Aesthetic Education and Philosophy in Schools | ESOL edit
CFP for publication or other deadlineSeptember 11, 2026
Aesthetic Education and Philosophy in Schools
The Journal of Philosophy in Schools invites extended abstracts on aesthetic education, philosophical inquiry, and the development of aesthetic experience with school-aged children.
Journal of Philosophy in Schools (JPS)
aesthetic education and philosophy with school-aged children
Aesthetic education is often treated as a concern of arts education alone. Yet philosophical traditions from Schiller and Dewey to Maxine Greene have understood the aesthetic as integral to human experience, attention, imagination, perception, and judgment. This special issue asks how these insights might illuminate philosophy in schools.
The issue will explore questions including the relationship between aesthetic experience and the formation of judgment; whether schools can be understood as sites of aesthetic formation; and how philosophical pedagogies can cultivate attention, receptivity, imaginative response, and discernment alongside reasoning and dialogue.
We welcome contributions from diverse philosophical traditions, historical recoveries of figures whose work remains relevant to contemporary practice, and crossdisciplinary approaches to aesthetics.
Possible Topics
The Facilitator as Artist: How might the teacher or facilitator in philosophical inquiry be understood as engaging in an aesthetic practice or performance?
Embodiment & Environment (Place & Play): What is the relationship between aesthetic experience, physical play, and embodied cognition in philosophical inquiry? How do classrooms, outdoor settings, and digital spaces influence philosophical inquiry's aesthetic dimension?
Attention, Perception, and Imagination: What role do aesthetic attention, perception, and imagination play in philosophical inquiry with children, and how might these capacities be cultivated?
Educative Aesthetic Experience: What distinguishes an aesthetic experience that is genuinely educative from one that is merely pleasant, passive, or distracting? How can aesthetics be engaged without instrumentalizing works of art?
Educating the Aesthetic Dimension: What does it mean to educate the aesthetic dimension of a young person's experience or cultivate aesthetic sensibility, and how does this differ from or complement critical reasoning?
Creative Thinking and Aesthetics: What is the relationship between creative, critical, and caring thinking in philosophical inquiry with children? How might an aesthetic perspective illuminate creative thinking and its compatibility with critical reasoning?
Aesthetics and Flourishing: How do aesthetic experiences in philosophy classrooms foster meaning, connection, student growth, well-being, eudaimonia, and holistic flourishing?
Theoretically-Grounded Aesthetic Intuition: What theoretical resources can explain the intuition that the best philosophy classrooms possess an aesthetic quality exceeding their argumentative content?
Empirical Research and Implications: How do aesthetic considerations bear on ethical, civic, and epistemic education, and what can empirical research reveal about aesthetic experience in classroom philosophical dialogue?
Diverse Aesthetic Traditions: What can non-Western aesthetic traditions and Indigenous perspectives contribute to philosophy in schools? What aesthetic injustices or barriers have resulted from the dominance of Western aesthetic traditions?
Submission Guidelines
Authors are invited to submit an extended abstract of 500–700 words, including a proposed title and a brief bio indicating relevant affiliations.
Extended abstract deadline: Friday, 11 September 2026
Authors will be notified by early October 2026.
Full papers of 4,000–6,000 words will be due 1 February 2027 for double-blind peer review.
Extended abstracts should be submitted by email to the guest editors: