What makes humans meaningfully connected through philosophical inquiries? -Comparing online and in-person dialogues-

• In Event: Philosophical, ethical, and practical questions for education

Proposal

The purpose of this presentation is to reflect on the importance of in-person interactions among human beings. Needless to say, the use of technology such as Zoom and Skype has expanded our learning experiences and ability to connect with people all over the world. Furthermore, the development of translation tools, such as Google Translate or DeepL, has enabled people to communicate with others who do not speak the same language. However, scholars have recently began investigating the possibility that making things more convenient by setting up learning spaces digitally has caused us to overlook some important factors that exist only in physical learning spaces. When it comes to creating meaningful human relationships, the importance of being with others in-person can no longer be ignored. Yamagiwa (2023) argues that trustable human relationships can be only established by interactions that make use of all five senses: seeing, listening, smelling, tasting and touching. We need to experience things together with others in the same physical space in order to build trust with each other. In online settings, we can see and hear each other, and to that extent we do experience something together, but our other senses are left isolated and unattended.
In this project, I would like to examine the differences between human inquiries that take place online and in-person discussions. I am interested in this because of my work with teachers in Hawaiʻi and Japan. My former place of employment, the Uehiro Academy at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, organized a teachers’ community of philosophical inquiry to support the practice of an educational approach called philosophy for children Hawaiʻi (hereafter p4cHI). In this approach, participants usually sit in a circle and have an inquiry together about anything they wonder about as a community. The goal of p4cHI is“to help students develop their ability to think for themselves and to learn to use this ability in compassionate, responsible ways” (Jackson, 2017, p. 3). Further, Thomas B. Yos, an experienced p4cHI practitioner working in Hawaiʻi, has suggested that one of the purposes of p4cHI is to nurture young people to be able to make “good judgements,” which means “a process of choosing which is performed through [good] thinking” (Yos, 2004). This idea of “good thinking” includes “the effective employment of a variety of cognitive moves” and the ability to make, at any point in time, a “deliberate and purposeful appeal to one’s prior thought” (Yos, 2004, p. 11).
Further, in order for educators to accomplish these goals, Jackson (2017) suggested that it is important for all the participants to feel Intellectual Safety. He defined Intellectual Safety in the following way: “All participants in the Community feel free to ask virtually any question or state any view so long as respect for all community members is honored” (p. 6). Jackson believed that the creation of a safe environment was an absolutely necessary condition for participants (including both students and teachers) to reveal their own, authentic sense of wonder and inquire together as a community.
These practices for creating intellectually safe communities of inquiry can be followed regardless of whether a community decides to meet online or in person. However, in the course of my experiences working with teachers and students who practice p4cHI, it has become apparent that there is a noticable difference between these two kinds of communities. Nowhere has this difference been more noticable than during my work helping connect p4cHI practitioners in Japan and Hawaiʻi. Both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the Uehiro Academies in Hawaii and Japan have conducted in-person teacher exchanges. In these exchange programs, teachers from Japan and Hawaiʻi travel to their colleaguesʻ country, observe each otherʻs classrooms and have discussions. However, after the COVID-19 pandemic began, the in-person teacher exchange was canceled for three years. During this period, my colleague and I were concerned that the teachers’ connection and support networks might be weakened, so we started an online teacher exchange. Because of the commitment and excitement of the participating teachers, we were able to have meaningful inquiries by using the online conference tool Zoom during this period.
As a result of these experiences during the pandemic, some people started feeling that we could keep connecting with each other exclusively through online settings. In-person meetings, they reasoned, cost money and time. However, others continued to believe in the importance of in-person meetings, and as the restrictions necessitated by the pandemic were lifted, the in-person teacher exchange resumed. We quickly noticed that there was a distinct difference between online meetings and in-person meetings. In these in-person meetings, many participants expressed feeling more emotionally connected, reaching greater depths in the inquiries, and having more things to talk about. Motivation to get together again in the future also seemed to increase.
This project explores the idea that the senses ignored by online meeting software can meaningfully contribute to the strength and vitality of communities of inquiry. It will use testimonies collected from interviews to examine the differences between inquiries conducted in-person and via online methods. I will apply a phenomenological approach to the date collected, analyzing what the testimonies reveal about how a sense of physical togetherness can contribute to an inquiry. In other words, I am going to focus on what I call the phenomenology of togetherness in order to see what role our physical senses play in inquiries.
Because of the relatively small sample size, this project will only be able to reach preliminary conclusions. At the presentation, I will report my findings, provide a discussion of those findings and draw some tentative conclusions. I am hoping that this study will contribute to a greater understanding of the sensory factors at play in communities of inquiry, and in learning spaces more generally.

Author

• Aya Watanabe