How do primary school children view learning and behaviour problems and to what extent can a brief Philosophy 4 children (P4C) intervention change their feelings, behaviour or thoughts?

BackgroundWe know very little about how young children perceive others with special educational needs in educational contexts, or about how malleable these beliefs are. AimsTo gain an understanding of whether children’s attitudes towards those who learn and behave differently we designed a Philosophy for Children (P4C) intervention and evaluated it using a randomised control trial SampleThe participants were children, from two primary schools, based in the north of England (n = 165). All children, irrespective of special educational needs and disabilities (SENDs), were invited to participate in the study. In total (n = 39) children, 24% of the sample had been diagnosed with SENDs.MethodTwo non-gendered puppet characters, Zig and Zag represented learning and behaviour differences to participants. An English version of The Chedoke-McMaster Attitudes Towards Children with Handicaps Scale (CATCH) (Armstrong et al., 2017) was used to assess older children’s attitudes (affective, behavioural and cognitive) and a measure, developed by the researchers for the youngest children, before and after intervention. ResultsAfter adjusting baseline pre-test scores for affective, behavioural and cognitive attitudes we found that the intervention had a significant positive effect on affective attitudes towards those with learning disabilities. ConclusionThe study offers preliminary evidence that a brief four-week P4C intervention can significantly alter children’s affective attitudes towards others with learning differences. These research findings also demonstrate that very young children can meaningfully share their perspectives.