childhood & philosophy
type: channel
description: childhood & philosophy is a rolling pass journal dedicated to the intersections and relationships between philosophy, childhood, philosophies of childhood and philosophical inquiry with children. it is the result of a partnership between the nefi (center for the study of philosophies and childhoods) of the state university of rio de janeiro (uerj), and the international community for philosophical inquiry with children (icpic). it has been edited and published in brazil since its creation in 2005. e-issn 1984-5987 | p-issn 2525-5061 | creation year: 2005 | knowledge area: philosophy of education
publisher: Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
language: en-US
publication name: childhood & philosophy
issn: 2525-5061
copyright: copyright for each article published in childhood & philosophy belongs to its author(s). childhood & philosophy has the right of first publication. permission to reprint any article that appears in childhood & philosophy MUST be obtained in writing from the author(s). in addition to any form of acknowledgement required by the author(s), the following notice must be added to the statement of copyright permission made in the reprint (with the appropriate numbers replacing the ellipses): [Article Title] was originally published in childhood & philosophy, volume ..., number ..., pp. ...-...
items: racismo, infancia y aporía
items: experiences
items: neutrality or complicity?
items: can the center speak for the subaltern?
items: the lesson
items: gramática de la violencia colonial y pedagogías de la crueldad
items: desegregating the community of inquiry in philosophy for / with children
items: argue as i say not as i do…
items: education and democracy in the world today (2025)
items: epistemic violence and philosophy for children
items: dwelling with middle schoolers on race and racism in us history
items: em caxias a filosofia en-caixa?
items: philosophy as children
items: questioning techniques in a philosophical group-discussion scaffolding estonian preschoolers critical thinking and reasoning
items: philosophical walks
items: childhood epistemology in alice’s adventures in wonderland
items: because we care
items: infância, experiência e filosofia
items: sobre infância e devires
items: quando o fundo do mar interessa mais do que Monet
items: o que as teorias da psicologia da educação não nos contam
items: pensar a educação escolar de modo não cognitivista
items: imagens insurgentes
items: seis fragmentos para uma formação inventiva de professores, em tom menor, entre psicologia e filosofia
items: aprender a pensar com as crianças
items: o concreto, o abstrato e o mágico
items: cartografias da inventividade pedagógica
items: políticas da cognição em educação matemática

racismo, infancia y aporía
type: item
description: Considering racism as an object of knowledge and reflection generally stems from the need to argue for or against this phenomenon; however, approaching it from the perspective of Philosophy for Children involves assuming an intellectual heritage that requires addressing this issue from a higher and more demanding starting point. Researchers such as Jonathan Wurtz, Darren Chetty, Melissa Fitzpatrick, and Amy Reed-Sandoval have created a space for study and reflection that shifts attention to problems on another level, challenging scholars and practitioners of early philosophy education to raise their gaze beyond the well-founded rejection of any idea or action of a racist nature. This discussion area generates a different and exciting starting point, which encourages work on the web of epistemological, ethical, and pedagogical issues involved in the problems and challenges of doing philosophy for/with children in a world of institutionalized racism. That is why this article discusses how vulnerable the Community of Philosophical Inquiry can be in the face of the epistemological power that racism has achieved, and how the philosophical and pedagogical resources that Socratic dialogue can provide can help to exacerbate the problem of racism. Finally, the philosophical and pedagogical importance of aporia is highlighted as a tool capable of undermining the paradigmatic force of White Ignorance. This is within the framework of Sustainable Development Goals related to the need to reduce inequalities and build more just and inclusive societies.
creator: maría rodríguez-toro
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 María Rodríguez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-01-26
publication date: 2026-01-26
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 21
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.93358

experiences
type: item
description: The aim of this essay is to demonstrate how the educational model of philosophy for children (P4C) can function as a powerful pedagogical tool within the college classroom. It might challenge students to consider philosophical concepts in new contexts, allow them to reflect on their own childhood and consider their philosophical growth, provide them with tools for thinking philosophically with children in the future (as caregivers or educators), or provide philosophical concepts greater vibrancy through narrative or illustration. More specifically, in my own teaching, it has proven to be an effective pedagogical strategy for tackling antiracist and decolonial themes. In the following, I will outline how I have designed teaching methods and course assignments that have interfused my expertise in philosophy of childhood and/or P4C with the fields of Jewish studies, philosophy of race, and critical race theory, the result of which has produced both a dynamic scholarly dialogue and a rich educational environment. Incorporating P4C methods into the college classroom—such as the use of children’s books as a form of philosophical inquiry has played a pivotal role in developing of community of mutual inquiry where students learn from each other and even I as the professor have learned from my students.
creator: brock bahler
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 brock a. bahler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-01-26
publication date: 2026-01-26
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 24
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.92294

neutrality or complicity?
type: item
description: This article offers a critical reflection on philosophical practice with children and youth in Puerto Rico, grounded in personal, community, and institutional experiences. Through projects such as Guailimanai, Philosophy for Children Puerto Rico (FpNPR), and ZONA-FILO, it explores how philosophy can serve as a transformative pedagogical tool from an early age. The importance of philosophical dialogue, family participation, and critical thinking rooted in contexts of oppression is emphasized. Inspired by the work of Walter Omar Kohan (2018), the article establishes a dialogue between the proposals of Matthew Lipman and Paulo Freire. While Lipman aimed to develop cognitive skills through logical reasoning, Freire advocated for an education oriented toward critical consciousness and social transformation. The article expands on Kohan’s discussion by addressing the notion of educational neutrality, arguing that neutrality is an illusion in contexts marked by structural inequalities. From a critical pedagogy perspective, it asserts that education is inherently political. Neutrality, rather than ensuring equality, can become an ally of oppressive power. Therefore, the article proposes a committed philosophical practice, where educators and learners take ethical stances on issues such as colonialism, gentrification, femicide, racism, and adultcentrism. In this framework, philosophy does not seek to impose viewpoints but to foster sincere dialogue, deep questioning, and transformative action.
creator: erick javier padilla rosas
creator: zorayma navarro otero
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Erick Javier Padilla Rosas, zorayma navarro otero https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-01-26
publication date: 2026-01-26
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 26
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.93306

can the center speak for the subaltern?
type: item
description: This article offers a postcolonial critique of Philosophy for Children (P4C), arguing that despite its democratic aspirations, the program risks reproducing epistemic violence and colonial hierarchies in racial, colonial, and Indigenous contexts. Drawing on Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s “Can the subaltern speak?”, it examines how P4C’s universalist and Eurocentric foundations structurally silence subaltern voices by privileging the norms of Anglo-American analytic philosophy and marginalizing alternative epistemologies. Spivak’s concept of “epistemic violence” shows that even well-intentioned attempts at inclusion can reinforce subaltern invisibility when their speech remains unintelligible within dominant knowledge systems. In response to the impossibility that Spivak identifies, which closes off the possibility of authentic subaltern speech, I engage with Henry Giroux’s concept of “border pedagogy” to explore ways of decolonizing P4C. Giroux reimagines educational spaces as sites of critical negotiation where dominant and subaltern knowledge systems meet, encouraging border crossing practices that question claims to epistemic neutrality. Border pedagogy supports contextualized and pluralistic inquiry that values oral, narrative, and affective modes of reasoning alongside canonical traditions. The article proposes considerations and strategies for implementing a decolonial P4C praxis, including the use of ethnographic listening, the integration (and interrogation) of popular culture and Indigenous knowledge systems. By synthesizing Spivak’s diagnostic critique with Giroux’s practical considerations, this article’s effort is to reposition P4C as a potential site for epistemic justice, pluralistic dialogue, and transformative education accountable to history, difference, and power.
creator: soudabeh shokrollahzadeh
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 soudabeh shokrollahzadeh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-01-26
publication date: 2026-01-26
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 28
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.94251

the lesson
type: item
description: The following contribution is a work of fiction, submitted as a response to the call for papers for this dossier on ‘racism, colonialism and philosophy for /with children: praxis in non-ideal contexts’. Putatively written by the English-language philosopher A.M. Moskovitz (with an introductory note by Susan Lang), the story describes the ‘author’s’ childhood experience of a philosophy outreach programme. A stranger visits a classroom and enacts white forms of discursive violence upon the children with the perceived aim of oppression and control. The submission is followed by ‘uncomfortable meditations’, intended to stimulate thought and discussion.
creator: adam ferner
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 adam ferner https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-02-28
publication date: 2026-02-28
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 12
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.96276

gramática de la violencia colonial y pedagogías de la crueldad
type: item
description: This paper, derived from a research Project, adopts a critical stance from a decolonial perspective on the pedagogical function of colonial power within the context of teaching philosophy. To this end, it introduces into the theoretical discussion analytical tools such as the concept of the grammar of colonial violence and the pedagogies of cruelty. The objective is to examine and elucidate strategies—such as infantilization and feminization—that reproduce forms of domination and exclusion of colonized subjects (a passage to cruelty) within the pedagogical praxis of philosophy. The paper also explores possible interventions through counter-hegemonic alternatives that philosophy may offer in its pedagogical dimension. The paper is organized into three main sections. First, it engages with the notion of “pedagogies of cruelty” to analyze how colonial power produces and legitimizes the mechanisms through which it is transmitted and communicated. Second, it investigates how philosophy and its teaching are embedded within a generic framework that sustains the production of colonial power mechanisms—particularly through the construction of an adult-centric and patriarchal character of philosophical practice—which appears to undermine the emancipatory potential of critical thinking emerging from such practice. Finally, the paper turns to the consideration of decolonial pedagogies (counter-pedagogies of cruelty), in dialogue with reflections on the teaching philosophy, to explore the possibility of pedagogical enclaves as strategic spaces of struggle and resistance aimed at unveiling and ultimately displacing structures of colonial power within pedagogical praxis.
creator: jhon jairo losada cubillos
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 jhon jairo losada cubillos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-02-28
publication date: 2026-02-28
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 30
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.92452

desegregating the community of inquiry in philosophy for / with children
type: item
description: This dialogical article examines persistent challenges in engaging racism, colonialism, and white supremacy within the theory and practice of Philosophy for/with Children (P4/wC). Framed as a mutual interview between two long-standing colleagues, the dialogue revisits formative encounters in the P4/wC community and situates them within broader intellectual traditions, including American pragmatism, deliberative democracy, and Africana philosophy. Drawing on personal experience, archival material, and critical scholarship, the authors interrogate the metaphilosophical assumptions underpinning the “community of inquiry,” particularly its commitments to reasonableness, consensus, and democratic dialogue. Concepts such as the “gated community of inquiry,” white ignorance, nonideal theory, and insurrectionist ethics are mobilized to illuminate how norms of reasonableness can function as mechanisms of exclusion. Rather than abandoning dialogue, the authors explore the possibilities for reconstructing the community of inquiry in light of nonideal realities, positioning it as a site not only of deliberation but of critical transformation.
creator: maughn rollins gregory
creator: darren chetty
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 maughn rollins gregory, darren chetty https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-02-28
publication date: 2026-02-28
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 25
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.96051

argue as i say not as i do…
type: item
description: A key professional skill at leading Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CPI) is the ability to support students in developing contributions that open new lines of reasoning, or kairos. Nevertheless, in a CPI about destiny in a French secondary school, when a Muslim girl tries to articulate her belief in God with human agency, such kairos seems inaudible to the two instructors, one of them even stopping the discussion as it gets too metaphysical. Through an in-depth case study of this dialogue, based on interactional linguistics, institutional conversation analysis, and argumentation studies, we analyze how her contribution is put aside by precisely describing such missed opportunity across the social, cognitive, and emotional planes. We explore hypotheses about why the teacher-facilitators do not give her argument the attention that it deserves. Based on relevant contextual information, our interpretation is that multiple layers of cultural clashes occurring at the micro, meso and macro levels here restrict the philosophical inquiry. We define cultural constructs and perform our multimodal analyses on the video-recorded CPI session and the corresponding transcript. We finally step back from the present dialogue analysis to discuss the long-term effect of such types of missed opportunities as they might create barriers to inclusive multicultural education.
creator: claire polo
creator: kristine lund
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 claire polo, kristine lund https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-02-28
publication date: 2026-02-28
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 35
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.93049

education and democracy in the world today (2025)
type: item
description: This paper investigates critics’ claims that John Dewey neglected to adequately engage with racism—particularly his complicity in “whiteness,” including his valorisation of American democracy as an exemplar of the Anglo-Saxon legacy, viewed by critics as a narrative of human progress from “primitive” to “modern;” his failure to address his own prejudices and assumptions about the student and the community; and avoidance of the racial realities regarding “Black experience”. These criticisms could have ramifications for philosophy for children, which Matthew Lipman has said owes a debt to Dewey. We contend that education in Western-style democracies has not adequately responded to racial intolerance, and that liberal democracy has not lived up to its philosophical ideals of equal rights and opportunities, irrespective of people’s backgrounds. However, we argue that the problem goes deeper, that the very concept of freedom in liberalism is an obstacle to overcoming the problems that Dewey’s critics identified. We conclude that because reconstruction is inherent in pragmatist epistemology, reconstructing some of the assumptions that inform the community of inquiry, especially assumptions about democracy and deliberation, has the potential to strengthen engagement with the Aboriginal concepts of freedom and autonomy, thereby challenging the belief in the superiority of liberal philosophical thought in Western-style democracy. We begin our argument by drawing attention to the liberal concepts of freedom and autonomy (as idealised characteristics of identity that are the foundation of liberal understanding of human nature), followed by criticisms of Dewey’s ideal vision of the student and the classroom community, as well as his failure to acknowledge racial dynamics. We then introduce the Aboriginal political concept of autonomous regard (a core concept of simultaneous respect for the autonomy of others that fosters a relational worldview of community and with the land). T…
creator: mary graham
creator: gilbert burgh
creator: simone thornton
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 mary graham, gilbert burgh, simone thornton https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-06-25
publication date: 2026-06-25
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 27
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.93228

epistemic violence and philosophy for children
type: item
description: This paper explores epistemic violence as it relates to communities of philosophical inquiry. The authors start by characterizing Kristie Dotson’s epistemic systems framework and connect these ideas to the concept of epistemic violence. The authors differentiate between epistemic violence and epistemic injustice and highlight two key incidents of epistemic violence that serve as points of analysis: one arising in a community of philosophical inquiry facilitated by one of the contributing authors where students discussed Dutch-Lenape history in New York City and the other described by Philosophy for Children scholar Ruth Silver about an epistemic exclusion that occurred during a Philosophy for Children facilitation workshop. Using these instances, we argue that it is the impermeability of the dominant frameworks and communicative norms that govern these inquiries that may render the introduction of certain protective factors, such as historicizing and communicative reciprocity, necessary in order to uphold the ideals of a community of inquiry.
creator: alaina gostomski
creator: sam piede
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 alaina gostomski, sam piede https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-06-25
publication date: 2026-06-25
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 25
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.94211

dwelling with middle schoolers on race and racism in us history
type: item
description: In a 2018 article, Darren Chetty draws attention to a serious problem in the field of Philosophy for/with Children (P4/WC). Framed as gated, Chetty challenges the role of reasonableness in the creation and function of the community of inquiry. A community of inquiry based on an ahistoric conception of reasonableness not only limits what can be said but who can say what. Chetty ends the critique by calling on P4C practitioners to de-center reasonableness and re-center historical perspectives to challenge racialized common sense in the community of inquiry. I’m motivated by the call from Chetty to center historical perspectives in the community inquiry and forgo the traditional commitment to reasonableness in dialogical deliberation. This paper reports how I approached facilitating philosophical conversations with middle schoolers on issues of race and racism in United States (US) history—inspired by how Chetty and Abigail Bentely conducted philosophical conversations on race and racism, I frame my pedagogical approach as dwelling. Like Chetty and Bentley, I facilitated philosophical conversations on race and racism while sitting in a half circle, prompting discussion through engagement with shared stimuli. Unlike Chetty and Bentley, who recruited adult participants from their campus, I enacted these conversations with middle schoolers.
creator: max jacobs
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 max jacobs https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-06-26
publication date: 2026-06-26
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 23
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.94636

em caxias a filosofia en-caixa?
type: item
description: This writing seeks to investigate, based on the practices of the project "In Caxias, philosophy in a box?", a partnership between the Center for Studies in Philosophy and Childhood (NEFI) of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) and the Joaquim da Silva Peçanha Municipal School, Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the implications and intersections of a philosophical education that affirms itself as counter-colonial and anti-racist in a country marked by structural racism and colonialism. The project has been developing philosophy practices with children for almost twenty years in the public school system of the city of Duque de Caxias, a peripheral region of the State of Rio de Janeiro, resisting the silencing of ancestral knowledge and memories that marginalize Black bodies and especially those of children. We bring together concepts: from Antônio Bispo dos Santos (Nego Bispo), counter-coloniality and the logic of "beginning-middle-beginning" in opposition to school training and the logic of "beginning-middle-end". Their Quilombola way of thinking and way of life inspire us to view public schools as a confluent territory that does not separate knowledge, but rather strengthens it by converging; from Gloria Anzaldúa, the notions of "mestiza consciousness" and "border territories" bring us closer to other colonial realities and possible resistance movements by subverting the logic of creating epistemic borders for the purpose of separation, assuming the power of border territories; and from Lélia Gonzalez, who, with "Pretuguês" (Black Portuguese), shows us that these territories invent their places to affirm life despite the racism that is also strongly structured in the subjectivation of the Brazilian population. The project is based on a wandering and "philosophically questioning girl" pedagogy, which prioritizes curiosity, questions, and perplexity over ready-made answers and productivity, presenting two practical experiences carried out in 2025 at t…
creator: priscila liz belmont
creator: vanise dutra gomes
creator: walter omar kohan
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 priscila liz belmont, vanise dutra gomes, walter omar kohan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-07-30
publication date: 2026-07-30
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 33
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.97100

philosophy as children
type: item
description: This article proposes “philosophizing as children” as an epistemic stance that challenges the adultist assumptions embedded in the philosophical tradition. Rather than viewing childhood as a stage preceding rational thought, it argues that traits associated with childhood—curiosity, openness, and dependence—are fundamental conditions for the act of philosophizing itself. Drawing selectively on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception and Ahmed’s phenomenology of attention, the paper describes a mode of thinking that remains in relation to the unknown and resists gestures of mastery and closure that characterize adult rationality. In dialogue with Tronto’s ethics of care and Lugones’s notion of world-traveling, it suggests that thinking as children entails a relational and affective commitment to others. Philosophizing as children entails an intentional infantilization of philosophical thought, understood as a refusal of adultist norms of mastery, closure, and epistemic self-sufficiency in favor of wonder, relational responsibility, and openness to alterity.
creator: rachel mcnealis
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 rachel mcnealis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-01-26
publication date: 2026-01-26
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 27
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.95048

questioning techniques in a philosophical group-discussion scaffolding estonian preschoolers critical thinking and reasoning
type: item
description: In a fast-changing and evolving world, we need more and more flexible and critical thinkers. Critical thinking is a cornerstone of education and a necessity for all human activity. One of the growing problems in an increasingly digital society is the constant loss of dialogue and reflective discussion in the learning process. In pedagogical practice, critical thinking is effectively exercised through discussion and questioning. Philosophical discussion with the support of the Philosophy for Children programme is a good way to support pre-school children's critical thinking and reasoning skills. The aim of this follow-up qualitative study was to describe different questioning techniques during group-discussion utilising the Philosophy for Children programme in order to scaffold Estonian preschoolers' reasoning. The data was collected during an 8-month period through philosophical group-discussions engaged five- to six-years-old children with 20 observations from five groups (N=58). Transcripts from group-discussions were analysed using qualitative analysis. The findings indicated that the functions of a discussion leader´s open- and closed-ended questions varied depending on the children´s responses and behavior. Eight functions for open-ended questions and five functions with five parallel functions for closed-ended questions are described. Some closed-ended questions can support higher-level thinking in cases where they prompt children to compare, hesitate, or explain. A model for asking questions in group discussions was prepared, providing guidelines for asking questions in a purposeful manner, based on the function of the previous question and the child's answer. The informed understanding of questioning techniques is useful to identify how kindergarten teachers can scaffold children during group-discussions.
creator: egle säre
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Egle Säre https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-01-26
publication date: 2026-01-26
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 33
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.92728

philosophical walks
type: item
description: The philosophical walk is a recent addition to the spectrum of philosophical methods. Philosophical walks are a practice through which people of all ages — from children to adults — not necessarily trained in or familiar with academic philosophy can engage in philosophy through the simple act of walking. This article is based on an interview with Peter Harteloh, a philosophical practitioner well known for his philosophical walks. The interview was conducted by Chiaki Tokui during the 18th International Conference on Philosophical Practice (ICPP). Harteloh started a private philosophical practice in the city of Rotterdam (The Netherlands) in 2007 with a focus on individual consultations, Socratic group dialogue, courses on the art of living and philosophical walks. He has conducted philosophical walks in many countries all over the world and developed a method for it consisting of nine steps. The interview will examine the nine steps of this method in more detail and address the philosophical background, the development of the method, the characteristic features of Harteloh’s walks, and its application to the philosophy for children. An experience of Chiaki participating in a walk completes the interview and will lead to some conclusions on walking as philosophical practice.
creator: peter harteloh
creator: chiaki tokui
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 chiaki tokui, peter harteloh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-02-28
publication date: 2026-02-28
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 17
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.95451

childhood epistemology in alice’s adventures in wonderland
type: item
description: This article examines Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from the perspective of childhood epistemology, arguing that childhood knowledge should not be understood as deficient in relation to adult-centered rationality, but rather as an autonomous epistemic domain constituted through experience, uncertainty, and contextual interaction. The study conceptualizes childhood not merely as a pedagogical category, but as a distinct epistemic position that exists in structural tension with dominant adult knowledge regimes. Its point of departure lies in the limited number of studies within childhood research that directly problematize the epistemic status of childhood. The theoretical framework integrates Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice, John Dewey’s theory of experiential learning, and Michel Foucault’s analyses of knowledge–power relations. Metho- dologically, the study employs qualitative close reading and thematic analysis, focusing on the scenes of the Queen’s Croquet Ground, Advice from a Caterpillar, and the Mad Tea Party. The findings demonstrate that adult epistemology in the text operates through arbitrary authority, normalizing judgments, and exclusionary discourses, thereby exposing its own internal inconsistencies. In contrast, Alice’s modes of knowing are shaped through trial and error, embodied experience, and the suspension of fixed meaning. The article positions Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a critical epistemological space in which alternative forms of knowledge associated with childhood are literarily constructed, contributing to interdisciplinary debates in childhood studies, literary theory, and philosophy of knowledge.
creator: hulusi geçgel
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 hulusi geçgel https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-02-28
publication date: 2026-02-28
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 32
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.96052

because we care
type: item
description: The experiences of siblings of children with life-limiting conditions have received increasing attention in recent years. However, their conceptualisation of well-being and care has received limited attention. This article shares findings from a project with a small group of children who have siblings with life-limiting conditions. Uniquely, the siblings explored concepts of care and well-being through a series of philosophical dialogues and complementary art activities. Four main themes were central to the siblings’ ways of thinking about care and well-being: being your own person, life is an emotional rollercoaster, love is complex, and together we are stronger. The key message that was central to the ways in which the siblings understand care and well-being is that love drives caring behaviour, and that we should care for others, not because they have particular needs, but because we are human. Understanding how siblings of children with life-limiting conditions think about notions of care and well-being ensure that this under-represented group is heard, and that in attending to them, families and others who care for and about them are better able to meet their needs with a view to them living well.
creator: claire cassidy
creator: cillian dwyer
creator: lorna fraser
creator: anna robinson
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 claire cassidy, cillian dwyer, lorna fraser, anna robinson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-03-31
publication date: 2026-03-31
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 26
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.94817

infância, experiência e filosofia
type: item
description: This article proposes a comparative reading of the work Infâncias: Aqui e Além-Mar, by José Santos and José Jorge Letria, alongside the concepts of childhood and experience developed by Walter Kohan, David Kennedy, and Jorge Larrosa. The central objective is to understand how the poetic memories narrated by the authors articulate with the philosophy of childhood. The investigation adopts the essay as a form (Adorno, 2003), grounded in the fragmentary perspective of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. The reflection is developed through thematic axes that emerge from the work—such as curiosity and openness, the relationship with the other, imagination, aesthetic sensibility, and the confrontation with limits. The results show that the poems transcend a merely memorialistic register and are constituted as philosophical narratives of childhood, resignified through poetry. It is concluded that the work configures childhood as a space of openness, potency, and creation, considered in its singularity and cultural plurality, and experience as a process of meaning-making, revealing itself as capable of illuminating the human condition in all its complexity.
creator: fabrícia machado fernandes
creator: luciane pandini simiano
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 fabrícia machado fernandes, luciane pandini simiano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-05-30
publication date: 2026-05-30
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 24
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.94833

sobre infância e devires
type: item
description: The discussion presented in this article uses the “Biografematic” Method as a strategy for understanding narratives and challenges in the training of teachers who work with childhood education. Based on the theoretical works of Barthes, Deleuze, Guattari, Canguilhem, Varela, and Foucault, it questions rigid formats of teaching and understanding childhoods and proposes openness to the unexpected and to invention in the exercise of this profession. The paths taken in teaching as a field of experience intersect with affective and temporal fields in everyday life, being strained by the nuances of childhoods. By accompanying ephemeralities, “biografematic” writing has established itself as a tool for analyzing educational practices, in workshops held with teachers. The writing takes on an essayistic character, seeking to produce thought in motion, in dialogue with the unique gestures of the teaching profession and the tensions caused by encounters with childhoods. Rather than treating childhood as a chronological phase, the article takes it as a way of being, a state of experimentation and openness to the new. Becoming-child is understood as a power in pedagogical practice that allows for the displacement of knowledge, practices, and forms of relationship in the educational environment. Monitoring the ephemerality of educational practices has enabled dialogues with other possible modes of teaching in early childhood education. Teaching, understood as an ethical, aesthetic, and political activity, encounters childhood, which, as a territory of immanence and difference (NOGUERA, 2019), enhances other ways in the teaching profession based on infantilization.
creator: maria elizabeth barros de barros
creator: cristiana mara bonaldi
creator: denise carla goldner coelho
creator: mateus dias pedrini
creator: filipe azevedo souza
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 maria elizabeth barros de barros, cristiana mara bonaldi, denise carla goldner coelho, mateus dias pedrini, filipe azevedo souza https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-03-30
publication date: 2026-03-30
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 24
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.95261

quando o fundo do mar interessa mais do que Monet
type: item
description: This article examines how children engage with cultural spaces based on a report of an experience that took place at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris in January 2024. By observing children’s behaviors and adult interventions, we analyze how different forms of mediation can either limit or expand the experiential possibilities available to young visitors. The central episode (a girl’s immersive interaction with a virtual “underwater” installation and her mother’s attempt to redirect her response toward culturally validated content) serves as an initial provocation to discuss body, imagination, mediation, and experience, drawing on authors such as Vygotsky (1991, 2009), hooks (2017, 2020) and Larrosa (2002). The analysis shows that childhood activates embodied, curious, and inventive modes of knowing, challenging adult-centric norms that still structure many museums. In dialogue with educators from the Escola do Olhar of the Museum of Art of Rio (MAR), we argue that other practices are possible: mediations that welcome children’s gestures, recognize embodied knowledge, and understand the museum as a living social and political space. We conclude that recognizing children as subjects of experience requires rethinking the role of museums themselves, opening pathways for freer, more poetic, and more plural encounters with art.
creator: caio baranda-oliveira
creator: camilla martins de oliveira
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 caio baranda-oliveira, camilla martins de oliveira https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-03-30
publication date: 2026-03-30
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 20
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.95398

o que as teorias da psicologia da educação não nos contam
type: item
description: This article, written in an essayistic tone, stems from the experiences of the authors as professors of Educational Psychology at a Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Written in the form of correspondence, the text is sustained by the methodology of cartagraphy, a hybrid of epistolary and cartagraphic writing. Through these letters, the authors feel more at ease to recount and summon their experiences in the field of Educational Psychology, problematizing certain obstacles and challenges of the field, namely: the excess of historicization, the hegemony of certain authors (understood as fathers or owners of specific theories), the rigidity of teaching plans, the speed with which content is processed, and the lack of openness to other epistemologies, as well as to poetry, literature, and other artistic expressions. Alongside authors such as Freud, Piaget, Vygotsky, Skinner, Pavlov, and Wallon—though not necessarily converging with them—authors such as bell hooks, Milan Kundera, Deleuze, Guattari, Júlio Cortázar, Guadalupe Tomazolli, Sandra Corazza, Lenine, Mia Couto, Grada Kilomba, and Ailton Krenak are presented. This represents a wager on the collective, on what can occur when we accept the potency of the “in-between” (potência do entre), when we collectively “window” (janelamos) our classes, when we allow ourselves to experiment with cuticular thoughts, when we call into question our suffering/teaching bodies (corpos do(c)entes), when we ask a dog's permission to inhabit a classroom, and when, instead of settling for the frigid and solitary image of an Iceberg, we decide to sit in the shade of a solidary, leafy tree.
creator: luciano bedin costa
creator: claudia bechara fröhlich
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 luciano bedin costa, claudia bechara fröhlich https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-03-30
publication date: 2026-03-30
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 25
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.96047

pensar a educação escolar de modo não cognitivista
type: item
description: Contemporary educational discourse reflects a conception of learning based on classical cognitive psychology, which often addresses knowledge acquisition and cognitive development as the focus of school education. Based on this premise, we propose to investigate the following research question: how can we think about school education from a non-cognitivist point of view? In anthropology and philosophy, we find views of education as exercises in attention, which allow us to broaden notions of subjectivity and singularity in the act of educating. Thus, this article contributes to the understanding of the current school educational scenario, immersed in biopsychic discourses, as well as providing an opportunity to expand horizons built from attention and presence as attitudes that aim an examination of oneself, intersubjectivity, and openness to more affective, attentive, and plural ways of experiencing education in an expanded manner, intersubjectivity, and openness to other ways of experiencing the world.
creator: tiago brentam perencini
creator: beatriz alves de lima
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 tiago brentam perencini, beatriz alves de lima https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-03-30
publication date: 2026-03-30
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 25
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.95452

imagens insurgentes
type: item
description: This article brings together two research experiences developed in socio-educational settings in Brazil, both dedicated to listening, creating, and analyzing cinematographic practices with adolescents deprived of liberty. From an ethical-aesthetic perspective, we explore the philosophical possibilities of cinema as a form of world- and subjectivity-making in contexts marked by exclusion, structural racism, and institutional violence. Conducted at different moments and institutions, the investigations propose methodologies committed to alterity, co-authorship, and aesthetic experimentation as modes of resistance and reinvention of existence. Drawing from the images produced by these young people, we reflect on the displacements that such practices provoke in traditional ways of conceiving education, childhood, and cinema itself. The text situates itself within the contemporary debate on Philosophy for/with Children and Youth, advocating a praxis that confronts colonialism and epistemic racism in so-called “non-ideal” spaces, privileging experiences traversed by images and sounds.
creator: adriana fresquet
creator: bruno teixeira paes
creator: wania da rocha carli †
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 adriana fresquet, bruno teixeira paes, wania da rocha carli † https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-03-30
publication date: 2026-03-30
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 21
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.95218

seis fragmentos para uma formação inventiva de professores, em tom menor, entre psicologia e filosofia
type: item
description: The article uses the idea of six fragments to reconstruct axes between the theoretical and formative genesis of devices for the inventive training of teachers, understood as the practice and subjectivation of ways of working in educational psychology, in a minor key, between university and elementary school. Fragment, as Maurice Blanchot presents it, is what anticipates a becoming. The text gives special emphasis to six fragments of inventive teacher training: art, cartographic research-intervention; institutional analysis; production of subjectivities; plural cognition policies; and inventive teacher training. By increasing the degree of bearability to live an experience of problematization and forging a network of elements that can increase this degree of bearability to also place oneself in vulnerability, an inventive teacher training program is concerned with forging ways of acting, thinking, writing, being, feeling, doing, and being able to stress what is in the training of teachers. A training that vibrates, intertwines, and opens up to devices that equip us for the invention of ourselves and worlds and their micropolitical work. The final considerations reverberate questions about inventive training woven in the urban periphery of Rio de Janeiro, particularly in its relations between elementary school and the university. There are fragmentary discourses under the names Michel Foucault, René Lourau, Heliana Rodrigues, and Virgínia Kastrup, seeking to invent a fruitful conversation between intercessory authors, and to further multiply this rumor, in a minor key, to forge unique, inventive research and training ethics.
creator: rosimeri de oliveira dias
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 rosimeri de oliveira dias https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-03-31
publication date: 2026-03-31
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 35
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.96218

aprender a pensar com as crianças
type: item
description: This article aims to work on teacher training for children education at a higher education level and analyses pedagogical experiences in an elective course at the Faculty of Education of Rio de Janeiro State University(EDU/UERJ), taught by the author. The text is divided into two main sections. The first section presents the critique of teleological training in order to problematises how procedures and techniques forge specific teaching identities, creating a close relationship between knowledge, truth and power, with the aim of proposing a formative perspective based on a procedural and creative logic. Next, a critique of adult centrism is presented, reflecting on the ways in which the concept of childhood, strongly modern and colonised, has forged children's subjectivities through normative process. It is proposed that childhood can be thought of as a force for breaking with common sense and good sense, with reference to the concept of “becoming-child” (Deleuze; Guattari, 1997). ‘Becoming a teacher between captures and ruptures of childhood,’ the second section of the text, is devoted to narratives and reflections on the author's pedagogical experiences in the elective course she teaches. The entire text is based on cartographic methodology and in defence of writing as an experience and testimony of a formative process (of oneself).
creator: fabiana fernandes ribeiro martins
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 fabiana fernandes ribeiro martins https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-05-14
publication date: 2026-05-14
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 27
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.95458

o concreto, o abstrato e o mágico
type: item
description: In this article, structured as a theoretical essay, we discuss the relationship between concrete, abstract, and magical thinking in child development through the lens of Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy. Initially, we present the fundamental aspects of the philosopher's notion of individuation and its consequences for the conceptualization of child development. Subsequently, we analyze how hegemonic epistemologies in educational psychology have conceptualized learning in its relationship with abstract and concrete thought. We then revisit the notions of concreteness and abstraction developed by Simondon, as well as his unique definition of magical thinking. In the concluding remarks, we reflect critically on the approach to thought and child development in its articulation with the Western way of life and political rationality. Finally, we highlight possible transgressions and insurgencies that emerge as we recover insights bequeathed by social and technical philosophy, particularly within Simondon’s work. By repositioning child development within a transductive framework, this study challenges traditional linear progressions of cognition. It suggests that the magical dimension of thought is not a primitive stage to be surpassed, but a permanent relational capacity. Thus, the essay proposes a shift in pedagogical perspectives, advocating for a more integrated understanding of the child's psychic and collective reality in contemporary society.
creator: rodrigo lages e silva
creator: everton rodrigues farias
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 rodrigo lages e silva, everton rodrigues farias https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-05-30
publication date: 2026-05-30
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 19
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.95768

cartografias da inventividade pedagógica
type: item
description: This work unfolds from the cartographic experiments of the first author, reflecting on methodological possibilities that employ inventiveness, taking contemporary art as a field of creation and provocation, to make the classroom a space for experience and engagement with childhood. In this way, we will narrate part of the process of inventing a collective children's book, in which, through invitations to various artists, the first author continues to build her literary proposition. The research, developed through cartography as a methodological perspective, follows the movements, affects, and experimentations experienced throughout this creative process, understanding teaching as a field of invention and sensitivity. To this end, we draw near to authors such as Virgínia Kastrup, Gilles Deleuze, Jorge Larrosa Bondía, Luciana Loponte, and Renato Noguera to explore inventive possibilities from the perspective of the educator in conjunction with literature and contemporary arts. By bringing together art, literature, and teacher education, this work embraces experience as a possibility for transformation and infancialização as an opening to other ways of learning, teaching, and producing knowledge. In doing so, it seeks to contribute to the development of pedagogical practices that value imagination, collectivity, artistic creation, and encounters with the multiple forms of childhood in educational spaces.
creator: amanda de carvalho michaelides
creator: bruna moraes battistelli
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 amanda de carvalho michaelides, bruna moraes battistelli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-07-30
publication date: 2026-07-30
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 17
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.95500

políticas da cognição em educação matemática
type: item
description: This article discusses the concept of politics of cognition at the interface between psychology, mathematics education, and childhood. Therefore, we operate with the following questions: when we speak of politics of cognition, which politics? Which cognition? Which childhood? The idea of cognitive politics is forged within the scope of Virginia Kastrup's work and responds, initially, to a problem posed within Cognitive Psychology: it is about accounting for new ways of knowing and how these new ways of knowing imply new types of relationship with learning and with knowledge itself. In recent years, the notion of cognitive politics has been gaining ground in mathematics education research, so that the general problematic of the relationship with knowledge takes on singular contours to show and speak of the relationships we establish with mathematical knowledge and with childhood. Therefore, we problematize how models that thematize cognition and learning in the field of mathematics education – specifically the Theory of Conceptual Fields and the Model of Semantic Fields – operate a politics of recognition that submits childhood, children, and their learning to logics of normalization through the search for invariants or privileged cultural meanings and to a dogmatic image of thought. Such problematization leads us to discuss a becoming-child of mathematics and to think of mathematics as a radical human production.
creator: giovani cammarota
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 giovani cammarota https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
date: 2026-07-31
publication date: 2026-07-31
volume: 22
starting page: 01
ending page: 24
doi: 10.12957/childphilo.2026.95467