I argue that campus closures and shifts to online instruction in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic created an obligation to offer courses asynchronously. This is because some students could not have reasonably foreseen circumstances making continued synchronous participation impossible. Offering synchronous participation options to students who could continue to participate thusly would have been unfair to students who could not participate synchronously. I also discuss why ex post facto consideration of this decision is warranted, noting that similar actions may be necessary in the future and that other tough pedagogical cases share important similarities with this case.
We investigated changes in students' reported sense of community in the context of a one-semester first-year seminar course using the Community and School Community Inventory (CSCI) research instrument across two years with differing instructional formats. We report a statistically significant increase in students' sense of perceived classroom community, but not school community, from pre- to post-course assessment in both years. Additionally, students' sense of social community is most significantly increased for women, students of color, and first-generation college students, but only when the instruction is face to face. Conversely, no student groups reported an increased sense of social community during online instruction. A significant increase in students' sense of learning community from pre- to post-course assessment was only reported by students who identified as male in 2020, and by no groups in 2019.
This paper explores relationships between environment and education after the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of philosophy of education in a new key developed by Michael Peters and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA). The paper is collectively written by 15 authors who responded to the question: Who remembers Greta Thunberg? Their answers are classified into four main themes and corresponding sections. The first section, 'As we bake the earth, let's try and bake it from scratch', gathers wider philosophical considerations about the intersection between environment, education, and the pandemic. The second section, 'Bump in the road or a catalyst for structural change?', looks more closely into issues pertaining to education. The third section, 'If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you', focuses to Greta Thunberg's messages and their responses. The last section, 'Towards a new (educational) normal', explores future scenarios and develops recommendations for critical emancipatory action. The concluding part brings these insights together, showing that resulting synergy between the answers offers much more then the sum of articles' parts. With its ethos of collectivity, interconnectedness, and solidarity, philosophy of education in a new key is a crucial tool for development of post-pandemic (philosophy of) education.
In March 2020 I published the 'emergency editorial' in Postdigital Science and Education and invited the community to 'explore all imaginable aspects of this large social experiment that the Covid-19 pandemic has lain down in front of us' (Jandrić 2020a: 237).Articles immediately started pouring in; within weeks, the journal's contributions had been recognized by institutions such as the World Health Organization, the US National Library of Medicine's Nature Public Health Emergency Collection, and UNESCO (see Jandrić 2021 for details).After publication of the October 2020 issue of Postdigital Science and Education, 1 consisting of almost 60 articles on the Covid-19 pandemic, the first wave of pandemic research has wound down.As it has become obvious that Covid-19 is here to stay, research on immediate Covid-19 experiences and responses slowly gives way to research which 'reaches beyond the pandemic to the point where the pandemic experience is transformed from an object of research to an intrinsic part of our theories, approaches, research methodologies, and social struggles' (Jandrić 2021: 262).An important part of our early efforts to make sense of the pandemic, and the one very close to my heart, is 'Teaching in the Age of Covid-19' (Jandrić et al. 2020), which is a collection of short testimonies and workspace photographs submitted between 18 March and 5 May 2020.
This chapter develops an account of epistemic nihilism – roughly, the rejection of truth’s intrinsic or instrumental value in favor of statements that reject or obscure truth to secure an advantage for the speaker – by examining three instances of such nihilism: lying, bullshit, and trolling. It further argues that epistemic nihilism, exacerbated by changes in the media landscape, can pose a significant threat to liberal democratic institutions and ideals by undermining the democratic ideal of good faith engagement on a level playing field, while also encouraging undemocratic actions (e.g., terrorism) among interlocutors who take the nihilist’s claims seriously. Finally, this chapter argues that in extreme cases, we are justified in denying epistemic nihilists a platform from which to speak by drawing a parallel with vexatious litigant laws that deny individuals the right to petition courts for redress on the grounds that abuse of that right results in significant harm to both individuals and the legal system itself.
I argue that Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL) represents a distinct pedagogy that differs from philosophy’s signature pedagogy because of PWOL’s differing views of what philosophy is and how it is successfully practiced. I further argue that this pedagogy is radical in two senses. First, PWOL is technically radical because it naturally incorporates cutting-edge pedagogical techniques that promote student success. Second, I argue that PWOL is transformatively radical because it seeks to transform students’ understanding of themselves and the world around them. Following this argument, I discuss my own experiences implementing a PWOL-based course as a case study of PWOL’s radical nature.
Philosophy as a way of life (PWOL) places investigations of value, meaning, and the good life at the center of philosophical investigation, especially of one's own life. This essay argues that PWOL is compatible with general introductory philosophy courses, further arguing that PWOL-based general introductions have several philosophical and pedagogical benefits. These include the ease with which high-impact practices, situated skill development, and students' ability to "think like a disciplinarian" may be incorporated into such courses, relative to more traditional introductory courses, as well as the demonstration of philosophy's value to students by explicitly tying philosophical investigation to students' own lives.
Petar is 43 years old, and lives in Zagreb, Croatia
Introductory students regularly endorse naive skepticism - unsupported or uncritical doubt about the existence and universality of truth - for a variety of reasons. Though some of the reasons for students' skepticism can be traced back to the student - for example, a desire to avoid engaging with controversial material or a desire to avoid offense - naive skepticism is also the result of how introductory courses are taught, deemphasizing truth to promote students' abilities to develop basic disciplinary skills. While this strategy has a number of pedagogical benefits, it prevents students in early stages of intellectual development from understanding truth as a threshold concept. I argue that we can make progress against naive skepticism by clearly discussing how metadisciplinary aims differ at the disciplinary and course levels in a way that is meaningful, reinforced, and accessible.
‘Fake news’ has become an increasingly common refrain in public discourse. The term itself has several uses, at least one of which constitutes Frankfurtian bullshit. After examining what sorts of fake news appeals do and do not count as bullshit, I discuss strategies for overcoming our openness to such bullshit. I do so by drawing a parallel between openness to bullshit and naïve skepticism—one’s willingness to reject the concept of truth on unsupported or ill-considered grounds—and suggest that this parallel indicates three principles for how we ought to combat our openness to fake news and other bullshit. First, the root causes of bullshit openness are not monolithic; we should adopt anti-bullshit strategies in recognition of this fact. Second, our efforts to overcome bullshit openness should be collaborative efforts to create an environment that allows for sustained interrogation of our bullshit openness, rather than a confrontational provision of contrary evidence, despite the fact that such strategies are more time-intensive. Third, social media is unlikely to be a fertile ground on which we will make meaningful progress in the fight against bullshit because of the inherent nature of social media platforms as spaces for short, declarative, confrontational claims.
Progressive stacking is a strategy for prioritizing in-class contributions that allows marginalized students to speak before non-marginalized students. I argue that this strategy is both pedagogically and ethically defensible. Pedagogically, it provides benefits to all students (e.g., expanded in-class discourse) while providing special benefits (e.g., increased self-efficacy) to marginalized students, helping to address historic educational inequalities. Ethically, I argue that neither marginalized nor non-marginalized students are wronged by such a policy. First, I present a strategy for self-disclosure that reduces the risk of inadvertent, unwanted disclosure while respecting marginalized student autonomy in a manner analogous to accommodations provided under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Second, I argue that non-marginalized students are not wronged because such students are not silenced during discussion and because non-marginalized students benefit from the prioritization of marginalized voices.
A restricted-use mobile device policy for introductory philosophy classrooms is presented and defended. The policy allows students to use devices only during open periods announced by the professor and is based on recent empirical findings on the effects of in-class mobile device use. These results suggest devices are generally detrimental to student learning, though they have targeted benefits for specific tasks. The policy is defended via a discussion of the ethical considerations surrounding device use, a discussion of the policy's benefits, and responses to potential objections. Avenues for future research are suggested at the conclusion of the discussion.