Philosophy Classroom Research Articles

The Analysis of the Expression Form of Ideological and Political Elements in Philosophy Courses Based on Multimedia Information Fusion Strategy

Abstract The application of multimedia technology to teaching in colleges and universities is an inevitable trend in the development of modern education. This technology has changed the traditional teaching mode and provided technical support for the development of modern education. Multimedia technology integrates sound, image, text, animation, and video, and has the remarkable characteristics of human-computer interaction and instant feedback. The application of multimedia technology in philosophy and ideological and political courses in colleges and universities can fully mobilize and stimulate students’ initiative and enthusiasm for learning. This paper aims at the teaching of ideological and political courses in the field of philosophy in colleges and universities, and teachers focus on students to carry out research. Given the problems existing in the application of multimedia technology at present, this paper discusses the effective methods of applying multimedia technology in ideological and political courses in the field of philosophy in colleges and universities. The effectiveness of ideological and political education in the field of philosophy in colleges and universities is a question worthy of continuous discussion. Focusing on the application of multimedia technology, this paper discusses the methods for teachers to use multimedia technology to improve the effect of ideological and political education in the field of philosophy. The research in this paper has positive practical significance and innovative value. Multimedia technology can better express ideological and political elements, which is helpful for the application of ideological and political elements in philosophy classroom teaching, and can bring a better learning experience to the student group.

Random Discussion Leader in the Philosophy Classroom

Teaching through discussion is perhaps the most fundamental pedagogical technique of philosophy. When done well, discussion can promote long-term, durable learning. It supports an active-learning classroom, sparks higher-order cognition, and helps students construct their own understanding of the material. Yet it is often not done well: it is easily dominated by a few students; it can waste time on tangents and minutiae; it can fail to motivate students to prepare adequately; and it is not easily scalable. In this paper we present a technique, the random discussion leader (RDL), which addresses all of these shortcomings of traditional discussion. Qualitative and quantitative evidence from our quasi-experimental study (n = 279) suggests that RDL leads to better preparation, better engagement with the material, more equitable participation, and higher quality discussions. Additionally, we provide a toolkit for instructors interested in trying RDL, showing how the technique can be adapted to various course settings and materials.

Student Perspectives on Teacher Advocacy in the Philosophy Classroom

Whether teachers should take on the role of an advocate in the undergraduate classroom is a thorny question, which has been answered in a variety of ways in the pedagogical literature. What seems to be lacking, however, is information concerning student perceptions on teacher advocacy. Do students believe it is appropriate for a teacher to present and disclose his or her own views on controversial topics? In this paper, the author describes the results of two separate surveys conducted in an effort to answer the question about student perceptions on this practice. Furthermore, the author provides a number of suggestions, based upon the results of these surveys to help mitigate some of the problems associated with advocacy, for those who practice it in the classroom.

To Form More than to Inform

In this paper we argue that God and the Good Life, a prominent philosophy as a way of life (PWOL) undergraduate course, serves the needs of novices in philosophy classrooms, whether they plan to continue in the study of philosophy or not. We draw from both philosophy and educational psychology in making our case and highlight four distinctive components of God and the Good Life pedagogy at the University of Notre Dame: 1) transformative learning goals, 2) immersive experiences, 3) deep personal connections to students’ everyday lives, and 4) cooperative relationships of mutual support in a community of dialogue. We end with a coda on even wider relevance for PWOL pedagogies in bringing about the pluralistic society we hope for, even in our deeply polarized societal moment.

Considerations for Teaching Introductory Philosophy to First-Generation College Students

First-generation college students are a unique population of undergraduates with different backgrounds, strengths, and challenges compared to their continuing generation (not first-generation) peers. These students have the potential to perform well as novice philosophers but may require some additional supports. First-generation students are especially at risk for not being retained by their university at the end of their first year. Given that introductory philosophy courses tend to be taken by first-year students, instructors of these courses can impact student retention, both at the institution and within the discipline. This essay outlines the characteristics of first-generation students, the role instructors play in their success, and specific considerations for working with this undergraduate population in introductory philosophy classrooms.

The Significance of Creativity for Teaching Philosophy

Although creativity constitutes a central human ability that needs to be fostered in school, research in didactics of philosophy hasn’t so far developed accounts of how to train creativity systematically. In this paper I will provide the foundations for a didactics of creativity for philosophy and ethics education. The approach is based on the insight that creativity is an important competence to be promoted in philosophy and ethics classrooms. I will define the concept of creativity and review key empirical findings from the field of educational psychology and psychology of learning which will help me working out a framework for fostering creativity in the philosophy classroom. Central to this is the idea that creativity can only be taught if the use of creative task types is preceded by a phase of acquiring domain-specific philosophical and ethical competences and knowledge. I will then argue that this objective can be implemented particularly well through the design thinking method. In this context, task types that promote divergent thinking are particularly effective. I will use three classroom examples to illustrate how creativity could be fostered in philosophy and ethics classes.

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Miguel de Unamuno ed. by Luis Álvarez-Castro

Reviewed by: Approaches to Teaching the Works of Miguel de Unamuno ed. by Luis Álvarez-Castro Francesc Morales Álvarez-Castro, Luis, ed. Approaches to Teaching the Works of Miguel de Unamuno. Modern Language Association of America, 2020. 247 pp. ISBN: 9781603294423. Miguel de Unamuno is one of the most studied and debated Spanish authors from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is no surprise, then, that one of the last additions to the Modern Language Association of America publications is a book about the Basque-born writer. The following essay reviews the goals, target, and possibilities of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Miguel de Unamuno, edited by Luis Álvarez-Castro. The context in which the volume has been published will also be an element of concern for this academic review. As part of the MLA series, this volume provides instructors with resources to teach certain literary texts. Nonetheless, Spanish letters do not have a strong predicament among the series. If readers look at the one hundred and seventy-one volumes in the collection Approaches to Teaching World Literature, they will see how very few explore Spanish literature. Less than seven per cent are related to authors or works from Spanish letters. Therefore, the book edited by Álvarez-Castro in 2020 is not just a qualitative addition to the ranks of MLA scholarly production, but also a necessary quantitative one. The goal and target of the volume has a clear double intention in mind. On the one hand, "while Unamuno's critical relevance in Spanish studies is secure and indisputable, the author's standing is less prominent in other academic fields and in Spanish literature syllabi at the undergraduate level" (ix). Also, he is greatly underrepresented in the broader context of comparative studies, such as general education courses on world literature, as well as in courses taught by departments of philosophy, religion, French, and English (ix). Indeed, Approaches to Teaching the Works of Miguel de Unamuno is helpful not just for instructors of Spanish literature classes, but also for English and philosophy courses as well. The interdisciplinary nature of the text is the main contribution of the book to the humanities at large because the philosophical aspect of the writer is often neglected. This section needed a better location in the organization of the essays, instead of an odd position next to the last. To effectively organize the 247-page volume, Álvarez-Castro divided the book into two distinctive parts. The first section gives information on different editions and translations of Unamuno's works focusing primarily on scholarly and critical sources. The second section is a group of essays that introduce students to the range of his works in Spanish language and literature, comparative literature, religion, and philosophy classrooms. More so, it includes audiovisual resources still in preparation at [End Page 205] the time of completing the book, such as Alejandro Amenábar's film Mientras dure la guerra, "a historical film based on the last six months of the writer's life" (16). In other words, part one, together with the works cited section at the end of the edited volume, is likely the most complete bibliographical recollection about Unamuno to date. On the other hand, the scope of part two is so vast that it required a subdivision about the writer's biography and his texts as a teaching tool. Indeed, the short essays cover a variety of approaches, including the biographical details. The exile the author suffered in the 1920s is present in several of the essays, such as in the ones by Stephen Summerhill (71) and by Ana Urrutia-Jordana (87–92). Also, the admiration he had for other Iberian cultures, such as the Portuguese and the Catalan, is certainly addressed in the introduction written by Álvarez-Castro himself (19) and in Juan Francisco Maura's text: Unamuno learned that "there is no history of Spain without Portugal and that the history of Spanish literature would be incomplete if it did not embrace Portuguese literature as one of its central components" (77). As Maura asserts in his essay, the Basque writer has a lot to offer given current nationalist polemics in Spain (77). Here we have...

Bringing Public Reason into the Philosophy Classroom

In recent years, ‘philosophy as a way of life’ [PWOL] courses have emerged as an exciting new pedagogical approach. I explain here what a PWOL-course is. In doing so, I argue that the standard method for teaching such courses—what I call the ‘Smorgasbord Model’—presents us with a basic problem: viz., how to enable students in the context of a modern university setting to experience fully what a PWOL is. I propose a solution to this problem by exploring a PWOL that most teachers and students alike already find themselves immersed in, what I describe as political liberalism applied to the context of the university classroom. I show how this overlooked fact not only offers us a novel resource for teaching a PWOL-course. It also helps us as philosophy teachers—in a meta-pedagogical sense—to become more self-reflective about and appreciative of our underlying ethical commitments when teaching philosophy.

Teaching strategies for value-loaded critical thinking in philosophy classroom dialogues

An important aim in education is that students learn to think critically about moral values. In this exploratory multiple case study, we analyze teaching strategies to promote value-loaded critical thinking in philosophical whole-class dialogues. We observed 15 philosophy classroom dialogues, led by five experienced philosophy teachers, and we selected seven dialogues in which moral values were explicitly discussed for further qualitative analysis. In these value-loaded dialogues, we identified three categories of teaching strategies that were used by the teachers to promote critical thinking about moral values: teaching strategies for 1) addressing, 2) applying and 3) arguing about moral values. We also looked for transfer-oriented teaching strategies and found that the teachers made the learning content more meaningful and created intercontextuality; however, we found no examples of metacognitive reflection. In this paper, we give a detailed description of the identified teaching strategies.

Strategies to Improve the Effectiveness of Classroom Teaching for Philosophy Teachers

The purpose of this study is to achieve two objectives. First, to compare the effectiveness of philosophy classes in two administrative classes of Liupanshui Normal University, and to explore the influence of the strategies used by the teachers in the two administrative classes in philosophy teaching on the students. Secondly, through the comparison and discussion of the first point, this paper puts forward the implementation strategies to improve the effectiveness of philosophy classroom, so that students can accept and absorb these knowledge points to the maximum extent to improve the teaching effect. Liupanshui Normal University is located in a remote mountain area of China, so students don't have enough knowledge and guidance in philosophy. Therefore, it is necessary to improve students' philosophical quality through effective classroom practice, so that they can better adapt to the society. Taking case study as the research method, this paper conducted observation, questionnaire survey, interview and literature analysis on philosophy teachers, students, parents, employers and school administrators. The results show that the effect of traditional teaching methods is not as good as audio-visual teaching tools, and the application of audio-visual materials in philosophy teaching has successfully endowed students with higher intellectual value and stimulated their creativity and innovative spirit. In addition, continuous improvement in teachers' emphasis on evaluation feedback, interaction and knowledge literature learning has a positive impact on students, as these strategies encourage them to use higher-level thinking skills.

Why Does Intellectual Disability Matter to Philosophy?: Toward a Transformative Pedagogy

This article explores what it means to include intellectual disability (ID) in philosophical discourse and in the philosophy classroom. Taking Audre Lorde’s claim that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” as a starting point, it asks how certain forms of cognitive ableism have excluded ID from the “philosopher’s house.” Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s work as a theoretical framework, part one critically examines the ways that ID has been included, excluded, and constructed within philosophical discourse. Part two then considers what it would mean for ID and people with an ID to be included in the philosophy classroom. It offers some examples of how the work in disability studies, philosophies of disability, and philosophy of art can lead to a more inclusive and transformative pedagogy that will generate new critical questions and expand our philosophical dwelling places.

Let’s Be Frank: Revitalizing Frank Friendship in the Contemporary Philosophy Classroom

Philodemus’s On Frank Criticism offers a unique conception of friendship that relies on frank speech, or truth-telling. The ability to have frank conversations with one another is the heart of a conception of friendship in which we are seen, heard, and acknowledged. This is the friendship through which we become better citizens and better selves. In particular, Philodemus is offering this truth-based friendship to students and their mentors. Yet, one would be hard put to find such trust and deep friendship in the university philosophy classrooms of today. Our professionalized and content acquisition focused culture in the academy all too often inhibits fostering these kinds of relationships with our students. We begin the essay by tracing the roots of this kind of frank friendship in Plato’s Lysis, and then contextualize its emerging role in the ancient philosophical classroom by exploring its place in Philodemus’ Epicurean philosophical community at Herculaneum. We do so to see how such friendship moves beyond discourse and into practice. Next, we use Arendt and Foucault to unpack the public and private dimensions of frank friendship in the philosophical learning environment and its role in a good life and good politics. Finally, we show how the classroom practice of Modern Socratic Dialogue (MSD) can re-enliven frank friendship as a spiritual exercise in the contemporary university-philosophy classroom. Specifically, we argue that MSD is a particular method of dialogue suited for the public realm of friendship and that it contributes to the care of one’s soul, thus modeling in our classrooms a method of dialogue for both the public and private dimensions of life.

Re-envisioning the Philosophy Classroom through Metaphors

What is a philosophy class like? What roles do teachers and students play? Questions like these have been answered time and again by philosophers using images and metaphors. As philosophers continue to develop pedagogical approaches in a more conscious way, it is worth evaluating traditional metaphors used to understand and structure philosophy classes. In this article, we examine two common metaphors—the sage on the stage, and philosophy as combat—and show why they fail pedagogically. Then we propose five metaphors—teaching philosophy as world-traveling, wondering, conducting an orchestra, storytelling, and coaching—that can better respond to the needs of increasingly diverse student bodies. Further, these metaphors find their ground in long-standing beliefs about what philosophy is, how it is done, and what it can do for those willing to engage in it. While no single one of them is comprehensive, we think that these models can help us enliven our own thinking about our teaching and the roles we and our students play in our classrooms.

What Practices Make For An Inclusive Philosophy Classroom?

What Practices Make For An Inclusive Philosophy Classroom?

Enseñanza y filosofía. Una mirada desde la perspectiva del aprender

the inquiry into teaching in philosophy entails two different questions, namely: What does it mean to teach? And, what is understood by “philosophy”? The first of these questions constitutes the starting point of this article – product of the research project Balance of the Ways of Teaching Philosophy in Colombia –, specifically regarding the topics of teaching as an area, and the task of teaching. However, the methodological potential of studying the task of teaching from the perspective of learning arose while enquiring into the notions of translation, “plagiarism”, repetition, and creation. What kind of relation brings together teaching with learning and learning with teaching? In other words: How much does learning require from teaching? How much learning can we find in teaching? Can teaching and learning be thought of independently from one another? What happens in a philosophy classroom? In short, what does it mean to think about the relation between philosophy and teaching from the perspective of learning? In this way, as can be observed, positing the question of teaching on the axis of learning situates the discussion within the sphere of experience, and of the exercise and practices of the self. This is a different dimension of teaching from that determined by emulation, explanation, and monologue.

Philosophical Think Tanks

While small group discussion is invaluable to the philosophy classroom, I think it can be improved. In this paper I present a method that I have developed to better facilitate active learning in the spirit of a philosopher within a Socratic community. My method is to form what I call a “philosophical think tank,” which takes the form of a small group that persists for the duration of the semester (or a large portion of it) in order to overcome deficiencies that can arise if groups are determined anew with each class meeting. After presenting the technique, I offer an overview of results, possible issues, and ideas for future development.

The Concept of Argument in Philosophy as a Threshold for Learners

It is commonplace for undergraduate students to find certain concepts inherent to the disciplines of study troublesome. While some concepts are troublesome simply because they represent new vocabulary for the students, other concepts are troublesome in a more significant sense. Concepts of this kind are troublesome because they highlight an aspect of the deep structure of the discipline, a way of thinking and inquiry, that the students are likely to find strange and even, counter-intuitive, relative to their own pre-existing conceptual frameworks. In this paper, I will argue that the concept of ‘argument’ in the discipline of philosophy, is one such concept. To make the case for this, I will be drawing upon a relatively new and important framework for inquiry into troublesome disciplinary concepts, known as “threshold concept theory” (Meyer and Land 2006, 2008). In addition, I propose to consider the implications, in terms of the design of curriculum and pedagogy for the philosophy classroom, of conceiving argument in threshold concept terms.

The Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gītā: A Contemporary Introduction by Keya Maitra

Reviewed by: The Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gītā: A Contemporary Introduction by Keya Maitra Malcolm Keating (bio) The Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gītā: A Contemporary Introduction. By Keya Maitra. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Pp. xii + 204. Paperback $24.95, isbn 978-1-350-04019-9 Introduction As Richard Davis notes in his recent The Bhagavad Gītā: A Biography, this important text has by now been translated over three hundred times in English alone.1 Given this embarrassment of riches, and the relative poverty for other crucial works of South Asian philosophy, why would anyone translate the Gītā yet again? In the introduction to her new translation, Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gītā: A Contemporary Introduction, Keya Maitra gives an important, primarily pedagogical rationale: she hopes that her book will introduce new readers to the text, philosophically. She aims to facilitate philosophical engagement without too many cognitively-taxing Sanskrit terms or too much religio-historical context, whle also remaining faithful to the text, so as to encourage cross-cultural engagement that does not overlook the text's situatedness. This balancing act aims for a text that "stand[s] on its own" and can be a suitable text for the "Western reader" in the philosophy classroom (p. 1). By "Western," Maitra has in mind English-speakers for whom the characters of the Gītā (and by extension, the Mahābhārata) are not background knowledge, and the classrooms she's envisioning are those where Anglo-European analytic philosophy would be a natural contrast. Maitra's book is excellent insofar as it makes an explicitly philosophical introduction and translation available to the discipline, something which is crucial if we are to bring philosophies from outside of the Anglo-European canon into the undergraduate classroom. The translation is well-suited for philosophy classrooms, is fluid, accessible, and opens up the text for genuine engagement. At the same time, the results of her comparative aspirations are more mixed, sometimes obscuring more than illuminating. Still, Maitra largely succeeds in her goal to present the text intelligibly to students and instructors from an Anglo-European context, without entirely subsuming it into its categories, and while being historically sensitive. I commend it as a translation for philosophy classrooms, especially those taught by instructors from within the broadly analytic tradition wishing to expand their curriculum. The publication of a new philosophical translation of such a seminal Sanskrit text presents an opportunity to reflect on broader questions about teaching cross-cultural philosophy through translation. First, there is the muchremarked upon "double bind" that challenges philosophy instructors. As Amy Olberding puts it, this is the charge to "Show us something we have not seen before, but be sure it looks well and truly familiar to us too."2 While I think that Maitra's book does not entirely escape the double bind, as it often positions itself explicitly in conversation with the default "Western" categories, it does do more than simple comparison. Second, since it has been almost forty years since Larson surveyed English translations of the Gītā, this substantive review article is an opportunity to reflect on Maitra's work in comparison to some of the more popular translations presently used in philosophy classrooms.3 Thus I have selected three passages for close reading which are also discussed in Larson so that philosophy instructors will have accessible points of comparison. Section 1 takes up the book's introduction and supplemental materials. In Section 2, I discuss Maitra's translation in comparison with existing translations. And in Section 3, I conclude with reflections on Maitra's effort in light of the pedagogical double bind present in the philosophy undergraduate classroom. Introducing and Approaching the Bhagavad Gītā Maitra has designed her book with several sections to facilitate its use in a philosophy classroom. It opens with a lengthy 33-page introduction to the Gītā, its context, and major concepts. Each chapter of the Gītā opens with a short summary and concludes with a "Philosopher's Corner," a short essay that raises questions about the preceding chapter and makes connections mostly to Anglo-European philosophy (with some connections to Chinese philosophy, too). She concludes the...

Teaching Moral Philosophy through Literature Circles

How do you effectively teach moral philosophy to classes of twenty to thirty-five students who come from diverse national, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and educational backgrounds, and most of whom have little or no interest in philosophy? In seeking ways to create a course that is relevant, practical, and engaging, I hit upon the idea of adapting literature circles to the study of moral philosophies. In this paper, I contextualize the need for an approach that promotes individual student responsibility within a teamwork context, introduce the appropriateness and adaptability of the literature circles concept in a philosophy classroom, and uncover the theoretical structure underneath the strategy in order to make it more adaptable to other classrooms and courses.

Are University Students Who Are Taking Philosophy Courses Familiar with the Basic Tools for Argument?

Philosophy courses help students develop logical reasoning and argument skills or so it is widely assumed. To test if this is actually the case, we examined university students’ familiarity with the basic tools for argument. Our findings, based on a sample of 651 students enrolled in philosophy courses at six Greek universities, indicate that students who have prior experience with philosophy are more familiar with the basic tools for argument, and that students who have taken philosophy courses at the university have stronger argument-recognition and argument-evaluation skills compared to university students with no prior experience with philosophy. Moreover, our findings suggest that students get more familiar with the basic tools for argument as their level of engagement with philosophy increases, and that they get significantly better at evaluating arguments when they become graduate students in philosophy. However, our findings also suggest that the majority of students in philosophy classrooms haven’t developed fluency in (at least some) basic argument-related concepts and skills. To remedy this, we argue that philosophy instructors need to re-think (a) the place that the teaching of argument has in philosophy courses, and (b) the way that they teach students about argument.