This research project aims to answer the following questions: (1) What experiences do pupils with intellectual disabilities (ID) report after participating in education based on philosophical dialogue? and (2) How do these experiences relate to the needs of pupils with ID? To address these questions, an interview study was conducted with 12 pupils, aged 13 to 15 years, with primarily mild ID, attending the Swedish Compulsory School for Pupils with Intellectual Disabilities. The pupils participated in a small-scale intervention program consisting of 12 sessions of philosophical dialogues over 6 weeks, guided by two experienced facilitators. Toward the end of the program, the children took part in semi-structured interviews to share their experiences of the philosophical dialogues. The responses to these interviews were analyzed in relation to identified needs of pupils with ID, specifically the need for cognitively stimulating activities, communication and social skills, and decision-making skills. Thematic analysis of the data revealed the following themes: To meet each other, to know and grow, and to have a good time. The results indicate that philosophical dialogue holds promise in addressing the identified needs of pupils with ID. Notably, the role of humor in the children’s experiences during the philosophical dialogues was of particular interest.

In our previous research, we developed a theoretical concept that we call ‘the impossibility view’, denoting an attitude commonly held about people with certain disabilities, claiming that they cannot participate in philosophical dialogues, for alleged lack of skills, abilities or prerequisites. Inprior research, we have shown it false for several types of disabilities, and in our ongoing research project, we take on the challenge to prove the impossibility view false also for pupils with intellectual disability (ID), and study what influence a philosophical dialogue intervention has on socio-emotional development and experiences among pupils with ID. We use a mixed-methods pretest-posttest intervention design with an intervention school and a matched control school. In this paper, we outline the background of the research and describe the main methods used. During the presentation, we will present preliminary results.

We will present results from a multiple case study based on interviews with students diagnosed with neurodevelopment disorders and their school staff after participating in a short and small-scale intervention carried out in a socio-economically disadvantaged Swedish elementary school in 2019. Two small school classes participated in 12 philosophical dialogues each (ranging from 45 to 60 minutes) during a total of seven weeks. Two facilitators, both with years of facilitation experience and teacher degree and at least BA in philosophy, facilitated the majority of the dialogues. 

The philosophical dialogues mainly followed a ”routine” procedure, but a few differences can be noted. First, one of the facilitators wrote short stories prompting interest in contestable issues during the intervention, which helped the stimuli to get adapted to the groups’ developing interests. Second, in the start-up phase of several dialogues, the students were encouraged to practice dialogic skills through randomly assigned individual and group tasks based on both the jointly decided rules for interaction and on ART for kids (a tool for children to become aware of and evaluate dialogic quality and progress in inquiry dialogic sessions). During meta-dialogue, the groups returned to these tasks in order to increase meta-cognitive awareness, evaluate group performance, and set up short term goals for the upcoming session. Third, during two sessions, the sessions were organized in the form of a dialogic puzzle. 

The sample in this multiple case study contains students from two school classes (school years 3 and 4) in a Swedish elementary school. The school was small (about 150 students in total), rural, and ranked among the 10 % most socio-economically disadvantaged in Sweden. The school included students from around 20 different countries and about 20 % of the schools’ students were asylum seekers. All the students in the multiple case study were diagnosed with different neurodevelopmental disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), attention deficit disorder (ADD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and severe developmental language disorder (DLD).

We interviewed the students, four teachers who participated in the dialogues, and the school principal. The students were interviewed individually in direct connection to the end of the intervention about their experiences from the dialogues and their perceptions about the influence of the dialogues. The interviewed teachers (two in each grade) were those who had participated in the dialogues. They were interviewed in pairs, also in direct connection to the end of the intervention, while the school principal was interviewed two years after the study. The staff interviews concerned the staff’s experiences of the influence of the dialogues on the students within the intervention as well as transfer effects to other contexts in school. All interviews were semistructured. 

For each student, we present data from both student and staff interviews. We strive to give a representative picture of both the advantages and disadvantages expressed by students and staff.