Freedom is a fundamental value and one which all human beings aspire to cultivate; therefore, it must be defended with both courage and respect. According to Aristotle, an individual is free when they are capable of deliberating and acting in accordance with their own reasoning and reflections. In accordance with this, it can be said that thought is closely interconnected with freedom. In the today’s world, individual freedom is at risk because of the neoliberal politics dominating our time. Neoliberalism is increasingly making human beings prisoners of others’ ideologies, taking away their ability and desire to think according to their own intuitions. In a reality in which everything is already arranged and offered by those in power, thinking has become an exhausting action. Because of this, the value of freedom is in deep crisis. Therefore, the school – a place where the mind is nourished with knowledge and each individual’s potential can flourish – has the task of providing ample room for education in “thinking”. This action becomes essential to make the citizens of the world increasingly free to know how to think and build themselves in accordance with their own will and their inner essence.

Based on these considerations, the MelArete project developed by the MELETE Center of the University of Verona (Italy) aims to promote ethical thinking education in schools. The project utilizes numerous educational tools to promote ethical thinking in children; one such tool is Socratic conversations. Socratic conversations are dialogues between children and researchers inspired by the Socratic method. Starting from eidetic questions (for example, “What is good?” “What is care?”), the goal of Socratic conversations is to enhance the development of children’s thinking within the intersubjective context of the classroom by encouraging them to reflect together on ethically relevant concepts.

The literature has long highlighted the effectiveness of the Socratic method in the development of thinking. However, the manner in which this method fosters children's thinking has not yet been fully explored. Thus, this study poses the following research question: “Which conversational moves are enacted by primary school children and their facilitator(s) during a Socratic conversation?” The aim of this qualitative research is twofold: first, to shed light on the conversational moves through which primary school children develop thinking during a Socratic conversation; second, to identify the conversational moves through which the facilitator invites children to reflect on and, thus, develop their thinking.

During the 2021–2022 and 2023–2024 school years, the MelArete project involved five classes from several Italian primary schools (6–11-year-old students). A qualitative analysis of the conversation – conducted using the empirical phenomenological method and the discourse practices analysis instrument – revealed that children develop their thinking through specific conversational moves, such as giving examples, providing interpretations, arguing their ideas, recalling their own experiences and knowledge, or co-constructing the class’s collective thinking. The results of this study provide the learning community with a coding system to access conversational moves that encourage children to reflect and can be referenced in every instance where the aim is to foster spaces for children to think together in the school.

Keywords: Ethical thinking education, socratic method, MelArete, primary school, qualitative research.