Kant on teaching philosophy

[Introduction] In 1765, Kant issued an Advertisement for the four lecture courses he would be delivering in the winter semester of 1765/66, on Metaphysics, Logic, Ethics, and Physical Geography (Kant 1905). Instead of merely outlining the course syllabuses, Kant prefaced the document with what would nowadays be called a ‘statement of teaching philosophy’. As far as I am aware, this is the only place where he explains his approach to teaching,2 and it is an approach which (apart from the first point below) is remarkably consistent with what professional educationalists consider to be best practice in the 21st century. In view of the radical nature of Kant’s ideas, it is surprising how little attention has been paid to them. John Ladd (1982) summarises the Advertisement in a general account of Kant as a teacher, derived largely from Vorländer’s biography. His main purpose is to show that Kant’s approach to the teaching of philosophy presupposes that philosophy is very different from other disciplines, in that it fosters the independence of thought which is central both to the concept of enlightenment and to the concept of the autonomy of the will in ethics. Eugene Kelly (1989) provides a complete translation of the Advertisement into English, and prefaces it with a few brief remarks. Interestingly, Kelly is almost entirely negative about the Advertisement. He says that if Kant had submitted it for publication in the APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy (of which Kelly was editor at the time), he would have rejected it, on the grounds that it was too long-winded, it contained too much technical terminology and it said too little about the content of his lectures. Its only saving grace, according to Kelly, was that Kant showed a genuine concern for his students. The articles by Ladd and Kelly are the only two writings I have been able to find which discuss Kant’s Advertisement in any detail. In what follows, I shall give a much more sympathetic account of Kant’s approach to teaching philosophy, and relate what he says to current theories of good practice in university education

The PRS subject centre: four years on

At the AAPT International Workshop/Conference at Alverno College in 2000, I was invited to give a presentation on the recently established Philosophical and Religious Studies Centre of the Learning and Teaching Support Network. My presentation was published in AAPT News, 24/1, Spring 2001, pp.3–8. In the UK, there had never previously been a forum for publishing articles or conducting discussions specifically concerned with teaching philosophy. In those early days, I naively expected that there would be scores of philosophers scattered throughout the UK eager to share their ideas about teaching philosophy, and to publicise their innovative methods of teaching and assessment. This turned out not to be the case. Although we now have a growing resource of articles and reviews in our journal Discourse and on our website, these are mostly the outcomes of projects we have funded with grants of up to about $5k. We still have difficulty persuading people to write for us voluntarily, or to attend workshops and conferences — much more difficulty than subject centres covering other disciplines. It is worth considering possible reasons for this: (Continues..

External pressures on teaching

[FIRST PARAGRAPHS] The primary role of the PRS-LTSN is to improve the quality of education by encouraging the sharing of good practice and innovation, and the discussion of common problems. However, there are other forces at play, which are pursuing the same end by different means. The purpose of this article is to explain what these forces are, and how the PRS-LTSN can help departments to satisfy their demands. The first set of pressures comes from the Government via the funding councils, namely the requirement for higher education institutions (HEIs) to be publicly accountable for the services they provide with Government funding. The assumption is that the two main activities of HEIs are teaching and research: ● The Research Assessment Exercise2 (RAE) is conducted by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on behalf of the other funding councils, and research ratings have a major influence on funding. ● The assessment of the quality of teaching and of institutional quality assurance mechanisms is the responsibility of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) (see Appendix), which is an independent body funded jointly by the funding councils, Universities UK (UUK) and the Standing Conference of Principals (SCoP). Ratings do not affect funding, except that there is the ultimate sanction of withdrawal of funding for persistently unsatisfactory programmes of study. ● More recently, the Transparency Review commissioned by the funding councils evaluates the extent to which funding for research is actually spent on research, and funding for teaching is actually spent on teaching

External pressures on teaching: three years on

n August 2001, I wrote an information article called ‘External Pressures on Teaching’, which was published in the then PRSLTSN Journal, 1.2, Winter 2002, pp. 98–129. It is now time to update that article, and to add a number of subsequent developments. However, the original article, which explains the logic of the various QAA initiatives, is still valid apart from some points of detail that I shall highlight here. It is available on our website at: http://prs.heacademy.ac.uk/publications/discourse/winter2002.pd

The UK subject centre for philosophical and religious studies of the Higher Education Academy

[FIRST PARAGRAPHS] This article is about the work of the UK Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies of the Higher Education Academy. In order to explain what the Academy and the Subject Centre are, I need to point out some key differences between the UK and the US higher education systems. In the UK, we do not have a distinction between private and state universities (except that there is just one small university, the recently founded University of Buckingham, which receives no direct funding from the Government). All universities are private in the sense that they are self-governing charities1 with a royal charter granting their status as legal entities. On the other hand, they are all state universities to the extent that they are largely funded by the Government, and subject to indirect control by the Government as a condition of that funding. Even the best endowed universities (Oxford and Cambridge) are poor by US standards, and they cannot afford to go it alone in competition with heavily subsidised institutions. The situation is beginning to change since the introduction of tuition fees for all but the poorest students. The Government determines the maximum fee that universities can charge UK and European Union citizens, and from 2006, the limit will be nearly tripled to 3,000 British pounds (over $5k at the current exchange rate). The Government subsidy per student will remain the same, so universities will have a welcome increase in income, which will partially correct serious underfunding over the past three decades. However, the new fee level falls far short of actual teaching costs, and even the fee plus subsidy is totally inadequate for supporting both a high quality education for students and a decent standard of living for teachers. If some future Government decides to lift the cap on fee income, we may see a system more like that of the US (warts and all)

The PRS subject centre: four years on

At the AAPT International Workshop/Conference at Alverno College in 2000, I was invited to give a presentation on the recently established Philosophical and Religious Studies Centre of the Learning and Teaching Support Network. My presentation was published in AAPT News, 24/1, Spring 2001, pp.3–8. In the UK, there had never previously been a forum for publishing articles or conducting discussions specifically concerned with teaching philosophy. In those early days, I naively expected that there would be scores of philosophers scattered throughout the UK eager to share their ideas about teaching philosophy, and to publicise their innovative methods of teaching and assessment. This turned out not to be the case. Although we now have a growing resource of articles and reviews in our journal Discourse and on our website, these are mostly the outcomes of projects we have funded with grants of up to about $5k. We still have difficulty persuading people to write for us voluntarily, or to attend workshops and conferences — much more difficulty than subject centres covering other disciplines. It is worth considering possible reasons for this: (Continues..

Plagiarism in philosophy: prevention better than cure

[Introduction] Plagiarism more common than thought in student essays’ would make a good headline. Recent research suggests that students admit to much more plagiarism and other forms of cheating than teachers generally suspect, and it is widely believed that the problem is increasing as a result of the internet. The solution is to use a range of techniques to get the thought back into student essay writing, and to take more active steps to spot when this has not happened

In defence of subsidiarity

[FIRST PARAGRAPHS] In issue No. 5 (Spring 1993), there were two rather flippant remarks about the concept of subsidiarity. The Philosophy Glossary defined subsidiarity as ‘nobody agrees on what this word means’ (p.32), and John Crosthwaite described its meaning as a ‘grey area’, and ‘hand[ed] the question over to the real philosophers’ (p.25). I don’t know if I count as a ‘real’ philosopher, since I have some unsound views on the theory of meaning. In particular, I believe that the meaning of a word depends as much on its etymology as on its use. We can often gain important philosophical insights through understanding how words have acquired their present meaning. The abstract noun subsidiarity comes from the adjective subsidiary, which in turn comes from the concrete noun subsidy. The English word subsidy is a direct borrowing of the Latin subsidium, meaning ‘support’ or ‘assistance’ (though it has subsequently been confined to a financial sense); and the adjective subsidiary originally meant ‘providing assistance’ or ‘supportive’; but it gradually changed its meaning, via ‘auxiliary’ or ‘tributary’, to ‘subordinate’

The establishment in the UK of a philosophical and religious studies subject center

Summary: A paper, orginally presented to the 13th International Conference of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers, on the establishment of this Centre. I have been invited here to speak to you about the new Philosophical and Religious Studies Subject Centre of the Learning and Teaching Support Network, of which I am Director. This is a terrible mouthful, so we usually refer to it as the PRS-LTSN, in the absence of any jazzier acronym. Although the mission of the PRS-LTSN (at least as far as philosophy is concerned) is very close to that of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers, its structure and funding are very different. This is because of the unique nature of the British higher education system. So in order to explain how the PRS-LTSN fits into its institutional context, I shall begin with a thumbnail sketch of how British higher education has developed over the last century or so. My apologies to anyone who is already familiar with the facts

Educational research in philosophy

[FIRST PARAGRAPH] What makes the Higher Education Academy unique in educational development circles is its firm focus on disciplinary differences. This is why it has a network of 24 Subject Centres, each with its own distinctive perspective on helping academics to improve the quality of their students’ learning. However, disciplines differ as much in their methods of research as of teaching, and at a time when the spotlight is on the relationship between research and teaching, we need to consider the implications of different research traditions for research into teaching. The concept of the scholarship of teaching has become widely accepted, and it demands that all university teachers should be actively engaged in research into teaching – at least into the effectiveness of their own teaching. However, it is unreasonable to expect hard-pressed lecturers to learn an entirely new and foreign research methodology in order to fulfil this expectation. The methods of educational researchers are very different from those of philosophers, physicists, and practitioners of other disciplines