CFP: APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy

The Fall 2015 issue of the APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy will be devoted to the special topic of teaching philosophy in non-traditional settings, and we encourage readers to submit papers on this topic. We are interested in papers on pedagogical information and insights, on the particular intellectual challenges these settings present, and especially, on what you have learned about teaching philosophy, and about philosophy, from your experiences.
The following guidelines for submissions should be followed:

• The deadline is March 2, 2015.
•  Papers should be between 10-24 double spaced pp.
• All papers should be sent to the editors electronically. The author’s name, the title of            the paper, and full mailing address should appear on a separate page. Nothing that          identifies the author or his or her institution should appear within the body or within the    notes of the paper. The title of the paper should appear on the top of the paper itself.
• Authors should adhere to the production guidelines that are available from the APA. For example, in writing your paper to disk, please do not use your word processor’s footnote or endnote function; all notes must be added manually at the end of the paper. This rule is extremely important, for it makes formatting the papers for publication much easier.

Contributions should be sent electronically to guest editor Katheryn Doran, Hamilton College via Carolyn Mascaro (cmascaro@hamilton.edu), with “APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy submission” in the subject line. After an initial vetting, those papers that will be considered further will be forwarded to the general editors Tziporah Kasachkoff, The Graduate Center, CUNY (tkasachkoff@yahoo.com), and Eugene Kelly, New York Institute of Technology (ekelly@.nyit.edu), as well as to the other Newsletter reviewers Robert Talisse, Vanderbilt University (robert.talisse@vanderbilt.edu), and Andrew Wengraf (andrew@welch-wengraf.fsnet.uk). The papers will be blind-reviewed at all stages.

Seeking Participants for Problem Based Learning in Philosophy Project

Available in PDF here.

RE: Doing Philosophy in Teams.
Invitation to participate in an NEH Digital Humanities Implementation

Dr. Michael Hoffmann
Associate Professor
Director of the Philosophy Program
School of Public Policy
http://works.bepress.com/michael_hoffmann/
Email: m.hoffmann@gatech.edu

December 31, 2014

Grant proposal

Dear colleague,

I would like to invite you to participate in the writing of a grant proposal whose goal is to get funding for a three-year, $325,000 project that focuses on using web-based argument mapping software to support problem-based learning (PBL) in philosophy. PBL is learning in teams. Traditionally, PBL has one goal and two basic strategies. The goal is to stimulate and guide self-directed student learning. The first strategy is to let small groups of students collaborate autonomously, but guided by a “facilitator” or “tutor,” and the second is to confront student teams with a problem that poses a real challenge. As Allyn Walsh (2005) highlights in her tutorial, the goal “is NOT to solve the problem which has been presented. Rather, the problem is used to help students identify their own learning needs as they attempt to understand the problem, to pull together, synthesize and apply information to the problem, and to begin to work effectively to learn from group members as well as tutors.” In PBL students are supposed to acquire on their own the knowledge they need to approach the problem. Students should learn to learn.

The undergraduate seminar paper

For the first time in a long time, I have the opportunity to teach a bona fide seminar. The "seminar paper" is a pretty ubiquitous feature of that experience. But to my surprise, I've never thought very explicitly about what an undergraduate seminar paper is supposed to be. So I'm interested in how all of you have explained this to your students: What's its main rhetorical function? What's the proposed length? What are the main components?

Thanks!

Diagnosing and treating students at risk of doing badly in logic: a request.

My friend Tony Laden, who is chair at University of Illinois, Chicago, requested that I pass on the request below. It's something that I imagine most Philosophy departments have to deal with, and I hope some have useful resources: if so, this would be a good place to provide them. Here's the request:


Our department is looking for ways to help the large number of our students who struggle every term in introductory logic (failing to receive a C or better, and thus failing to satisfy the College’s quantitative reasoning requirement).  We have secured funding for an extra TA line to run extra classes or study sections etc for students who are at risk of not passing. The questions that now face us are (a) how to select the at-risk students, and (b) exactly how best the TA can help them. ACT and scores on the University’s math placement test are rather imperfect predictors of success in logic. Does anyone know of a good diagnostic test we could give students in the first week or so that is predictive of logic success? Similarly, does anyone have tested ideas on what kind of small group interventions are most effective with students struggling with logic and how to get those students to make use of that help? (Obviously we have some ideas based on our individual experiences, but would be particularly grateful for any rigorous or systematic studies or clearly successful past interventions.)

Specs grading?

Curious to know if anyone out there has experimented with what Linda Nilson is calling "specs grading"? It seems to be a combination of mastery grading, a pass-fail only system, and grading that reflects accumulated knowledge. I'm intrigued and would be interested to hear directly about instructor experiences with this.

Why undergrad teaching is not a "necessary evil"

Over at Philosophers' Cocoon, Marcus Arvan expounds on how we should see undergraduate teaching as something more than a "necessary evil" we tolerate in order to engage in philosophical research. (How come no one ever says we tolerate undergrad teaching in order to do university service?!)

Marcus observes that teaching demands that we set aside jargon and get back to intellectual basics. This forces us to grasp, in a non-technical and intuitive way, what's appealing and unappealing about a philosophical position or claim: 

when teaching Kant's moral/practical philosophy, it's really easy to get sidetracked by Kant's technical terminology, etc. But, when teaching a first-year undergraduate course, getting mired in that stuff is a recipe for disaster. Students tend to tune out. In order to get them to tune in, the challenge is to explain, in the simplest and most intuitive way possible, what Kant is up to, and how his theory is philosophically motivated. - 

This 'cutting to the chase' makes us better researchers, Marcus notes.

I'm intrigued by a second point Marcus makes in defense of undergrad teaching: Undergrads, not having been heavily immersed in the discipline, don't take a problem or argument seriously simply because those in the discipline do. They have, Marcus points out, good BS detectors, and have to be won over to thinking that a position or argument merits esteem. Undergrads thus serve to keep their instructors 'grounded,' we might say, not taken to flights of intellectual fancy. That said, I'm ambivalent about this point: Sometimes this BS detector is also an immaturity meter: Students may not take an argument seriously due to ignorance (philosophical or otherwise) or philosophical inexperience. Indeed, part of our job is to help them see the force of unfamiliar or obscure points.

Why else is teaching more than a "necessary evil"? I'd add two points here: First, teaching can be a source of challenges no less compelling than those we face as philosophical researchers. As I've argued before, our profession would benefit enormously if our teaching culture were more like our research culture in certain crucial ways.

Second, there's been lots of talk about 'public philosophy', the public face of the humanities, and so on, in recent years. I'm often struck by how those who advocate for a more public role for philosophy overlook their most public role of all — their role as philosophy educators. After all, in teaching, we have a semi-captive audience with at least some willingness to be persuaded of the value of philosophy. Our students are our most important 'public,' and each time we teach, we are doing public relations for our discipline and our profession. Teaching is thus a necessary evil only if showing that philosophy is worthy of study and worthy of respect is a necessary evil too.

UPDATE: Graphic on history of philosophy

UPDATE, Nov 4: Cook has created a second graphic depicting the history of Eastern philosophy.

Merrill Cook has created this very attractive graphic charting the history of philosophy. Do feel free to display and disseminate.