Inchwise Education · Writing

Dr Zhihao Yan (Tim)

颜志豪 · known to his students and readers as 大黑老师 · Academic & Curriculum Adviser, Inchwise Education, London

Also known as Tim Yan. Chinese: 颜志豪, 大黑老师.

A philosophy PhD who went into primary schools instead of universities, and built a philosophy curriculum for Chinese children from nothing. More than a decade later he has done his classroom training again, in English, and holds QTS.

His full profile is on the Our Team page.

What he works on

• Philosophy for children (P4C). Curriculum design and classroom method, in Chinese and in English — built for Chinese pupils rather than translated from Western materials.
• Teacher training. Preparing subject teachers to run enquiry rather than deliver answers.
• Philosophy outdoors. Enquiry moved into forests, parks and museums, and the interdisciplinary framework that connects it to nature-based learning and music.
• UK primary practice. What an English classroom actually asks of a teacher, written from inside the training year.

Representative positions

Children are natural philosophers. The questions they ask — must a rule always be obeyed, does free mean doing whatever you want — are existential enquiries that have not yet been wrapped in concepts.

Philosophy for children is not about producing precocity. It is about making children slow to surrender to a single answer.

A philosophy doctorate is not a reason to stay out of a primary classroom. It is a reason to be in one.

In brief

PhD in Philosophy, Sun Yat-sen University.
Over a decade in primary and secondary education in China, at Nan'ao Experimental School in Guangzhou and Shanghai Pinghe Bilingual School, where he created a Philosophy for Children curriculum from scratch.
Teacher training since 2019; appointed a practice mentor at East China Normal University.
Author of Doing Philosophy with Children (和孩子们一起做哲学), SDX Joint Publishing (三联书店), February 2025.
In the UK: completed a PGCE and holds Qualified Teacher Status (QTS).
Coverage: Sanlian Life Weekly, The Educator (Guangming Daily) and Bund Education.
At Inchwise he leads curriculum research and practice design.

Where to read him

The Thinking Classroom — field notes and evidence-led essays on schools, philosophy, inclusion and educational mobility.

Also at Inchwise

Dr Xiaoyun Peng (Sophia, 彭晓芸) — Founder and Director. See also Our Team.