Using Philosophy for/with Children in Initial Teacher Education as a pedagogical approach to challenge neoliberalism in education

The effects of the last forty years of political movement in England have been an inexorable move towards a standards-based and marketized system of teacher education (Menter et al., 2017). Current performative education policies, influenced by prevailing neoliberal tenets, have also redefined the model of a teacher, to one whose purpose is to deliver knowledge to largely passive students (Hardy & Lewis, 2017; Strom & Martin, 2017). This reinforces a particular conceptualisation of education, as articulated in Freire’s (1996) banking education, with knowledge seen as an objective and quantifiable content to be disseminated (Freire, 1996; Strom & Martin, 2017). Likewise, this impacts on initial teacher education (ITE), as this model presumes that ITE is concerned with transferring a body of knowledge to its student teachers, that can subsequently be passed on, unmodified, to their pupils (Strom & Martin, 2017). This chapter will advocate Philosophy for Children (P4wC) as a form of problem-posing critical pedagogy (Freire, 1996) to be explored with student teachers as an antidote or challenge to neoliberal educational narratives. The suggestion will be that P4wC can both encourage philosophical dialogue and critical thinking in education seminars, but also can provide a pedagogical model for student teachers to enact in the primary classroom, to challenge narrow and reductionist performative agendas, and encourage democratic teaching and learning environments.