Teaching Philosophy

Because learning is a biological process, pedagogical approaches should conform to the ways the brain learns. One of the findings of brain-based pedagogical research is that context matters to learning. More specifically, the order of learning must be preserved: content should be introduced in a concrete context, followed by attempts to isolate abstract elements found in the case. There are better and worse strategies to preserve this order. In this paper I discuss the research and provide what I have found to be a very successful way to preserve the natural order of learning: online discussion board assignments.

This paper argues that a well known passage from Plato’s Meno exemplifies how to employ scaffolded learning in the philosophy classroom. It explores scaffolded learning by fully defining it, explaining it, and gesturing at some ways in which scaffolding has been implemented. We then offer our own model of scaffolded learning in terms of four phases and eight stages, and explicate our model using a well known example from Plato’s Meno as an exemplar. We believe that any practical concerns one might have against the employment of scaffolded learning in the philosophy classroom ought not serve as an impediment to adopting our model.

They say that argumentative writing skills are best learned through writing argumentative essays. I say that while this is excellent practice for argumentative writing, an important exercise to practice structuring such essays and build critical thinking skills simultaneously is what I call the four-sentence paper. The exercise has the template They say . . . , I say . . . , one might object . . . , I reply . . . One might object that the assignment oversimplifies argumentative writing, stifles creativity, promotes an adversarial attitude, or that students can’t consider objections well anyway. I reply that a simplified form of argumentative writing is fine for beginners, especially since the template is ubiquitous in philosophy; that any assignment template has room for creativity; that considering objections is consistent with good manners; and that despite some pitfalls of trying to defend a thesis and consider objections, students are capable of considering objections well with proper instruction and practice.

This paper introduces The Logic Game, a two-player strategy game designed to help students in introductory logic classes learn the truth conditions for the logical operators. The game materials can be printed using an ordinary printer on ordinary paper, takes 10-15 minutes to play, and the rules are fairly easy to learn. This paper includes a complete set of rules, a URL for a website hosting all of the game materials, and the results of a study of the effectiveness of the Logic Game in three introductory logic classes.

In this review article, I attempt to give a helpful qualitative assessment of four books that might be used to provide the central content of a course in political philosophy. Two of these books (Inventors of Ideas: An Introduction to Western Political Philosophy, Third Edition, by Donald G. Tannenbaum and An Introduction to Social and Political Philosophy: A Question Based Approach, by Richard Schmitt) are, as their titles suggest, intended for use in introductory courses. The other two books (Political Philosophy in the 21st Century, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Robert B. Talisse and Comparative Political Thought: Theorizing Practices, edited by Michael Freeden and Andrew Vincent) are better suited for students who have already acquired adequate familiarity with political philosophy in a prior course. The two introductory books are written with markedly different approaches to teaching introductory political philosophy in mind and, likewise, the two more advanced collections of essays survey content areas that are mostly non-overlapping.