Skip to main content

Thoughtful

This post is by Grace Lockrobin, Co-director of Thoughtful.


Thoughtful new website


Over the past few years, the charity established in 1992 as SAPERE, has undergone a metamorphosis. Our members and stakeholders agreed that we needed a new name that captures our commitment to the kind of dialogue that takes ideas seriously and treats interlocuters sensitively. In short, thoughtful dialogue. It turns out, that our new name was staring us in the face.

We are pleased to share Thoughtful’s new website, a refreshed digital space that we hope better articulates (and facilitates) our work in Philosophy for Children and Communities (P4C). 


Resources for Philosophy for Children


Thoughtful has spent more than three decades supporting philosophical enquiry in schools and communities across the United Kingdom. The new site offers a clearer and more welcoming way to explore that work, while expressing the same mission and vison.

At the centre of Thoughtful’s approach is a simple but striking idea: that philosophical enquiry matters, not only within academic contexts but as part of everyday learning and life. The website reflects this by presenting enquiry as something that can be practised at any age and stage, and in any place, rather than as a specialised activity confined to higher education. 

Visitors to the new site can explore our courses, projects and programmes, via a navigation that makes it easier to see how different elements of P4C connect and are mutually reinforcing. The resources library (the new home for P4C.com) is particularly useful for educators, providing a curated collection of materials designed to support enquiry across a range of subjects and age groups. 


Young man engaged in philosophical discussion


The site also opens out onto a wider intellectual and social context via our blog which draws attention to the role of dialogue in fostering thoughtful, collaborative forms of engagement, and connects this to broader questions about education and participation in civic life. You’ll notice our latest post announces Thoughtful as the winner of the inaugural ‘Service to UK Philosophy’ prize from the British Philosophical Association.

Overall, the redesign is not simply a matter of presentation. It is a way of bringing Thoughtful’s work into a more accessible and coherent form. For educators, researchers, and anyone interested in dialogue, enquiry and education, the new Thoughtful website offers a useful starting point. It encourages visitors not only to explore what is available, but to take part in a wider community of enquiry.

We encourage you to take a look.

Popular posts from this blog

Delusions in the DSM 5

This post is by Lisa Bortolotti. How has the definition of delusions changed in the DSM 5? Here are some first impressions. In the DSM-IV (Glossary) delusions were defined as follows: Delusion. A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility.

Rationalization: Why your intelligence, vigilance and expertise probably don't protect you

Today's post is by Jonathan Ellis , Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Public Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Eric Schwitzgebel , Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. This is the first in a two-part contribution on their paper "Rationalization in Moral and Philosophical thought" in Moral Inferences , eds. J. F. Bonnefon and B. Trémolière (Psychology Press, 2017). We’ve all been there. You’re arguing with someone – about politics, or a policy at work, or about whose turn it is to do the dishes – and they keep finding all kinds of self-serving justifications for their view. When one of their arguments is defeated, rather than rethinking their position they just leap to another argument, then maybe another. They’re rationalizing –coming up with convenient defenses for what they want to believe, rather than responding even-handedly to the points you're making. Yo...

Models of Madness

In today's post John Read  (in the picture above) presents the recent book he co-authored with Jacqui Dillon , titled Models of Madness: Psychological, Social and Biological Approaches to Psychosis. My name is John Read. After 20 years working as a Clinical Psychologist and manager of mental health services in the UK and the USA, mostly with people experiencing psychosis, I joined the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1994. There I published over 100 papers in research journals, primarily on the relationship between adverse life events (e.g., child abuse/neglect, poverty etc.) and psychosis. I also research the negative effects of bio-genetic causal explanations on prejudice, and the role of the pharmaceutical industry in mental health. In February I moved to Melbourne and I now work at Swinburne University of Technology.  I am on the on the Executive Committee of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis and am the Editor...