Syllabus Showcase: The Philosophy of Education, Kristopher G. Phillips

Part of what I love about teaching philosophy is that it affords me the opportunity to take things that students find familiar or banal and, through philosophical examination, make it peculiar, confusing, frustrating, and unshakable. By the time undergraduate students reach a 3000-level course they have had a lifetime’s worth of experience with education in different forms and contexts. The vast majority have plenty of ideas about the educational system, and few of those ideas are complementary. Philosophy by its very nature can, of course, be critical – but it can also be aspirational. Philosophers are not constrained by merely describing the way things are; we’re in a position to think about how things could or should be. Offering a course in the philosophy of education afforded me the perfect opportunity to poke, prod, and challenge something that students find familiar and to push them to consider not merely what their experience of education has been, but what it should be. What better way to do that than to give the students in the class increasing control over the course – and thereby also their own education – itself?

My goal in teaching the philosophy of education is to have an extended, thoughtful, philosophical dialogue with the students about their own education. In many ways this approach is informed by my practice in pre-college philosophy. Having studied with Michael Pritchard and subsequently started a couple of dialogue-based philosophy summer-camps (the Iowa and Utah Lyceum programs), I have seen first-hand the impact dialogic teaching has on a classroom. Specifically, framing philosophy education in terms of dialogue highlights that (a) students learn better through active participation, (b) when students feel a sense of ownership, they are motivated to think carefully and critically about course content, and (c) by engaging in thoughtful dialogue with one another, students actually do philosophy, rather than merely learn about philosophy. I was further inspired by recent work on the cultivation of intellectual virtue, which led me to take a more active role as facilitator than usually prescribed by the community of inquiry approach – emphasizing the importance and value of exemplars in cultivating intellectual virtue, aiming for a “virtuous dialogue” wherein students are active participants (Finley 2023). In addition to helping students learn material, I draw student attention to specific virtues by modeling and highlighting student behaviors in class which embody intellectually or dialogically virtuous behaviors. By reminding students that we are working together in pursuit of a virtuous dialogue and encouraging everyone to be excellent interlocutors, students quickly internalize and increasingly exhibit intellectually virtuous behaviors.

Borrowing from Jason Baehr’s Deep in Thought (2021), we begin the semester with an intellectual virtue self-assessment. Students identify how well they embody each virtue and write a reflection about both their strengths and where they can improve. We then meet in one-on-one meetings, discuss their survey and reflection, and set goals for the semester. Around the midpoint of the semester, students offer a formative self-reflection, exploring their efforts and progress made since the beginning of the term. One student expressed that they have a difficult time disagreeing with peers in class. We set a goal for critical-dialogical-engagement and I monitored their in-class participation. As this student noted in their mid-semester self-reflection, much of the progress they made happened outside of class; they were more engaged with classmates and felt more comfortable expressing their own philosophical positions in smaller group settings. That success built their confidence, and they ultimately spoke up more frequently in class than in any semester before.

In another case, one student wanted to work on their close-reading skills. Over the course of the semester, we identified three short passages from assigned readings and crafted an assignment designed to cultivate close-reading. While the assignment was designed for one student, I made it available to everyone in the class. To my surprise, several additional students took me up on the opportunity, despite being entirely optional.

For the second-half of the class, I want to afford the students even more autonomy. After all, the whole idea for the class was to help the students identify what education should be. Ceding some control over what we’re discussing seems an obvious choice. To that end, I don’t specifically assign which chapters from the collection Intellectual Virtues and Education we read, instead I leave it to them to choose. In this class, they wanted to read the whole thing. I had them teach each chapter in pairs. I meet with each pair of students before and after they lead the class in order to discuss their successes and how their experience supported their goals. They are free to use handouts, interactive slideshows, or whatever they think will best push one another to engage carefully with the texts and one another.

For years I have been suspicious of grades; I found that they distract students, fail to communicate anything meaningful, and – despite the appearance of objectivity – prove impossible to uniformly apply. After all, a major in their final undergraduate philosophy course should be held to a different standard than a student in their first upper-division philosophy course. I have adopted an ungrading approach to most of my classes already, but in this case it seems particularly appropriate to offer students a choice between traditional grading and ungrading. To help them make an informed decision about their own education, and to kickstart the process of making the familiar seem odd, we start by reading about the history of the grading system and the case against grades. These students unanimously went for an ungrading approach. To that end, I offered substantial qualitative feedback with no numerical score or grade on all written work and a standing opportunity to revise any assignment. Without the fear of failure, generally students are willing to take greater risks, reconceptualize how they approached their own learning, and consistently share that they enjoy learning more. One student even prepared a presentation on upgrading, teaching for the development of intellectual virtue, and my class for other faculty in another program at SUU.

In addition to innovating and taking greater risks, students also exhibit more excitement about research and spend more time discussing material with me outside of class. At the end of the term, I have students put together a portfolio of their work – including all written work, any revisions they may have done, reflections, and a final retake of the intellectual virtues survey. They then write a careful reflection of performance in the class – attending to their growth on personal goals, their depth of understanding, and what final grades are all about. During finals week, we meet one-on-one to review their portfolio, talk through their reflections, and collaboratively determine what their final grade should be. I ask each of them three questions just before turning to determining their final grade:

1. At some point someone who likely doesn’t know me, you, or the content of this course will look at your transcript. What does the grade that shows up on your transcript communicate to that person? What does it say about you as a student?
2. If we could go over to the registrar and place a footnote next to the grade for this class saying in one-sentence what the grade represents, how would that sentence read?
3. Given what you take the grade to actually communicate, what you ideally want the grade to communicate, and everything you have shown through your portfolio, reflections, and our conversation today, what is the grade you have earned for this course and why?

There is a lot about this class that is pretty on-the-nose. In asking students to consider both what education is and what it should be, it only seems fitting that the course itself should ultimately be a reflection of that aspirational project. From the outset, the class is designed to do just that – to reflect their views, values, and goals while preserving the instructor’s expertise in guiding, identifying, and developing student ideas and virtues. 

The Syllabus Showcase of the APA Blog is designed to share insights into the syllabi of philosophy educators. We include syllabi in their original, unedited format that showcase a wide variety of philosophy classes. We would love for you to be a part of this project. Please contact Series Editor, Dr. Smrutipriya Pattnaik via smrutipriya23@gmail.com, or Editor of the Teaching Beat, Dr. Nathan Eckstrand via eckstna@gmail.com with potential submissions.

Kristopher Phillips

Kristopher G. Phillips is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Michigan University. He serves as editor-in-chief of the journal Precollege Philosophy and Public Practice, and is co-founder of the Iowa and Utah Lyceum pre-college philosophy summer camp programs. A trained modernist, he has published broadly on Descartes, Cavendish, philosophy of mind, pre-college philosophy, the philosophy of education, interdisciplinary pedagogy, and popular culture and philosophy. An award-winning instructor, he was also a finalist for the 2021 and 2022 APA/AAPT Prize for Excellence in Philosophy Teaching.