CFP: AAPT Conference on Teaching Philosophy

ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The American Association of Philosophy Teachers

THE TWENTIETH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP-CONFERENCE ON TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

The College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University

Collegeville, Minnesota

July 30 - August 3, 2014

Proposals for interactive workshops related to teaching and learning philosophy at any educational level are welcome.  We especially encourage creative approaches to workshops or or panels on:

    •    innovative and successful teaching strategies

    •    professional issues connected to teaching

    •    how work in other disciplines can improve the teaching of philosophy

    •    engaging students outside the classroom

    •    innovative uses of instructional technologies

    •    the challenge of teaching in new settings

    •    methods to improve student learning

Call for Nominations: Teaching Fellows

2014-2016 AAPT TEACHING FELLOWS

The American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT) seeks devoted, excellent teachers to serve as 2014-2016 AAPT Teaching Fellows. Teaching Fellows will be acknowledged in Teaching Philosophy, receive a small stipend ($500), and serve a two-year term August 15, 2014-August 14, 2016. During this term, the fellow will pursue a personal project that furthers the teaching of philosophy. This project may include mentoring newer teachers, blogging on the AAPT website, facilitating teaching and learning workshops, or other activities. Most fellows will have the opportunity to deliver a plenary address at the biennial AAPT conference at the end of their term.

A note to Teaching Philosophy reviewers

I wanted to say thanks to all those who've volunteered to review manuscripts for Teaching Philosophy. (And for those who haven't, here's where to sign up.)

I also wanted to give one bit of advice: A couple of those who've signed up as reviewers have e-mailed me asking why they've not been select to review any manuscripts. In all likelihood, the answer is simple: You did not select any reviewing interests when setting up your profile. When selecting reviewers, I generally look to those who've expressed some interest in a manuscript's topical area. But if you do not indicate any reviewing interests, I'm not likely to select you as a reviewer. So I'd encourage anyone who hasn't done so to edit their profiles to include reviewing interests to do so. Reviewing interests can be subdisciplines (environmental ethics, ancient philosophy, logic, etc.) or pedagogical concerns (student writing, testing and evaluation, teaching and technology, etc.). Thanks!

Cheating: Authoritarian versus design approaches

One surprising conclusion I've reached about students is that many of the behaviors they engage in which seem irrational to us often look very rational from their point of view. Take reading assigned material, for instance. We know full well that many students don't read regularly (and a few don't read at all). No doubt this is shortsighted, but from the average student's point of view, not reading can look pretty rational in the circumstances from a cost-benefit point of view. If you lack the background knowledge to complete the reading, have been given little help in preparing to read, have few strategies for dealing with tough texts, find reading alternately boring or anxiety-producing, cannot discern a connection between reading (or reading carefully) and subsequent academic performance, and can nevertheless pull decent grades without reading regularly, then ... well, why read?

For we instructors, seeing our students as (admittedly flawed) rational actors can make us better teachers. In the case of reading, say, we can make reading a more rational strategy by not 'covering' the reading in lectures, designing assignments that reward careful reading, filling in gaps in students' background knowledge when necessary, and so on.

This observation — that how we teach and the learning environments we create make certain student behaviors rational from their point of view — was in my mind as read this interview with James Lang, the author of a recent book on academic cheating.

Lang puts his main point very nicely:

Why (in part) teaching is emotionally laborious

Teaching is hard work. Most of you probably know that. But as time goes on, it becomes increasingly evident to me that teaching is emotionally difficult work.

This piece by Kevin Brown illustrates some of the reasons why teaching is emotionally taxing. Most of us like instant gratification. For the most part, the gratification that comes from teaching is at best long term, if it comes at all:

Research productivity and teaching quality: No correlation!

There's a good bit I agree with (and a bit I disagree with strenuously) in this piece by Edward O'Neill. O'Neill takes up an issue we've engaged at ISW in the past: is it possible, from a pedagogical perspective at least, to know too much about one's subject — can expertise make you a worse teacher?

O'Neill notes there's some evidence for an affirmative answer, but overall, if knowledge is measured by research productivity (which I concede is a questionable assumption), there appears to be no correlation between subject knowledge and teaching effectiveness. O'Neill notes that this finding upends some central assumptions about higher education: 

PLATO awards for K-12 philosophy teaching

The Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (PLATO) is sponsoring three awards for K-12 philosophy teaching. Details about the awards, including eligibility and nominations, are available here.