Fieldnotes: Integrating AI Ethic into Philosophy for Children: Account of a Data-Privacy Lesson

Abstract

This Fieldnotes article documents the design and implementation of a Philosophy for Children (P4C) lesson aimed at introducing children aged 8–12 to the ethical dimensions of Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a particular focus on data privacy. Drawing on the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI) methodology—specifically the “Plain Vanilla” model associated with Thomas Jackson and disseminated by the IAPC (Yarmel & Gregory, 2023)—the session employed an illustrated narrative stimulus, “Liam’s Secret Base,” followed by student‑generated dialogue and a collaborative “Safe Sharing Scenario” activity. These components were designed to foster critical, creative, and caring thinking (Lipman, 2003) about digital life. This article demonstrates that engaging young learners in ethical inquiry about AI technologies is both timely—given the global call for age‑appropriate AI‑ethics education (UNICEF, 2021; Dabbagh et al., 2025)—and feasible, since most children already interact with AI‑mediated platforms. Classroom reflections showed that the lesson supported higher‑order reasoning, metacognitive awareness, and collaborative dialogue in a supportive environment, outcomes consistent with reported benefits of P4C (Adams et al., 2023; Ab Wahab et al., 2022). Rather than prescribing a list of “don’ts,” educators used open‑ended questions and realistic digital‑life scenarios to nurture children’s autonomy in ethical decision‑making, echoing participatory design approaches from the MIT Media Lab’s AI + Ethics curriculum (Wu, 2020; Williams et al., 2022). We conclude that P4C—co‑founded by Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp (Gregory & Laverty, 2017)—provides an effective pedagogical framework for integrating digital‑ethics learning into childhood education, enabling students to become thoughtful, informed, and responsible digital citizens capable of navigating an increasingly data‑driven world (Floridi, 2023/2024; Turner, 2019).