In 2011 Dr Sue Knight was engaged to create our curriculum and support materials. Over the following 4 years she developed detailed lesson materials for more than 250 weekly lessons for all seven years of primary school.
Dr Knight holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and a Bachelor of Education from the University of Adelaide and has spent more than 20 years researching and teaching within the University of South Australia’s School of Education. Her research interests include the development of justificatory reasoning skills and the embedding of philosophy within school curricula across the year levels. She has published extensively in these areas.
Dr Knight was involved in writing South Australia’s Senior Secondary Philosophy curriculum and served as inaugural Chair of the Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia’s Philosophy Subject Advisory Committee.
In relation to primary and middle school education, Dr Knight established and held the inaugural Chair of the South Australian Philosophy in Education Association and conducted much of the Association’s professional development. She held (jointly with Dr Carol Collins) the editorship of Critical and Creative Thinking: The Australasian Journal of Philosophy in Education, from 2006 to 2009.
In 2010 Dr Knight served as chief evaluator of the NSW Ethics Course Trial.
Recent contributions to the field include:
- Membership of the Vincent Fairfax Family Fund’s Ethical Development Working Group
- An address to 22nd meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethics in Washington (September 2015)
- The Ronald B Lippin Lecture in Ethics
- The keynote address to the annual Rock Ethics Institute’s Moral Literacy Colloquium at Penn State University (June 2015)
- A panel member in the discussion on the societal role of secular ethics with His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Happiness and its Causes, (June 2015).
Dr Knight’s website and recent publications may be accessed here.
