I’m excited to start as the new Series Editor for the Professor Reflection Series for The Blog of the APA. The series serves as a space for professors to reflect on teaching in philosophy. I want to use this first post as a plea for professors to offer their contributions to the series.
We often ask students to reflect on their own study habits and learning processes to help them identify what has and has not been effective. Similarly, it’s important for us to practice what we preach and engage in this same reflection on our teaching.
When I was a graduate student, my cohort and I were thrown into teaching with little formal instruction on pedagogy, but it was still more than many programs at the time. The general attitude seemed to be that if you understood the philosophical material, then you should be able to teach it effectively. Our attitudes toward pedagogy as a discipline have drastically improved. For instance, some programs today include required courses on educational design. We recognize that being a good philosopher is not sufficient for being a good teacher, and we better appreciate the fact that effective pedagogy cannot be learned from the armchair. This is why the series of professor reflections on teaching is so important, it provides a space to share teaching successes, to learn from our failures, and to generate new ideas for improving how students learn philosophy.
I want to give one example of how public reflections on pedagogy have helped my own teaching. Early in my career, my go-to assignment was the traditional philosophy paper: create a thesis, construct an argument, and respond to objections. I assigned 2-3 of these papers during each semester. However, I started to question how valuable these assignments were to my introductory students. Students just starting in philosophy often struggled to go beyond merely reporting what we discussed in class, they had difficulty incorporating the readings, and I wasn’t seeing the improvement I desired. Then, I stumbled upon a guest post by Professor Kate Norlock at The Philosopher’s Cocoon describing her experiences asking students to write journals while trying to practice an ethical theory, and then using their experiences to reflect on the readings discussing those theories. I decided to replace one traditional paper with this reflection activity and it was so successful that I modified the assignment for other philosophical topics. For instance, I ask students to use Descartes as inspiration for creating their own “method of doubt” to distinguish trustworthy online information from fake news, and I have students keep a journal of their experience applying this method to their own social media feeds. Students report that these reflection assignments are among their favorites, students provide much better explanations of philosophical ideas, and students usually develop more creative argumentative evaluations when we move to the more traditional writing assignments later in the course. I hope the professor reflection series will help others get similar inspiration for how they can improve their teaching.
I ask potential contributors to look over Professor Andrew P. Mills’ requests in his initial post Introducing the Professor Reflection Series. I’ll continue to ask contributors to: (a) discuss a pedagogical problem or goal, (b) discuss the methods used to address their problem or achieve their goal, and (c) provide critical reflection on the effectiveness of those methods. Additionally, I would like to encourage submissions that focus on adapting our teaching to changes in the educational environment such as changing student populations, changes in enrollment, changes caused by the Covid pandemic, or the increasing availability of generative AI.
While it isn’t exhaustive, here are a few ideas for potential topics:
- What methods have you used to create more inclusive learning environments?
- What are some unconventional topics you’ve recently covered in your courses? How did you incorporate them? What was the student response? What changes (if any) would you make to the unit in the future?
- What non-traditional pedagogical methods (such as ungrading) have you used? What worked? What didn’t? What changes would you make next time?
- How do you get undergraduate students engaged in philosophical thinking outside the classroom?
- What methods do you use to show non-majors the value of philosophical thinking in their careers outside philosophy?
- What pedagogical lessons did you learn during the pandemic? How have you incorporated those lessons into your teaching?
- Are you using AI detection software to deter academic dishonesty? If not, why not? If yes, what did you learn about how best to incorporate the use of this software?
- Are you encouraging students to use generative AI? If not, why not? If yes, what methods have you used? Were these successful? What difficulties did you encounter?
One of my central goals for the series is to ensure a regular, consistent publication to help us all reflect on our teaching. I can’t do that without you. So, please consider submitting a proposal on these or any other topic related to teaching.
Samuel Taylor
Samuel Taylor is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Tuskegee University. Before starting at Tuskegee, he was previously a visiting assistant professor at the University of Minnesota - Duluth and an instructor at Auburn University. His research and publications focus on issues in epistemology such as introspective justification, inference, and skepticism. In his teaching he focuses on creating an inclusive learning environment and emphasizes the ways that philosophical thinking is applicable to student's lives outside the classroom.
