I came across a paper recently (William Wood 2009), which suggests that instructors share their pedagogical reasons for their course structure and teaching approaches. This can demonstrate to students the benefits of what is being done in the course and can encourage “buy-in”.
I was initially a bit sceptical of this idea. Not that I never told my students the pedagogical reasons for my teaching approaches, but it’s rather than I didn’t do it very often–usually only at the beginning of the term. But I then thought that it might be worth a try, for two reasons.
First, if I were a student, I would want to know why I am doing what I’m asked by the instructor to do, particularly if the task/assignment seems atypical or (worst) if I didn’t think it has any point. In a German language course I took last year, there were tasks and contents that I did not like at all because I thought they would not serve my purpose at all.
Second, some students expressed in the past that they thought they “didn’t learn anything” and the course was “useless”. Setting aside the question about how seriously I should take such comments, explaining to students the disciplinary differences between philosophy and other disciplines may help them appreciate the value of the course they are taking and navigate the course material. Unlike in other disciplines such as natural sciences and economics, students often do not need to deal with a lot of factual and theoretical information in philosophy. They will instead spend most of their time applying, comparing, and analyzing what they have learnt, and ultimately evaluating/arguing. And Bloom’s taxonomy can help illustrate such disciplinary features of philosophy.
