Partnering to Explore AI Coaching in P4C

Thoughtful (formerly SAPERE) and STAR21 are pleased to announce a new partnership to pilot Starlight, an AI-powered coaching platform, within Philosophy for Children and Communities (P4C) practice.

This collaboration will explore how AI coaching can support facilitators in reflecting on their enquiries. By capturing lesson audio and generating private, practitioner-facing coaching reports, Starlight offers a new way to strengthen professional development. The goal is not to replace human judgement or dialogue, which would be antithetical to the very aims of P4C, but to act as a mirror for reflection: helping facilitators more accurately refer to the content of what was said in a session, notice patterns such as the proportion of time they speak and to identify habits such a tendency towards asking some kinds of questions but not others. We are curious to learn if these kinds of AI-assisted insights will offer facilitators an opportunity to think more deeply about their practice and to make improvements that will ultimately benefit their student’s philosophical development.

This year some of our trainers will be piloting this coaching system, firstly within their own practice of facilitating P4C, and then working with Starlight to refine the dedicated P4C coaching template to develop an enquiry transcript that can best serve teachers and their practice. Together, we will ask whether this technology can add real value to the professional growth of facilitators and if so, what works, what needs adapting.

We are grateful for the careful attention given by our trustees and advisors to questions of ethics, GDPR, and responsible AI. Their diligence ensures that this work remains grounded in trust and transparency.

More broadly, we believe that teaching philosophy has never been more important in a world of accelerating AI. Philosophy equips people to:

• make better ethical decisions;

• face the profound questions this technology will pose;

• strengthen the language skills needed to interact with AI (prompting);

• analyse and evaluate AI outputs critically;

• detect bias and, ultimately, make decisions for themselves.

  
  

In this sense, P4C and AI are not at odds but in dialogue. By bringing together Thoughtful’s expertise in philosophical enquiry and STAR21’s work in AI coaching, we hope to create an approach that is useful, safe, and respectful of the communities it serves.

Like any enquiry, this pilot is a conversation. We expect to adapt and rethink along the way — and that is exactly how meaningful learning happens.

We look forward to sharing updates as the project develops, and to learning from the insights of the facilitators who take part.

Starlight. Spark Insight.

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The Insight Engine is written by Adam Sturdee, co-founder of Starlight—the UK’s first AI-powered coaching platform—and Assistant Headteacher at St Augustine’s Catholic College. This blog is part of a wider mission to support educators through meaningful reflection, not performance metrics. It documents the journey of building Starlight from the ground up, and explores how AI, when shaped with care, can reduce workload, surface insight, and help teachers think more deeply about their practice. Rooted in the belief that growth should be private, professional, and purposeful, The Insight Engine offers ideas and stories that put insight—not judgment—at the centre of development.