What Is SAPERE?
SAPERE is an educational charity based at the Westminster Institute of Education at Oxford Brookes University.
Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself.
John Dewey
SAPERE was set up in 1992 following interest aroused by the BBC television documentary Socrates for six year olds. This hour-long film focused on the work of Professor Matthew Lipman and his associates (including Catherine McCall) in New Jersey who, over the past 25 years, have developed a curriculum for 5 to 16 year olds known as Philosophy for Children. SAPERE seeks to build on Lipman’s work and promote his and other approaches to developing better reasoning, more reflective consideration of values and the development of communities of enquiry at all levels of education and in a wide variety of contexts.
Who are we?
SAPERE is managed by an elected committee who are currently (2007-8):
Barbara Blatherwick, Paul Cleghorn (Chair), Kate Duffy (Secretary), Lezley Finch, Richard Gore, Annie Haight, Martyn Soulsby (Treasurer), Marcelo Staricoff
SAPERE is undergoing some exciting new changes under the leadership of the interim CEO; Margo Horsley. The office is managed by the Transition Manager; Aria Sandis (Full Time)
SAPERE serves as a co-ordinating body in the UK helping to:
- promote philosophical enquiry as an important dimension of school and college curriculum development
- raise levels of educational achievement through philosophical enquiry
- develop materials that stimulate philosophical enquiry in a range of contexts
- raise funds for projects that aim to develop communities of philosophical enquiry
- raise awareness through conferences and training courses
- organise and validate training courses in the theory and practice of philosophical enquiry in education
- keep members in touch with developments through a quarterly publication
- set up networks and local groups catering for those who are curious as well as those who are professionally interested
- encourage interest in new approaches and teaching methods promote research into practice
SAPERE is an active member of ICPIC (the International Council for Philosophical Inquiry with Children) which links practitioners and researchers in over 60 countries. There is now considerable worldwide interest in the role of philosophical enquiry in education, especially with children under 16, both as a model of rigorous thinking and as a celebration of wonder and open-mindedness.
In all our lessons you get asked questions and you just give the answer. In the philosophy sessions you ask questions of yourself and by asking yourself questions you learn more than other people asking questions. You have free expression and you don’t have people giving you boundaries. Daisy - a Year 6 participant from Caldecote Primary School, Leicester, in the Gifted and Talented enrichment programme focus Philosophy