engleski

Play as a way to developing critical thinking in ethics education

hrough play a child learns, trough play a child gets used to rules of social behaviour and develops his or her motoric and intellectual skills. Johan Huizinga argues that civilization arises and develops through play and as a play. For human species, along with the characterizations such as homo sapiens and homo faber, he adds homo ludens. If we ask children what they like to do, almost every child will answer “I like to play”. Through game children can develop their thinking abilities and skills. That’s why we can use games for developing critical thinking skills. However, we must be careful in characterizing game as a educational tool since because transformation into a tool calls into question game as a game. Developing thinking skills through game must go on, in no small part, just like a game. Thinking games, thinking stories and similar educational tool are used for developing thinking skills. This kind of games must be open in the sense to stimulate children to think. The aim of this kind of educational activities is not to suggest children what to think, but encourage them to find their own solution and to try to construct and formulate their own thinking. We will present ways how to use this general approach in the field of ethics and values education (employing critical thinking approach and philosophy with children). Within such a framework we can use activities or games including moral dilemmas, examples from everyday life, stories, cartoons etc. to stimulate children to play and think about ethical issue given their level of moral maturity.

play; critical thinking; ethics education; philosophy for children; values.

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