University of North Texas 
About
PWC UNT is a project devoted to the study and implementation of philosophy with children, including a focus on its intersections with environmental philosophy and environmental ethics.
What is philosophy for/with children?
Philosophy for Children (commonly abbreviated P4C) is a program intially developed by Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp in the 1970s in order to foster critical, creative, and caring thinking skills in young students. The P4C movement has spread around the world, and its local practioners and researchers have developed their own ways of facilitaion and interpretation, while respecting the original work by Lipman and Sharp. The main practice that links most P4C practitioners is the concept of "communities of inquiry", in which, students and facilitators together use a unique style of dialogue to create questions and reflect together about some kind of intellectual stimulus (a piece of artwork, a text, or a thought experiment). The approach has been highly developed and well-received in many places. Philosophy with Children (PWC) is a response to the development of P4C, and implies that we as facilitators do not simply provide philosophy for children, but participate together with children.
Current Projects:
During the 2023/24 school year, Shoshana McIntosh has been volunteering to do PWC with a small community cooperative of elementary age students. She is currently in the process of building a collaboration with a local public elementary school to implement a PWC program for the 2024-2025 school year. If you are interested in volunteering or learning more about PWC programs, please contact her at shoshana.mcintosh@unt.edu
Current People
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Dr. Adam Briggle
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Adam is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Philosophy and Religion Department at UNT. He helps to foster the UNT P4C program and occasionally gets a chance to philosophize with local school children. |
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Shoshana McIntosh
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Shoshana McIntosh is a PhD student and Teaching Fellow in the Philosophy and Religion department at UNT. Her research centers around the relations between humans and other-than-humans particularly in education, aesthetics, and ethics. She focuses on the role of embodiment in forming these relations and how care-based and justice-oriented embodied theories and practices can help build a more equitable multi-species community. Shoshana is also a K-12 educator passionate about creating and implementing radical multi-species pedagogies and has been doing philosophy with young people in North Texas since 2018. She is a recipient of the 2024-2025 PLATO graduate fellowship which funds her work with public school students. |
Previous People
Rika Tsuji
Rika Tsuji is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at UNT, and her research focuses on
the theoretical and practical development of environmental education programs incorporating
philosophical inquiries. She was intern at Teton Science Schools and Biocitizen School,
where she was exposed to placed-based education. She is currently co-teaching P4C
classes at the Koan School, where she facilitates philosophical dialogues on things
that matter with children.
Benn Johnson
Benn is a PhD student, studying the connections between environmental philosophy,
especially ecofeminism, and various systems of domination. He is currently co-teaching
P4C classes at the Koan School, where he helps lead courses of students from 4-9 years
of age, as well as high school students. He is also experimenting with using the methodology
of P4C in the undergraduate classroom.
Dr. Adam Briggle
Adam is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Philosophy
and Religion Department at UNT. He helps to foster the UNT P4C program and occasionally
gets a chance to philosophize with local school children.
Dr. Lewis Tyson
Dr. Tyson E. Lewis is an associate professor of art education at UNT. Previously he
was an assistant professor in Educational Foundations at Montclair State University,
New Jersey, which houses the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children
(IAPC). As a scholar, he is interested in developing new approaches to understanding
the role of the teacher in community of inquiry approaches to philosophy for children.
As a teacher, he continues to experiment with dialogic classrooms centered on art,
aesthetic philosophy, and educational philosophy.
T Wright
T is a PhD student in philosophy interested in philosophies of education especially
as they pertain to conservation, sustainability, and justice. Currently, T is co-teaching
P4C at the Koan School while working to broaden the scope of P4C in North Texas. T
seeks to incorporate direct encounters with the natural world as stimuli for students'
creative, critical, caring questioning at the core of P4C.
Dr. Tran Nguyen Templeton
Dr. Tran Nguyen Templeton is an assistant professor of early childhood studies in
the College of Education at UNT. Her research focuses on young children's co-constructions
of identity through processes of image-making (photographs, in particular). Broadly,
she's interested in the environments and conditions that make children's critical
thought possible.
Dr. Chris Moffett
Chris Moffett is Visiting Assistant Professor in Art Education at UNT. Current projects
include work on play based early-childhood learning in Anji, China, ecology in the
art classroom, and material inquiry. He is a Founding Member of the artist collective ARE, exploring the intersections among movement, sensory exercises and aesthetic practices.
