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APA Newsletters

Fall 2006
Volume 06, Number 1

Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy

From the Editors

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Tziporah Kasachkoff
The Graduate Center, CUNY (tkasachkoff@gc.cuny.edu)
Eugene Kelly
New York Institute of Technology (ekelly@nyit.edu)

We welcome our readers to the Fall 2006 edition of the APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy. We offer this month two articles, several book reviews, a letter to the editor, a list of books for possible review, and, in this letter, a request to our readers.

The first paper in this edition is Lawrence Adam Lengbeyer's "Making Philosophy of Science Accessible-and Useful-to Non-Majors: Five Innovations Worth Trying." A mandate to teach philosophy of science to students who are not majoring in philosophy or in one of the sciences poses peculiar problems for the teacher: the course usually assumes student familiarity with the processes and theories typical of the sciences, the level of analysis is quite demanding, and the course lacks apparent relevance to the practical life of students and citizens.

Professor Lengbeyer's response to these and other difficulties is a unique course design that requires considerable daily preparation and participation by his students. He describes five innovations that engage the students and make them "more actively in charge of their own learning." A sample course syllabus, descriptive of the course and containing a list of readings, assignments, procedures, sources of information both print and electronic, and a schedule of class discussions, is appended to the article.

The second article, "An Issue I Would Die For," by John Chaffee of La Guardia Community College–CUNY, describes an exercise that begins with students contemplating Socrates’ stance before his judges in Plato’s Apology. Students are asked whether they would risk death by defying the legal representatives of some government in the name of some issue that they feel passionately about. Students are given a list of possible issues and are asked to construct a dialogue in which they cross-examine their accusors, and are questioned by them in turn. Professor Chaffee describes the process in which students consult with each other as they develop their own dialogues and then present them to the class. Two examples of such dialogues are offered here by the author, written by students who drew their material from situations and conflicts experienced by themselves or members of their families.

The Committee on Teaching is currently working on formulating the new APA Statement on the Major in Philosophy and on rewriting the Statement on Outcomes Assessment. This latter statement can be found on the APA’s website, http://www.apa.udel.edu/apa/governance/statements/. The Statement on Outcomes Assessment is somewhat controversial. First approved by the Board in 1995, it was prepared by the Committee on Teaching and the Committee on the Status and Future of the Profession. It was roundly criticized by a member writing to the Proceedings and Addresses of the APA shortly after its appearance for its negative characterization of outcomes assessment (OA). The statement had suggested that OA was being imposed upon teachers by administrators unsympathetic to philosophy, and that it lacked adequate support by research demonstrating its usefulness as a teaching implement. After eleven years, philosophers have had much more experience with OA, and the Board seems to have thought that a new statement, one perhaps linked to web-based resources on OA, is desirable.

The editors of the Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy are members ex officio of the Teaching Committee and can use the Newsletter to funnel information between the Committee, whose current chairman is Randall Curren of the University of Rochester, and the APA Membership. We would be glad to publish in Letters to the Editor ideas from members derived from their experience with or research in Outcomes Assessment. Readers’ thoughts on the philosophy major are also very welcome.

We would also like to call attention to the Teaching Committee's establishment of links to web-based materials on teaching. These are contained in the Committee's space on the APA website. After logging in, members should click on "committees," and then on the Teaching Committee's link. The address is http://www.apa.udel.edu/apa/governance/committees/teaching/. Members who have used these resources are encouraged to tell us about their experiences and to assess the use and usefulness of these resources.

We always encourage our readers to suggest themselves as reviewers of books and other material that they think may be especially good for classroom use. The names of books and other materials that we have received for review are listed in our Books Received section in each edition of the Newsletter. But reviewers are welcome to suggest material for review that they have used in the classroom and found useful. However, please remember that our publication is devoted to pedagogy and not to theoretical discussions of philosophical issues. This should be borne in mind not only when writing articles for our publication but also when reviewing material for our publication.

As always, we encourage our readers to write for our publication. We welcome papers that respond to, comment on, or take issue with any of the material that appears within our pages.

The following guidelines for submissions should be followed:

- The author's name, the title of the paper, and full mailing address should appear on a separate sheet of paper or, if the paper is sent to the Editors electronically, on a note that will not print out within the text of paper itself. Nothing that identifies the author or his or her institution should appear within the body or within the footnotes/endnotes of the paper. The title of the paper should appear on the top of the paper itself.

- Unless the paper is sent in electronic form, four complete copies of the paper should be sent.

- Authors should adhere to the production guidelines that are available from the APA. For example, in writing your paper to disk, please do not use your word processor’s footnote or endnote function; all notes must be added manually at the end of the paper.

- If you send an article by post rather than electronically, do not send the disk on which it was composed. The editors will request the disk when the paper is ready to be published.

- All articles submitted to the Newsletter are blind-reviewed by the members of the editorial committee. They are:

Tziporah Kasachkoff, The Graduate Center, CUNY (tkasachkoff@gc.cuny. edu), co-editor

Eugene Kelly, New York Institute of Technology (ekelly@.nyit.edu), co-editor

David B. Martens (dmartens@istar.ca)

Andrew Wengraf (andrew@welch-wengraf.fsnet.uk)

Contributions should be sent to:

Tziporah Kasachkoff, Philosophy Department, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10016

or to

Eugene Kelly, Department of Social Science, New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, NY 11568

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