Philosophers get out of the cave, into the pod(casting)?

My university has a program that assists faculty in creating audiofiles that can then be used to create podcasts students can subscribe to, download, etc. I've not yet explored this in detail, but I'm interested and would be curious to know if anyone has any experience or insights into this.


The first issue is the content of the podcasts themselves. The obvious benefit of podcasts would be that students could listen while in their cars, on the bus, walking to class, etc. I don't think I want to encourage their use as a substitute for in-class activities, so I don't think I'll put lecture-like content on them. My idea was to use them as ways of refreshing student's recollections about the content of previous meetings, perhaps highlighting a few key points, suggesting a few questions to ruminate over in preparation for the next meeting, and so on. I thought I could also ask students to e-mail me questions related to a given meeting's content, and I could offer responses to the questions on the podcast. I could also remind students of upcoming tasks and deadlines.

Anyone have any suggestions here?

Teaching Intro to High School Students

Hi All,

Tis' the season for email requests. I received another email from Jenny Hudson, who teaches in an international school in Hong Kong (living in Hong Kong! I'm jealous!). She asks for some advice about teaching introduction to philosophy to students of that age, and also in that setting. I'll reproduce her email request below for all of you to read.


Advice needed for a new teacher of Philosophy

I have just started to teach Philosophy to 17 and 18 yr olds in an international school in Hong Kong. The course is designed to fulfill the requirements of the IB syllabus. The school has chosen 3 units of study; What is a Human Being (mind body question, manifestations of personhood, knowledge of self and others), Philosophy of Religion (concepts of a higher being,religious experience and behavior and religion around the world) and Theories of Ethics.

Currently the students are studying the first 2 themes and, while I have the philosophical knowledge to teach them, I am uncertain of any 'good' teaching methods. I am a qualified teacher but have not taught this age group before and I find their maturity a little daunting!

I am interested in ensuring this course is taught in the most engaging way possible but need some ideas to kick start me.

Does anyone have a tried and tested techniques for teaching philosophy, for making the lessons engaging, to ensure the lessons are not just me reading notes to the kids, and explaining them?

I would really appreciate any activities, methods, websites, ideas - anything that can help me to make the course as interesting as possible.

Thanks in advance

Building a Havrutot in the Classroom

I received this by email from Vance Ricks at Guilford College. A colleague of his, Jonathan Malino, had an idea about a possible classroom tool for group work/understanding learning through a group experience, and Vance suggested that he try to get it up here for some comments on how to develop the idea. So I'm functioning as the messenger here. I think the idea is an interesting one, and because I'm such a dreadful failure at getting this kind of collaborative learning to happen in my own classrooms, I'm curious to hear what people have to say about it too. Here's the original email, with a few changes to translate from email to blog-ese:


---
In Introduction to Philosophy, I broke the class into groups of two. Generally when I break the class up, the groups have 3-4, but I wanted to be sure no one could be passive. I also picked the groups, so that students who don't sit near each other or appear to know each other well would work together.

As I watched them, before I started to float, I recalled that the typical format for Jewish text study in a yeshiva is called "havrutot," or study partners/partnerships. I've always found this format a terrific experience when we do it my Israeli philosophy conference, although there groups tend to be more than two. But in a yeshiva setting, each partner has a palpable responsibility for the learning the pair accomplishes. Plato is aware of one aspect of this kind of study, when he quotes the
Illiad in the Protagoras (and in the Symposium) "When two walk together, one sees before the other" (rough quote). In the Protagoras, Socrates also talks about how, when we discover something, we are eager to share it and check it with others. In short, there is a social aspect to learning and discovery that includes, but goes beyond, the inherent social character of the elenchos.

I mention all this because as I watched the students on Friday, I thought that it would be interesting to find a way to build havrutot into my Intro. class in a systematic way. I don't know how to do this, but I'm going to give it some thought.

Any suggestions here for our colleague at Guilford?

Learning and Motivation, pt I: Abandoning existing beliefs

I have recently been reading (with colleagues from various disciplines) Marilla Svinicki's book Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom. This will be the first of what I intend as a series of posts sharing provocative tidbits from the book that I hope prove relevant to the teaching of philosophy.



Svinicki devotes an early chapter to the topic of what theories of learning tell us what will assist students to master new content. One of the main barriers is that "prior knowledge and experience affect current behavior and learning," and not necessarily in salutary ways. For example, learners may have existing beliefs that are sufficiently ingrained that attempts to dislodge these beliefs by presenting counterevidence to them will often fail. Svinicki, citing a paper by Posner et al. (1982), states that four conditions must be met in order for learners to abandon an existing belief (pp. 28-29):

1. Dissatisfaction: learners have to be confronted with information that makes them dissatisfied with the existing belief
2. Intelligibility: the belief proposed as a substitute must be intelligible to the learner
3. Plausibility: the belief proposed as a substitute must be plausible to the learner
4. Fruitfulness: the proposed new belief must be able to "predict new ideas as well as explain old ones"

Svinikci's four criteria fit somewhat awkwardly with much of what we teach in philosophy: For instance, philosophical beliefs have logical implications, but often don't "predict" anything. Nevertheless, her description resonates strongly with me inasmuch as much of philosophical learning is unlearning: unearthing and querying unrecognized assumptions, noting that our commitments have surprising — even implausible — implications, etc. This is much of what we sometimes think of as 'critical thinking.' And on the whole, I think philosophers are reasonably successful in using our analytical and logical skills to help students meet the first criterion.

Yet I wonder how often we succeed in meeting criteria 2-4. I suspect many students new to philosophy are thrilled by philosophy's capacity for intellectual destruction but become disillusioned when they feel that the relentless criticism of views endemic to philosophical practice results in many views being toppled but not much being offered in their stead. In philosophical research, being 'purely destructive' has its place. (If I recall correctly, Gilbert Ryle had several papers whose purpose, he said, was wholly destructive.) But in the classroom, being purely destructive is itself destructive -- and I wonder how often we help students destroy without helping them 'move on' to an ostensibly better view of the phenomena in question. This relates to some of our earlier discussions: Mike's on philosophical progress and mine on 'easy' moral skepticism. But I'd be curious to hear people's thoughts about how well we philosophy teachers do beyond instilling a sense of dissatisfaction in students concerning their philosophical convictions, and if we're not doing as well as we should, what techniques or approaches might help us steer students toward convictions that are intelligible, plausible, and fruitful.

Teaching the History of Philosophy

When teaching the history of philosophy I encourage students to approach the history of philosophy as they would contemporary philosophy. It is as important to identify, outline and reconstruct Locke’s arguments as it is to identify, outline and reconstruct Peter Singer’s arguments. For each, one must use the principle of charity and considerations of overall coherence. Originality does not primarily consist in arriving at some completely novel idea but in providing explanations, arguments and interpretations of ways that philosophical problems can be or have been treated.

I emphasize that when one identifies, outlines, reconstructs and explains an argument, one is providing an interpretation for which one is responsible, i.e. one that is open to criticism.

Students often ask: “When do I get to do philosophy?” This is a difficult question to answer because when we ask them to explain, for example, Reid’s criticism of Locke’s theory of personal identity, we are asking them to do philosophy. But they often take us to be asking for a book report and they wonder why we’re not “letting them” do philosophy.

Any advice about how to make clear to students that when we ask them to provide interpretations and explanations of various positions in philosophy as exemplified by particular figures – from Socrates to Singer – we are asking them to “do” philosophy?

Course Refreshers

We've hit the shorter days of November and we've all seen it in our classes: attendance drop-offs, falling behind in the reading that turns to not doing the reading, and even our better students becoming a little complacent. It's time for a little pick-me-up that provides a bit of a reminder that we haven't been just doing the same thing for weeks on end. A little bright memory that carries the course into Thanksgiving break in a couple of weeks and after that the rush to finals. So does anyone have anything special they do at this point to reinvigorate a course?

One of the things I've done in the past is a quick midterm evaluation (though usually earlier in the semester and I completely spaced on doing them this semester). I have a midterm evaluation form which is probably too comprehensive, but part of the form asks students to distribute 10 points into what kinds of different activities we should do in class (so half lecture, half discussion would put 5 points in the "lecture" box and 5 points in "discussion" box) and that part is easily done even without a form. I usually average it out across all the forms and change course if necessary. Another thing I've tried in past logic courses is "fallacy jeopardy", made possible with a couple of Powerpoint presentations that really do work like the Jeopardy board. Finally, in my more applied courses, I try to go a little more into theory and some of the deeper questions to remind students that there's a lot under the surface. In my less applied courses, I try to take a break from the official narrative of the course and spend a course applying old, dead philosophers to recent events. (I try to do this anyway, but these are more sustained lessons that can take all or half of the class period.)

Anybody else have anything they do to perk up a November classroom?

Steppin' up to the mic: part 6

I'm happy to tell our readers that Rebecca Copenhaver has joined us as a contributor. Becko teaches at Lewis and Clark College, and she is an early modernist, a specialist in Reid in fact. So we're hoping she can enlighten us on the mysteries of teaching the history of philosophy. Welcome Becko -- and we look forward to your posts.