Emergent philosophising is the spontaneous, tentative philosophical thinking and questioning of young children. Those who work with young children can, with practice, develop an ear for their emergent philosophising. I call this ‘listening philosophically’. In this article I report on a qualitative study of preschool education students at the University of Crete as they learn the art of listening philosophically.

This paper aims at introducing the idea of Emerging Philosophizing as a way of naming, describing, developing and further understanding the process of having philosophical moments occurring instantly and coming directly from children in the classroom. On this ground, the main characteristics of philosophizing as developed in the frame of EmPhil along with its differences among other forms of philosophizing are briefly discussed. The conceptualization of EmPhil can be grounded in philosophies that explore the process of thinking as emergence, doing (...) and a way of life. EmPhil is an ongoing idea still developing, changing, and shaping both philosophically and practically in classroom as an experience and a process forming a way of philosophizing that allows children’s thinking to unblock and unlock. Children’s thinking and EmPhil as extension to it, are inevitably and fundamentally related to their own activity, incorporated to it, following the stream of this activity, as EmPhil follows the stream of thinking of this very activity and dives in it. EmPhil opens up systematically the space for children to view their own thoughts, as important that need to be questioned, discussed and not left aside. EmPhil celebrates the “instant”, the “fresh”, the “unfinished”, the “ongoing” process of thinking which keeps changing, altering and developing. (shrink)