ABSTRACT
The paper reports on a case study addressing the question of how young children think about the living/non-living distinction before and after their engagement in a ‘Philosophy for Children’-inspired learning environment. The aim of the learning environment was to help children come up with a better identification of living and non-living things by grasping certain biological functions as the main identification criteria. Our participants were 15, conveniently selected, 4–5 years old pupils of a public kindergarten. In order to evaluate the learning gains, we carried out our pre-/post-tests with semi-structured individual interviews. The results were rather promising and will be discussed thoroughly in the paper.
Acknowledgements
This research was financially supported by the ‘Andreas Mentzelopoulos Scholarships for the University of Patras’.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).