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ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS VOL. 37, ISSUE 1 (2016) 

  
 

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Sharing Space with Other Animals: Early Childhood 

Education, Engaged Philosophical Inquiry, and Sustainability 

Margaret MacDonald and Warren Bowen   

 

INTRODUCTION 

ollaborative research between UniverCity Child Care at Simon Fraser University and 
a philosopher in residence has yielded promising research in an understudied 
interdisciplinary undertaking: early childhood education, engaged philosophical 

inquiry, and sustainability. The goal of our work has been to better understand how Engaged 
Philosophical Inquiry (EPI) can be used with young children (age 4 and 5) on topics related to 
our local forest environment as part our centre's foundation curriculum on sustainability 
(MacDonald, 2015). Our guiding research questions include: What are children’s beliefs, ideas 
and concepts related to sustainability? And, how can we contribute to children (and adults) 
deeper understandings of sustainability by challenging our human centric thinking?  

Pedagogical Methods 

Engaged Philosophical Inquiry is an approach that honours children’s natural 
curiosity and our quest to understand and make connections in the world around us. Different 
from philosophical discussions with the goal of developing logic and argumentation (Gardner, 
2009), EPI stresses development of the capacity to listen and take into account the 
perspectives of others within a democratic participatory community of learners (Lipman, 
2003, 2009; Cam, 1998, 2000; Dewey, 1954; Dahlberg & Moss, 2005). This pedagogical 
method employs principles and practices of Philosophy for Children (P4C) in order to 
facilitate critical discussions among children and adults related to our curriculum on 
sustainability (MacDonald, 2015). 

Our EPI sessions were conducted once per week over a six-month period. During this 
time the content was negotiated and developed by the children and our philosopher in 
residence, Warren Bowen, using a conversational approach in a group setting with 8 children. 
During this project, one of the main discussion threads was human management of non-
human populations. Questions discussed in depth included: Are dangerous animals real? 
What should we do with dangerous animals? How should we share space with other animals? 
Are humans animals? Do humans need to be managed? Is it acceptable to trap and kill 
frightening or dangerous animals?  

We endeavour to live by an ethos of joy and wonder in our pedagogical encounters 
with children, believing in working from a strong image of children’s capabilities as a starting 
place for our pedagogical practices and EPI sessions (Malaguzzi, 1994). Our embodied 
holistic view of learning sets out to optimize both experience and thought by gently 
introducing critical cognitive challenges to children’s thinking and ideas. For this approach to 
be successful we try to link the discussion to the learning context by introducing activities, 
experiences and naturally occurring events while the children are visiting the forest. Later we 
are able to draw on and refer to these events in the discussions that follow.  

We tried to create a flow in our EPI sessions and found that in the forest we could 
engage with the children optimally by having the sensory benefit of the natural environment 

C 



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at a time when we were discussing nature and our environment (MacDonald & Bowen, 2015). 
In this way the questions were meaningful to the children after having just played a related 
game or having participated in a related activity (i.e. building a house for dragons and then 
discussing whether or not dragons are dangerous, or asking about the value of trapping 
animals after a child has caught a mosquito).  

During the discussions, when statements were presented by members of the EPI circle 
(i.e. Warren, the teachers or the children) Warren would often ask the children if they held 
the same view or a contrary view. This created rich opportunities to deepen thinking and the 
opportunity to gain the advantage of multiple opinions and perspectives on a topic of interest. 
From our transcripts of the discussion and reflections on the EPI circles propositions were 
identified that led to our understanding of the children’s arguments and, importantly, also 
formed the basis of our next lesson. In this way, as we reviewed and debriefed we could build 
on the children’s current understandings as well as any emerging ideas that they may have 
had. Each week was connected to the last by a re-current game or activity that was familiar. 
Warren also built on the children’s memories of the previous week’s discussion by reminding 
the children of conversations or statements made or bringing in objects related to the prior 
discussion (i.e. pictures of animals in the zoo when the previous week’s discussion had been 
about capturing wild animals). 

Methodology 

Methodologically we used ethnographic techniques (Charmaz, 2006) to systematically 
collect and analyse our weekly EPI sessions. In this study, our collection includes digital 
video, photographic and audio recordings of the children’s forest play sessions, and the 
children’s group time discussions with our Philosopher in Residence. These digital traces 
were collected, transcribed and reviewed for content related to the questions posed and as 
discussed above the children’s thinking and propositions around being in the world. To do 
this, all audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and initially reviewed using in vivo 
coding (Charmaz, 2006; Corbin & Strauss, 2008) to identify key words reflecting the 
children’s references to topics of interest and emotions. We also reviewed the transcripts for 
‘cognitive knots’ in the children’s thinking, where emerging ideas were contradictory or in 
the process of being developed (Edwards, Gandini & Forman, 2012). To optimize and deepen 
thinking we introduced ‘gentle critical cognitive challenges’. This was done to challenge the 
children to think in different ways. For example, when the theme of human management over 
non-human populations emerged from the transcripts we further reviewed the transcripts and 
video recordings during the play sessions to determine the way the children saw themselves 
in relation to pretence in play, the forest, animals and their own being and becoming during 
play and questioned them during the EPI sessions (for example to determine if the children’s 
statements were believed to be true across different circumstances or conditions i.e. ‘What if 
it was a baby animal? Would it be alright to put a baby animal in a cage?’) 

Findings: The Threats of Wild Animals 

The major contention discussed during our EPI session was whether or not we can 
live peaceably with wild animals given they can scratch, bite, and eat us, or whether we ought 
to cage, kill, or otherwise train and punish them for posing perceived threats that were 
frightening to the children. In the following, section excerpts from the transcripts are shared 
to demonstrate the children’s thinking in relation to this area of sustainability. Often the 
children would recall and reference being hurt by or frightened by animals such as bees, bears 
and other wild animals. For most of the discussion this fear lead to a desire to cage or trap 
wild animals as well as pets. 



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As the session with the children went on, their reasoning about what to do with 
animals perceived to be dangerous changed. Originally we focused on building a dragon nest 
for dragons that might be living in the forest. Later the children became increasingly 
concerned with threats posed by dragons to bodily integrity, safe space, and their lives. As 
their intent and concerns shifted so did their beliefs about what kind of structure to build for 
an animal as dangerous as a dragon. The children’s ideas changed from building a nest, to a 
tower (that could shoot them), to a cage to contain them.  

Their reasons for caging other animals also changed and become more refined as the 
months passed. In the earlier months, caging was seen as a convenience for interaction, and 
even as homes for animals: “He can go in the cage and we can pet him whenever we want,” (I) 
“But that's [the cage] her home,” (A). Cages could mean that cats could be pet at any time 
and that they would have their own home. 

Eventually, however, with the introduction of plastic toy props (animals and cages), 
the children were asked whether we ought to trap animals like lions, wolves, elephants, and 
bears. In part influenced by their reasoning about the dangers of dragons, the children began 
to advocate for caging as pre-emptive measures against the perceived potential for violence. 
So when asked why we ought to trap various animals, the children responded:  

A: We have to trap him [the mosquito] so he won't suck our blood. 

I: Because they bite each other! 

A: Wolves are bad because they will eat people. I saw a snake eat a bad guy. 

J: Because they [elephants] can smash people in the face with their nose. 

S: Because they [elephants] can spray you in your face and then you will get soaking 
wet. 

I: They might push you to the ground. And eat you. 

G: I'm a little bit nervous, I am scared, because lions are not actually in cages. They 
can jump over. 

A: A lion will just bite you with its big mouth and then so bad and then your head and 
they you're going to have no bones, you'll have no bones and then your skeleton is going to 
be there and then you to have your red, red, red body. 

A: And he's going to throw our bones in the air. 

Every regular participant advocated for the caging of animals during our sessions, 
using strikingly similar reasons. The children for the most part expressed here and elsewhere 
concern for their own safety and worry about violence against them. They often imaged these 
possibilities in graphic detail. For the children, the fear and possibility of being bitten, pushed, 
hit, and even eaten was real. Being small animals themselves, the threat of even domesticated 
cats proved real enough to justify caging. 

 It became apparent early in our discussions that alongside concerns about safety and 
bodily integrity were also concerns about power: 

A: Nooo! We can bring kitty and then we can bite them-- 

Warren: You want to bite them?! 

A: Yeah! 

G: Yeah, so that I can kill it! 



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Caged animals soon became recipients of the children's expression of power and 
domination. Importantly, almost all of the children voiced the desire to bite the tail of one 
animal or another (a wolf, a lion, a cat, a snake). This might be seen as a display of human-
nonhuman power relations and the children’s emerging understandings of their limits against 
others of superior strength and agility. Some children also expressed amusement at the 
thought of caged animals. In a vignette offered by one of the teachers about seeing caged 
bears the children were asked how they felt. 

Warren: [D]o you think it's sad, or how do you feel?  

A: I think it's sad. 

A: Funny. 

Warren: Ok, so why do you think it's funny, A? 

A: Because they eat us. 

J: I think it's funny, too. 

Warren:  Why do you think it's funny, J? 

J: Because we can catch them so they don't run away. 

Gentle Critical Cognitive Challenges 

 As we reasoned together, important terms were introduced by the children to refine 
their position and better explain their beliefs. Wildness was one such term. As J explained, 
“Wild kitties are bad... Because wild kitties have no food to eat and then they get grumpy and 
they bite people.” Wildness was a term adopted by the children to describe the kind of animal 
that will bite, scratch, and devour. J introduced it for the first time during a discussion about 
caging domesticated cats in order to draw a distinction between cats that are not violent, and 
those that behave the same way as wolves, lions, and bears. 

‘Wildness’ became especially important in our discussion of what to do with a baby 
lion (represented by a plastic figurine). While the children offered many reasons to trap the 
adult lion, they were less sure about what to do with the baby. As A succinctly put the matter, 
trapping an adult is okay but trapping a baby is not “[b]ecause big animals are not cute for 
us.” Further complicating the argument and building on J's distinction of wildness, A added, 
“[b]ecause if one goes wild, then the other goes wild and follows it.” That is, wildness begets 
wildness; if an adult is permitted freedom with her baby, the baby will turn wild and pose the 
same kind of threat as the adult. 

Some children did offer reasoned dissent against caging. Another child suggested that, 
“[b]ecause some will get angry at you, and try to get to you, eat you,” [if we attempt to cage 
wild animals]. As mentioned above, cuteness was a consideration against trapping an animal. 
S also felt concern for the separation of parent and child “[b]ecause the lion wants his baby.” 
In the final two sessions with the children, Warren introduced a flying squirrel hand puppet, 
named Peanut, in order to confront the children about some of their beliefs about trapping, 
caging, and killing wild animals. We felt this offered something to both the children and 
facilitator: the children were able to take responsibility for their beliefs about the Other in the 
presence of the Other, and the facilitator was able to be more forceful in objecting to the 
positions of the children without feeling neutrality was compromised, since objections came 
from Peanut. 

Peanut: Well hold on. I have something to say to J and to A: are you guys just joking 
[about what you want to do with wild animals]? 



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A and J: No. 

Peanut: See? They're serious. They really do want to trap. So you want to trap me? 

A: We want to trap you! 

J: I want to bite you! 

Peanut: A, why do you want to trap me A? 

A: Because you want to scratch us and [inaudible] spray you with water. 

J: And I put you in my washer, and put you in the toilet. 

A: I want to put it in the jail. 

G: I want to trap you in a cage. 

J: I'll eat every friend of yours. 

We came to learn that the motivating force behind the desire for extreme punitive 
measures against not only Peanut, but, as we have already seen, all potentially dangerous 
wild animals, was the fear of being eaten, bitten, or scratched: “Because [they] scratch us. 
Because [they] scratch all of us,” (A). Some children were uncomfortable with these 
measures, calling them “sad,” and subsequently changed their minds about their own 
positions regarding the treatment of other wild animals. However, at least one child also 
recognized that the intentions of A and J seemed reasonable, “I guess J and A think he'll do 
bad stuff to us, so they [A & J] want to save us,” (S). 

This line of inquiry lead to Peanut asking whether it is was acceptable to trap children 
who bite and scratch. Two separate discussions followed. The first was that because children 
are not animals, it was unacceptable to trap them: 

M: Because there won't be any more humans. 

A: Or kids! 

I: No, then I'll never get to eat again. 

J: I'll give you food and water though. 

Peanut: A, do you want to put I in a cage? 

A: No, I want to put small animals. 

When Peanut responded that I is a small animal, and so meets A's criterion for caging 
eligibility, some children objected that humans are not animals. While reasons were not 
offered for this position, some children contended that humans are animals because “some of 
us really hurt people,” because the “one song said people are animals,” and because of quasi-
evolutionary reasons: 

Peanut: A long, long time, humans were monkeys? What does that mean? 

A: My dad tell me. 

Peanut: Ohhh. Did you guys hear what A said? He said a long, long time ago humans 
were monkeys. 

J: Yeah, you're right, and then they turned into people. 

Peanut: So does that mean that humans are animals? 



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J: No, not anymore. 

I: I'm still a monkey because I'm just born.  

Interestingly, there did not seem to be a correspondence in thinking between those 
who believed humans were animals and what ought to be done about animals, as J and M and 
S believed humans and animals were different, and A and A, Ar, and I believed humans are a 
type of animal. 

The second discussion that followed related to the acceptability of caging children 
who scratch or bite explored asymmetrical punishments for humans and nonhumans. When 
asked what should happen to children who bite or scratch, the children suggested to “throw 
them out of daycare,” or “just give them a timeout.” But when Peanut asked what should 
happen to her if she bit or scratched the children they suggested to “throw you out and kill 
you!” (J) “[p]ut you in the fire,” (A) or “kill you and [your] friends!” (I). Objecting to this 
disparity, Peanut sought to explain the rationale behind wild animals attacking humans: fear 
of being hurt. To this M and A replied, 

M: Yeah. I don't think you should go in the garbage or [be] lit on fire. 

A: Yeah, you just want to defend yourself to be safe. 

The children were left, then, having expressed different beliefs on the subject of how 
to treat a potentially dangerous wild animal. A and J were strong defenders of extreme 
punitive measures, including shooting, igniting, caging, and biting the offender, and 
devouring the offender's friends. A, A, S, I, and M objected to these measures, instead opting 
for a more empathetic approach to wild animal behaviour and critical self-reflection of their 
own “wildness”, and eventually repudiating their own positions about caging animals. S 
noted, however, that the motivations of A and J were for the sake of protecting the children, 
and all seemed reluctant to criticize the two directly.   

Analysis 

Adopting an ‘ethic of resistance’ (Lenz Taguchi, 2010; 2011) toward assumptions and 
taken for granted notions in early childhood education discourses, in this analysis we turn our 
attention to promising explanations of the children’s statements based on their own 
experience of feeling the need for protection against cruel aspects of the world. Rather than 
focusing on the children’s inability to take the perspective of the animals (for discussions on 
perspective taking see Piaget & Inhelder, 1969). We can view their stance as a natural 
extension of their current knowing and sensibility around safety and security and perhaps 
what could be considered a realistic view of vulnerability within the world. In their short 
tenure (4 years) as humans on earth, these children have learned a great deal about their own 
power (or lack of power) and fears within the world. Their sympathies for the baby animals 
and their consideration that caging the animals could assist them in getting to know them 
potentially without being hurt by them reveals promising notions of attending to others with 
care and adopting a gaze or understanding based on the mutual need for protection. Rather 
than looking at these children’s power fantasies as naïve or cruel, it might be fruitful to 
examine the potential that their comments hold for extending their understanding, and 
nudging their thinking toward other complex ideas including species interdependence and 
alternative perspectives on freedom, safety, contact and cohabitation.  

So many of the messages children receive are confusing and contradict species 
interdependence. For example, we often encourage children to clean up after themselves and 
perhaps have even begun to work on habits of recycling and reducing or critically considering 
our consumption of resources in our attempt to move children toward stewardship and green 



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actions and thinking. However, at the same time children are bombarded with other messages 
promoting material consumption. This creates confusing and contradictory images of ways of 
being and becoming within the world. For adults to understand and work through these ideas 
with children we ourselves must identify and critically deconstruct the contradictory and 
confusing ways that the world is or may appear to be with respect to human consumption, 
place and power.  For example, we tend to valorise high density urban habitation as a solution 
to global population growth knowing that this creates economies of scale in urban areas and 
the potential to preserve and protect natural habitat. However, we rarely discuss human 
encroachment on bear, wolf, coyote and/or the habitat of other species that are displaced or 
are marginally co-existing within city or suburban limits. We are also remiss in our focus and 
discussion of care and release of unwanted “pets” like fish and rabbits and the role that we 
(human’s) play in the stewardship of the ‘unwanted’. Release of non-domestic species has 
created ecosystem imbalances in urban areas along with countless other pollutants that effect 
insect and microbial populations in the remaining wooded and riparian zones. To adequately 
support children’s actions and thinking adults have to also begin to act and reflect on these 
topics.  

Considering again the children’s experience of being cared for and protected, the idea 
of caging and confining S’s cat so that they could encounter it safely can be seen as an 
extension of their curious and inquiring gaze rather than a position of superiority. In this way 
we can examine these exchanges from the perspective of species interdependence or what 
Donna Haraway (2008) terms ‘worlding’, where species meet, respond and learn to pay 
attention to ‘other’ (Kindle edition, location 399). As Haraway notes, 

I love the fact that human genomes can be found in only about 10 percent of all the 
cells that occupy the mundane space I call my body; the other 90 percent of the cells 
are filled with the genomes of bacteria, fungi, protists, and such, some of which play in 
a symphony necessary to my being alive at all, and some of which are hitching a ride 
and doing the rest of me, of us, no harm. I am vastly outnumbered by my tiny 
companions; better put, I become an adult human being in company with these tiny 
messmates. To be one is always to become with many. (Kindle edition location 157) 

CONCLUSION 

During the EPI sessions it was necessary for Warren to unpack the children’s ideas, 
and he did so by drawing out the children’s thinking and challenging them using a variety of 
analytic techniques such as: 1) Asking who, when, where, what, how much, and why 
questions, 2) Making comparisons to look for similarities and differences, and 3) Using what 
Strauss and Corbin (1990) call a ‘Flip flop technique’ where the concept is wrestled with 
cognitively and turned inside out or upside down, imagining the very opposite, comparing 
extremes to bring out qualities and properties under different conditions (example, does it 
hold true if…when…), and 4) Drawing on personal experiences. 

We also found it necessary to deepen the children’s perspectives by gently nudging 
their thinking forward. Analysing the transcripts for children’s understandings and assertions 
we found was a valuable way to further their thinking. By bringing ideas forward week to 
week from the children’s previous discussions we were able to introduce alternative 
perspectives, including (through Peanut) the perspective of the animals the children wanted 
to cage.  

We also found that the discussion was assisted by the forest context. In this 
environment we were able to create a flow in the dialogue and a confluence between the 
games and activities taking place in the forest, the children, Warren and the topic of 
discussion. This coming together of elements reminds us of Deleuze and Parnet’s (2007) 



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writing on conversation, lines of flight, flow and how timing creates a phenomenon. As 
stated: 

Movement does not go from one point to another-rather it happens between two 
levels as in a difference of potential. A difference of intensity produces a phenomenon, 
releases or ejects it, sends it into space. (p. 31) 

 The moments we experienced in conversation with the children in a sense represent 
such lines of flight and movement as our conversations created an awareness and deepened 
our experience of the children’s understanding. Barad (2007) refers to as an ‘agentic realist 
encounter’ where a bounded reality comes into existence and becomes agentic through an 
entanglement of human and non-human agencies in the moment of the encounter. Our 
encounter during the EPI sessions with the children created an agency that was the product 
of all elements of the encounter within that moment of conversational flow. Using technology 
(digital video, audio, photographs) to capture aspects of that agentic moment and bringing 
them forward to our next session with the children, or to our joint awareness in a research 
dialogue between the teachers and researchers, added another dimension to the phenomenon 
by creating a record of it in time and for the purposes of analysis. Taken together we found 
that EPI with the children in the forest on the topic of animals helped to deepen our 
understandings of children’s perspectives on sustainability and in particular their reaction to 
and treatment of animals they felt threatened by. As we analysed the work we took into 
consideration the contradictory messages received by children around cohabitation and 
environmental stewardship. To make these discussions meaningful and sufficiently complex 
we must ourselves consider the various environmental contradictions we live by and with and 
the way we might present these to children to gently nudge both their and our own thinking 
forward in favourable ways. We believe that the educational importance of this research lies 
in its previously understudied method of engaging critical inquiry with young children 
around topics of sustainability. While this method need not be limited to sustainability, the 
collaboration between the philosopher in residence and the childcare centre, whose 
foundational curriculum is based on sustainable practice, proved a fruitful line of 
interdisciplinary early childhood educational research. We hope our work here will provide a 
useful starting point for other educators interested in critical inquiry with young children in 
the hopes of interrogating beliefs, fostering participation, and promoting democratic and 
sustainable lines of inquiry. 

 

References  

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158-181. 

Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative  

analysis. Los Angeles, CA: Sage 

 



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Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2008). Basics of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: 

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Address Correspondences to:  

Dr. Margaret MacDonald                                                                                                     
Associate Professor                                                                                                                  
Faculty of Education                                                                                                                
Simon Fraser University                                                                                                           
Burnaby, BC  V5A 1S6                                                                                                            
 

Warren Bowen Philosopher in Residence                                                                          
UniverCity Childcare Centre                                                                                                             
Simon Fraser University                                                                                                                
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6 

 


