First, I am committed to never using my teaching position as a platform to deliver my personal beliefs. I see my primary responsibility as that of presenting the most relevant concepts at issue in the clearest and most accessible format - in order to facilitate each student's own engagement with these concepts and their ability to comprehend and apply these concepts independently.
In the spring of 2024, I took a pedagogy course at the University of Helsinki on the constructivist teaching approach with a particular focus on constructive alignment in course design. It resonated with many of my intuitions about teaching and provided me with concrete guidelines and techniques to foster active student engagement. I strive to implement this philosophy in my current courses. The core element of the constructivist approach is to move away from the top down teacher to student model (according to which the teacher plays the active role and the students, the passive role) and toward active student-centered engagement. This is accomplished by moving away from the lecture-driven format and by incorporating constructive learning activities. Course design should be guided by the learning outcomes of the course - which themselves should reflect genuine (active, student-centered) learning - and all assessments and activities should be designed in a way that fosters these outcomes. The links between the learning outcomes and these assessments and activities should be made very clear to the students.
I hold high expectations of my students with the understanding that this requires expert scaffolding from me. I am thus constantly striving to improve my teaching skills and strategies and regularly attend teaching workshops and conferences. Most recently, I have had the benefit of learning from an expert on autism and diverse/no-barrier learning strategies at the Center for Learning at UW-Madison.
These are my philosophy-specific teaching guidelines:
(1) Remember that the roots of philosophical inquiry are the questions we all ask from childhood. We tend, for many reasons, to put these questions to the side as we grow up and take on the burdens and responsibilities of adult life. We may also simply accept our parents’ or religion’s answers to them. In those students, I hope to rekindle an independent interest in these questions and, for all students, to spark new questions and to cultivate skills and provide resources for formulating answers. Even if these answers, should they come, end up being exactly what they were at the outset, they will be the product of deeper reflection.
(2) Let my passion for the course material come through in every lecture.
(3) Be actively attentive to the students, while yet giving them the space and time (within certain boundaries) to express their own interests and to take their own initiatives. Engage them in a way that reveals their engagement with the material and respond to that feedback. Design classroom activities that inspire active participation and build effective communication skills (informal debates, targeted and free format discussions, textual interpretation exercises, etc.). Make the course material as relevant and topical as possible, inviting connections to real world situations.
(4) No matter how gifted and well-educated the student, especially undergraduates need focused skill-building in textual interpretation, argument analysis, and philosophical writing. Philosophical skills take time and practice to develop. For undergraduates, start with manageable, clear exercises and provide targeted feedback and repeat opportunities for improvement. Get familiar with students’ initial strengths and weaknesses early on through this process and build on them throughout the semester. Advanced students also benefit from focused writing tasks.
(5) Create an ultimately safe space for all to use and grow their own voice. Philosophy is, in the Socratic sense, an inquiry in the form of a dialogue. Even in this sense, though, it is not free from conflict. Disagreement and dissatisfaction (with the answers given) drive the dialogue. Academic philosophy is notoriously competitive and, in some ways, rather unfortunately combative; I do (and should) not seek to eliminate conflict or disagreement in the classroom. However, I seek to approach it constructively and to enable students to see this constructive dimension, learning to approach conflict with patience, insight, skill, and a sense of generosity (and, ideally, with a sense of humor) in order to move the dialogue along the path toward understanding. The philosophy classroom is perhaps the most fruitful venue for learning these skills. I hope to convey that conflict is not to be feared, not to be angered by, but to be sensitively and carefully approached in ways that reflect the dignity of both sides of the conflict. Whether or not we can ever resolve philosophical conflicts, our attempts to do so help us to grow our own voices in myriad ways. In engaging conscientiously with those who disagree with us, we treat ourselves and others with dignity and we gain an appreciation for the difficulties of proving any one viewpoint.