want to take their abilities to engage young people in the classroom to a deeper level.  We spent three days engaged in Communities of Inquiries, as well as looking deeply at some of the theory and strategies we can use and implement to move our participants beyond mere conversation and into deeper philosophical analysis and engagement with our content.  We looked at how to deepen critical thinking, how to support different groups of students with the construction of different skills – social skills as well as critical and creative thinking.  

Here are some quotes from those participants:

Philosophy Disneyland! Three days at the Community of Inquiry Level 2 course — and honestly, the greatest three days of my working life.  It felt like Philosophy Disneyland: I never wanted to leave or miss a minute.Across the three days we explored:  How to turn conversations into inquiries, Why respectful disagreement can be a gift, The difference between concepts and examples, Games and activities that make philosophy playful, but rigorous. A favourite reminder from Lipman:“Philosophical dialogue is like a boat going into the wind.It goes this way and that, but in the whole the direction is forward.” I’m excited to bring these tools into Philosophy for Everybody, and keep creating spaces where curiosity, conversation, and community thrive.

Andy

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Last week I spent three soul-filling days completing the 'VAPS Philosophical Inquiry in the Classroom Advanced Practice Course' led by Bonnie Zuidland. Together, we explored how to investigate these philosophical questions while building our students ethical, social, and intercultural capabilities with a particular focus on critical and creative thinking through a range of pedagogical techniques. Strongly recommend this for anyone interested in building this into their own, or their school's, practice. Many of these approaches lay at the heart of our Echoes and Dialogues program.

Joel

Please be on the look out for the next offering of this course.  If you would like to know more about the course and express interest in attending one of the future offerings please send an email to: bonnie@vaps.vic.edu.au

Contact Bonnie Zuidland for further enquiries.