‘Community’ is suggestive of collectivism and plurality, while ‘enquiry’ evokes processes of exploration led by pressing questions or concerns. Combining these concepts and practices is at the heart of the ‘community of enquiry’, associated with Philosophy for Children (P4C). Drawing on and diverging from the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, among several others, P4C founders Ann Margaret Sharp and Matthew Lipman adopted this term to characterise its relational methodology (Gregory, 2022).
Over the past 50 years, philosophical enquiry in community has been taken up, not only in schools around the world but also in a wide range of other contexts, including teacher education, university teaching and research, and in informal community settings. Since the creation of Philosophy for Children (P4C), those associated with its theory and practice around the world have continued to deliberate and experiment with it, giving rise to a significant educational, social and philosophical movement (Gregory et al., 2017).
