Abstract:

This study aims to examine the questions that middle school students formulated during "Philosophy for Children (P4C)" activities. The research is a case study from qualitative research designs. The participants of the study were 7th grade middle school students from a public school. Within the scope of the research, five math story videos were shown to the students as stimuli, and then the students were asked to form questions about these videos and then discuss them. Within the scope of the research, 97 valid questions were generated. These questions were analyzed using an indicator developed by the researchers that included four different categories. These categories are "Basic Knowledge and Recall", "Cause and Effect Analysis", "Critical Thinking and Evaluation" and "Empathizing and Expressing Thoughts". The categories emerged as the questions were analyzed during the research. According to the findings, the questions in the first category are questions related to students' ability to understand and remember basic information, such as who, what, where, when, and how. Questions in the second category were more related to students' ability to understand cause and effect relationships and required students to think more deeply and analytically. In the third category of the study, it was found that students questioned the topics with a critical perspective and discussed different possible scenarios. Finally, in the fourth category, students generated questions related to their ability to express their own thoughts and to understand and accept different perspectives. When the students started the activities, they produced questions mostly in the knowledge and recall category, but as the activities progressed, it was observed that they used different thinking skills such as empathizing and critical thinking to produce questions in this direction and that these skills improved over time. In conclusion, the study provides an important perspective to understand middle school students' question generation skills and thought processes during P4C activities.

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