Feeling Quixotic
A Note From the Immediate Past President
David W. Concepción
President, American Association of Philosophy Teachers (2013-2014).
As my term as President of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers [AAPT] comes to a close, I’ve been asked to take stock. The good news is that there is lots of good news. The AAPT board is incredibly effective; financially we are great shape; we run wonderful workshops; our conference remains inspirational. I’m thankful to the many people who volunteer to make the AAPT the meaningful home that it is. The list of these people is too long to recount, but the members of board’s executive committee must be recognized: Emily Esch, Rory Kraft, and Kevin Hermberg. Without them the teaching world and the discipline of philosophy would be sadder places, and we are all better off for their service.
At the 2014 AAPT conference, hosted by the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN, we celebrated the founders and sustainers of the AAPT. It was wonderful to have Terry Bynum, Betsy Decyk, and others provide us with a history of the AAPT, which can be found here. As always there were scores of fantastic presentations and seminars of enduring value. One moment I particularly enjoyed was when Amy Ferrer, the Executive Director of the American Philosophical Association [APA], was citing a source while reviewing some of the history of the APA and Arne Wilson pointed out that the author of that source, James Campbell, was sitting right in front of her. Most of all, I am bouyed by the altruistic spirit of the people who come to AAPT conferences. I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that the self-selected 100 or so most devoted teachers in the land would be such other-directed people, and yet it is. Perhaps that is because such giving natures are too rare. Thank you.
As for what lies ahead… I believe the time is right for something big. The APA is changing in many ways. In part these changes are the result of new generations of philosophers insisting that the APA better represent more of the constituencies it claims to serve. The hegemony of R1 institutions in our profession may be ready to crack, opening more space for teaching, service, and research as co-first priorities. Of those who obtain jobs at all, only 1 in 8 newly minded PhD’s gets a tenure-track job at an R1 institution. Perhaps the right partnership with the APA Committee on Teaching can, at this moment, leverage a sea change.
Put another way, the discipline of philosophy needs and wants teacher training with a proven record of success that can be implemented in graduate programs throughout the country. And we, the AAPT, have already built that model, a model that is rich in evidence-based content and powerfully delivered. In 2008, the members of the AAPT designed a new, intensive, multi-session teaching and learning seminar that has proliferated to great effect. Donna Engelmann, Stephen Bloch-Schulman, Betsy Decyk, Andy Carpenter, Paul Green, Mimi Marinucci, Emily Esch, Andrew Mills, and myself have continued to refine it. And, we’re now building capacity by training additional facilitators and offering multiple seminars throughout the country on an annual basis. The Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization [PLATO] has adopted and adapted our model to great effect. The AAPT seminar focuses on two things: creating learner-centered teachers and empowering philosophers to be able to develop teaching innovations throughout their careers. Participants grow in these ways by focusing on course design and learning theory, topics rarely addressed in the meager teacher training that graduate programs in philosophy currently offer.
With the right effort we could teach one faculty member in every graduate program in the country how to offer a deep and transformative teacher training course for each second year philosophy graduate student. This is what I mean by thinking big. Let’s see if we can lead the discipline to a place where a for-credit philosophy teacher training course is a part of every graduate program in the country. Imagine what philosophy could become if we succeed.
When I attended my first AAPT conference in 2004, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. AAPT members empowered me to think possible things that I used to think were impossible. I used to start a lot of sentences with “Students won’t…” or “Students can’t…”. By learning from you, I came to see that such statements reflected my inability to innovate; they were not, as I intended them to be, accurate descriptions of students. AAPT members have made it impossible for me to think disempowered thoughts about teaching and learning in philosophy. And just as I have stopped saying “students won’t,” I can no longer take myself seriously when I start sentences with “Graduate programs can’t…” or “Graduate faculty won’t…”. The AAPT has the talent to create a future where graduate programs regularly offer deep and transformative teacher training. The question is: Will we? If the attempt is to tilt at windmills, I’m grateful to the AAPT for making a Quixote of me.
