Fostering Ethical Dialogue through Philosophy with Children: Practice-Based Insights from Association Petit Philosophy Projects

The present article examines the manner in which ethical dialogue and philosophical inquiry are integrated into education through a selection of European projects implemented by the Croatian non-governmental organisation Association Petit Philosophy (Mala filozofija). Utilising a qualitative, practice-based approach, the study analyses project materials, workshop designs, teaching manuals, implementation notes, and practitioner observations from initiatives such as ETHIKA, ETHOS, PEEC, ZOOM OUT, Young Minds, and PLATO's EU. The projects encompassed children and young people from early childhood to secondary education, in addition to teachers and educators in both formal and non-formal learning settings. The analysis identifies recurring pedagogical methods, including storytelling, Socratic questioning, role-play, film-based discussion, digital scenarios, and the community of inquiry model. The observed outcomes of these practices suggest that they support critical thinking, reasoning, empathy, perspective-taking, dialogical competence, ethical awareness, and civic engagement. In view of the fact that the extant data are of a qualitative nature and non-experimental in nature, it is imperative that the findings are interpreted as practice-based insights, rather than as statistically generalisable evidence. The article posits that philosophical dialogue has the potential to serve as a valuable framework for ethics and values education, and it calls for more systematic evaluation of such practices.