Philosophy's relation to other disciplines

Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber has a post referring to an interview with Michele Lamont, who recently completed a book on academic peer review. Lamont has some intriguing remarks about the differences between philosophy and other disciplines, remarks that I think have pedagogical interest:

Philosophy is a problem discipline, and it’s defined as such by program officers. Philosophers do not believe that nonphilosophers are qualified to evaluate their work. Perhaps that comes out of the dominance of analytic philosophy, with its stress on logic and rigor. Philosophers think their discipline is more demanding than other fields. Even its practitioners define the discipline as contentious. They don’t see that as a problem; argument and dispute are the discipline’s defining characteristics.All that conflict makes it difficult to get consensus on the value of a philosophy proposal — or to convince people from other disciplines of its merits. The panels I studied are multidisciplinary. Nonphilosophers are often frustrated with the philosophers. They often discounted what philosophers had to say as misplaced intellectual superiority.

Brighouse comments:

Philosophy seems to be an outlier within the humanities, just as Linguistics is; we have less in common with the other humanities in terms of the concepts and methods that we deploy, and even the subject matter, than they have with one another (I don’t think I could make the case for that claim in a rigourous way, but I’m convinced its true). Some philosophers, furthermore, seem largely uninterested in any other kind of intellectual endeavour, and this just increases the sense of the other humanists that wee are arrogant; worse still, those of us who are interested in other disciplines frequently look to the sciences and social sciences rather than to the rest of the humanities.

I sincerely hope that the arrogance Brighouse and Lamont find among philosophers isn't the norm. Indeed, I like to think that one thing philosophy ought to engender is intellectual humility. And my observation is that philosophy tends to be somewhat more interdisciplinary than many other disciplines. Not having much territory that belongs exclusively to us, we philosophers often have to look to other disciplines to complement our own insights. For instance, it's hard to tell the difference these days between 'pure' philosophy of mind and philosophically motivated cognitive science. With respect to the study of the mind, the interpenetration between philosophy and the empirical sciences is complete. Similarly, though there's still plenty of 'pure' practical ethics or 'pure' political philosophy, a lot of the most interesting work is empirically nuanced too. (I'm thinking of, e.g., so much of the work on global and institutional justice.) Now, this doesn't mean that when philosophers look to other disciplines, they look to the same disciplines. For example, I've often thought that one way to characterize the analytic/Continental distinction is that when analytic philosophers look outside the disipline, they tend to look to the natural sciences, psychology, and the more data-driven social sciences (economics, say), whereas Continental philosophers tend to look to literature, social theory, and the more culturally-oriented social sciences (e.g., anthropology).

Here's the teaching-related thought: Students come to philosophy with some disciplinary background. Even entering freshmen have a working understanding that the methods and objects of investigation vary greatly among history, mathematics, and literature, say. And I suspect that students' early experiences with philosophy are shaped by the place they expect philosophy will occupy in their own mental map of the various disciplines. And this, I think, is a double-edged sword. For while students can find in philosophy something familiar from disciplines that attract them, they will also find in philosophy something to which they are intellectually averse. To put the matter in somewhat stereotypical terms: The computer science major will welcome philosophy's systematicity, emphasis on explicit analysis, and logic, but may not be so enthusiastic about philosophy's openendedness and emphasis on intellectual toleration and empathy. But the English lit major will respond in the opposite way, welcoming the latter and being somewhat put off the former.

Of course, this doesn't imply that philosophy instructors should teach so as to welcome one intellectual orientation: The computer science major and the English lit major both become more cognitively limber by studying philosophy. But it's still worth thinking about student disciplinary expectations and where philosophy fits in. For several years, I've distributed a midquarter feedback survey to my students in my intro to philosophy and intro to ethics courses. One question reads:

This course is (exactly/more or less/not at all) what I expected.

Over the years, the distribution of answers has been about even, 30-40% for each response. This suggests that philosophy, for good or ill, confounds students' mental maps of the disciplines.

I'd be curious to know what teaching challenges this issue presents. I'd also really interested in hearing from people who aren't philosophers about their own experiences studying philosophy and how their reactions were shaped by their disciplinary backgrounds.

don rags: a different sort of student evaluation

(This post isn't specifically about the teaching of philosophy, so consider yourself warned.)

Michael is busy heroically (I'm not being facetious or sarcastic) refusing to ride the "Student Evaluations of Teaching Are Worthless" Express . Meantime, I thought I'd slightly redirect the conversation about student evaluations to focus on something equally timely at this point of the year: faculty evaluations of students, rather than by students.

A former student of mine is now a faculty member at a US college that has a tradition of holding "don rags" during each semester. As I understand it from her description, a student meets her instructors (i.e., dons) as a group. The student sits there and listens as her instructors discuss her in the third person. They talk about her work in each of their courses, their perceptions of her as a learner ("ragging" on her if the perceptions are negative), what she will need to do if she's to succeed in subsequent years, and even whether she will be asked not to come back. Then the student is invited to comment/respond.

Parts of that practice aren't entirely unfamiliar to me, from my time in graduate school: graduate faculty met each year to discuss their students' progress through the Master's or doctoral program, and sometimes to have difficult conversations about whether some student should be asked to leave the program. They then sent a letter to each student, summarizing their discussion.

Of course, I'm alternately intrigued and horrified by the practice of inviting the student to listen in on that discussion! But I'm also curious about some of the benefits and problems of structured, regular conversation between a student's instructors about that student followed by feedback to the student about the substance of that conversation.

(Some caveats: I don't mean the don rags specifically: they're only one possible model for how to do that. My graduate school department's practice is a different model; there may be still others. And I'm also assuming that these conversations could supplement, not replace, other ways of evaluating our students -- such as comments on their written work, etc. Finally, I'm thinking primarily of how departments could employ this method for their majors, rather than for undeclared students -- who might actually benefit more from it.)

The biggest problem, clearly, is the amount of labor/time that would be required. That would especially be true of departments with many majors and few faculty. My own department would not be especially heavily burdened by doing this, but I'm sure that others would find it very hard to do it annually, let alone once a term.

I can think of a few possible benefits of such a conversation and feedback:

• a regular -- indeed, mandatory -- opportunity to talk with one's colleagues might help reduce the sense of isolation that many instructors feel, especially near the end of a term
• we all have students who bring different -- sometimes very different -- personas to their different instructors, and that sort of conversation could help each instructor get a fuller, more complex sense of each student
• many conversations about assessment that I've been privy to treat the primary object of assessment as the course, not necessarily the student. A "don-ish" conversation could, if it and the subsequent feedback were tied carefully to the "learning outcomes" that the department has established for its major(s), be a consistent way at the departmental level to assess each student's progress through the major
• I've taught many students who, not necessarily through any fault of their own, treat each course as a discrete experience, related only coincidentally to any of their previous or subsequent coursework. Conversations and feedback of the sort I'm describing might help students develop/strengthen their meta-cognitive skills, helping them become more self-conscious of themselves as learners and as membes of an academic community.

Are there other benefits or problems with this way of evaluating our students? Can those of you who've been through it (either as instructor or student) chime in?

Lang's On Course: Student evaluations

Lang's chapter 13 deals with a perennially controversial teaching topic: student evaluation of teaching. Here I'll lay out some of his main claims about student evaluations and talk a bit about his suggestions for improving the results on one's evaluations.


First, let me say that my own reading of the literature on student evaluation supports Lang's conclusion that much of the conventional skepticism about student evaluation is misplaced. By and large, student evaluations validly measure certain aspects of instructor performance (whether students have learned from the course, their enthusiasm, how well the exams or other evaluative instruments corresponded with the course content). At the same time, there are elements of instructor performance that students are not well positioned to evaluate: the choice of textbooks or course content, the instructor's knowledge or mastery of the course content, etc. My own sense is that Lange may underestimate how many bad student evaluation questionnaires are out there: Many that I've seen ask students questions that are outside their competence and fail to ask questions that fall within their competence. And many have basic methodological problems (for example, students are asked to consider double-barreled statements such as "The instructor's lectures were organized and informative").

Indeed, this may be one area where faculty autonomy is overrated. Colleges and universities vary in this regard, but at most of the places I have taught, departments are given some vague guidelines as to how to develop their questionnaires but are left to their own devices beyond that, with the result that different disciplines have questionnaires that vary dramatically in length, content, and so on. I wouldn't suggest absolute uniformity across an institution with respect to these questionnaires, but I wonder if having an outside expert develop the questionnaires might be a good idea. In any event, I'd be curious to know from commenters whether my remarks reflect their own experience of student evaluation in different institutions.

Since Lang's book is directed at new teachers, he gives some valuable advice as to how to improve your student evaluation results.

1. Know the form and what's asked.
2. Get additional feedback from students earlier in the term, using techniques such as minute papers, 'muddiest point' exercises, and questionnaires.
3. Be transparent as you teach, explaining to students how the various activities you provide them promote their learning, etc.

I think Lang is right on target with these suggestions, but let me echo and underscore a few points.

• When you get additional feedback, do what Lang proposes and discuss the feedback with the students. Students are willing to forgive our missteps and will tolerate high academic standards if they see that we are acting in good will. Hence, when students give us feedback and we not only acknowledge it but also indicate how we intend to incorporate that feedback in the future, we engender that good will -- and better evaluations result.
• Constantly remind students of the course learning objectives. One challenge for students, especially in philosophy courses, is that they are often uncertain as to what they are supposed to learn. If so, then student evaluation becomes a misguided exercise: Students are being asked whether they learned X but their attention is focused on whether they learned Y.
• Foster the habit of student self-evaluation. Many of us are nervous about student evaluation because it may not do a good job prying apart our contribution to student learning from students' own contribution to their learning. Clearly, the interaction between these contributions is complex: Sometimes great teaching produces great learning, but it may not always do so. In light of this, I've found it important for students to get in the frequent habit of evaluating their own performance and efforts. This encourages a more mature attitude to instructor evaluation because students are more aware of their role in the collaborative learning process and so are more able to focus their attention specifically on how the instructor helped or hindered learning.

Finally, I think one thing that bothers many teachers about student evaluation of their performance is that the information gathered is often not put into context. I'm familiar with institutions where student evaluations are the only data used to evaluate teaching performance. Student evaluations are valid but limited, and need to be supplemented by other kinds of information: peer visits (though these don't take place often enough to be of great value), expert consultations, instructors' own self-evaluations, etc. Student evaluations measure the outputs of an instructor's teaching efforts, but these other sources of information can help measure the inputs to determine if the instructor's teaching is basically sound, regardless of whether it happens to be effective in producing student learning in a particular case. Teaching is, as Lang reminds us in this chapter, as much art as science.

A suggestion on what to include in course material

In teaching intro courses there is the standard philosophical readings that most of us use to introduce philosophy to our students. Over the past few years I have been utilizing non-traditional material (as well as the more tradtional readings) in my intro to philosophy and intro to ethics courses. This material has included literature such as The Plague and The Fall by Camus, The Kite Runner by Hosseini, and The Handmaid’s Tale by Atwood. I have also used videos (Youtube is a Godsend) as well as movies. I have found that utilizing this type of material, alongside the more traditional philosophical material, has helped students gain a deeper appreciation for, and understanding of, some of the issues being discussed. I think it is helpful for students to see that philosophical issues arise in the normal context of lives being lived. After all, is that not one of the reasons Plato had for using dialogues that take place in the day to day lives of the people taking part in the discussion. If students can see the ‘naturalness’ of some of the important philosophical issues, I think it makes these issues more real and important for them. They can see how these issues can relate to their own lives. As we think about what material to use next semester I would like to suggest that everyone include at least one non-traditional piece in your required readings. In my intro to ethics courses next Fall I am planning to use The Lakota Way by James M. Marshall III as a way of introducing virtue ethics to my students. This is a collection of short stories within the Lakota Sioux tradition, each one pertaining to a particular virtue or character trait that is desirable for people to possess if they want to lead a flourishing life. Does anyone else have any more suggestions?

From the Wall Street Journal

So You Want to Be a Professor

By NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY

Late last month, the Web site Inside Higher Ed reported that several universities were shrinking the number of students admitted to their Ph.D. programs this year. Emory University is cutting its doctoral students by 40% -- admitting 220 this fall, down from 360 a year before. Columbia is reducing its intake by 10%. New York University is planning a reduction, although a "very modest" one, according to school officials. And the University of South Carolina is considering a plan to have some departments admit doctoral students only every other year.

There are several reasons for this doctoral downsizing. For one thing, teaching graduate students costs universities money -- at least on first glance. Ohio University economist Richard Vedder estimates that schools spend anywhere from five to 15 times as much on graduate students as on undergraduates. Grad students are taught in small classes with senior professors. And students in doctoral programs (as opposed to those who leave after taking master's degree) are generally on some kind of fellowship. They pay no tuition and receive a school-year stipend between $10,000 and $20,000.

But graduates students also act as teaching assistants, doing a great deal of time-consuming classroom work (and grading) that professors themselves are thus not compelled to do. In all sorts of courses, especially in their freshman and sophomore years, undergraduates may find themselves being instructed more often by a 25-year-old doctoral candidate than by the university's full-time faculty members, who, of course, already have their doctorates (and one or two books to their credit, too). It is an odd, upside-down arrangement, but it has an economic logic: By providing cheap labor, graduate students save college administrations millions of dollars each year in salary costs.

So why the cuts? Well, the calculations work out differently for different schools. For instance, universities in lower tiers might not have to do as much because they can get away with having a higher percentage of classes taught by graduate students. But some of the schools making doctoral cuts this year gave compassion as their reason. Catherine R. Stimson, the dean of Graduate School of Arts and Science at New York University, was quoted in Inside Higher Ed: Given the state of the academic job market, she asked, referring to would-be doctoral candidates: "Is it fair to bring them in?"

It sounds like a logical question, but is it really? After all, the dire academic job market is nothing new. As Peter Berkowitz recalls from his time as a graduate student and professor at Harvard and Yale in the 1980s and '90s: "The departments knew that something like half the students they admitted to their programs wouldn't get Ph.D.s." And, says Mr. Berkowitz (who is now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution), "something like half of those wouldn't get tenure-track jobs."

In an article called "Contingent Faculty and the New Academic Labor System" (2004), Gwen Bradley notes that an academic job shortage is rarely the result of some surprising lurch in supply-and-demand curves, since "the same institutions both manufacture and consume the Ph.D. product." In other words, universities know very well that they are producing far more Ph.D.s than they need. Compare this situation with the medical profession. Even if medical residents are made to work long hours under difficult conditions, the vast majority of them will get jobs as doctors. The vast majority of, say, Ph.D.s in English literature will not. Given that the typical doctoral degree takes six or seven years to complete (during prime job-training and family-forming years), there is a moral problem here. It is no great exaggeration to say, as Mr. Berkowitz does: "Many lives are ruined this way."

With more and more people going to college, one might reasonably wonder why there hasn't actually been a shortage of Ph.D.s in recent years. Two decades ago William Bowen, a former president of Princeton University, predicted as much, claiming that there would soon be far more university teaching jobs than academics to fill them. He co-authored a study foreseeing "a real shortfall" in the humanities and social sciences starting in the late 1990s.

The shortage never materialized. Even during boom times, there was not much of an uptick in job listings for university faculty. Any increase in job demand was met by an overwhelming increase in labor supply. Universities began hiring adjunct faculty members. They typically teach courses at more than one school. (In California, they're referred to as "freeway flyers.") They don't get benefits and, all told, probably earn less than minimum wage.

Not surprisingly, these adjunct faculty members are feeling exploited and getting angry. In recent years, their concerns have been taken more seriously by the American Association of University Professors, which now has committees engaged in rigorous hand-wringing over their ordeal. Marc Bousquet, the author of "How the University Works," sees a couple of key ironies in the academic job market: Getting a Ph.D. now often means the end of an academic career rather than the beginning of one; and the American university, which claims to be an egalitarian institution, relies on people who can only afford to take badly paid adjunct teaching positions because they have another source of income, either from a spouse's job or a second job of their own.

One response may be: So what? Is there any compelling reason that universities -- as self-interested as any institution -- should reconsider their employment policies? Why not staff classes with adjunct labor? Why not give customers the same product at a lower cost?

The last question points to a bigger problem, though: Is it the same product? Who knows? Higher education has gone so far off the rails in recent years that parents and students hardly know what they are supposed to have learned in a freshman composition course or in Sociology 101. And as long as there is a degree waiting at the other end, they hardly care.

Ms. Riley is the Journal's deputy Taste editor.

On Course, Common Problems Chapter.

It is a bit tricky to find a philosophy teaching angle on Lang's chapter about common problems. I'm afraid I haven't been altogether successful in finding one. As usual, Lang's advice is candid, unimpeachable, and even funny. Nevertheless, one can't help but feel he was running out of a little steam here, especially in his last two questions which ask if he has any final advice and whether these questions constitute exhaustive advice. One can't help but wonder if any academic reading the book would actually have those two questions in mind. But like a good prof at the end of a semester, I believe we can and should forgive Lang for a tired but good humored ending.



Lang offers advice on the following areas: 1) rude student behavior, 2) the use of technology in the classroom, 3) tardy and absent students, 4) remembering student names, 5) dealing with flirtatious students, 6) special concerns about labs and online courses, 7) stage fright, and 8) inadequate superiors. His funniest remarks are at the end of (5), wherein he accurately suggests staying far away from any romantic relations with students, recommending the painting of civil war figurines instead.

I limit my commentary to remarks on (1), (2), and (4). For (1), Lang's advice to choose whether you will confront a student in class or after class is very good. He opts for after class and has found it works well, but any new professor should know that some students will be fundamentally unreachable in either way. In philosophy (because there are no answers, right?) I find that there is a type of student who feels like the need to challenge the possibility that a philosopher could know more than he or she could. This leads to a behavior that is not rude in the sense of academic misconduct, but disruptive all the same. I feel that it is absolutely crucial not to let such a student define one's course and one's perception of the course. This can be a difficult maneuver, especially in an intro class, because our culture likes to see supposed authority hoisted on its own petard and other students can get behind the troublesome student. But the answer is, I believe, Socratic. For these students usually come from a pretty sophistical form of arguing involving equivocation, switching the topic, and (above all it seems), appealing to Hamlet's "more things on heaven and earth". I've found it works to actually engage such a student in a verbal "joust" in class in which one points out and actively refuses to participate in the sophistical techniques while showing how staying on point is vital to philosophical discussion. It can be difficult to get exactly the right tone, but after a couple of tries with this type of students I think I have the pacification measure down well. Sometimes one can even turn on a light in these students' heads that leads to more philosophical study. That's rare. But at least you get your class back.

For (2), we've recently addressed the use of laptops in the classroom and how another blogger, Andrew Cullison, dealt with them. So I'll just make a quick remark on mobile phones. First, the line between a standard phone that can simply call and text and a smartphone (like the iPhone which can do word processing, note-taking, and make you dinner) is starting to blur. It will be hard in the near future to tell if students are using these phones for actual classwork or for fun, but there will be legitimate uses. I like to use the camera in my iPhone after class to take pictures of what I have written on the board. That helps a lot, by the way. But I do believe that as mobile use has become pretty ubiquitous, it is time to end the ridiculous teacher tactics for dealing with phones ringing. Even when they provide great enjoyment for the class, the act of having the professor answer or a student singing a verse of the school's fight song, the class is derailed much more than it ever would have been with a stern look followed by an embarrassed look and a couple button pushes. These tactics are not done in professional settings and we want to think of our students as proto-professionals. I bring my phone to class for reasons mentioned above and though I check religiously, it has gone off once. It's time to accept that it's going to happen, it shouldn't happen, and people don't need extra embarrassment unless the lesson really isn't getting through. All this said, of course, if the student should in any way start *talking* on the phone, hang the person high atop the classroom walls.

Finally, and briefly, with (4): I am one of those people who can remember names. I do a little exercise day one in which I try to remember all 30 students' names. I don't do anything special that I know of. I just happen to have exactly as much short-to-mid-term memory to get them all in and repeat them all back after they introduce themselves. By two to three weeks in I easily have all the names. I understand that there are some people who are "bad" at names. I can't imagine their memory is worse than mine, but so be it. All I have to say is that it really is amazing how the students react if you actively try to remember their names and use them unprompted in the classroom and around campus. Knowing a name lets a student know you consider him or her and end rather than a mere means. I believe that I don't even see a lot of problems other profs do, simply because I know there names and they know I wanted to know their names. If you can do it, do it.

Weir on the art of lecturing

Following on his "10 Commandments of Lecturing," Rob Weir has a new piece in Inside Higher Ed on how to craft effective lectures. Again, there's lots of good advice about lecturing here.

• Have a small number of clear objectives that you return to throughout the lecture. Don't try too much or try to pack in too much detail!
• Remember communication basics: eye contact, varying your tempo, have good notes to rely on.
• Start with a hook.
• Use a small number of well-chosen examples.
• Restate the main ideas at the end.

I'd only add two suggestions to his: First, use your chalkboard, whiteboard, whatever you have by way of visuals, but don't let them be the lecture. We've talked a lot here at ISW about PowerPoint, etc. and how students take notes and interact with visual material. I think it's important to remember that the visuals are supposed to help the lecture along, not be a word-for-word reconstruction of the lecture.

Second -- and I'm a strong advocate on this point -- I have doubts that students are well prepared to learn from lectures at the college level. So one technique I often use is to lecture in a traditional way, but then arrange for an exercise that enables students to reinforce their understanding of the lecture while also serving to troubleshoot my performance. This can take the form of a small group exercise where students develop questions based on the lecture, a 'minute paper' exercise, etc. Lectures are important because they are a content-rich way of delivering material, but they are very instructor-centered, which makes it all the more important that we instructors know which material we successfully conveyed and that students have the opportunity to engage lecture material in their own terms.