Study

Barrientos-Rastrojo, J., Saavedra-Macías, J., & Nardi, E. R.

2024 Brazil

Intervention aims

Development of critical thinking, the government of passions and improvement of interpersonal and social relationships.

Duration and Intensity

20 weekly sessions (+2 for delivery of tests) 6 months Session duration not reported.

Participant selection

Eligible prisoners self-selected between intervention (philosophy) and control group (English classes) There were 8 groups of between 15 and 20 participants (no further details given)

Prison setting

Not reported

Delivery methods and procedures

Workshops structured into the following stages:

1. review of the previous week’s practice;
2. performance of a practical exercise;
3. dialogical and maieutic explanation of the theory;
4. exercise carried out by the students;
5. proposal of a weekly task; and
6. brief final dialogue with whoever required so, individually or in groups.

Weekly exercises were proposed that had to be performed daily.

5 facilitators with a degree in philosophy or education were recruited to deliver intervention (not specified which groups were facilitated by whom).

Instructors received all the information about the project, including the detailed development of each of the meetings, the measurement instruments and the precise attitudes with which to address the inmates. The general PI (Principal Investigator) of the project held weekly on-line meetings that were 60-minute sessions with the team of instructors during the whole process (most commonly devoted to dealing with the content of the previous meeting and preparing for the next one), covering a total of 30 meetings.

Topics Covered

Control group:
The content of the sessions was based on a list of topics using a basic level.

Experimental group:
- 14 sessions focused on stoic exercises (diakrisis, prosoché, cosmic vision, premeditatio malorum, gymnastiké, akroasis, enkrateia)
- 6 sessions on critical thinking exercises (conceptualization, argumentation, analysis of language and rational criteria).

 

 

Study

Bovil and Anderson

2020 Scotland (UK)

Intervention aims

Provide alternative educational experience for those already involved in education; Improve critical literacy skills

Duration and Intensity

6-weeks 1hr tutorial

Participant selection

Self-selecting prisoners who had already chosen to take education classes

Prison setting

Classroom

Delivery methods and procedures

McCall’s (2009) CoPI framework:

1. aim is to engage in ‘philosophising’, rather than convey substantive content concerning philosophy;
2. Ideas are conveyed through everyday, common language without specialist terms and with no appeal to ‘authority’;
3. Chair leads and manages the dialogue (but remains outside of it), structuring the process by: imposing time frames; deciding on questions; indicating who can speak; asking for responses; modelling key skills;

CoPI ‘rules of engagement’:

1. Before the start of each six-week programme, the participants were asked to choose another name for themselves and wear it for each other to see.
2. participants were not allowed to talk about themselves or introduce anecdotes about the events that had led them to be incarcerated.
3. participants in a CoPI tutorial were told that they must follow the format of: ‘I agree / disagree with … X … when they said … Y because … Z’.

In each inquiry, participants sat in a circle and were given a text, (print and/or image), which was read out to ensure that no one would be excluded from the processes of thinking. The texts served as conceptual springboards, not as objects for analysis in themselves. The discussion then began with the question selected by the chair which was deemed to have the potential for lively philosophical exploration.

No prison officers in the session, but prison teaching staff allowed

Sessions facilitated by postgraduate students and prison teachers; all had received training in CoIP beforehand

Topics Covered

The Nature of Knowing;

Mind,

Brains and Computers;

Morality;

Free Will and Determinism;

Time Travel.

 

 

Study

Gois and Kane

2022 UK

Intervention aims

To give participants new ways to think about their lives and to help them have more control over their own mind by learning new ways to think differently.

Duration and Intensity

10 weeks 1hr discussion group

Participant selection

Self-selecting females residing in the DTC

Prison setting

Community Meeting Room

Delivery methods and procedures

Community of Inquiry (CoI) set-up: members sitting in a circle and engaging in exploratory, democratic, cooperative dialogue around a focus stimulus (e.g. question, task, image, problem).

White board to aid memory and discussion mapping;

Gender-aware and trauma informed strategies for communication and interaction with participants;

The facilitator spent the whole day at the DTC taking active part in community and staff activities on the days that the philosophy sessions took place.

Decisions about topics for discussion were deferred to participants, but they wanted the facilitator to suggest a question to get them started.

The facilitator drew on specialist knowledge and expertise in philosophy to identify and suggest to the group topics for discussion. These mapped onto mainstream philosophy areas (e.g. metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology, ethics), and specific questions/issues suggested because of their potential relevance to therapy targets and/or in response to events at the DTC.

Participants were actively involved in the co-production of philosophical content.

Sessions facilitated by one of the study co-authors (an academic philosopher), who acted as co-inquirer in the discussions. 1 prison-officer took part also as co-enquirer.

Topics Covered

1. The experience machine - Would you plug yourself (forever) to a machine that simulated every possible pleasure?
2. Happiness
   • If happiness was a cake, what would be the ingredients?
   • Which would you rank first?
   • How do we distinguish true from false happiness?
3. Implicit Bias
   • How can we repair involuntary harm?
4. Can a computer think?
   • The imitation game
   • Chinese Room
5. Tragedy of the Commons
   • How can we avoid spoiling shared resources?
6. Free Will
   • Do we have free will?
7. Does it matter how you live your life?
8. Does it matter how you live your life? (revisited)
9. Ethics of humour
   • Are some jokes morally unacceptable?
10. What good is thinking?
    • Pro and cons of thinking
    • “Prisons we choose to live in”

 

 

Study

Mnisi, F.

(2019) S.A.

Intervention aims

Provide ethical training to prisoners to improve moral thinking and reasoning

Duration and Intensity

12 weeks

± 4hrs per session, once or twice a week

Participant selection

Self-selecting

Prison setting

Outdoors

Delivery methods and procedures

Training included a combination of formats:

1. Power-point presentation (because it brought formality; this seemed to relay the message that the participants were taken seriously and respected through this professionalism and not only seen as mere offenders.;
2. tutorial;
3. Socratic debate (a structured exchange of ideas and arguments between two groups who presented opposing views (on a given value), in a form of affirmative position and negative position about a specific topic or moral dilemma);
4. practical application of values of Ubuntu with reflective-journal;
5. written assignments;
6. legal presentation on Constitutional Rights offered by an Advocate from Johannesburg.
7. participants worked in groups and choose their own value as a topic to present on Ubuntu for the facilitators and Officials of the Johannesburg Correctional Services at the end of the training programme (two participants who had been released early were able to present).

The intervention consisted of semi- formal or semi- structured programmes with discussions of scientific paper as needed, as well as legal matters. Sessions facilitated a Corrections Officer (primary facilitator) and the author (a PhD student)

Topics Covered

• Topics on Ethics versus Morals and Ethics versus Law;
• The principle of Ubuntu (including examples of moral values of Ubuntu;
• Practical application of Ubuntu (where participants including the facilitators had to practically apply and journal the experiences of the moral values on a daily basis for a period of 4- 6 weeks.

 

 

Study

Pritchard, D.

2019 Scotland (UK)

Intervention aims

Enhance the intellectual virtues, and thereby the intellectual character, of the students.

Duration and Intensity

7-weeks; 45mns tutorial with groups of 7-8 students each

Participant selection

Researchers and prison educators worked together to identify potential candidates among those taking education classes; those invited could opt-in or out

Prison setting

Classroom

Delivery methods and procedures

1. McCall’s (2009) CoPI framework+MOOC (massive open online course) (offline version);
2. Dedicated leaflets for each topic covered in the MOOC;
3. Tutorials (alternating between those that were devoted to engaging with the MOOC content directly and those that were run in a more discursive manner using the CoPI methodology).
4. Critical thinking exercises (‘lateral logic puzzles’).

CoPI key ‘rules of play’:

1. participants were not permitted to talk about themselves, or indeed engage in any dialogue that wasn’t germane to the intellectual task in hand. (The point was to make the students focus on the reasons in play.)
2. Before the first CoPI tutorial, the students were required to choose another name for themselves (fictional or otherwise). (Not using personal names helps the students to abstract away from their personal experience and focus on the reasons in play);
3. Participants of the CoPI are told that they must follow the following format: ‘I agree / disagree with….. when they said….because….’

During tutorials, students were given a text (print and/or image), chosen to correspond with the MOOC materials they had covered, and the chair collated the questions arising from the interaction of the participants with the texts. The questions were written up on a whiteboard with the names of the questioners alongside. The discussion then began with the question selected by the chair, which leant itself to genuine philosophical exploration.

Each CoPI tutorial was conceptually linked to the philosophical field covered by the corresponding section of the MOOC.

Sessions were delivered by volunteer postgraduate students and prison educators. All had received prior training to familiarize themselves with the content of the MOOC and the mechanics of the CoPI pedagogical methodology that was employed.

Topics Covered

core areas of philosophy, including epistemology, ethics, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of science

 

 

Study

 Szifris, K.

2016 England (UK)

Intervention aims

The aim of the philosophy sessions is to get participants thinking and talking about questions that they may never have considered or, if they have, may never have discussed in a structured environment.

Duration and Intensity

 12 weeks

Participant selection

 Self-selecting

Prison setting

 Not reported

Delivery methods and procedures

Philosophy education based on the principles of Socratic dialogue. Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI) pedagogy:

1. group of individuals who discuss philosophical questions in an exploratory, non-adversarial manner.
2. A facilitator begins the session by presenting a stimulus3 which can be based around a particular topic (e.g. a ‘just’ society, personal identity), a specific philosopher (e.g. Kant, Socrates, Descartes) or a school of philosophy (e.g. the Stoics, utilitarianism).
3. The facilitator acts as one of the members of the community whilst also guiding conversation and maintaining focus.

In delivering course content, each session had a specific purpose. Some of the sessions were focused on a specific philosopher’s work illustrating how philosophers build arguments. Others focussed on a topic and introduced different philosophical points of view introducing arguments and counter-arguments to illustrate the complexity of philosophical conversation as well as providing mechanisms to allow participants to express their own philosophies.

Philosophy sessions led participants through different philosophical ideas, introducing counter arguments and further developments in stages.

Sessions facilitated by author (a PhD researcher)

Topics Covered

Plato’s Republic, the principle of specialisation and the question of a ‘just’ society.

Topics including knowledge and identity (Descartes, Hume, Arendt and Baginni), morality (Kant, Bentham and Mill) and the ‘good life’ (Socrates, Russell). Some sessions were paired to ensure opposing philosophies could be explored.

 

 

Study

Tillmanns, M. and Crespo, W.

2018 USA

Intervention aims

Introduce a Socratic Dialogue Group as an alternative for inmates who were not challenged or who might otherwise choose to define themselves by mental or physical illness.

Objective was to understand Philosophy as a way of life

Duration and Intensity

4 years; By-weekly

Participant selection

• Self-selecting (not specified if from general population or only those making use of the chapel services);
• male facilitator later invited inmates who were not as articulate, nor as well-read or culturally sophisticated as the others and had some definite deficits. For some English was their second language.

Prison setting

Prison Chapel

Delivery methods and procedures

1. Socratic dialogue;
2. Texts, chapters and articles (given 2 weeks in advance to stimulate participants’ own thinking);
3. Selected children’s books

Each session started with reminder of rules for discussion (wait until the other finishes before speaking; do not seek to argue but seek to understand; questions posed to each other should be open and inquiring questions or ask questions for clarification; no one was to dominate the discussion and if there was a period of silence, participants were to simply allow it to take them where it did). Discussions focused on building collective understanding of topics raised by reading materials (‘the bigger picture’), rather than the materials themselves or whether individuals agreed or disagreed with them. At the end of discussion, the group would wind down and allow for last words and ideas from everyone which was followed by a period of silence and a selection of music played for everyone to experience.

Sessions facilitated by the prison chaplain and a lecturer at UCSD (who is also the chaplain’s wife)

Topics Covered

Existentialism;

Ancient philosophy (The Ancient Greeks provided an understanding of life along with the spiritual exercises and practices to achieve a reasoned choice of life, with an emphasis on achieving freedom from suffering (Epicureans), or exercising moral intent (Stoics), or living the good life (Platonists), etc.)

Extracts from J. P. Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games, V. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, S. Segal’s Meaning Crisis, Martin Buber’s The Education of Character, and P. Hadot’s Philosophy as a Way of Life,

Books: P. Hadot’s What is Ancient Philosophy? A. C. Sponville. A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues

Articles from The American Psychologist and The Psychotherapy Networker.

Included a Philosophy for Children component where the group read children’s stories and talked about how the inmates could use these topics to discuss life’s issues with their children. Some of the childrens’ books read were, Milo and the Magical Stones, by M. Pfister, Doctor De Soto, by W. Steig, and Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse, by L. Leonni