Dr. Maughn Gregory Receives $5,000 Grant from the American Philosophical Association

Dr. Maughn Gregory, Educational Foundations Professor and Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, received 2021-2022 Small Grant Funding from the American Philosophical Association (APA). His project, Open-Access Publication of the Original IAPC Philosophy for Children Curriculum was awarded $5,000.

From 1974 through 1996 the late American philosopher Matthew Lipman (1929-2010) and his colleague Ann Margaret Sharp (1942-2010) produced the first systematic P-12 philosophy curriculum, at the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC) at Montclair State University. The curriculum consists of a series of eight novels, sequenced for subject matter and inquiry skills, that foreground ethical, political, aesthetic, logical, and other philosophical dimensions of experience, with instructional manuals providing introductions to philosophical ideas found in the novels and exercises to deepen young people’s philosophical inquiry. To date, there are 168 translations (culturally adapted) of these groundbreaking, in sixteen languages, in thirty countries. However, their original editions are no longer in print and are not currently available for use or study. The IAPC seeks to digitize them, optimize them for visual accessibility, and make them freely available online to children, parents, teachers, and researchers.

Additional institutional affiliations of project personnel include Andrew Atkinson, Assistant Professor of Digital Photography, Deputy Chair of the Department of Art and Design; Jun Hierholzer, Associate Professor of Art and Design; and Karen Ramsden, Research and Projects Specialist, and Digital Commons Coordinator, Harry S. Sprague Library.

This grant project has three goals:

1. Design a comprehensive plan for the digitization and the online publication of the IAPC philosophy curriculum that includes (1) a digitization protocol that includes specifications for optimizing the material for the visually impaired,(2) a style guide for the design of the curriculum in digital formats that can be read and/or downloaded on desktop and mobile devices and printed, (3) a protocol for organizing and storing the digital files on the Montclair State University Digital Commons website, and (4) a design of a new page on the IAPC website for the curriculum.

2. Digitize and publish one IAPC philosophy curriculum title: the novel Pixie and its accompanying instructional manual Looking for Meaning, in order to test and work out any problems in the comprehensive plan.

3. Advertise the publication of this digital curriculum title and solicit user feedback.

The project begins in January, 2022 and runs through June, 2023.