This contribution, as an exploratory phase (Lumbelli, 1984) of a more extensive doctoral research, aims to investigate a strategy of philosophy teaching in high school, inspired by the Socratic disputation (Flammia, 2021), which aims at the creation and effective management of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) as a tool for promoting critical thinking. The didactic choice under study originates from the assumption that a didactic planning aiming at the promotion and development of a critical attitude towards reality cannot disregard the awareness of the complex psychological mechanisms related to the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance that can contribute positively or on the contrary hinder the learning process when the preconceptions and prejudices questioned are deeply rooted. The research originates from a series of philosophical workshops held in the years 2016/2019 in a technical and vocational school in the province of Varese (Italy) in which the author took part as a teacher. This experience is particularly interesting from the point of view of didactic research because of the large number of students involved (about 150) on a continuous basis (3 years) in an institute where the discipline is not curricular, who voluntarily decided to participate in the workshops in the afternoon hours after attending presentation meetings during curricular hours. Therefore, starting from an exploratory empirical investigation of a qualitative, naturalistic and participatory type of a real situation, relevant for its novelty and the successful involvement of students, this research aims to describe this experience and the educational model that underlies it, trying to bring out the complexity of the variables involved. Therefore, the research questions are: to what extent is it possible to propose the teaching of philosophy according to a problematic approach through the use of cognitive dissonance? What didactic forms can it take? The research also aims to explore the relationship between this strategy and the promotion of critical thinking in light of the theoretical debate on the topic. This research project starts from practice and aims to return to it through the scientific modeling of a teaching strategy that allows its transferability, possibly even in the teaching of other related disciplines. The complexity of the object of investigation requires that this transferability is not configurable in prescriptive terms, as a sort of "recipe" to be applied uncritically, but rather by a clear identification of the variables involved and their interaction, so that they can be elements of an autonomous and coherent design.

Given the complexity of the subject of the study and the double role of the author as researcher and teacher who designed and conducted the educational activities, a qualitative, naturalistic and participatory empirical research was chosen, specifically a self-study (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2009), divided into two phases. The first exploratory phase, the subject of this paper, aimed to collect data regarding students' perceptions of the educational experience and its formative impact. The convenience and purposeful criteria were adopted for sampling (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), and specifically the selection of individuals who are particularly informed about the phenomenon under study (Cresswell & Plano Clark, 2011) and who show openness and willingness to communicate their experiences and participate in the research (Bernard 2017; Palinkas et al, 2015), which led to the selection of 16 participants. The contacted students were previously informed about the purpose and methods of data collection and agreed to participate in the study by expressing their informed consent. The instrument chosen is the semi-structured interview, whose set list included general questions about the experience of the course, in order to let the representations of the latter emerge in their spontaneity, along with more specific questions investigating the following themes: the motivations that prompted to participate in the course, the representation of the discipline, the comparison and conflict with peers and with the teacher. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were analyzed using an inductive, bottom up approach, following the criteria of reflective thematic analysis as codified by Braun and Clarke (2006; 2019). The analysis, performed using Atlas.ti software, was developed on three hierarchical levels of coding, interweaving a prevalent semantic identification of codes with latent coding elements (Braun & Clarke, 2019).

In this first exploratory phase, several interesting elements emerge regarding the potential of the teaching strategy under investigation. In particular, three elements deserve to be emphasized and will be the subject of further investigation in the second phase of the research. The first concerns the relationship with doubt, the restructuring of one's attitudes towards evidence in contrast with one's own knowledge and beliefs. The perceptions of the students regarding the educational experience and the change caused by it show in fact the maturation of an attitude of open-mindedness or at least the recognition of this attitude as a desirable and fundamental aspect of a mature and educated adult. The second element concerns the choice of the Socratic-inspired disputation in the teaching strategy. The students' testimonies show how the dialogue between the teacher and the individual students in turn, made up of concise and punctual exchanges, is effective in maintaining a high level of attention and involvement of the students, even when not immediately engaged in the discussion. The third element is represented by the recognition, by the students, of the moments of emotional discomfort related to the experience of cognitive dissonance caused by the dispute as necessary steps for a path of learning and personal improvement to be considered effective. Starting from these results, the second part of the research foresees the replication of the workshops in different contexts, in order to videotape and qualitatively analyze the discursive interactions to better understand the characterizing and significant elements of the strategy from the perspective of its transferability.

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