The effect of philosophy for children (P4C) activities on the caring thinking skills of middle school students

This study examined the effect of Philosophy for Children (P4C) activities on the caring thinking skills of sixth-grade middle school students. The study was conducted using a pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental design. The study group consisted of 65 sixth-grade students enrolled in two classes at a public middle school in Burdur during the 2024-2025 academic year, with one class assigned as the experimental group (n = 32) and the other as the control group (n = 33). Over eight weeks, the experimental group received a P4C curriculum designed by the researchers to develop the five dimensions of caring thinking (appreciative, affective, active, normative, and empathic), while the control group continued with the existing national curriculum. Data were collected using the Caring Thinking Skills Inventory and analyzed through one-way ANCOVA; for the sub-dimensions in which the homogeneity of regression slopes assumption was violated, models including the Group × Pretest interaction were estimated, and the Mann-Whitney U test on gain scores was reported as a supplementary sensitivity analysis. The findings revealed a statistically significant difference favoring the experimental group in the total caring thinking score, with a large group effect, and in the normative and empathic sub-dimensions. In the appreciative, affective, and active sub-dimensions, the experimental group scored higher at average pretest levels, but the group difference diminished as pretest scores increased. The results indicate that P4C activities can meaningfully develop the affective dimension of thinking, and recommendations were offered regarding the applicability of the caring thinking dimension of the 4C model at the middle school level.