If you’re not familiar with the American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT), the organization’s self-description as “dedicated to the advancement of the art of teaching philosophy” is a good place to start. I hadn’t heard of the AAPT until sometime in March 2018, when I saw a call for participants for its Teaching and Learning Seminar. The seminar occurs at the AAPT’s biennial conference, which took place that year at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro, NC. When I arrived in Greensboro on July 25th, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but I hoped I’d improve my teaching skills. By the time the seminar ended, I had indeed become a much better teacher. But not only that: I had learnt more about teaching than I realized there was to learn; I’d gained the contacts, skills, and materials to make sure I would continue improving as a teacher far beyond the seminar; and I’d met some inspirational and lovely pedagogues, both experts and fellow aspirants. In short, I’d come to appreciate why the AAPT emphasizes the art of teaching philosophy, and I was both motivated and able to begin developing my own contributions to that craft.
The Teaching and Learning Seminar was a somewhat expanded version of the AAPT’s One-Day Workshop on Learner-Centered Teaching that is mentioned below. As the name suggests, the workshops are only a day long, while the seminar runs over four mornings. But the structure and aims are much the same. Participants read some handpicked scholarship in teaching and learning ahead of time. Then the workshop equips them with some of the ins and outs of learner-centered course design. That is, it teaches participants to focus on student (rather than instructor) needs in: first, the identification; second, the implementation; and third, the assessment of learning goals. The sessions of the workshop reflect this triune approach. One of the AAPT’s facilitators leads a session each on learning goals, on pedagogy, and on assessment. In Greensboro, these sessions were led by Christina Hendricks, Rebecca Scott, and Dave Concepción, respectively.
The AAPT facilitators practice what they preach: the sessions I attended were free from stodgy lecturing, and focused instead on interactive, challenging activities. We didn’t just hear about good teaching practices; we had to perform them ourselves. Christina, for instance, had us reflect on learning goals for a course we were planning, first individually and then in groups. Not only did this help me identify better learning goals, but it also served to give me first-hand experience of how valuable group work can be for learners. In another memorable group activity, Rebecca asked us to evaluate and discuss assessments of student papers that we’d done. Dave had us do plenty of hands-on learning too, but the thing that sticks out was a lightbulb moment I had while he was lecturing. (I said free from stodgylecturing, not free from all lecturing. Lecturing is a valuable tool in the pedagogue’s arsenal.) He was talking about pedagogy—what you ask your students to do, both in and out of the classroom, so that they will learn what you want them to learn. Before then, I’d realized that I wanted to expand my pedagogical repertoire, to get beyond asking students just to read and write, and maybe sometimes talk, over and over and over again. But I was having an imaginative failure. I had been asking a good question: what can I ask students to do in order to learn? But the simple and radical answer that I had overlooked was this: I can ask them to do anything at all (within the limits of reason and safety). I can get them meditating, experimenting, eating, interviewing, dancing, observing, creating, and even destroying. This broadening of my imaginative horizons was one of the best moments of the seminar, which was full to the brim of good moments.
This was what I gained from the seminar version of the AAPT’s Teaching and Learning event. As I mentioned above, this took place in Greensboro, NC, over the course of four mornings during the biennial conference. The advantage of a workshop over the seminar is that it packs most of the more extended format into a manageable, one-day event. Three AAPT members come to your home university to teach the skills of identifying, implementing, and assessing learner-centered goals, and do so in a way specifically focused on the challenges and opportunities that arise in teaching philosophy. In this way, it’s more convenient for many of those caught up in the academic treadmill.
I hope by this point you’ve got some idea of what the AAPT workshops are for, and what going to one might be like. I could continue to wax lyrical about the events, but instead let me finish by saying two things. The first is that the AAPT workshops (and seminar) provide the best philosophy teacher training available. If you want to be a better philosophy teacher, you must go. I’m sure enough of this that, as soon as I returned from Greensboro, I started organizing a workshop at my home institution of UNC Chapel Hill. The second thing is that, in being involved in organizing a workshop, I’ve been fortunate to glimpse some of the behind-the-scenes preparation that goes into these events. The facilitators who are coming to Chapel Hill — Stephen Bloch-Schulman, Betsy Decyk, and Melissa Jacquart — have been planning the event meticulously and creatively, from which readings they’re asking participants to do beforehand, to what they’re going to have them do on the day itself. Perhaps most impressive is that they’ve asked me for detailed information about the context of teaching philosophy at Chapel Hill, and have tailor made the workshop program to meet the specific needs we have here.
To work with AAPT facilitators — both as a participant in a seminar, and as an organizer for a workshop — has been to benefit from maestros in the art of teaching philosophy. I cannot strongly enough recommend getting a chance to learn from them as well. Whether a novice or a seasoned educator, you’ll at the very least become a much better teacher; and it might well change the way you approach education as a whole.
How to bring an AAPT workshop to your campus?
One of the leaders of the APA’s Graduate Student Council asked how to disseminate information regarding how to bring an AAPT workshop to one’s home department. The short answer is: contact the chair of the AAPT’s Teaching and Learning Committee. As of winter 2019, that person is, David Concepción, dwconcepcion@bsu.edu. AAPT will work with you to find a date of mutual convenience for a team of philosophers who are also pedagogy experts to lead activities at your campus.
The AAPT offers two types workshops to any Philosophy Department that would like to host one.
(1) How to design courses, pedagogies, and assessments as a learner-centered teacher
(2) Inclusive Pedagogy
Additionally, the AAPT can tailor a workshop to meet the specific needs of a particular department.
These workshops are designed to enhance participants’ ability to make highly effective pedagogical choices. The interactive sessions provide opportunities for participants to reflect with colleagues on how to individualize evidence-based best teaching practices to one’s own idiosyncratic teaching contexts. Participants will learn how to identify and select challenging and transformative learning objectives and how to design and assess sequences of learning activities to make the achievement of those goals highly likely.
For more information about the workshops, go to: https://philosophyteachers.org/teaching-learning-seminars-workshops/
David W. Concepción
David W. Concepción is Professor of Philosophy at Ball State University. He is chair of the APA Committee on Teaching, a past President of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers, and he leads teaching and learning workshops around the country. He has specialization in inclusive pedagogy.
Chris Blake-Turner
Chris Blake-Turner is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at UNC Chapel Hill. He currently is the Philosophy Department’s Teaching Assistant Coordinator for the 2018-2019 academic year. As well as starting a discussion group for graduate students to talk about teaching, he’s also helped to organize an AAPT One-Day Workshop at Chapel Hill on February 16th 2019.
