Teaching

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Teaching Narrative

In my teaching, I focus on providing students with hands-on experience in the distinctive activities of the field, whether I am teaching philosophy, history, interdisciplinary humanities, or the research methods of cognitive ethnography. Most of my teaching has been in philosophy or history of philosophy. In a philosophy course, I aim to acquaint students with the key elements of philosophical activity: critical habits of mind, thinking carefully through issues and arguments, and creative play of ideas. While it is important for students to be aware of the distinctive insights of the philosophical tradition, it is also important not to limit their philosophical attention to the narrow problems of professional philosophy, but to reorient them to the wider problems of life and intellectual inquiry. Though it is important to teach the debates and arguments internal to the discipline of philosophy, students should also be encouraged to engage philosophically with other areas of thought, such as science and in policy.

In my philosophy classes, I emphasize careful reading of texts, crafting of rigorous arguments based on evidence, as well as a accurate understanding of the issues, insight in interpretation, and, where feasible, originality of ideas and approach. Likewise, with history of philosophy or history of science, students should engage attentively with both primary sources and the secondary literature. In teaching empirical research methods, it is important to give students opportunities to put those methods into practice in realistic settings, not just to talk about them.

Often, as the subject-matter allows, I stress social responsibility and public engagement through service learning projects in addition to traditional academic assignments. For instance, for my philosophy of technology and science, technology, and values courses, students have created projects aimed at disseminating information about sustainable technologies for rural communities in the developing world, video games that discourage online bullying, and humorous videos encouraging viewers to recycle batteries.

The most important activities in teaching these skills is face-to-face discourse and written arguments. Many students struggle to participate in a large-group discussion, especially about texts whose content and format is difficult and new. I have also found that students often underestimate the time, effort, and skill necessary for writing well, while they overestimate their own abilities in research and writing. To address these problems, I break down the processes of reading, discussing, researching, and writing into component activities—such as weekly discussion questions, small-group discussions, annotated bibliographies, paper proposals, reverse outlines, and peer editing—often in order to force the students to slow down and take care, as well as to provide midstream feedback. Breaking down the process requires students to work more deliberately and reflectively, and in the end, leads to better results.

As a result of both the unusually interdisciplinary structure in the School of Arts and Humanities, and the relationships I have made with programs in other disciplines, I have had the opportunity to teach in a range of programs at the University of Texas at Dallas. In addition to philosophy, I have taught courses in history, history of ideas, interdisciplinary arts and humanities, cognitive science, emerging media and communication, and arts and technology. Many of the courses I have taught focus on or include a significant component about the ethical and social dimensions of science, technology, or medicine, including my courses in history and philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, bioethics, and gender in science and technology. Through my research, I have helped develop practical ethics curriculum in engineering.

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