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29The Routledge International Handbook of Philosophy for Children (edited book)Routledge. 2017.This rich and diverse collection offers a range of perspectives and practices of Philosophy for Children (P4C). P4C has become a significant educational and philosophical movement with growing impact on schools and educational policy. Its community of inquiry pedagogy has been taken up in community, adult, higher, further and informal educational settings around the world. The internationally sourced chapters offer research findings as well as insights into debates provoked by bringing children’…Read more
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13Introduction to the suite: The Child as Reader, Philosopher, and Social Critic: Evaluating the Vision of Gareth B. MatthewsJournal of Philosophy of Education 57 (2): 571-574. 2023.Gareth B. Matthews (1929–2011) was a specialist in ancient and medieval philosophy whose conversations with young children led him to discover their penchant for philosophical thinking, which often enriched his own. Those conversations became the impetus for a substantial component of Matthews’ scholarship, from which our book, Gareth B. Matthews, The Child’s Philosopher, features essays spanning the length of his career. Contemporary contributors to the book critically evaluate Matthews’ schola…Read more
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7Response to commentators on Gareth B. Matthews, The Child’s Philosopher (2022)Journal of Philosophy of Education 57 (2): 602-610. 2023.In this article we respond to the reviews, which appear in this issue, by Harry Brighouse, David Bakhurst, and Sheron Fraser-Burgess of our edited book Gareth B. Matthews, The Child’s Philosopher (Routledge 2022a). We are grateful for their sympathetic yet critical perspectives, which we take to be the very kind of engagement the philosophy for children movement requires in order to become more integrated with professional philosophical and educational theory and practice. We particularly value …Read more
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13Philosophy for Children as a Form of Spiritual EducationChildhood and Philosophy 18 (n/a): 01-24. 2022.In the last two decades, some authors in the philosophy for children movement have theorized that the community of philosophical inquiry can be a form of spiritual practice, of the care of the self, or a wisdom practice (De Marzio, 2009; Gregory, 2009, 2013, 2014;Gregory & Laverty, 2009). Yet, it is unclear if philosophy for children is, by itself, a form of spiritual education, or if it requires some sorts of modification to be one. And, if it is or can be a form of spiritual education, we can …Read more
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Philosophy for children : where are we now?In Saeed Naji & Rosnani Hashim (eds.), History, Theory and Practices of Philosophy for Children: International Perspectives, Routledge. 2017.
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12The story circle as a practice of democratic, critical inquiryChildhood and Philosophy 17 01-42. 2021.The authors of this essay have been committed practitioners and teachers of Philosophy for Children in a variety of educational settings, from pre-schools through university doctoral programs and in adult community and religious education programs. The promotion of critical thinking has always been a primary goal of this movement. But communal practices of critical thinking need to include other kinds of democratic conversation that prompt us to see others as full-fledged persons and to be curio…Read more
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Philosophy for Children and Children’s Philosophical ThinkingIn Anna Pagès (ed.), A History of Western Philosophy of Education in the Contemporary Landscape, Bloomsbury. pp. 153-177. 2021.Since the late 1960s, philosophy for children has become a global, multi-disciplinary movement involving innovations in curriculum, pedagogy, educational theory, and teacher education; in moral, social and political philosophy; and in discourse and literary theory. And it has generated the new academic field of philosophy of childhood. Gareth B. Matthews (1929-2011) traced contemporary disrespect for children to Aristotle, for whom the child is essentially a pre-intellectual and pre-moral precur…Read more
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19Gareth B. Matthews, The Child's Philosopher (edited book)Routledge. 2021.Gareth B. Matthews, The Child’s Philosopher brings together groundbreaking essays by renowned American philosopher Gareth B. Matthews in three fields he helped to initiate: philosophy in children’s literature, philosophy for children, and philosophy of childhood. In addition, contemporary scholars critically assess Matthews’ pioneering efforts and his legacy. Matthews (1929-2011) was a specialist in ancient and medieval philosophy who had conversations with young children, discovering that they …Read more
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114Are Philosophy and Children Good for Each Other?Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children 16 (2): 9-11. 2002.
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225Philosophy for/with Children, Religious Education and Education for Spirituality. Steps Toward a Review of the LiteratureIn Ellen Duthie, Félix García Moriyón & Rafael Robles Loro (eds.), Parecidos de familia. Propuestas actuales en Filosofía para Niños / Family resemblances. Current proposals in Philosophy for Children, Anaya. pp. 279-296. 2017.The authors describe the organization of a review of research literature on the relationship between Philosophy for/with Children (P4/wC) and religious education/education for spirituality (RE-EfS). They summarize a debate about whether the two are mutually enhancing or incompatible. They explain delimiting the scope of the project and present a grid of research questions used to analyze the literature. They summarize findings on how P4/wC is relevant to five categories of aims of RE-EfS: hermen…Read more
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23In Community of Inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp: Childhood, Philosophy and Education (edited book)Routledge. 2017.In close collaboration with the late Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp pioneered the theory and practice of ‘the community of philosophical inquiry’ (CPI) as a way of practicing ‘Philosophy for Children’ and prepared thousands of philosophers and teachers throughout the world in this practice. In Community of Inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp represents a long-awaited and much-needed anthology of Sharp’s insightful and influential scholarship, bringing her enduring legacy to new generations of ac…Read more
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172Ethics education and the practice of wisdomIn Elena K. Theodoropoulou, Didier Moreau & Christiane Gohier (eds.), Ethics in Education: Philosophical tracings and clearings, Laboratory of Research On Practical and Applied Philosophy, University of the Aegean. pp. 199-234. 2018.Ethics education in post-graduate philosophy departments and professional schools involves disciplinary knowledge and textual analysis but is mostly unconcerned with the ethical lives of students. Ethics or values education below college aims at shaping students’ ethical beliefs and conduct but lacks philosophical depth and methods of value inquiry. The «values transmission» approach to values education does not provide the opportunity for students to express doubt or criticism of the proffered …Read more
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8Pragmatist Value InquiryContemporary Pragmatism 3 (1): 105-126. 2006.This essay concerns relationships among value experience, value inquiry, and value theory. Five stages of value experience are distinguished, comprising a narrative of the attempt to enhance certain kinds of experience. A multi-level model of value inquiry is presented, beginning with improvement of immediate situations and moving to meta-level inquiry. Six pragmatist methods for conducing value inquiry are explained, which culminate in informed judgments of preference among qualitative experien…Read more
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10The Perils of Rationality: Nietzsche, Peirce and educationEducational Philosophy and Theory 33 (1): 23-34. 2001.
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8Review of Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities: Princeton University Press, 2010 (review)Studies in Philosophy and Education 30 (4): 419-427. 2011.
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9The Procedurally Directive Approach to Teaching Controversial IssuesEducational Theory 64 (6): 627-648. 2014.Recent articles on teaching controversial topics in schools have employed Michael Hand's distinction between “directive teaching,” in which teachers attempt to persuade students of correct positions on topics that are not rationally controversial, and “nondirective teaching,” in which teachers avoid persuading students on topics that are rationally controversial. However, the four methods of directive teaching discussed in the literature — explicit directive teaching, “steering,” “soft-directive…Read more
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18A Framework for Facilitating Classroom DialogueTeaching Philosophy 30 (1): 59-84. 2007.Classroom dialogue can be democratic and evidence critical and creative thinking, yet lose momentum and direction without a plan for systematic inquiry. This article presents a six-stage framework for facilitating philosophical dialogue in pre-college and college classrooms, drawn from John Dewey and Matthew Lipman. Each stage involves particular kinds of thinking and aims at a specific product or task. The role of the facilitator—illustrated with suggestive scripts—is to help the participants m…Read more
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7New Research on Programs for Classroom Discussion (review)Questions 10 1-3. 2010.Gregory reports on an evaluation study of nine different educational programs for small-group discussion, funded by the US Department of Education. The researchers evaluated Philosophy for Children very highly on each of the five discourse features: (1) Teachers' and students' use of authentic questions, uptake and questions that elicited high-level thinking (generalization, analysis and speculation); (2) Teachers' and students' use of questions that elicited extra-textual connections (affective…Read more
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7Introduction to Special Issue on Education for Critical Thinking in the 21st CenturyInquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 18 (2): 4-7. 1998.
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4Democracy and Care in the Community of InquiryInquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 17 (1): 40-50. 1997.
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23Philosophy for Children and its Critics: A Mendham DialogueJournal of Philosophy of Education 45 (2): 199-219. 2011.As conceived by founders Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp, Philosophy for Children is a humanistic practice with roots in the Hellenistic tradition of philosophy as a way of life given to the search for meaning, in American pragmatism with its emphasis on qualitative experience, collaborative inquiry and democratic society, and in American and Soviet social learning theory. The programme has attracted overlapping and conflicting criticism from religious and social conservatives who don’t wa…Read more
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16Philosophy and Children’s Religious ExperienceProceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 45 125-135. 2008.Philosophy serves to determine and clarifying the meaning of experience, and to make experience more meaningful, in both of the senses that Dewey distinguished: to broaden the range and amplify the value of qualities we experience, and to multiply their relevant ties to other experiences. Children’s experience is replete with philosophical meaning, and in facilitating children’s search for meaning, we are obliged to lead them in the directions that we ourselves have found most fruitful, though w…Read more
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14The Status of Rational Norms:: a Pragmatist PerspectiveAnalytic Teaching and Philosophical Praxis 21 (1): 53-64. 2001.Cultural conservatives urge curricula for critical thinking and character education as means of shoring up rational and moral truths. Cultural critics challenge not only the objectivity of the standard curricula but the very norms of objectivity used to justify it. A pragmatist account of rational and other norms leaves most of those norms intact but makes their status provisional.
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Montclair State UniversityProfessor
Montclair, New Jersey, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Teaching Philosophy |
PhilPapers Editorships
Philosophy for Children |
Philosophy for Children, Misc |