Research: Assessing the Impact

Philosophy education can foster critical thinking, ethical reasoning, intellectual virtues, and engagement among students and educators. PLATO believes it is important to be able to communicate these outcomes to colleagues, funders, policymakers, and society more generally.

The aim of PLATO’s Research Committee is to facilitate evidence-based assessment and evaluation of philosophy education in various contexts and settings. Below you will find curated resources that can help you design, implement, and evaluate your own philosophy education programs. Please note that the resources on this page are primarily for program assessment and personal use.

Curated Resources

PLATO’s Current Research on Cognitive and Social/Emotional Skills

The main goal of this study was to evaluate for the first time the impact of an easy-to-use and not time-consuming dialogue-based classroom intervention (a) on preschool children’s understanding of both simple and complex components of emotions and (b) on the range of individual differences in children’s understanding of emotions.

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National Humanities Alliance (Document the Impact)

A coalition of organizations dedicated to advancing humanities education, research, preservation, and public programs. NHA offers a toolkit for documenting the impact of humanities programs, as well as case studies, sample surveys, and best practices.

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National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance

This guide offers a five-step process to design effective research-based questionnaires that can be used to survey students, teachers, or parents. It also lists resources on sample selection, questionnaire administration, and data collection, analysis, and presentation.

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Educating for Intellectual Virtues

This website offers a comprehensive guide to teaching for intellectual virtues in various educational settings and levels, based on the book Deep in Thought by Jason Baehr. It also provides a host of resources, such as videos, articles, case studies, and toolkits, to help educators design, implement, and evaluate their own philosophy education programs that aim to foster intellectual virtues among students and teachers.

Open This Site
NICD Research Network

Research is a crucial part of the mission of the National Institute for Civil Discourse. The organization’s research staff and research network support scholars throughout the country in their research and teaching on civics-related educational activities.

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Project Zero

Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education has compiled resources related to assessment, evaluation, and documentation of learning in and through the arts. They provide resources for documenting learning processes and outcomes in ways that can inform one’s pedagogy.

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Civic Engagement in Our Democracy

A product of the Democracy Knowledge Project, this toolkit provides assessment opportunities throughout the curriculum to identify student development of conceptual understandings, civic knowledge, civic skills, and commitment to shared civic values.

Check Out The Toolkit

Contact Us

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about the resources on this page, or if you would like to share your own experiences or findings related to philosophy education assessment, please get in touch with us!

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