In this paper, I critically explore Ann Sharp’s conception of personhood as it figures in the theory and practice of the community of philosophical inquiry (CPI). Through surveying Sharp’s rich and varied philosophical output, it will be shown how Sharp’s conception of personhood as a trilateral relationship (between self, other(s), and community) maps onto “the Three C’s” of critical, creative, and caring thinking that make up the practice of Philosophy for Children. After thus presenting Sharp’s conception of personhood, the paper (...) brings into view an aspect of said conception which could benefit from further development. This potential shortfall in Sharp’s thought is identified as “the problem of closure”. In highlighting the problem of closure, I will indicate how Sharp marshals the concept of faith in her conception of CPI as a spiritual community, a relationship that is coincident with personhood itself, as it stands for the bond that ties together the individual (self and other(s)) and the collective (community) dimensions of CPI. I argue that faith serves, among other things, as an agent of closure between the individual and the collective in Sharp’s thought. In considering the function of faith in CPI, I will suggest an avenue of possible resolution to the problem of closure in Leonard Nelson’s conception of “the Socratic spirit” as the embodiment of “reason’s self-confidence”. Finally, the paper looks ahead to David Kennedy’s writings on the intentionality structure that governs the relationship between the individual and the collective in CPI as a resource that promises to offer a more rigorous and systematic treatment of the problem of closure. (shrink)

O objetivo deste texto é questionar, no contexto sócio-histórico da modernidade europeia, o modo como se forjou no interior do “novo sentimento de infância” uma vida por etapas que outorga às pessoas de pouca idade a urgência de uma existência em permanente desenvolvimento. Problematizar a “ideia” de desenvolvimento, mais concretamente de desenvolvimento infantil e as suas implicações na produção de modos de ser criança, permite avançar pistas sobre como é que a narrativa desenvolvimentista se tornou hegemónica e inquestionável nos contextos (...) educativos destinados a pessoas de pouca idade. Em concreto, interessa-me pensar os agenciamentos históricos que vinculam a infância (enquanto tempo cronológico) a uma certa ideia de desenvolvimento. (shrink)

La Filosofía para Niños ha contemplado en los últimos años la emergencia de prácticas entre comunidades indígenas en todo el mundo. Desde las prácticas mexicanas de Madrid o Ezcurdia a las africanas de Odierna y las asiáticas de Elicor, diversos especialistas han demandado su necesidad para el desarrollo del pensamiento crítico y, por extensión, la liberación de las condiciones de opresión y colonialismo a las que se han sometido a los pueblos originarios. A pesar de estas buenas intenciones, se despierta (...) la inquietud de que las propias metodologías del pensamiento crítico o de la verdad nacida según criterios discursivos o lógico-argumentales pueda convertirse en un mecanismo neocolonial al imponer formas de pensamiento occidentales. Además, la agenda de los temas y los materiales corresponden a horizontes nacidos en Estados Unidos o en Europa y, por ende, podríamos encontrarnos ante un proceso de imposición de discursos donde la salvación crítica se convierta en un nuevo modelo de opresión.Este artículo analiza los riesgos de esta realidad y avanza a una propuesta co-operativa. Esta co-operación anima a quedar a la escucha de las filosofías de estos pueblos para ampliar, corregir y mejorar los presupuestos de la Filosofía para Niños. Por tanto, recorre el camino inverso a las experiencias con comunidades indígenas. Reflexiona sobre los avances que supone su filosofía respecto a los presupuestos occidentales de nuestro campo. De esta forma, deja el campo abonado para un producto sinérgico que facilite la creación de una Filosofía desde Niños indígenas mayas-tojolabales y no una para ellos. (shrink)

The paper begins with the concept of voice and questions its different meanings, especially in educational settings, to propose a philosophical framing of people-of-young-age’s material voices. It then proposes to understand those voices as disruptive differences or opportunities to (re)think about our roles as educators and, most of all, to return to the question of what a philosophical approach to childhood might disrupt. In doing so, it outlines some ideas about “voice” as sound and materiality (Cavarero, 2005) and also about (...) “listening” as a permanent attention to what might emerge (Nancy, 2002; Davies, 2014), to then extend particular meanings of these concepts to the practice of thinking philosophically with people of different ages in the community of philosophical inquiry educational setting (Kennedy & Kennedy, 2012). It also builds on the concept of “event” by Gilles Deleuze (Deleuze, 2013), as a potential immanent within a confluence of forces, to then ask how we can foster a philosophical way of living (in) education that takes people-of-young-age’s material voices as something we cannot afford to lose. Finally, the paper proposes to frame the community of philosophical inquiry as a philosophical community of voices, in the sense of an opportunity to experience the materiality of all the voices as something that matters in the shared thought of its participants. (shrink)

The article analyzes some of the results that emerged from a questionnaire administered in the academic year 2021/2022, aimed at investigating the point of view of primary school teachers regarding experiences of philosophical reflection with children.The idea of focusing attention on teachers lies in the belief that they are the main protagonists of philosophical practices with children, and that it is important to hear their voices. This contribution analyzes issues such as the training of teachers who intend to engage in (...) these teaching experiences; the benefits that philosophy can bring transversally to improve learning in other disciplines; the possibility of developing critical thinking capacities in children; the increase of logical and argumentative skills; and finally the development of citizenship and social responsibility skills. A positive picture seems to emerge from the results of the questionnaire, where teachers show themselves to be proactive with respect to the possibility of understanding philosophical dialogue as a discourse that can be conducted with children of all ages. This leads, in turn, to the need to revisit normal teaching practices, and to the need for teachers to question themselves through targeted training. It is believed that the survey has positively stimulated teachers, even those who have never had direct experience with children's philosophy, and that it has shown how in a changing society, the figure of the teacher must change as well. (shrink)

This article considers children’s status in society and how this may be elevated with a view to imagining a possible future. Children’s status is such that the structures and systems under which they live diminish their agency. In so doing, their opportunity to contribute to the shaping of what appears to be an uncertain future is limited. The article proposes that looking towards children as saviours of our tomorrows is misguided and that a healthier view is to recognise the networked (...) nature of children, which recognises children’s humanity and sees them as connected to the world in which and of which they are a part. By accepting the networked nature of children, adults may come to think and behave differently towards children, beginning to see themselves and children as ‘one among many’. This perspective allows for compassion, a notion that supports our living together. This article proposes that Philosophy with Children may offer an approach to engaging in community and dialogue that allows us to think our way to a future that is epistemically inclusive. Ultimately, engaging with children as potential knowers demands that we are more overtly political in the ways in which we engage with Philosophy with Children. (shrink)

This article, based on grandparents' narratives collected in a doctoral research project, aims to weave together reflections on childhood, intergenerational bonding, and love. Seven grandmothers and three grandfathers, between fifty-one and seventy-one years old, participated in the research; nine residents of the city of Rio de Janeiro and one of Niterói, Brazil. In addition, narratives were collected from six of their grandchildren, all of them between five and twelve years old, and residents of Rio de Janeiro, Niterói, Brasília and Montevideo, (...) Uruguay. Conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic, our methodological strategy involved interviews conducted on Zoom. Interviews with the adults were conducted individually, and collectively with the children. The themes that emerged in the grandparents' narratives led to reflections on the relationship between adults and children that are emblematic of the conception of childhood found in Walter Benjamin's work, as well as the philosophical anthropology of Martin Buber and the psychoanalysis of Donald Winnicott. The emphasis of the research participants was on affective security, built on the basis of small, everyday gestures, which result in an atmosphere of mutual support between children and adults. From these affectionate encounters between the youngest and the oldest, what we characterize as a “childlike force” is established—an energy field that produces new existential possibilities. The narratives collected here teach us new ways of being adult through our relationships with children: in our encounter with the lifeworlds of the youngest among us, we re-encounter our own deeper sensibilities, and regain the ability to play, to create, and to reinvent ourselves in relearning the joy of beginnings. (shrink)

ResumenLas aventuras de Pinocho es uno de esos pocos cuentos que no solo ha resistido al paso del tiempo, sino que se incorporó a la cultura y 139 años después, sigue recreándose en versiones literarias, cinematográficas, teatrales, plásticas, incluso pedagógicas. En este artículo tratamos de levantar algunos de los velos con los que Disney cubrió una parte importante de la historia dejando fuera, por ejemplo, el tema de la pobreza. Hoy nos preguntamos si un producto cultural como Las aventuras de (...) Pinocho puede detonar conversaciones y reflexiones con niños de hoy, y si la escuela puede apropiarse de este material para filosofar con los alumnos e incluso con los adultos. ¿Por qué en un mundo de malhechores que roban, engañan, cocinan, venden o cuelgan a los niños, la mirada reprobatoria está fija en un niño que dice mentiras? ¿Qué experiencias tiene que vivir un niño para verse a sí mismo como “malo”? ¿Cuáles son los riesgos de la clasificación, por otro lado, tan necesaria en el conocimiento? Si bien partimos de una experiencia realizada en una escuela de la Ciudad de México, el análisis que se presenta se ocupa principalmente del vínculo entre la(s) lectura(s) y la reflexión filosófica en este cuento.Palabras claveFilosofia con niños Pinocho Educación no formal Pinocchio is one of those few stories that has not only stood the test of time, but continues to be recreated in literary, cinematographic and theatrical versions... Pinocchio is no longer just the story written by Carlo Collodi at the end of the 19th century; over the course of 130 years, the social imaginary has incorporated numerous interpretations. In this article we ask ourselves whether a cultural product such as The Adventures of Pinocchio can trigger conversations and reflections with today's children, and whether the school can appropriate this material to philosophize with students and even with adults. Although we start from an experience carried out in Mexico City, the analysis presented here is mainly concerned with the link between reading and philosophical reflection in this story.Key wordsPhilosophy with children Pinocchio Non-formal education Pinóquio é um dos poucos contos de fadas que não apenas resistiu ao teste do tempo, mas continua a ser recriado em versões literárias, cinematográficas e teatrais... Pinóquio não é mais apenas a história escrita por Carlo Collodi no final do século XIX; ao longo de 130 anos, o imaginário social incorporou inúmeras interpretações. Neste artigo, nos perguntamos se um produto cultural como As Aventuras de Pinóquio pode desencadear conversas e reflexões com as crianças de hoje, e se a escola pode se apropriar desse material para filosofar com os alunos e até mesmo com os adultos. Embora partamos de uma experiência realizada na Cidade do México, a análise apresentada aqui se preocupa principalmente com o vínculo entre a leitura e a reflexão filosófica nessa história.Palavras-chaveFilosofia com crianças Pinóquio Educação não formal. (shrink)

The Creative Citizenship project was founded to promote critical, ethical, and creative thinking in early childhood, and to recognize and encourage children as social actors and peacebuilders. In concert with the methodology of North American philosopher Matthew Lipman's Philosophy for Children (P4C), Creative Citizenship seeks to promote in children the ability to think critically, ethically, and creatively in and from their own realities, and to exercise multidimensional thinking skills in the various areas of their daily lives. The research documented here (...) adopted a qualitative approach in so far as it sought to inquire about the character of those relationships, particularly among boys and girls, that promote their identity as social agents. As such, it examined training processes and generated theoretical perspectives in the interest of promoting social transformation through the empowerment of multidimensional thinking. The article begins with a review of the concept of Creative Citizenship and ends with that of Peacebuilding. Three theoretical categories have been applied in order to situate the inquiry within the framework of the realities of childhood, and to chart the pedagogical interventions by adults that occurred throughout the implementation of the project. The first focuses on the development of children’s thinking per se, the second on children's capacities for creative problem-solving in social environments, and the third on the concept of peacebuilding as a commitment to practicing philosophical dialogue among children, which is understood as a form of discourse that builds the capacities of citizens to undertake individual and collective actions that allow them, in turn, to create and re-create scenarios of peaceful coexistence. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that, if it is true that maximum self-development is better both for individuals and society, and if it is true that that self-development is being seriously curtailed by pervasive environmental tech forces, then clearly educational systems, since they are guardians of “developing” young humans, have a moral imperative to push back against forces that diminish the self. On the other hand, if it is not true that “more self is always better,” that perhaps “goodness of (...) fit” between self and society is optimum, then education systems are justified in continuing to pay scant attention to the forces of self-development (or lack thereof). In line with Sherry Turkle’s (2011) argument that tech forces are diminishing the sort of reflective reasoning necessary for self-development, we will argue that since communicative interchange is necessary for self-development, and an ever-developing self is necessary for ever deeper and more meaningful dialogue (hence forming a dialectic), the fact that social media and other forms of tech connection stunts deep and meaningful interchange has serious implications. Specifically, we will argue that, in contemporary high-tech society (what we are calling Society 2.0), the dialectic between self and communication is going the “wrong” way; that genuine dialogue is becoming ever more rare, which in turn is resulting in “diminished-I’s,” which in turn is resulting in ever more complacency in the face of utterly superficial communicative interchange. We will begin with an overview of what we mean by a “diminished-I,” and then follow by noting how social media, the reading vacuum, roboticism, crowd communication, and decreasing social capital are resulting in diminished-I’s. Since this is resulting in an “I-diminished” society, we will reflect on the question of whether those dialogical educational initiatives that promote self-development are, in fact, making dodos, i.e., making youngsters unfit for the environment in which they find themselves. Ultimately, we will argue that, if educators choose to fight back against the I-diminishing forces of Society 2.0, they need to take selves seriously and actively engage youngsters in dialogue with those with opposing viewpoints. Ultimately, youngsters in Society 2.0 will need all the assistance educators can muster to fight the addictive, literally mind-numbing forces of being “happily” “alone together,” and instead chose the riskier often unhappy-making option of diving into the truth-seeking process with varying coalitions of the willing. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose to investigate one common adult representation of childhood that will serve both to reflect on and to problematize current and varied representations. As such, our object of study will always be a representation and not a substantialist definition. We propose to analyze the adult concept “child” from a critical perspective by reviewing it through a historical lens—that is, as it is expressed in the political and educational world of 19th century Chile, which, in turn, we (...) can glimpse in the historical writings of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. To carry out this journey, we propose three guiding thematic axes: 1) how all school apparatuses embody, configure and assume a certain identifiable representation of “child’ and childhood; 2) an analysis of the characteristics and objectives of the 19th century Chilean school apparatus, particularly in its function as a government device, or dispositif; 3) just how that dispositif becomes visible to inquiry in the historical record, particularly in what it can reveal to us about the image or images of childhood held by adults. To be understood by adults as a boy or a girl in Chile during that period is communicated in the historical record through a myriad of diverse sources, each requiring consideration in its context. Magazines, syllabaries, school textbooks and children's stories configure different perspectives on and attitudes toward childhood, which in turn are associated with the social origin of these documents and the purposes they embody. The images, ideas and signs of interaction that appear in these school documents act cumulatively to reveal a cultural image of “child” and aid us in understanding the political and socio-cultural significance attributed to that period in the human life-cycle. And while we cannot claim to have identified how all adults of 19th century Chile understood and represented childhood, such documents do offer insights into the beliefs and assumptions of the political and ruling classes. (shrink)

This paper is the result of reflections inspired by observing and participating in dancing sessions with children. Our experience of the latter led to the production of images that provoked a variety of questions, and invited us to think about the relationships between bodies, dance, and various forms of education. Among these questions were: what clues about the experience of human embodiment are given through observing children’s dance? What can children teach us through participating with them in this performative medium, (...) and what are its implications for education, most especially in light of our observations of children's inventiveness in this regard? Our impressions resonate and find expression in the oeuvre of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Jan Masschelein and Manoel de Barros. Placing ourselves under their influence, we mobilized our thinking and opened ourselves to the emergent character of their ideas, resulting in what might be called a form of “dancing-writing” in which those two forms of expression interact. This dancing-writing is informed by and imbued with children’s lived experience: step by step, we walked the paths that they opened, recording as best we could their multisensorial approach to the world—gaze, taste, smell, sound, touch, movement. Ours was an experience of research on movement, with movement, in movement. As such, we harbor no intention to present final answers, but rather offer the reader an invitation to think philosophically and childishly. Ours is an invitation to dance with and among the questions which that very dance inspired. (shrink)

This paper seeks to redress a predominant focus on speaking over listening in theorising the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI). Frequently, where listening is discussed, the focus is on encouraging children to be active listeners. This means of describing the listening that occurs in the CPI has lost some efficacy as the language of active listening has been co-opted as a management technique focussed on making the speaker feel heard with little emphasis on the intentions or outcomes for the listener. (...) Thus, on a cynical reading, ‘active listening’ can become reduced to performative physical indicators of listening (such as eye contact and body language), overlooking the ethical-epistemic commitments of the genuinely engaged listener. Here, rather than formulating new terms to describe listening, I propose Iris Murdoch’s account of attentiveness as an apt descriptor of the effects of truly involved listening on the self that seeks to attend to the unfolding content of the CPI and as a way of characterising the qualities of a CPI where such listening is achieved. Here, attentiveness is presented as a concept that captures the unique facets of listening as a challenge to individual participants concerned with contributing effectively to the dialogue as it unfolds within the CPI and those facilitating the dialogue. The paper briefly explores some implications for practice contexts, proposing three interventions to cultivate attentiveness in CPI participants and in facilitators (especially if they are undergraduate or postgraduate in Philosophy because philosophical identities might become a barrier to attentiveness). At its conclusion, this paper repositions listening in the CPI as a productive risk with a particular form of ‘aliveness’ aptly captured by the term attention. (shrink)

A partir de imagens de crianças encontradas no cinema dos primeiros tempos, propomos uma reflexão sobre as relações entre a infância e cinema. Segundo Walter Benjamin (2009), tanto a infância quanto o cinema são invenções da modernidade: o conceito de infância como um período importante de formação do sujeito nasce de forma inseparável das tecnologias de produção e reprodução da imagem que nos dão a ver as crianças de uma forma inédita, primeiro na fotografia e depois no cinema. A partir (...) disso, nos perguntamos se seria possível pensar na “invenção” do cinema como também um gesto de infância? Nos propomos a pensar uma ideia de infância do cinema para além de um reducionismo teleológico. Para tanto, partimos de uma visão psicanalítica sobre o processo de entrada na linguagem, que coincide com o movimento de individuação do sujeito, na infância. A partir desta perspectiva, estabelecemos uma analogia entre a infância e o desenvolvimento do cinema como momentos igualmente marcados pela entrada na linguagem: de um estado atravessado fortemente pela visualidade, pela experimentação, pela descoberta e pela brincadeira, em direção a uma entrada no sistema simbólico estruturado da linguagem através de constantes negociações com as convenções e os limites do mundo adulto. (shrink)

We present results from a single case study based on semi-structured interviews with a student (a boy in school year 3) diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and his school staff after participating in a short and small-scale intervention carried out in a socio-economically disadvantaged Swedish elementary school in 2019. The student participated in a seven week long intervention with a total of 12 philosophical dialogues (ranging from 45 to 60 minutes). Two facilitators, both with years of facilitation experience and teacher (...) degree and at least BA in philosophy, facilitated the majority of the dialogues and mainly followed a ”routine” procedure. The student was interviewed in direct connection to the end of the intervention about his experiences from the dialogues and his perceptions about whether and how the dialogues had influenced him. The student’s two teachers, who had participated in the dialogues as participants, were interviewed as a pair, also in direct connection to the end of the intervention, while the school principal was interviewed two years after the study. These staff interviews concerned the staff’s experiences of the influence of the dialogues on the students within the intervention as well as transfer effects to other contexts in school. The data from the study include detailed elaborations from a student perspective of different effects on the student’s communicative and cognitive development, which are in several respects supported also by staff reports. The results show that the student was able, interested, and willing to participate in philosophical dialogues, and our data point to several positive outcomes for the student in the communicative and cognitive domains. (shrink)

Los derechos de la infancia son de formulación reciente, y hasta el siglo XX no surgen los primeros intentos de reconocerlos y regularlos. Además de revisar los textos jurídicos que formulan y protegen esos derechos a nivel mundial, este estudio promueve una lectura filosófica de los derechos de la infancia y del papel de las familias con respecto a esos derechos. La ética del cuidado proporciona un marco de reflexión muy oportuno para plantear la responsabilidad ética que las familias, y (...) la sociedad en general, tienen hacia los niños y niñas, que son los miembros más vulnerables de la sociedad y los que padecen con mayor crudeza las consecuencias de la pobreza, la migración o los desastres naturales. Este estudio lleva a cabo una revisión crítica sobre los derechos de la infancia y los principales intentos de reconocer y garantizar jurídicamente esos derechos a nivel internacional. Explora también la situación actual de la infancia a nivel mundial, enfatizando las consecuencias negativas de la pandemia de COVID-19 en ese sector vulnerable de la población. Por último, se adopta la perspectiva de la ética del cuidado para analizar las responsabilidades de las familias y el papel de las instituciones y de la sociedad en general hacia la protección de la infancia. (shrink)

The paper arises from a shared event that turned into an experience: the finding of a childlike piece of paper on our way to a conference about philosophy in schools and how it affects our educational ideas and research practices on listening to children. Triggered by the question of what it means to listen, we are led to the exercise of self-questioning inspired by some of the authors that have already written about the topic, specifically in the context of the (...) community of philosophical enquiry. The thinking unfolds with the telling of the story about the found piece of paper, crossing different layers of questioning and trying to keep the enquiry open for the readers: what is it that we do not know about listening to children? And to what extent might that, which we do not know, be the cause of biased and adultist practices? Is it necessary to return to what philosophy is and where one can find it inside the school environment? Is it already there when the adults arrive? Are we not listening to it? Or are there specific places for philosophical conversations, such as the classroom? Is philosophy also invited to the margins of those spaces? Who decides what counts as philosophical? It is not about answering questions and giving closure to our concerns as educators and researchers, but rather sharing with the readers how even in the least suspected place - an academic event about bringing philosophy to school - one might still not be listening to children. In returning to this self-questioning movement, we want to echo some of the troubling in the thinking and practices of listening in the so-called movement of Philosophy for/with Children: this for/with phenomenon, its politics and relations; some of the assumptions that might be present in the dilemmas in practice for educators and researchers; but also its aesthetics resonances, the sheer beauty of troubling, the (out of) tune of self-questioning, the questions it raises for us as researchers and the space of doubting and uncertainty it offers, like a hesitation or a breathing space. And perhaps, we wonder, it is in-between spaces, in its cracks and transitions, that important things can find their way into our thinking and conversations about childhood. Just like a piece of paper in a hotel room. (shrink)

Although the Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) movement seems to have overcome two major points of criticism, these critical concerns can still be found in the literature today. The first question is whether P4wC can be placed in the field of philosophy at all, and the second asks whether children possess the cognitive abilities necessary to engage in philosophical discourse. One of the more recent articles voicing these concerns is authored by Caroline Heinrich, who describes P4wC as “an assault on philosophy (...) and an assault on children” and argues that P4wC is a “concept imposed by adults on children.” She maintains that P4wC ignores “children’s thinking, questioning and play.” Furthermore, Heinrich states that P4wC cannot be called philosophy because children are not able to philosophize. In most of her argumentation, refering to Jan Piaget’s theoretical account of the cognitive development of children. Although the P4wC discourse has already dealt with these questions over the last few decades, it seems that there is still a need for further clarification. This paper provides an overview of the main points of criticism, which form the starting point of the author’s Polylogical Process Model of (Elementary-)Philosophical Education (PPEE model). This interdisciplinary approach, which is based on the constructivist conceptual change/growththeory of Stella Vosniadou and William Brewer, attempts to add new perspectives to two central questions addressing the P4wC movement: first, can P4wC actually be called philosophy?; second, do children have the cognitive abilities to engage in philosophical discourse? In addition, the question arises as to which pedagogical considerations based on constructivist learning theory could be added to P4wC methodology? The aim of the interdisciplinary PPEE model is to build a broader scientific foundation that has the potential to reduce the main points of criticism of the P4wC movement. (shrink)

This paper seeks to reconstruct the role of schooling in a moment of accelerated social, political, economic, geo-political, climatic, indeed planetary crisis. It identifies the school as a potentially prefigurative institution, an evolutionary social frontier, capable of nurturing the democratic social character, a form of sensibility apart from which authentic political democracy is not possible. As theorized by Herbert Marcuse and Richard Hart and Antonio Negri, the “new sensibility” or “multitude” is characterized by greater psychological freedom, individuality, social creativity and (...) self-rule, comprising a “whole of singularities” that “acts in common”. It suggests a human subject with a vital, biological drive for liberation, with a consciousness capable of breaking through the material as well as ideological veil of a society based on hierarchy and domination, and is associated politically with democracy and social-anarchism, or what Murray Bookchin called “communalism”. This paper identifies three main characteristics of an institution informed by this form of modal subjectivity, all of them based on student-teacher dialogue: an emergent, project-based curriculum, whole-school direct democratic governance on all levels of the community, and the regular practice of communal philosophical inquiry, through which we problematize the concepts we live by, in the interest of their ongoing reconstruction. (shrink)

O presente texto narra uma experiência de formação de alfabetizadores de jovens e adultos: uma alfabetização filosófica de 40 horas com 300 alfabetizadores em julho de 2022, como primeira etapa do Programa “Supera RN” em Pau dos Ferros, dentro da Política de Superação do Analfabetismo do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte (RN). O texto tematiza em que sentido a experiência de Alfabetização filosófica se inspira e ao mesmo tempo se diferencia do curso de Alfabetização oferecido por Paulo Freire em (...) Angicos em 1963. Inspirado na curiosidade e no compromisso de Paulo Freire com os esfarrapados do mundo, o conceito “alfabetização filosófica” propõe uma formação experiencial sustentada nas seguintes disposições: escutar atentamente o mundo humano e não humano que nos rodeia; pensar juntos com cuidado e calma; relacionarmo-nos cooperativa e não competitivamente com as ideias das outras pessoas; perguntarmo-nos, colocando em questão, nossa vida e a maneira como nos relacionamos com ela, num tempo especial, singular, suspendido; conversar como iguais na busca de enfrentar as exigências de nossa comunidade; inventar novas formas de estar com outras e outros. O texto apresenta como essas disposições foram pensadas e praticadas durante a alfabetização filosófica em Pau dos Ferros, RN, através de cinco princípios (perguntar; escutar; tempo de infância; igualdade; pensar juntos) e lança algumas perguntas sobre possíveis desdobramentos da alfabetização filosófica no campo de formação de professores. (shrink)

Since the turn of the millennium, a new phenomenon has arisen on the global stage, as girls have increasingly begun to raise their voices. In an effort to achieve new philosophical understandings of contemporary childhoods in a post-truth era, the present article examines this Girl Rising movement from an existential perspective. In doing so, the article aims to problematise children’s right to be heard and listened to, as enshrined in Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. (...) More specifically, the article explores children as rights-holders and their rights-subject position and how these positions are supported (or not) by adults in different ways. Throughout the analysis, Greta Thunberg is used as a case study to illustrate the phenomenon under study. This new movement highlights children’s right to be heard as a valuable right. The defence of this view relies on the claim that at the heart of adult’s acknowledgement lies the uniqueness of each child and the implications of this uniqueness. Taking into consideration the realisation of children’s rights, powerful stakeholders who seek to silence children’s voices are also identified, as are worldwide adult acknowledgements intended to empower girls to exist ‘in’ and ‘with’ the world in a ‘grown-up’ way. (shrink)

The environmental crisis—because of its complexity, urgency, unpredictability, and scale—requires a defence of the educational role of philosophy and an account of how to implement philosophical pedagogy in the exploration of environmental issues. This is the aim of this paper. As we face an uncertain future, all educators must consider what knowledge and “know-how” young people need, and what kind of people they need to become, if they are to survive and thrive in this changing world. Philosophical educators cannot assume (...) the ongoing utility of their practice, nor can they expect that their practice should remain the same. In the context of the current crisis, the philosophical exploration of emerging environmental issues raises challenges for those who work in the spirit of Community of Enquiry and these challenges require both discipline and flexibility from practitioners and participants. This paper outlines some of the adaptations that I have used to try and respond flexibly to this predicament. But I also defend an issue on which I believe philosophical educators should hold the line—namely the importance of being non-directive on matters that are philosophically contentious. I defend the view that despite the existential nature of this emergency and its profound urgency, it is not the role of philosophical educators to convince or coerce philosophical learners to adopt particular views on the philosophical questions that this crisis raises. This is because all philosophical enquiry involves creating an environment of freedom and responsibility with respect to what participants believe to be right and true and what they do as a result. Participants in enquiry must be epistemically free to explore and evaluate philosophical questions as they see fit, but they must also be epistemically responsible for the evidence and arguments on which their provisional judgements rest. Equally, participants in enquiry must be ethically free to respond to philosophical problems in ways that express and cultivate their authentic character and commitments, but they remain ethically responsible for their true motivations, their professed values and for the real-life consequences of their words and actions, and their silences and inaction. This paper explores some ways to optimise freedom and responsibility in all forms of philosophical enquiry, drawing specifically on examples of my work with young people on philosophically contentious environmental issues. These examples also highlight some of the adaptations that I have developed to address the challenges that environmental enquiry brings. (shrink)

What challenges does the political participation of children pose to the Philosophy of Childhood? What challenges does the Philosophy of Childhood pose to children's political participation? This text is inspired by the idea that “research is not about enumerating situations, but making researchers lose their sleep”. It is divided into two distinct parts. In the first, we introduce the theoretical framework that orients our research group and our work with children in the philosophical research community. We posit a link between (...) listening to children's voices, the conditions of listening, and the location of their political participation in public space. The second part is comprised of a creative illustrated narrative in the form of a dialogue. From the coast of what could be called the territory of political participation, two characters - Sentinel and Walker - discuss the waves of children that crash onto the territory. To what extent does creating space and time for listening to children open polyphonic movements and enable the construction of new forms of polis: poly(s)phonies? In what ways does the Philosophy of Childhood challenge itself in the creation of poly(s)phonies where the participation of children sets the tone? In what ways does the Philosophy of Childhood in turn challenge us to create poly(s)phonies? (shrink)

The article intends to discuss processes of political subjectivation of children and young people based on excerpts from a research carried out within the scope of a master's degree in education, presenting a cartography of the political participation of children and young people living in vulnerable territories of the municipality of São Vicente, on the south coast from São Paulo, members of collectives and educational actions of the Instituto Camará Calunga. The concepts of mobilization and subjectivation are presented as important (...) elements of politicization processes, portraying the way in which children and young people engage politically in different ways, coordinated or supported by adults, representing themselves or supporting adults in their demands, opposing the notion that children do not act politically or that the ideal way for children and young people to participate would be to produce consensus and there would be no room for contestation. The research took place in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, essentially in a virtual way, but it traces a continuity with the Institute's participation practices in the pre-pandemic period. The research made use of the cartographic method, in a virtual and face-to-face way, in the context of live work, of daily living with children, young people and educators from Camará, through semi-structured interviews and field diaries. (shrink)

This paper endeavors to carry out a philosophical analysis of the current state of civic education in Western democracies, in order to deal with the problematic dualism between extreme individualism and endogamic communitarianism, which alters the relational modalities and specific lifestyles that characterize human plurality. As such, the intention of this article is to understand how the formation of citizens supported by the practice of philosophy can cultivate a dialogical, open, and pluralistic community capable of facing this duality. For this (...) purpose, we carried out a systematic and critical analysis of books and articles that, in dealing with the relationship between the individual and the community, aim to overcome the above-mentioned problematic dualism. Among the results of this study, we found that Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp’s Philosophy for Children (P4C) program contributes significantly to the empowerment of citizens, and supports the development of their ability to engage in dialogue in search of creative and ethical solutions in the diverse circumstances of daily life. Moreover, P4C contributes to the achievement of communities characterised by solidarity, plurality, openness, and self-correction, and which are oriented toward the rigorous search for the common good. Therefore, we conclude that community-based philosophical practices such as P4C can contribute to civic education and the formation of responsible citizens, offering a possible paradigm to develop the humanistic axis of the individual and promote openness to diversity. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept of primal wonder in P4C, proposed by Thomas E. Jackson, can be seen as a “sprout” or seed of intellectual virtue. My understanding of his insight is inspired by Mengzi’s view of moral cultivation and Aristotle’s eudaimonist account of virtue ethics. According to Mengzi, all humans possess four innate sprouts of virtue, and the aim of moral education is to nurture these moral sprouts so that they can grow up into fully ripened virtues. In (...) terms of P4C, Jackson contends that all of us are born already with a special feeling of wonder which he refers to as “primal wonder”. Synthesizing his statement with Mengzi’s agricultural metaphor of moral sprouts, I shall take one step forward by arguing that the innate sense of wonder within every child can be seen as a sprout of virtue. Additionally, once children’s primal wonder has been transformed into a virtue through implementing P4C in the classroom, this admirable character trait, I suggest, should be understood as an intellectual virtue according to Aristotelian virtue ethics. This is because the virtue of wonder can promote children’s intellectual flourishing, which is fully endorsed by Aristotle’s contention that the happiest kind of life is a philosophical one, and that philosophy begins in wonder. In short, if primal wonder as a sprout of intellectual virtue can lead to the highest good for human beings, then one of the main educational goals of doing philosophy with children, I suggest, is to turn their primal wonder into a virtuous habit so that they can live an examined life. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the role of philosophy in the school environment, paying special attention to the promise of intergenerational dialogue carried forward by philosophy programmes associated with Lipman’s Philosophy for Children (P4C) curriculum and its current transformation into Philosophy with Children (PwC). There are two basic ideas that constitute the guiding thread of my reflections. Firstly, that philosophical interventions of that kind challenge adult-centric views of education and philosophy. Secondly, that such initiatives carry with them the promise of acknowledging (...) children as equal participants in the process of philosophical questioning and meaning creation. In the first part of the paper, I argue for the importance of understanding the act of philosophizing with children as a disruption of adult-centrism. First, I reflect on a narrow future-directedness that seems to characterize the temporality of school. I suggest that P4wC interventions interrupt such a future-directedness inviting the students to immerse themselves into a dilated ‘now’ of multiple possibilities. Then, I reflect on the ways in which P4wC interventions challenge the assumption that philosophy is an adult preoccupation. Special attention is paid to the work of scholars who challenge our restrictive assumptions about what qualifies as philosophical thinking. In the second part of my paper, I turn to the work of Merleau-Ponty with the aim of sketching out some requirements for the possibility of a dialogue between childhood and adulthood. I suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on childhood and expressive speech are invaluable in the context of P4wC because they invite us 1) to appreciate the alterity of children without reducing them to inferior ‘others’ and 2) to remain alert to the expressivity of children’s speech. (shrink)

This article considers two of the methodological steps in a Community of Philosophical Enquiry: developing the questions and voting on the questions. Both of these practices are enacted by the 8-9 year old children who are the participants in a philosophical enquiry, which I facilitated at a government primary school in South Africa. Matthews (1994) reminds us that children as philosophical thinkers/doers have been left out of the dominant narratives about children and childhood. A question that guides this research is (...) where is the place for philosophical questions (developed by children) and the kind of philosophical thinking/drawing/creating/being for child (and adults) in schools? How do we make space for such questioning–so that the richness of these pedagogical encounters can really matter and make a difference to the teaching and learning taking place? Gandorfer in an interview with Barad (2021), suggests that critical thought “is to encounter what is unrecognizable and imperceptible, yet sensible and constructive of sense without separating it from the physical world” (p. 20). I would agree and apply this to the critical thoughts of child. This thinking is not located in the child, in their mind and does not emerge only through the thoughts, child verbalises. A critical posthumanism theory/practice analysis ensures that as researcher, I do not stand outside of the research peering in at a distance. Similarly the children, the questions, the voting and the enquiries are not separate from the world, they are all already entangled with the world. When the children are voting on the questions, this performs as a pedagogy of interruption (Michaud, 2020). As the facilitator, I do not know which question will receive the largest number of votes for the philosophical enquiry. This makes possible an emergent curriculum in its be(com)ing. Toby Rollo’s (2016) formulations about child as political agent and not just moral agent and the implications for more democratic and just schooling are theorised in this paper through the act of the children voting on the questions. I argue that children are not just excluded from participating in decisions about what and even how they are learning at school but from most pedagogical practices in classrooms and schools. I show how the children creating the questions and voting on the questions can be democratic practices with political and moral implications in a community of philosophical enquiry. (shrink)

Today, people are better informed about environmental degradation than ever before. However, this does not imply that people are more engaged toward ecological issues nor are they more committed to achieve greater ecological justice. In this respect, environmental education is paradigmatic: the current generation of young people is, by far and without any doubt, the most knowledgeable and aware of environmental problems thanks, among other things, to the presence since the end of the 20th century of environmental education in primary (...) and secondary school. However, levels of commitment to ecological issues that are significantly higher than before are not observed, except when it comes to individual pro-environmental behavior. How to link environmental awareness with a collective, political, ecosocial and ecocitizen commitment? In order to advance avenues for reflection on this issue, firstly this article presents the elements that characterize the current ecosocial crisis. Secondly, it addresses the ecosocial crisis as a crisis of knowledge that ultimately points to the challenge of transforming the visions of the world. Thirdly, it considers the ecosocial crisis as an opportunity that opens up the possibility of creating new worlds on the planet. Fourthly, the ecosocial crisis is presented as a crisis of contemporary education. Fifthly, it summarizes the two risks to consider in the practice of ecosocial education: the risk of dogmatism and the risk of blaming individuals for global problems. Finally, some clues are proposed that point to the Philosophy for children program as a program that can support the educational practice needed by the current educational and ecosocial crisis, as well as limits recognized risks of ecosocial education. (shrink)

In times of crisis, connections among people, cultures, and societies seem to be the main antidotes available against the risks of individualism, auto-referentiality, and a revenge culture. Connectivity offers opportunities to nurture human generativity (Santi, 2021) in the service of better futures and cosmopolitan scenarios, contrasting the delusion of autarchical economies, the rhetoric of political nationalism, and the reinforcement of social polarization by way of competition/marginalization, which applies to education as well. The pandemia that occurred in 2020 brought both risks (...) of isolation and opportunities for connection: it has been a paradoxical and even paroxysmal situation that has challenged us to think about forms of dependence, especially in instructional contexts. The stimulus for an inquiry that was carried out with 817 students at the University of Padova was the provocative title of an album by well-known musicians: “Declaration of Dependence.” The aim was to think about dependencies in the form of regular roles such as “study/student” that are important for our human existence, and which were profoundly upset by the “sindemia” (Singer, 2009). Our aspiration was to explore what it means to belong to a thriving university whose over-arching goal is to serve the dependencies of people in a generative community of future horizons. Our efforts led to the drafting of the “Declaration of Dependence,” a shared manifesto by the research group that enumerated a thorough list of the students' self-declared dependencies, and which was later shared with the university community in multiple languages. This led, in turn, to the use of the Declaration to launch multiple focus groups, which discussed these dependencies in a setting devoted to dialogue and the practice of complex thinking. Subsequently, in a workshop carried out in 2020 at the 20th Biennial Conference of the International Council of Philosophical Inquiry with Children (ICPIC) in Tokyo, we opened an international dimension on the reflections that had preoccupied us in the Padova University context. Here, the aim was to reflect on the personal, collective and educational dependencies of the present historical moment through the practice of community of philosophical inquiry, which offers a paradigmatic time and space for sharing, listening, questioning, and gaining perspective. The conference workshop offered an international group of scholars and practitioners from various socio-political contexts the opportunity to deliberate on how the pandemic has impacted both their local and the global community. Considering the new educational and philosophical challenges presented by the pandemic, the group expressed an urgent need to deconstruct established boundaries and return to “origins.” Invoking metaphors taken from the natural world (Roversi et al, 2022), an inquiry into the nature and scope of our fundamental dependencies reminds us that we are part of a socio-cultural ecology that is grounded and nurtured in our relationship with others. A community that understands its dependencies as gifts that call us to the design of a better future could in fact represent a foreshadowing of a better tomorrow. (shrink)

This article presents the emergent findings of research conducted in Iran. It’s main objective was to investigate whether adolescents' thinking could turn polyphonic in CPI and what processes, thinking would go through to achieve this objective. Seventeen adolescents, ten girls, and seven boys participated in fourteen sessions with three iranian and three foreign novels as the materials of inquiry. The sessions were videotaped and analyzed by the researchers. The findings discovered out of pre-determined objectives revealed that CPI was effective in (...) developing adolescents' polyphonic thinking, and polyphonic thinking processes at work were also revealed. At the same time, some unexpected data emerged which gave rise to some emergent findings, among which was that meaning-making is not limited to what happens “inside” the CPI, but some events before, after, and during the sessions are decisive in meaning-making within this communal circle and formation of CPI. We named them ‘paratexts’ of CPI that included WhatsApp chats, religious, educational, scientific, and gender discourses, the extension of issues discussed at CPI to school and home, adolescent dialogues before and after the sessions, and their reading of philosophical ideas and literary commentaries on the materials of inquiry. Gérard Genette, giving currency to the term ‘paratext’, conceives of it as an undefined zone between the inside and the outside of a printed work that forms the complex mediation between book, author, publisher, and reader. It is a border zone in which text and off-text enter dialogue the paratexts associated with CPI directed us to reconfigure the practice in reconsideration of the facilitator’s roles and positions. On this account, the facilitator is someone who needs to be able to actively listen both to the voices of the group members and the voices of existing paratexts, and to manoeuvre between multiple roles and positions as the situation demands. (shrink)

O campo interdisciplinar dos novos estudos sociais das infâncias parte de uma ruptura epistemológica com as abordagens clássicas das ciências que adotam visões biologizantes, essencialistas e universais da criança e encontra na etnografia uma possibilidade de conceituação de criança enquanto sujeito ativo e de infância enquanto categoria social geracional. O reconhecimento desses conceitos de criança e de infância pela etnografia na pesquisa com crianças implica voltar-se para a criança como o outro, o diferente, o estrangeiro. A proposta de ruptura teórico-conceitual (...) na investigação das infâncias exige a implementação de metodologias que focalizem as experiências, os pontos de vista e as vozes das crianças, compreendendo-as enquanto processo, em outras palavras, constante construção. Portanto, para essa perspectiva, a criança não é o objeto do estudo, mas é sujeito que interage com o pesquisador na construção dos sentidos e significados da pesquisa. O texto está organizado em três partes que abordam os aspectos epistemológicos, teórico-conceituais e metodológicos do debate proposto. Ao final, procura-se uma articulação entre os diferentes aspectos da discussão, propondo uma reflexão sobre a ética e a alteridade, reconhecendo que a diferença atravessa as relações humanas e, portanto, é o diferente, o incomum, o incompreensível, o oposto, o desigual, o inalcançável que marca e define a pesquisa com criança. (shrink)

This paper has two objectives: to explore how inverting questions in the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (Kennedy, 2004) can be a useful tool for triggering thought processes; and, more generally, to explore the importance of inverting the role traditionally given to children as bystanders to their own education and thought processes. On this basis, we will assume that children have an epistemic and political voice and that this voicing, placed on equal standing with the adult voice, is long overdue. It (...) is undeniable that questions have a central role in P4C sessions (Costa-Carvalho E Mendonça, 2020; Costa-Carvalho E Kohan, 2020) and that, in the context of any given community of philosophical inquiry, they can trigger (Kennedy, 2004) a wide range of thought processes. Some questions may be too vague and require sharpening to adequately address the problem at hand, while others may promote a metacognitive approach to the issue under discussion, and to the entire thought process that sustains it. We will explore how inverting questions may be useful in this context. Moreover, we will consider how this thought anastrophé may emerge in concrete philosophical discussions with children. Our argument will, therefore, navigate the intersection between language and thought, logic and semantics, and theory and practice. Assuming that the term “inversion” may offer different understandings, we will try to outline this rhizomatic approach (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) to the concept. We will focus primarily on the child’s point of view, which we hold to be epistemologically privileged (Kennedy, 2020). It is our core belief that children´s voices should be granted scientific and political standing and that an epistemic inversion between adulthood and childhood in education must be explored. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present an ongoing research project that aims to uncover meanings about the figure of the teacher in the community of philosophical inquiry. What is unique about this figure? What constitutes this figure? How is this figure configured and reconfigured in her own practice? and how is she configured and reconfigured in her own practice? The article begins by describing what characterizes, defines or constitutes the figure of the teacher as facilitator outlined in the (...) initial Philosophy for Children program. It also addresses some critical perspectives on the notion of facilitating and seeks to propose an alternative to the figure of the facilitator which, far from attempting to define a taxonomy of teaching philosophy with children or to establish a model of teacher, allows us to think of a figure of schoolmaster who is sensitive to encounters and who, through them, also finds other ways of being and doing. In this sense, a reflection is also proposed on what an educational encounter can mean and what is the place of schoolmasters in these encounters. Finally, some possible conditions of/for the encounter are proposed as starting points that allow us to promote and sustain the encounter, such conditions are: commonality, equality, listening and unpredictability. (shrink)

Este artículo se construye en el marco del proyecto de investigación Democracia, igualdad y desacuerdo: conceptos teóricos-metodológicos de Jacques Rancière para pensar la educación en el mundo contemporáneo. El objetivo del proyecto fue la exploración de conceptos como democracia, igualdad y desacuerdo para pensar los sujetos y las realidades educativas desde las lógicas políticas contemporáneas. Como desdoblamiento de la investigación, este artículo explora algunas premisas de Jacques Rancière que permiten pensar las potencialidades políticas de la infancia a partir del reconocimiento (...) de la palabra y del tiempo infantil como formas de experiencia comunitaria. La perspectiva metodológica asume una escritura que elimina las distancias entre los discursos de los filósofos y las voces de las niñas y los niños para afirmar la potencia que tienen sus palabras al momento de pensar un problema filosófico. En este ejercicio de escritura y lectura no jerárquicas se puede apreciar que las palabras de la infancia no son el reflejo, la expresión ni el símbolo de una realidad teórica más elevada, sino que funcionan como condición de posibilidad para que el pensamiento no se detenga. Precisamente, no se busca escribir sobre la infancia, sino con la infancia. No se intenta hallar la verdad de la infancia, sino aprovechar la potencia de sus voces para acorralar al sentido común. De tal forma, se establece la relación entre conflicto político, estatuto de la palabra, infancia e igualdad, lo cual indica la capacidad de la infancia para renovar el sentido de los conceptos sobre los que se fundamenta la sociedad. Por último, se expone que la infancia es una forma de subjetividad que experimenta la temporalidad a partir de la afirmación de intensidades signadas por la curiosidad y la creatividad. Por esto, se constituye como una forma de experiencia política que es capaz de inventar temporalidades múltiples que subvierten el orden de la dominación. (shrink)

In this essay we expand the notion of thinking by emphasizing the provocation and urgency to think and by reconceptualizing thinking as an embodied practice. The aim is to expand Lipman and Sharp’s approach to philosophical inquiry with children and show how other ways of thinking can be included. We strive to unfold a way of “thinking” that is both different from rationality (critical thinking) as well as from creative and caring thinking. In the first part of the paper, we (...) discuss the merits of Lipman and Sharp’s critical, creative and caring thinking within the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI). We then expand Lipman/Sharp’s philosophical method through Ekkehart Marten’s Five-finger Model, which allows for different philosophical approaches. In the second half of the paper, we draw on Martin Heidegger’s What is called thinking? to develop his concept of the “call” to think together with its related notions of provocation and urgency. Building on this, we draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty to show how this call is not an intellectual activity or mere exercise of the “mind” but rather affects our entire existence. As such, thinking becomes a response to an existential urgency that is an embodied practice. Using concepts like embodiment, affect, and sensibility, we try to widen our conception of thinking in a CPI. Finally, we hope this will allow facilitators to hear the unique voice of every child so that no one is left unheard. (shrink)

Both social studies and preschool programs mention freedom as a value. However, in typical social studies curricula, the philosophical perspective is not included and no discussion takes place. In the preschool curriculum, freedom is an abstract concept, and the belief that children cannot understand abstract concepts prevails, while value studies are still limited to determining the frequency of values rather than interrogating them. As such, this study aims to explore young children's views on the concept of freedom, how these views (...) changed after their participation in a philosophically oriented activity, and how, consequently, the concept of freedom might be addressed in social studies on a philosophical level. The researchers used an applied qualitative study design, in which 19 children (14 boys, 5 girls) aged 5-6 years were interviewed before and after the presentation of the well-known folk tale “Rapunzel,” along with the question, “… am I free?” An exercise taken from the Philosophy for Children curriculum, "Freedom is similar to…, because…” was used in both pre and post interviews. The study used semi-structured interviews and document analysis as data collection instruments. The data obtained were subjected to descriptive and content analysis. As a result of the study, it was found that before the activity, children tended to discuss the meaning of freedom in the context of its limits (e.g. permission, prohibition, rules), and, following the activity, in the context of positive freedoms (e.g. growth, being independent). (shrink)

This paper is an introduction to the dossier on “the present and the future of doing philosophy with children”, which itself drew inspiration from a conference on the same topic that was held in University College Dublin on the 24th of June 2022. While the conference aimed at building a case for the importance of engaging pre-college students in philosophical thinking, it also aspired to function as a forum where the participants can critically reflect on the practice of doing philosophy (...) with children. The participants were asked to reflect on 1) the ways in which philosophy prepares children to engage with an increasingly complex world; 2) the future challenges of the P4wC movement; 3) the ways in which and the extent to which P4wC practice contributes to the decolonization of childhood discourses; 4) the ways in which and the extent to which the philosophy with children initiative addresses issues of epistemic injustice and educational and social inequalities. Building on the discussions that took place during and after the conference, the authors in this dossier interrogate the hierarchical opposition between child and adult, and cast a critical gaze on adultist assumptions that prevent Philosophy for/with Children initiatives from achieving their full potential. (shrink)