What is good philosophy instruction?  The answer to that question depends very much on the answer to the following question: What are the proper goals of philosophy instruction?

Ensuring that students develop the skills of a good philosopher is clearly one proper aim of philosophy instruction.  In an online video about the value of liberal arts for students in technical fields of study, James Winebrake explains, “Liberal arts teaches you how to communicate better, how to be a better problem solver, how to understand ethics, how to be a better critical thinker.”  Philosophy, with its heavy emphasis on clarity and rigor, is especially well-suited for facilitating the development of the skill set that liberal arts offer.

I believe that the development of these skills requires practice, practice, and more practice.  Putting each student to work to solve sets of problems week in, week out is one very effective means of ensuring that they engage in sufficient practice, as the space between problem and solution is the whetstone on which philosophical skills are sharpened.

As in athletics, practice in philosophy is most effective when done under the supervision of a dedicated coach who constantly provides supportive and unflinching feedback.  Receptivity to such feedback is aided by (a) my own stories of nerves and growing confidence and the stumbles I had along the way and (b) positive reinforcement, not focused on the level of brilliance of student ideas, but rather on the helpfulness of those ideas to the classroom learning process.

Giving feedback for practice that happens between classes involves regularly collecting students’ solutions and then promptly returning them with individualized comments.  Such formative assessment allows students to see the gap between where they are and where they need to be to succeed in the course and allows the flexible instructor to tailor instruction to help close the gap.

But for what aim(s) are the skills of philosophy to be applied in philosophical investigations?  In Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell proposes “an enlargement of the Self” that arises from the “greatness of the objects which [philosophy] contemplates, and the freedom from narrow and personal aims resulting from this contemplation.”  Student growth results from the use of philosophical skills to open up, as Russell puts it, “many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts.”  Instructors should stimulate the growth that results from, not only asking philosophical questions, but also contemplating possibilities that arise when attempting to answer them.  An important product of this growth is the intellectual humility that philosophy’s uncertainty engenders.

It is worth noting here that because ethics and critical thinking instruction are especially concerned with stakeholders other than the student of philosophy, they have goals – good conduct/character and responsible citizenship, respectively – that can be in tension with the goal of an enlargement of the Self.  While good instruction in ethics opens up many possibilities, some possibilities, such as ethical egoism, threaten to undermine conscience rather than help students build a better conscience.  To treat an exploration of ethical egoism as an opening up of a possibility is to shirk responsibility to those other stakeholders of ethics instruction.

And how can the skills of a good philosopher be exploited for the aim of right conduct or virtuous character?  A very helpful model is found in Plato’s Euthyphro.  The process of successive approximation that unfolds in the dialog mirrors the process that leads to a reflective equilibrium, which brings coherence to a student’s moral thinking.  One helpful skill for reducing inconsistencies among ethical beliefs in a reflective individual is constructing examples that illustrate or challenge moral principles.  And weaving student creativity into classroom lessons makes for an especially meaningful learning experience.  For example, after instruction about Kant’s false promise example, my students are tasked with building their own example that illustrates insights of the categorical imperative.  My favorite student example, which I share with new classes each semester, is one in which an agent adopts the maxim, “Whenever I am in need of an expensive power tool for one small job, I will purchase it, use it and then return it for a full refund.”  Greater moral belief coherence is achieved when we do not make exceptions for ourselves for rules that we would have for others.  My students see this point for themselves through the intellectual excitement of creating something novel, unique, and sometimes great enough to disseminate beyond the walls of their own classroom.

It is good practice for philosophy instructors to move students toward the understanding that facilitates achieving philosophical aims by means of a dialectic.  While a dialectic in which the instructor plays the role of Socrates is helpful, this tool tends to engage too few interlocutors.  The remedy is frequent, team-based learning sessions in which the Socratic process is played out in smaller scale.  Here, the instructor relinquishes the role of “the sage on the stage” and assumes the role of “the guide on the side.”  In my experience, students in predominately technical and career-oriented fields tend to be well-adapted to such collaborative, student-centered approaches.

Though students work in teams, teams are never pitted against each other.  Presenting philosophy as a co-operative, rather than competitive, endeavor is helpful for creating conditions in which all students feel comfortable enough to participate freely.  In a competitive setting, voicing one’s own misunderstanding is a setback, but when we co-operate, trying but misunderstanding is, as the Euthyphro makes clear, an important step in the process of arriving at understanding.

Philosophy instruction that places heavy emphasis on team-based learning that culminates in deliverables treats the classroom as a laboratory.  Philosophical positions and students’ beliefs are the hypotheses that get tested in discussion among lab partners.  Since students bring their own unique sets of beliefs, such discussion fosters tolerance for diverse viewpoints.  And as it is with science, a philosophy lab requires prep work, done in advance, by both instructor and student.  [View example.]

The instructor’s prep work includes constructing, by means of trial and error, ever-evolving sets of problems to be solved in the lab and also providing resources with which students do their prep work.  To that end, I have created approximately two dozen carefully-scripted, animated videos that provide concise, engaging, and meaningful content to prepare students to grapple with challenging readings by great philosophers.  The fact that students can watch and re-watch, at variable speeds on myCourses, these properly-captioned video lessons as many times as suits their learning needs has proven helpful to RIT’s technology-savvy students and, especially so, to students whose first language is not English, including those who sign rather than communicate orally.  [View ethical theory and other philosophy videos.]

The heavy lifting of my students’ prep work consists of engaging with the reading assignment by individually solving sets of problems centered on comprehension and evaluation.  While I recognize opportunity-costs associated with a problem set’s guiding a reader’s attention, experience has taught me that a reading assignment without such sets of problems prepares some but not enough students for the advanced thinking that I expect in the lab.

But how does the instructor minimize the freeriding of some on the efforts of their lab partners?  After all, the point of a lab is to ensure that all students are participants rather than spectators.  The remedy is to exploit the power of imagery.

Great philosophers have long made use of the power of metaphorical language that conjures up images to convey ideas.  Consider the power of Hume’s labelling resemblance, contiguity, and causation as the “cement of the universe.”  Imagine Ryle’s criticizing Cartesian dualism without labelling it as belief in “the ghost in the machine.”  (It is no accident that my Statement of Outlook on Teaching Philosophy is built on metaphors of athletic training and science lab work.  If you find yourself challenging my image-conjuring metaphors, then you can see what fertile ground imagery is for philosophical (and meta-philosophical) reflection.)

Recently, I have begun investigating how images projected on a screen can spark student interest in exploring problems to be solved.  While an experienced instructor can construct problem sets that generate intellectual excitement in most students, thoughtfully-selected images can stir up excitement where it is missing and elevate it where it is not.  A picture is worth a thousand words, and the vibrant discussions that these images have prompted reflects that.  [View example.]

In addition, my recent experimentation in flipping the script by having students propose their own image after their solutions have been reached has shown early promise and mirrors exciting work done at RIT in developing American Sign Language signs for abstract philosophical concepts.  For example, after thinking through a problem that calls for challenging the idea of “the greatest good for the greatest number,” one student proposed an image of two cars travelling in opposite directions as a reflection of the idea’s calling for maximizing two separate variables.

Good philosophy instructors guide students through the important growth that occurs when one engages deeply in doing philosophy.  Furthermore, good instructors grow themselves.  While the student-centered philosophy classroom is a laboratory for its students, the philosophy course is a laboratory for the instructor.  Taking risks does not always produce results, but it always produces growth.