Conditions of labor in higher education for non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty are hostile. Many recognize this fact, which serves as the basis for the push for unionizing NTT faculty. This essay furthers that project. I draw attention to the fact that one¡¯s expertise sets normative boundaries on the conditions that they may be legitimately invited to labor under. I try to capture this thought in terms of developmental appropriateness (DA), a principle that typically guides course design. I extend it to show that the conditions of labor in higher education, and professional philosophy in particular, are unjustly hostile not only due to poverty wages, a lack of resources, and precarity, but also due to the fact that the expertise of NTT faculty is decoupled from the value of their teaching. I argue that this violates their autonomy and that unionization is required to prevent that violation and reclaim the value of their expertise.

This article offers a mixed narrative-theoretical account of developing and teaching a second-year course in philosophy on Indigenous-settler reconciliation in Canada. It discusses teaching methods, resources, experiential learning activities, and student perspectives to reflect on both the content and process of the course, while offering potential cautions about teaching it as part of reconciliatory or decolonial practice. The article explores tensions and possibilities surrounding efforts toward indigenization within Canada¡¯s university system as a colonial institution and inside a discipline (philosophy) that has not yet widely engaged with Indigenous knowledge systems and pedagogies.

As philosophy professors, we may inadvertently contribute to antifat bias and fatphobia in our classrooms. ¡°What about health?¡± is the most common question students raise in conversations about antifat bias and fatphobia. I discuss the relationship between weight and health, the ¡°obesity epidemic¡± as moral panic, and ways that antifat bias and fatphobia occur in everyday life. I share my experiences, difficulties, and suggestions for teaching philosophy courses that guide students to begin thinking critically about antifat bias and fatphobia. Critical approaches to fatness raise philosophically rich moral, epistemic, and ontological questions and require careful reflection on our own positionality. Specific topics I address include developing a personal stake in dismantling antifat bias and fatphobia, inclusive design and denaturalizing the built world, antifat bias in medicine, intersectionality and epistemic oppression, eating disorders and fatphobia through a feminist philosophical lens, how microaggressions sustain fat oppression, and fat temporality and crisis phenomenology.

We have noticed a worrying trend of students receiving failing grades because they disappear. They stop showing up to class and stop submitting work. They become unresponsive to email and do not take up offers of help. In a real sense, these students fail but have not taken the class. In this essay, we attempt to address this issue by examining systemic and structural features of higher education that contribute to this phenomenon, using our home institution, San Jos¨¦ State University, as an example. We look at add/drop policies and argue that they create an environment that is hostile for the student population our university serves¡ªprimarily first-generation students of color with low socioeconomic status. We argue that these policies constitute an instance of structural injustice that becomes systemic when combined with other sources of injustice in our students¡¯ lives. We situate these structural and systemic injustices within larger discussions of the hidden curriculum and decolonial approaches to pedagogy. Finally, we conclude with a call to action. We urge others to consider university-level policy as a source of structural injustice that interacts with wider systems of injustice. The details of how this works, however, will differ depending on contextual details particular to individual systems.

This article reflects on the experience of graduate labor organizers at Indiana University, in a ¡°right-to-work,¡± deep-red state. Dire conditions, including low pay and mandatory university fees, culminated in a graduate worker strike during the spring 2022 semester, which resulted in substantial wins for graduate instructors. This article has three aims: 1) to provide a test case on university organizing within the broader national labor movement, 2) to equip others to organize successfully at their own institution and 3) to encourage confidence in those workers (graduate, adjunct, nontenure track, and otherwise) that the risk of organizing a labor movement is outstripped by the rewards. We provide advice for university labor, given the peculiarities of the academic calendar, and reply to the inevitable accusation that organized labor is at odds with education. We end by outlining practical suggestions for ensuring a labor movement that provides safety in the solidarity of its membership.

Generative AI (GenAI) grading and tutoring systems are rapidly entering higher education, promising increased efficiency and personalized learning experiences. We believe this technology should be viewed with caution, particularly in the case of philosophy. In this article, we first outline the nature and purported benefits of these systems. Next, we examine the economic motivations driving their adoption within institutions, such as reducing labor costs. Finally, we argue that these motivations, while compelling to administrators, may fail to consider potential negative consequences. We present six pedagogical reasons to be critical of the widespread implementation of GenAI in education: (1) limitations on teacher efficacy; (2) increased student alienation; (3) the undermining of educators¡¯ duty of care; (4) the outsourcing of core teaching tasks; (5) questions regarding the accuracy and utility of GenAI graders; and (6) the risk of implementing GenAI as a misguided solution to real problems in education.

In this essay, we explore two salient kinds of value conflict between instructors and students and how such conflict can cause both pedagogical and professional challenges for instructors. We delineate two main forms of value conflict: between instructors and students and between students and their peers. We highlight case studies for each example, illustrating first-order pedagogical consequences and second-order social, political, and professional consequences for each conflict type. In response to the two kinds of conflicts instructors in both K¨C12 and higher education face, we propose Ethics Bowl¨Cstyle pedagogy as a strategy for addressing each type of conflict. We argue that by utilizing pedagogical tools taken from and inspired by Ethics Bowl, instructors at various institutions and academic levels can mitigate the multiple consequences associated with each value-conflict kind.

In recent years, there has been an increase in initiatives aimed at making professional philosophy more accessible to, and inclusive of, practitioners from diverse backgrounds. One important aspect of identity that often gets overlooked, or is at least much less discussed, is the experience of pursuing a degree in philosophy as someone from a first-generation and/or low-income background. Drawing upon a diverse range of personal reflections from philosophers from non-traditional class backgrounds, we first highlight the unique barriers and challenges that such philosophers often encounter, as well as the crucially important perspectives and insights that such students can bring to our philosophy classes and academic communities. We also offer a range of preliminary guidelines and suggestions¡ªthings we can do in the classroom as educators, as well as policy-level changes at the institutional level¡ªfor how to better support first-generation and low-income students.

Using the format of the assignment itself, we describe an assignment we have been using for the past seven years: Change Making Letter. Students are asked to pick an issue which directly affects them, identify a specific problem, think of a possible solution, as well as anticipate objections and respond to them. This letter should be about something the student genuinely cares about and has personal experience with, not a big national or international issue. While arguing for the importance of the change making letter, we describe the advantages of this assignment, how the assignment is structured, and how faculty can modify it to meet a variety of classes and pedagogical goals.

Communication formats have been influenced by internet culture, and one communication format with staying power¡ªand a heavy dose of humor¡ªis the meme. Shifting over time, meme formats currently span a wide variety of screen captures from various types of media as well as individually produced art. Meme repositories frequently not only record memes but also allow people to make their own memes. Because of existing student familiarity with memes of various types and the process of making memes, memes serve as an interesting and useful mode for shifting communication formats, including using meme creation as a basis for short writing assignments. I explain why assigning meme creation with short writing assignments allows for assessing student comprehension of texts and concepts, describe my own meme creation assignment, and offer support for the claim that this type of assignment has improved student learning, engagement, and writing in my courses.

This essay focuses on how zine-making could be used as an alternative, multimodal writing assignment in introductory philosophy courses. Zines are defined as non-mainstream publications that include images and text and communicate their subject matter in an informal way. The use of zines for low-stakes writing assignments can engage and encourage students who are new to academic writing and those who might feel excluded from the ¡°expert¡± language privileged in many classroom settings. By allowing students to incorporate their own linguistic styles and creative skills, zines invite students into the scholarly conversation in an unconventional way. Two examples of zine-making assignments along with possible rubrics are discussed to illustrate how such writing bolsters affective and embodied pedagogy.

We discuss how writing assignments that center students¡¯ personal experience can help to promote inclusive pedagogy and significant learning. These assignments lend themselves to less formal, more colloquial language that allow students to do the hard work of understanding, analyzing, and assessing complex philosophical content without also having to navigate a specialized form of academic writing¡ªa struggle for many first generation and ESL students. Inviting students to make connections between philosophical content and their own lives rewards diversity of experience, which can encourage students from underrepresented backgrounds to see their lived experience as relevant to philosophy and assure them that they belong, and can succeed, in philosophy. Significant learning is promoted for all students by addressing the key learning goals of integration, the human dimension, and caring and by helping build classroom community. We present the prompts, our reflections, and conclude by addressing potential worries.

Here we describe how writing exercises based on Value Analysis Design, an approach to the design and implementation of technological systems, can build skills in both philosophical reflection and philosophical writing. While not a replacement for long-form philosophical writing, these exercises are ways to help students develop both philosophical and writing skills. Not only do they do so without requiring the extensive feedback that is required for long-form writing, but they are also opportunities for STEM students and other non-philosophy majors to acquire skills in ethical reflection, analysis, and communication.

In this essay, I explore alternatives to traditional philosophical writing assignments. I propose that inviting students to engage with philosophical ideas creatively can make our writing instruction more inclusive. Creative assignments, I argue, can achieve the same goals as traditional writing assignments but are able to sidestep some of the assumptions and habits that make it harder for students to experience writing as an authentic act of self-expression. I also discuss assessment strategies and provide several sample assignments including grading criteria.

Philosophy students often struggle to write well and helping them to learn can be wearisome for instructors. This essay presents a set of scaffolded writing activities that I call microwriting. These activities can improve both student work and instructor satisfaction by helping them to write better. Microwriting helps students to develop skills that transfer to writing longer essays and to writing in other fields.

Writing is a staple activity in many philosophy courses. Yet it is a common complaint among philosophy instructors that students arrive to the undergraduate classroom ill-equipped to produce the writing expected of them. What is a philosophy teacher to do? In this essay I draw on pedagogical research in composition studies to argue that philosophers ought to adopt a Writing to Learn and Engage (WTL/E) approach in the lower-division philosophy classroom. Doing so will produce better writing, more capable writers, and better philosophy. By contrast, traditional ways of incorporating writing into the philosophy classroom¡ªincluding the standard analyze-and-evaluate paper¡ªtend to reflect a Writing in the Disciplines (WID) approach, which I argue is ill-suited to lower-division philosophy courses. After arguing for the intentional adoption of a WTL/E approach, I offer concrete suggestions for implementing the approach in the non-major undergraduate philosophy classroom.

I describe reasons for using short writing assignments in philosophy courses. Short writing assignments can facilitate targeted skill-building, effective feedback, and practice with revision of one¡¯s writing. They can allow for a close match between the topics in the course and the course¡¯s writing assignments. They admit of effective rubrics and example papers. For these reasons, short writing assignments can usefully be added to or serve as replacements for longer writing assignments, which are often less effective at securing the above-mentioned benefits. I discuss the 500-word paper as a case study to explore these topics.

Educators are increasingly concerned with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in student writing. Much of the concern focuses on the issue of students using ChatGPT to complete their work. I introduce the CUPID model for instructors to use when thinking about how to pedagogically handle ChatGPT. The CUPID model lays out five general approaches: Catch, Utilize, Prevent, Ignore, and Disincentivize. I suggest that instructors should especially consider using certain assignments that fall under the approach ¡°Disincentivize.¡± Philosophy instructors in particular should assign more low-stakes writing, such as journals and reflection pieces. The adoption of low-stakes writing assignments aims to discourage students from relying on AI while promoting clarity of thought and deeper engagement with philosophical ideas.

Writing any paper¡ªlet alone a philosophy paper¡ªcan strike fear into the hearts of even seasoned undergraduate students. In this article, I discuss strategies for demystifying both the process of writing a philosophy paper and the inevitable assessment of that paper. Rather than viewing the assessment of their work as something I do after they do their part, inviting students to think about the assessment of their work serves as the first stage of their writing process. The goal is that students come to understand the work they are being asked to do and endorse that work as worthwhile. Ideally, they even enjoy it a little along the way. Specifically, I outline two practices to accomplish the goal of demystifying writing: collaborative rubric design and a process-based feedback loop geared toward making visible what is often the invisible work of doing philosophy.

Employer studies indicate recent college graduates are underprepared for workplace communication. Philosophy instructors should offer alternative writing assignments to improve career readiness. I propose philosophy instructors offer white paper assignments in lieu of, or in addition to, traditional academic writing assignments like argumentative papers. White papers provide students familiarity with business writing and inclusive and empowering learning opportunities. I present my argument as a white paper and provide sample white paper topics, scaffolding suggestions, and assessment examples.

In this paper, I outline various pedagogical practices that I believe are important for diversifying the field of philosophy. I outline these practices through a discussion of knowledge and its production, the production of relations through collective acts, the creation of space in and beyond the institution, and finally moving beyond inclusion narratives. The various pedagogical practices that I outline have been developed in, and drawn from, a workshop titled the Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop. Ultimately, in this paper I utilize what I call a ¡°tenderness approach to philosophy¡±¡ªtenderness as devotion of time and concentration, as directional, relational, and embodied¡ªin order to demonstrate how tenderness can be applied to a pedagogical context.

Philosophers unknowingly subscribe to two competing conceptions of philosophy. On the inclusive conception, teaching philosophy provides a valuable social good that should be distributed as much as possible. On the traditionalist conception, certain materials and techniques constitute the way philosophy should be taught, which must be conserved. Unfortunately, the traditionalist conception clings to methods that have repeatedly produced an elitist, hierarchal version of philosophy that inhibits diverse engagement. Given the value of philosophy, philosophers have a duty to distribute philosophy to a greater number of people, which requires embracing the inclusive conception. Acting towards this duty can be done by working beyond the classroom, spreading philosophy through service, and improving our teaching both to reach a more diverse audience and to follow pedagogical research, such as with experiential learning techniques. Philosophers should also ensure that the duty¡¯s burden falls more on privileged philosophers who can take on the necessary sacrifices.

The act of welcoming is often the first step in shaping the participatory contours of a collective¡¯s social landscape. How and if individuals are invited into a space is often a product of the formal and informal social mechanisms used to facilitate newcomer or returner inclusion or exclusion. Notably, philosopher Iris Marion Young points out that greetings, as everyday communicative gestures, amount to acts of public acknowledgment. Moreover, during a successful greeting, Young argues that greeters announce themselves as ¡°ready to listen¡± and ¡°takes responsibility for her relationship to her interlocutors,¡± in addition to meeting the greeted¡¯s basic need for recognition. In light of these observations, this paper argues that we have good reasons to think that welcomings, as a subcategory of greetings, require us to adapt our classroom communication norms, policies, assignments, and curricula in important ways. Specifically, they should change to publicly acknowledge our students¡¯ dignity as potential knowers; to see them as contributors to the classroom space. Additionally, this paper offers a non-exhaustive list of three guidelines that can be useful when navigating these efforts and the challenges associated with the practice of welcoming.

Inspired by the practice of dialogue in ancient philosophical schools, the Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL) Project at the University of Notre Dame has sought to put dialogue back at the center of philosophical pedagogy. Impromptu philosophical dialogue, however, can be challenging for students who are new to philosophy. Anticipating this challenge, the Project has created a series of manuals to help instructors conduct dialogue groups with novice philosophy students. Using these guidelines, we incorporated PWOL-style dialogue groups into our Spring 2021 course ¡°The Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender¡± with the hope that, through having conversations about these challenging topics, our students would both be able to practice having philosophical dialogues as well as form their views on race and gender in light of contributions from their diverse peers. This article examines several strategies for how instructors can seek to incorporate similar dialogues into their own introductory classroom.

In this paper we argue that God and the Good Life, a prominent philosophy as a way of life (PWOL) undergraduate course, serves the needs of novices in philosophy classrooms, whether they plan to continue in the study of philosophy or not. We draw from both philosophy and educational psychology in making our case and highlight four distinctive components of God and the Good Life pedagogy at the University of Notre Dame: 1) transformative learning goals, 2) immersive experiences, 3) deep personal connections to students¡¯ everyday lives, and 4) cooperative relationships of mutual support in a community of dialogue. We end with a coda on even wider relevance for PWOL pedagogies in bringing about the pluralistic society we hope for, even in our deeply polarized societal moment.

First-generation college students are a unique population of undergraduates with different backgrounds, strengths, and challenges compared to their continuing generation (not first-generation) peers. These students have the potential to perform well as novice philosophers but may require some additional supports. First-generation students are especially at risk for not being retained by their university at the end of their first year. Given that introductory philosophy courses tend to be taken by first-year students, instructors of these courses can impact student retention, both at the institution and within the discipline. This essay outlines the characteristics of first-generation students, the role instructors play in their success, and specific considerations for working with this undergraduate population in introductory philosophy classrooms.

In this essay, I sketch a preliminary account of philosophical curiosity. Drawing on philosophy of curiosity, philosophy of education, and philosophical pedagogy, I argue first that philosophical curiosity is a set of investigative practices and affects that engage philosophical content and philosophical skills. Turning to critical pedagogy and meta-philosophy, especially via Paulo Freire and Kristie Dotson, I then supplement the preliminary account by arguing that philosophical curiosity is also rooted in existential exploration and communal inquiry. I argue for the necessity of this supplement by showing that, in failing to account for what and who philosophical curiosity is for, we risk excluding diverse practitioners and phenomena from the philosophical enterprise. I then evaluate two pedagogical exercises in philosophical curiosity¡ªthe Freedom Schools¡¯ citizenship curriculum and Melissa Shew¡¯s Curiosity Project¡ªin light of this account. I close by considering some objections and implications.

This paper explores the tensions that arise when one considers the relevance of institutionalized philosophy to social, political, and environmental change. It considers the time it takes to think deeply, critically, creatively, against the urgent need for protest in the streets, for persuasion of our political representatives, for profound alterations to what we consume. Since philosophy in the academy can reek of disproportionate privilege and self-protection and norms that govern institutionalized philosophy often drive away some of the most curious minds and diverse perspectives, this paper considers: if our philosophical work does not help in substantial ways to address social, political, and environmental crises, can we, in good conscience, continue it? To think through this question, this paper will share a video-based assignment on ¡°activism¡± that helps me, and hopefully students in my classes, navigate, but not resolve, this tension.

I argue that it can sometimes be good to do philosophy badly and that this has important implications for our classroom practices. It is better to engage in philosophy in a mediocre way than to not engage with it at all, and this should influence what learning goals we adopt and how we assess students. Furthermore, being open to doing and teaching philosophy imperfectly is necessary for fighting against rampant prestige bias and perfectionism in our discipline and our classrooms; if we are to expand the canon and diversify our curricula, we must be willing to risk doing mediocre work ourselves and willing to support our students in doing the same. I conclude that we should sometimes be guided in our teaching by an alternative standard of philosophical excellence that is focused not on the quality of the work produced, but on the joy, creativity, and collaboration involved in the process.

In this essay, Drexler reflects broadly on our practices as philosophy teachers: how we think of our classrooms and design students¡¯ learning experiences, how we evaluate ourselves and our teaching, and generally, how we keep walking into the classroom each semester. Based on a talk she delivered in 2020, Drexler¡¯s contribution to this issue presents a series of ¡°chapters¡± of an ¡°enchiridion¡± for teaching: a handbook of loosely-connected reflections, principles, and strategies for teaching Philosophy as a Way of Life, and for teaching (philosophy) as a way of life.

This article pursues the goal of articulating a pedagogical paradigm of philosophy as a way of life that can effectively re-invigorate the teaching of philosophy in today¡¯s academic world. This re-invigoration should take direct inspiration from Hadot¡¯s hermeneutical framework of how to live philosophically, while still recognizing the intrinsic limitations that his model presents when applied to the modern educational practices of academia. In particular, we maintain that a literal application of Hadot¡¯s model would require we turn the teaching of philosophy as a way of life into a systemic affair that demands from students a full commitment to particular schools of thought. Conversely, we argue for a pedagogical paradigm of philosophy as a way of life (¡°PWOL-as-Situated-Pedagogy¡±) that enacts a triple balancing between theory and practice, progress and assessment, and depth and breadth. In this way, the problem of self-cultivation is tackled by engaging students with a broader consideration of philosophies and spiritual exercises.

In this article, we reflect on our experiences teaching a PWOL course called Philosophy for Living. The course uses modules focused on different historical philosophical ways of life (Epicureanism, Stoicism, Confucianism, Existentialism, etc.) to engage students in exploring how philosophy can be a way of life and how its methods, virtues, and ideas can improve their own lives. We describe and compare our experiences with two central aspects of our approach: engagement with diversity and the use of immersive experiences and assignments. In particular, we discuss how we recognize and center various forms of diversity in philosophy¡ªcultural and gender diversity, but also diversity in how and in what forms philosophy can be done and what ¡°philosophy as a way of life¡± can be. We also examine how the experimental and experiential aspects of immersive assignments promote deeper understanding and create possibilities for personal transformation.

Teachers committed to seeing philosophy as a way of life (PWOL) often focus on assignments that help students develop personal practices, so they experience peace of mind, independence, and a cure from anguish. While we applaud these goals, our work highlights another important aspect of philosophy as a way of life that sometimes is overlooked. We want our students to experience a transformation toward seeing themselves as moral agents, growing in civic virtues, and developing ¡°cosmic consciousness.¡± To reach this end, we utilize a civic engagement (CE) project that we call the ¡°Experiments in Ethics.¡± This CE project consists of a series of small, interrelated assignments or ¡°experiments¡± that help students develop habits and certain civic dispositions. While students complete the experiments throughout the semester, we argue that civically engaged philosophy as a way of life extends beyond the confines of the classroom and the semester as our students cultivate the ability to see themselves as ethical agents capable of making changes in their own lives and the communities in which they live.

Philodemus¡¯s On Frank Criticism offers a unique conception of friendship that relies on frank speech, or truth-telling. The ability to have frank conversations with one another is the heart of a conception of friendship in which we are seen, heard, and acknowledged. This is the friendship through which we become better citizens and better selves. In particular, Philodemus is offering this truth-based friendship to students and their mentors. Yet, one would be hard put to find such trust and deep friendship in the university philosophy classrooms of today. Our professionalized and content acquisition focused culture in the academy all too often inhibits fostering these kinds of relationships with our students. We begin the essay by tracing the roots of this kind of frank friendship in Plato¡¯s Lysis, and then contextualize its emerging role in the ancient philosophical classroom by exploring its place in Philodemus¡¯ Epicurean philosophical community at Herculaneum. We do so to see how such friendship moves beyond discourse and into practice. Next, we use Arendt and Foucault to unpack the public and private dimensions of frank friendship in the philosophical learning environment and its role in a good life and good politics. Finally, we show how the classroom practice of Modern Socratic Dialogue (MSD) can re-enliven frank friendship as a spiritual exercise in the contemporary university-philosophy classroom. Specifically, we argue that MSD is a particular method of dialogue suited for the public realm of friendship and that it contributes to the care of one¡¯s soul, thus modeling in our classrooms a method of dialogue for both the public and private dimensions of life.

This essay fills in some historical, conceptual, and pedagogical gaps that appear in the most visible and recent professional efforts to ¡°revive¡± Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL). I present ¡°American Philosophy and Self-Culture¡± as an advanced undergraduate seminar that broadens who counts in and what counts as philosophy by immersing us in the lives, writings, and practices of seven representative U.S.-American philosophers of self-culture, community-building, and world-changing: Benjamin Franklin (1706¨C1790), Frederick Douglass (1818¨C1895), William Ellery Channing (1780¨C1842), Henry David Thoreau (1817¨C1862), Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), Henry Bugbee (1915¨C1999), and Gloria Anzald¨²a (1942¨C2004). Students enter the class with preconceptions about who philosophers are, what they do, how they write, and the languages in which they write. Students walk out with new senses of self, place, and language that emerge through new ways of seeing, doing, and writing philosophy.

In this essay, I sketch a third possibility between teaching PWL solely as history of philosophy (which seems to inescapably pull against its own conception of philosophizing), and the fascinating recent attempts by scholars to experiment with introducing modes of teaching and assessment which would reactivate ancient spiritual exercises within the modern university. This third way takes for granted that, for the foreseeable future (and if academic philosophy widely survives the twenty-first century¡¯s recalibration of the university), it will do so as a primarily theoretical discipline. Nevertheless, it proposes that insights from PWL¡¯s re-conception of philosophy as a situated, social as well as ethical activity can and ideally should be integrated into such modern syllabi. This can be done by introducing and teaching (a) capstone unit(s) for advanced students which would reflect critically on what it is to be an academic philosopher today and the ways that the fact that philosophy is institutionalized as a professional discipline in neoliberal universities creates pressures towards particular forms of intellectual and ethical vice and sophistry. Based on a course taught at the author¡¯s home university, it examines how Plato¡¯s Republic, Bacon¡¯s Novum Organum, and Kivisto¡¯s Vices of Learning prompt students, respectively, to consider the place of the philosopher in the ¡°city,¡± their own (and everyone¡¯s) propensities towards forms of epistemic bias and partiality, and the ways that institutionalized competition for status can promote forms of pride, vanity, and misanthropy in scholars. Encountering and discussing these texts, it is argued, can prepare students for the realities of philosophizing in the professional universities of the twenty-first century, helping them to identify ways philosophers can go wrong, and helping them to identify chastened, more Socratically self-aware ways of thinking, reading, arguing, and understanding what philosophers do.

I argue that Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL) represents a distinct pedagogy that differs from philosophy¡¯s signature pedagogy because of PWOL¡¯s differing views of what philosophy is and how it is successfully practiced. I further argue that this pedagogy is radical in two senses. First, PWOL is technically radical because it naturally incorporates cutting-edge pedagogical techniques that promote student success. Second, I argue that PWOL is transformatively radical because it seeks to transform students¡¯ understanding of themselves and the world around them. Following this argument, I discuss my own experiences implementing a PWOL-based course as a case study of PWOL¡¯s radical nature.

There is a way of teaching philosophy as a way of life that is focused on delivering content. It is focused on giving students information about the topic. In this paper, I consider a different way. It is focused on giving students the experience of philosophy as a way of life¡ªin particular, the experience of being in love with wisdom. The main question of my paper is what it might be to teach philosophy in a way that prioritizes giving students the chance to fall in love with wisdom. I do not so much argue for an answer as invite the reader to follow me along a path of metaphor, reflections on teaching philosophy, and quotations.

Standard ways of conceptualizing moral development and measuring pedagogical interventions in ethics classes privilege the growth of moral judgment over moral sensitivity, moral motivation, and moral habits by too often conflating improvement in moral judgment with holistic moral development. I argue here that if we care about students¡¯ construction and cultivation of their ethical selves, our assessment design principles ought to take seriously the transformative possibilities of philosophy as a way of life and be based on a more robust and holistic account of moral development. I illustrate these principles of assessment design through an examination of the Character Project, which I created to help students engage in their own deliberate ethical transformation through self-directed, individualized, and concentrated practice. Finally, I conclude with a discussion about how to appropriately and fairly assess this kind of deeply personal learning.

Problem-Based Learning has become an increasingly popular instructional method for a variety of disciplines at all levels. Many studies and meta-analyses of these studies have shown the efficacy of this method for developing knowledge and skills. I adopted this method for teaching Engineering Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University, which has as its main course objectives the development of moral reasoning skills, as well as collaboration and communication skills, with special attention given to ethical dilemmas that may arise in the normal course of an engineer¡¯s professional career. In the most recent iteration of the course, I used the Engineering and Science Issues Test as a pretest and posttest to test the development of my students¡¯ moral reasoning skills over the course of the semester. Based on the results of these tests, I argue that the students in my Engineering Ethics course did in fact significantly develop their moral reasoning skills.

Philosophical writing is challenging for students new to philosophy. Many philosophy classes are populated, for the most part, by students who have never taken philosophy before. While many institutions offer general writing support services, these services tend to be most beneficial for helping to identify problems with style and grammar. They are not equipped to help students with the particular challenges that come with writing philosophy for the first time. We implemented the Home Base Mentoring Program in two introductory-level philosophy courses to target the specific challenges that novice learners have when learning how to write philosophy. Through the program, students had access to writing mentors who were undergraduate senior philosophy majors. Based on surveys given to the students who have participated in this program, we found that the program boosted student confidence in writing and also worked to develop a welcoming, judgment-free, and encouraging environment in the philosophy department more generally.

Multiple-choice questions have an undeserved reputation for only being able to test student recall of basic facts. In fact, well-crafted mechanically gradable questions can measure very sophisticated cognitive skills, including those engaged at the highest level of Benjamin Bloom¡¯s taxonomy of outcomes. In this article, I argue that multiple-choice questions should be a part of the diversified assessment portfolio for most philosophy courses. I present three arguments broadly related to fairness. First, multiple-choice questions allow one to consolidate subjective decision making in a way that makes it easier to manage. Second, multiple-choice questions contribute to the diversity of an evaluation portfolio by balancing out problems with writing-based assessments. Third, by increasing the diversity of evaluations, multiple-choice questions increase the inclusiveness of the course. In the course of this argument, I provide examples of multiple-choice questions that measure sophisticated learning and advice for how to write good multiple-choice questions.

Philosophy students often struggle to master the complex skills needed to succeed in their work, especially in writing thesis-driven essays. Research over the past forty years on instructional scaffolding, both generally and as applied in philosophy, has helped teachers to refine both instruction and assignment design to improve students¡¯ performance on complex philosophical tasks. This essay reviews the fundamentals of scaffolding in order to motivate and support some innovative in-class exercises and writing assignments that can help students develop even finer-grained skills. These skills are useful both intrinsically and for their transfer to longer-form essays, to other philosophical work, and to the general academic and intellectual development of our students.

Traditionally, students have no choice over which assignments they must submit to receive the grade they desire in a course. An alternative ¡°menu approach¡± (developed by Maryellen Weimer in 2002) provides students with a list of possible assignments and lets them select which to submit. This approach is demonstrated to increase student engagement with course material, motivate students to engage in creative work, and allow students to choose assignments that allow them to best demonstrate their learning. Student reaction is mixed: some like the choice but others are stressed and overwhelmed by it. This may result from the increased responsibility they must shoulder under the Menu Approach. Some questions remain about the link between increased engagement and student learning, questions that may form the basis for future research on the Menu Approach.

The literature on drawing provides a justification for using drawing in the teaching of philosophy. The aim of the essay is to show how drawing as a pedagogy, though unusual in philosophy, fulfills high-quality teaching desiderata: make it personal, go beyond the text, allow students to show and explain their work, and unify the work of the course. I explain these four desiderata and how students complete drawing exercises to develop understanding, generate insights, and make philosophic discoveries. I begin by explaining and justifying the pedagogical desiderata. I discuss the literature on drawing-to-learn and concept mapping and apply its insights to teaching philosophy. Finally, I describe my exercises on color theory, two-point perspective exercises, my modifications to concept mapping, and the use of summative drawings.

In this essay, I analyze the pedagogical system contained within Jacques Ranci¨¨re¡¯s , paying special attention to the conceptions of knowledge and learning that follow from the presupposition of the equality of intelligence between teachers and students. From this, I show how the Ranci¨¨rian pedagogical system introduces the problem of distraction and suggest that the phenomenon of distraction in learning presents a problem for emancipatory teachers. I conclude by considering the role that pleasure plays in learning and suggest that cultivating pleasure minimizes the problem of distraction.

One way for an experience to provide an effective scaffold for learning is when the concepts and theories it is intended to help students grasp and understand can be used to productively analyze, make sense of, and discuss the experience itself. In this essay I propose that games and game mechanics can be used to create learning experiences amenable to this kind of scaffold.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) has been used as an experiential educational tool for nearly twenty years. Innovative educators have expanded the educational use of GPS devices beyond the geocache. This essay uses Leopold¡¯s land ethic as a philosophical framework for relational education, and outlines the practical application of the GPS ecocache. The experiential, place-based ecocache has learners navigate to sites of ecological significance (e.g., plants, animals, landforms), where they must answer a question or riddle related to this site. We discuss the contradictory nature of using a gadget to connect with the outdoors, and integrate the GPS ecocache with Kolb¡¯s model of experiential education. Ultimately, we hope to cultivate the values of Leopold¡¯s land ethic through the use of a ubiquitously available device, and for learners to engage in relational pedagogy relevant to ecology, geography, environmental ethics, philosophy of science, philosophy of education and other courses concerned with human-nature connection and the nature of space.

I designed and executed an environmental ethics course intended to provide a useful product to a municipal partner. In teaching the course I had an opportunity to get concrete experience in experiential teaching. I share my experiences with being a philosopher in an applied program and tie it to the models of experiential learning. My experience indicates that the important work is not the abstract conceptualization or the concrete experience, but the bridging between them.

A class in informal logic can be an opportunity to do more than just cover the basic material of the subject (such as fallacies, induction, and deduction). ¡°Critical Thinking¡± can also foster civic engagement as experiential learning¡ªin the course¡¯s readings, assignments, in-class activities and discussions, and tests. I favor an inclusive understanding of civic engagement: the course theme is engaging (from the French, pledging with) with the concerns of the civis (Latin for the citizenry). The argument made throughout here is that the civic engagement theme is a way of doing experiential learning in informal logic. I offer nine ideas for instructors here, which could be adopted wholesale or piecemeal, including how to do CSI (that¡¯s Civic Scene Investigation).

I explore methods for the explicit instruction of critical thinking in a topics-based philosophy course (topically or historically organized courses designated neither as Critical Thinking nor Logic). These methods make the classroom more experiential and less didactic and involve students in the philosophical process, allowing them to learn content while using the methods of philosophy to work through, explain, or produce similar content. Experiential learning¡ªapproaching learning as a ¡°continuous process grounded in experience¡± involving the acquisition of practices, the specialization in those practices, and the integration of oneself into the learning process¡ªenhances traditional philosophy classrooms, and explicitly teaching critical thinking skills involves the methods of experiential learning. After an overview of relevant aspects of experiential learning and addressing how experiential learning methods can be used for the explicit teaching of critical thinking skills, I explain four methods I use to explicitly teach critical thinking in my introductory classes.

I consider a more generic goal teachers have for students in addition to learning some determinate content: that they learn how to learn anything whatsoever. To explain this process, I draw on two insights from Aristotle¡¯s account of learning: first, that in every case students learn by doing the very things they are learning to do; and second, that it is possible to achieve a general educatedness whereby someone can make intelligent judgments and intellectual progress even in previously unfamiliar subject areas. In both cases, Aristotle¡¯s account of the teacher as thinking-facilitator rather than knowledge-infuser is illuminating. This connects with recent literature on Experiential Learning. Having developed this broadly Aristotelian account of learning how to learn I offer some concrete strategies for putting the theory into practice in the philosophy classroom. These strategies include targeted reading guidance and mystery text assignments, both of which develop incrementally throughout the course.

The central focus of this article is to share several experiential activities we have designed in our teaching careers that we use to help education students, primarily undergraduates and teacher candidates, access philosophical ideas and enter philosophical discussions. The examples shared below come from our attempts to help students reach key concepts and abstract ideas in some well-known educational philosophical discussions, through engaging in experiences relating to them. They are based on Plato¡¯s Allegory of the Cave, John Dewey¡¯s scientific method, and Martin Buber¡¯s philosophy of dialogue. The focus for this article is not so much on the specific content or philosophical interpretation of these works but instead on the activities themselves as a means towards better understanding the concept of experiential learning itself. The three examples we present serve to show ways in which well-designed and thoroughly-considered experiences can serve as a bridge to difficult and abstract material while also honoring a more expansive range of learning styles.

In this essay, I muse upon aporia¡¯s value as a pedagogical technique in the philosophy classroom using as a guide examples of aporia that are found in Plato¡¯s Socratic dialogues. The word aporia, translated as ¡°without passage¡± or ¡°without a way,¡± is used metaphorically to describe the unsettling state of confusion many find themselves in after engaging in philosophical discourse. Following a brief introduction in which I situate aporia as a pedagogy amicable to experiential learning, I examine various ways in which aporia appears in certain Platonic dialogues, which enables us to draw out some paradigmatic features of aporia. I then discuss how I apply aporia as a pedagogical technique in the contemporary philosophy classroom, taking up three specific concerns in detail: aporetic discomfort, right use, and potential misuse.

Community-based learning is one way to bring discussions about diversity and inclusion into the philosophy classroom, but it can have unintended, negative consequences if it is not carefully planned. This article is divided into four sections that utilize courses and projects in which I have participated, as both co-architect and instructor, to discuss potential negative outcomes and how to avoid them. The first section introduces the projects and courses. The second section discusses practices that nurture positive relationships between institutions of higher education and communities, and pedagogical strategies to prevent reinforcing negative student perceptions about vulnerable communities. The third section discusses how curricular and pedagogical choices can challenge privilege and power both in the classroom and community experience. The final section focuses on what to do when a student resists the learning experience. I conclude with a brief reflection about the community side of this partnership.

This paper is meant to engage with philosophy teachers who are interested in creating a more inclusive environment by using small group discussion exercises. I begin this paper by describing the connections between the inclusive classroom and the collaborative classroom. I then articulate two learning goals that group discussion exercises can help students accomplish and define these learning goals as philosophical discovery and philosophical creation. Finally, I discuss a number of activities that encourage students to accomplish these learning goals in small groups and describe how the incorporation of these exercises has affected the inclusivity of my own classes.

When one thinks about inclusive pedagogy, it is tempting to focus solely on adding more diverse voices to one¡¯s syllabus. While this technique is valuable and important, one can also promote inclusivity by encouraging and supporting the diverse voices of one¡¯s own students. In this paper, I argue that two practices¡ªlow-stakes journal assignments and the pre-theoretical discussion of student thoughts about a topic before any readings have been assigned¡ªpromote inclusivity by encouraging and supporting a wide range of perspectives in the classroom, because such methods foster the students¡¯ individual voices, experiences, and beliefs and demonstrate that they are valued and respected.

In this essay, I provide some insights on how to instruct students with learning disabilities. The first half of this essay deals with the theoretical issue of equal opportunity. I begin by examining the question of access and consider the various ways philosophy remains inaccessible to students with learning disabilities. Then, I use the legal definition of accommodation to argue that it is possible to make philosophy courses accessible to students with learning disabilities without fundamentally altering the nature of these courses. Finally, I point out several reasons for preferring the accessibility model of equal opportunity in education over the accommodation model. The second half of this essay proceeds to highlight several pedagogical practices an instructor can employ to create an inclusive college-level philosophy course under the accessibility model. Specifically, I provide recommendations for how to write effective accessibility statements, develop inclusive course design, ensure equal assessment opportunities, utilize technology in the classroom, and maintain strong academic relationships between instructors and students.

Some students who possess the same cognitive skill set as their counterparts but who neither speak nor write English fluently have to contend with an unnecessary barrier to academic success. While an administrative top-down approach has been in progress for many years to address this issue, enhancement of student performance begins in the classroom. Thus, we argue that instructors ought to implement a more organic bottom-up approach. If it is possible for instructors to make class content available in other languages, such as Spanish, without thereby compromising something of comparable pedagogical value, then they ought to do so. In fact, we provide here Anselm¡¯s Ontological Argument rendered in Spanish to show how, when translated, it provides native Spanish speakers with greater accessibility to difficult material. Then, we consider the possible beneficial implications of doing so for university students.

Hoping to expand upon public philosophy endeavors within higher education, the following captures the story behind the course Dialogue, Integration, and Action. The course has yielded a number of innovative pedagogical tools and engagement strategies likely to be of value to philosophy instructors seeking to explore a more participatory, experiential educational approach. As a transdisciplinary, community-engaged philosophy class, it engages students in the theories and practices of deliberative democracy and activism, encouraging the development of dialogic skills for their personal, professional, and civic lives. By documenting the community-instructor-student collaborative design of the university course; the feminist pragmatist philosophic commitments underlying its design; the community-led and student-facilitated dialogue and the subsequent public report, as well as the impact of this work on the students, the community partner, and the instructor, the article highlights the benefits and the challenges of undergraduate philosophic engagement that emerges from and responds to place-based needs.

Despite a growing awareness that the philosophical canon consists almost exclusively of white male philosophers, it can be tempting to ignore the problem¡ªespecially for those who lack either the time or the expertise to fix it. Yet philosophical practice regularly requires us to raise questions and acknowledge issues even when we lack solutions. Engaging students in a discussion about dismissive or exclusionary comments that they notice (or ought to have noticed) in the reading is a good place to start; it provides insight into the origins of the problem and acknowledges its wide-reaching impact. For example, analyzing an editorial comment about Diotima during a class on Plato¡¯s Symposium allows us to recognize and reconsider our assumptions about the impact of women on philosophy, a reflection that becomes even more salient when we realize that neither Plato nor the Socrates depicted in his dialogues seem to find anything ridiculous about the suggestion that the theory stems from a woman. This easy intervention provides us with a blueprint for envisioning similar responses in other courses.

This paper explores postcolonial pedagogy and the use of oral dialogues as a way to assess college students and cultivate intellectual virtues in philosophy courses. The authors apply the theories of postcolonialism, particularly the emerging work of ¡°poor theory,¡± to affirm the academic validity of oral dialogues and subaltern philosophy for a pedagogical framework of equity that goes beyond inclusion. Oral dialogues utilize an epistemology of the body in contexts of scarcity to increase student success and retention. The authors offer two case studies that exemplify the promise and complications of oral dialogues. The paper does not argue for the replacement of written philosophical work, but rather, draws attention to the symbiotic relationship between oral and written philosophy.

Students in introductory philosophy courses bring with them varied preconceptions about philosophy and its place in their education and their lives. Rather than assuming we all agree on what it is we are doing when we do philosophy, it can be effective to problematize the discussion from the start. Plato¡¯s Apology of Socrates is a useful tool for this. While interpreted by some philosophers as not particularly philosophical, recent approaches by Sellars and Peterson suggest that the Apology is rich with philosophy. Here Plato¡¯s Socrates reveals much about himself and his own understanding of the love of wisdom. By engaging in a process of mutual disclosure and active discovery of what matters to Socrates, we give students an excellent opportunity to find philosophy for themselves. As a result, students not only retain an understanding of key themes from Plato but also develop skills and attitudes well-suited to life-long philosophical engagement.

Plato¡¯s Allegory of the Cave is both a staple in the philosopher¡¯s diet and the lesson that is often difficult to digest. In this paper, I describe one way to teach the Sun, Line, and Cave analogies in reference to students¡¯ personal past experiences. After first learning about Plato¡¯s metaphysics and epistemology through reading Republic VI-VII, students are asked to reflect upon a time in their lives when they emerged from a particular ¡°cave of ignorance.¡± In reflecting on this experience, students are encouraged to consider how each aspect of the line analogy might be represented in their own experience. Students also consider the epistemological experience turning towards that which is more real. In so doing, students gain a deeper understanding of these lessons by connecting new, abstract, and difficult information (Plato¡¯s Theory of Forms) to information that is so familiar, it is remembered and not merely imagined. Putting Plato¡¯s theories into the context of their own learning experiences facilitates students¡¯ comprehension of the different levels of being and cognition, their interrelation, and the psychological process of increasing understanding.

Traditional pedagogical approaches to the Platonic forms pose problems that can be best addressed by presenting students two rival interpretations: one that understands the forms in terms of definitions, and another in terms of ideals. The second, if not the first interpretation, models, for students of even a relativistic stripe, how one can conceive the existence of thought-objects about which no consensus exists. It also serves to illustrate how knowledge of such thought-objects may be attained nonetheless. This approach is to be preferred, therefore, to traditional approaches that tend to reinforce, rather than counteract, relativism in students.

This paper discusses an assignment used to teach the trial and death of Socrates that asks each student to give a tour for someone of personal significance (a partner, family member, friend, loved one, etc.) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to view and discuss two pieces of art about Socrates. The overall aim of the task is for the students to engage the texts and conceptual material and emulate philosophical practice outside of class and in public. The paper focuses on preparing the students to partake in such an endeavor, laying out a historically contextual approach to the study of Socrates, the varied texts that are used, as well as the general pedagogical framework employed. More importantly, the paper explores how one might adapt the assignment to their particular classroom.

In this essay, I examine how Plato¡¯s Symposium can be helpful for teachers who are interested in encouraging introductory students to develop a sense of wonder in their early encounters with philosophical texts. Plato¡¯s work is helpful, I argue, in two ways. First, as teachers of philosophy, the Symposium contains important pedagogical lessons for us about the roles of creativity and affectivity in philosophical pedagogy. Second, the dialogue lends itself well to the pedagogical methods that Plato¡¯s work recommends. That is, the Symposium invites students to engage with it in ways that involve them as affective and creative learners. I begin by providing the theoretical basis for my pedagogical approach, which is inspired by phenomenology. Next, I offer my interpretation of the Symposium, indicating what we can learn from the text about how to teach philosophy. And finally, I describe three classroom activities based on Plato¡¯s text that are aimed at accomplishing the pedagogical ends I have outlined.

In Republic, Plato presents a pedagogy whose crucial component is the conversion of the student¡¯s soul. This is clearest in the Allegory of the Cave, where the prisoner (the student) begins her liberation (her education) by turning herself away from the images on the wall. Conversion is not something we professors typically seek to provoke in a philosophy course, even when we teach Plato. But if this were our goal, what could we do to achieve it within the limits of the modern university? I present one such effort, a paper that uses the Allegory to focus on two questions: who are you (your self), and how did you become that way (your education)? After presenting both the prompt and its rationale, I summarize six student submissions and discuss how I evaluated them. I conclude by considering the risks and possibilities of addressing the whole soul and not simply the intellect.

While Euthyphro and Apology are widely taught, they do not offer a complete picture of the variety of ways in which Socrates interacts with his interlocutors in Plato¡¯s dialogues. Perhaps the most important point we wish to bring home is that most, if not all, of Socrates¡¯ discussions are carefully calibrated according to a certain social awareness. Through careful analysis of sections of the dialogues, we argue that aspects of discussions between Socrates and his interlocutors should serve as lessons for students and instructors. Students should see that learning to philosophize is a matter of skill development, Instructors should see that one ought to be cognizant of students¡¯ abilities, as well as other relevant information. The upshot of paying attention to Socrates¡¯ interactions is to augment instructors¡¯ and students¡¯ understanding, facilitating the cultivation and development of philosophical skills.

In spite of his reputations as an impractical skeptic or dogmatic idealist, Plato¡¯s Socrates is often an impressive example of a critical thinker, and we can use Plato¡¯s dialogues to promote such skills in the college classroom. This essay summarizes recent institutional motivations for promoting critical thinking in a student-centered, active-learning pedagogy; compares Plato¡¯s core model of education and fundamental rationale for it; shares an essay¨Cpresentation¨Cdiscussion assignment that serves those modern and ancient goals; and discusses how this flexible type of assignment is especially well suited for Plato¡¯s dialogues, serving students and teachers in a Socratic manner. The first two sections thus situate Plato¡¯s dialogues in relation to the heart of critical thinking in higher education generally. The later sections and Appendix explain a way to ¡°follow the arguments¡± with Socrates that¡¯s informed both by recent best practices and by much of what we see in Plato¡¯s dialogues.