University of Edinburgh HMP Schotts, HMP Low Moss, HMP Cornton Vale

Low Moss and Cornton Vale prisons offered seven-week Introduction to Philosophy courses to prisoners, adapting a successful MOOC (Massively Online Open Course) offered by University of Edinburgh academics. The courses were designed by Philosophy researchers at Edinburgh, and is delivered through small-group tutorials by postgraduate students. Tutorials took the format of guided discussions using the Community of Philosophical Inquiry (CoPI) format, a pedagogical method which does not presuppose any particular knowledge or literacy level from students and which work to strip away prisoners’ previous assumptions about themselves and the world.