Teaching and Learning > DISCOURSE
Practical Suggestions for Teaching Students to Think for Themselves
Author: Anne Gunn
Journal Title: Discourse
ISSN:
ISSN-L: 1741-4164
Volume: 4
Number: 1
Start page: 71
End page: 76
Return to vol. 4 no. 1 index page
Introduction: The Problem
This article will concentrate on practical techniques that I have developed to encourage independent thinking in ‘A’ level philosophy classes, some of which can, I think, equally be employed when teaching undergraduates. However, my main area of research is in defining the activity that we are trying to teach students to engage in. What are we doing when we teach Philosophy? I maintain that we are trying to do two things. First we want to introduce them to a body of knowledge that we call Philosophy and secondly we aim to teach them an activity, or practice, which we call Philosophising. It is this activity of philosophising that sparked my interest in teaching techniques. While researching the idea of what we are doing when we philosophise I inevitably had to ask myself how this activity is taught.
Teaching Philosophy at ‘A’ level is a tricky business in many ways. Students are expected to be familiar with a body of knowledge, which they will be examined on. They also need to learn how to craft this information into an ordered essay. The marking of ‘A’ level papers is done by large numbers of people, from varying academic backgrounds and, in order to ensure an even vaguely coherent standard, marking schemes are specific about what is expected from students. Exam boards emphasise that there are a variety of potential responses of equal worth but they also emphasise the importance of scholarship. There is a temptation to ‘play safe’ with the ‘evaluation’ section of the answer and encourage students to reproduce arguments that have been made by well-known philosophers, which the students have ‘learnt’. There is a tension within the idea of what is expected of a good philosophy teacher. Teachers do have responsibilities towards their students but they also have a duty towards wider educational ideals. They would be failing in some respects if they did not help students to achieve good results, which requires an awareness of exam board requirements. However there should still be room to encourage students to think for themselves and to enjoy discussions. Although it is important for students to have models from which to learn the skill of philosophical thinking, they also need to acquire the habit, and the confidence, to think for themselves.
There are three issues that I feel are important. If a student can write a good ‘A’ level essay without ever having to really engage in any independent philosophical thinking then we need to question whether in fact we are actually being asked to teach them philosophy. Perhaps what they are being assessed on is closer to an understanding of the history of ideas. Secondly this approach sells the students short. Given the opportunity many of them are more than able and, having found out what philosophy is about, wish to go on to read philosophy at university. Which raises the last concern.
Having taught both ‘A’ level students and undergraduates it is easy to see why many incoming undergraduates experience problems during their first year. The assumptions which underpin the training of university teachers and those that ground school teaching are different. At both levels the emphasis is on the importance of getting the students to engage with the materials so as to do the learning for themselves. However, when ‘A’ level students extract information they do so from text-books, worksheets or information which has been pre-digested, filtered and quite often composed by the teacher. This inevitably encourages students to be the passive learners and recipients of authoritative learning that university philosophy departments despair of a year later. It also fails to encourage the skills that students need as undergraduates.
Some of the techniques discussed might hopefully help resolve the tensions between the desire to teach students to think for themselves and the need to help them acquire the knowledge that will produce the grades, so ensuring a place at university.
Practical suggestions
1. Knowledge and Understanding
Lessons are loosely based on the lecture-seminar model. The first part of the lesson is spent introducing them to the information they need to know, whether through a reading, or explaining with the aid of an OHP or a handout. Sometimes the students have prepared a reading as their homework but the large amount of contact time in schools means this is not usually the case.
There are various ways to test the students’ understanding of the texts. The arguments or information can be reproduced in the form of diagrams, flow charts, notes or mind-maps showing the relationship of ideas, e.g. how Ayer’s views developed from the Logical Positivist position into responses to ethical and religious issues. These are then exchanged and shared with others in the group. Students may be asked to discuss one positive thing about someone else’s note-taking skills or one thing they have learnt during feedback to the group. This helps them carry the practice of critical and reflective thinking into all their activities.
Groups can be subdivided into smaller groups, of mixed or similar ability, to prepare a presentation that explores an issue in depth. Different groups can work on different aspects of a topic and share their findings. OHPs, whiteboards and different coloured markers make the task more attractive. The students take it in turns to present the findings of the groups so that by the end of the year they will all be used to standing up and talking to the rest of the class. The presentations take the form of illustrations, raps (I have had a couple of musical students who have produced memorable results), bullet points, diagrams or notes. As the year progresses the students become much more adventurous about how they present their findings as their confidence increases. A convention of trust, and respect for each others ideas, is crucial if students are going to benefit from these types of activities and positive teaching approaches help establish the model for relationships between students.
At the end of each particular section of study students are asked to stand back and produce an overview of the section. If for instance they have been studying various meta-ethical theories, Emotivism, Intuitionism and Prescriptivism, they might be asked, working in groups, to draw a plan of the relationship between the various theories, comparing and contrasting them. They might then be asked to decide on a phrase, key word, drawing or even rhyme that will act as a summary of the theory which enables the teacher to assess their understanding. These are also useful memory triggers that will help them revise and later recall the various theories during their external exams. This type of approach is obviously very useful for students with visual learning preferences. By visually grouping the theories so as to accommodate ideas such as naturalism the students have to engage with the ideas in order to be able to reproduce the information in a different form.
Occasionally students are asked to explore ideas through role-play. Importantly for students in the early stages this allows the various rather abstract theories to become concrete. A good scenario is Bernard Williams’ dilemma of Jim and the Indians1. Groups are asked to assign roles, including director, to the various members. The actors then act out the scene in the jungle clearing. They have to explore the various views of the protagonists and incorporate these into the production. So they have to explore ideas from a particular social position, e.g. to plead for a relative to be spared but having, in the process, to justify the fact that one innocent member of the community will have to be sacrificed. Putting a student into a role-play situation can encourage them to explore views which they might not previously have considered in depth and consider all angles of a question, rather than becoming entrenched in one position. This type of exercise works better by the end of the year when students know each other well and are used to performing in front of the group. It only takes one or two students to enter into the spirit of the thing to get the others to dump their inhibitions, but the students need to know that the teacher is looking forward to being entertained and that there is an expectation that sessions will be enjoyable.
2. Philosophising
The second part of the process involves the students exploring their own ideas and starting to ‘do’ philosophy for themselves. This may take the form of assessing a theory critically; trying to work out what criticisms they have and what criticisms later philosophers might have had. In the following lessons we will then compare their evaluation with the ‘official’ criticisms that named philosophers made. Students will usually start these discussions in pairs or threes, which allows them an opportunity to work their ideas through in a fairly private setting and test them on other students. These small groups will then be joined into larger groups or the whole group will work together, with each sub-group feeding back their conclusions. The teacher needs to work their way round the groups restricting their input to asking an occasional question, helping them test an idea or acting as a sounding board. It is important to resist the temptation to jump in and help them; they should be left to do the work themselves at their own speed.
Dilemmas or thought experiments, such as Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine2 to consider the notion of happiness, help students form their own opinions, particularly at the beginning of the year. Examples from current affairs and films also provide a concrete starting point for the discussion. As they become more experienced and used to the expectation that they must think for themselves they do start being much more creative in their thinking. Encouraging the use of counter examples, as a way of testing their ideas, helps them start to build on each other’s ideas.
Sometimes rather than thinking about and evaluating the responses of the thinkers they have studied they can be asked a general philosophical question. Having looked for instance at Kant’s response to Hume on the subject of moral knowledge they can explore what their own responses would be to the question “can we know moral truths?” “Can we ‘know’ what the right action is?” can initially be applied to a particular scenario such as lying to a friend. So they are asked to consider the same basic question as the philosopher they are studying. It is important to keep these questions simple. We go back to the basic question and try to think the ideas through as a group. By interacting with these ideas at a personal level they are beginning, hopefully, to learn in an ‘active’ way, rather than superficially absorbing information which they will regurgitate at a later date3. So rather than just memorising facts they develop a personal engagement with the ideas and a much wider understanding of the questions under debate.
3. Assessment
Inevitably, essays and readings, usually with questions, form the bulk of assessment. However, during the year it makes sense to assess the students on their presentations. The groups will be given longer to prepare for these presentations, usually as a homework as well as class work, and each student will have to take part in the verbal presentation. Their mark will consist of 50% of the mark for the assessment being given on the group material, which will include any overhead projector slides or other resource used, and 50% based on the oral performance of that individual student, reflecting their ability to communicate their understanding. These marks are obviously purely internal but they are a good way of encouraging students who perform better in a verbal context.
Note: I would be most interested to hear from anyone who has any thoughts on the subject of what we are doing when we teach philosophy or who is researching in the same field. Please contact: Anne Gunn, vag2@kent.ac.uk
Endnotes
- Williams, Bernard, “Jim and the Indians” In Ed. Singer, Peter, Ethics, (Great Britain, Oxford University Press, 1994). 339-345 pp.
- Nozick, Robert “The Experience Machine” in Ed. Peter Singer, Ethics, (Great Britain, Oxford University Press, 1994) pp 228-229.
- Brockbank, Anne & McGill, Ian, Facilitating Reflective Learning in Higher Education, (Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press, 1999).
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This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.
