Nancy M Williams
Teaching Philosophy

Department: Philosophy
Institution: University of Georgia, Doctoral Canditate
Previous Institutions and Degrees Earned: Winthrop University, BS Marketing; University of North Carolina at Charlotte, BA Philosophy; University of South of Florida, MA Philosophy
Academic Interests: feminist theory and ethics
Personal Interests: cycling, photography, reading great science fiction books, and gardening (still at the novice stage)

Teaching statement (rough draft)
Nancy M. Williams

One of my long-term goals as a teacher (and a scholar) is to create ways that objectively measure student learning that does not reduce philosophy to mere memorization. Assessing a philosophy student’s improvement is important because it may demonstrate to others the practical value of philosophy courses in a competitive academic market. So, devising ways to successfully document student’s improvement in philosophy and articulating why such a skill is vital to our community is not only helpful for my personal pedagogical goals but it is also an important contribution to the discipline.

My primary goal as a philosophy teacher is to assist students in developing sophisticated thinking skills that will enable them to better understand the complex issues they will ultimately face in life. I accomplish this goal in three basic ways: first, I require my students to ask philosophical questions; second, I transmit philosophical material into a student accessible language; and third, I conduct discussion-orientated classes. My future goal as a philosophy teacher is on a scholarly level: I want to investigate and devise innovative ways to objectively measure student learning in order to better explain why learning philosophical skills is important for our college students.

Since I believe successful teaching begins from the student’s point of view, I transmit the lessons of philosophy into accessible language, a language that my students can understand. Only after they have earned an adequate understanding of basic philosophical concepts can I expect them to effectively critique debates concerning, say, freewill and determinism, moral realism and relativism, or reductionism and anti-reductionism in philosophy of mind.

Finally, I accomplish my primary goal by conducting a discussion-orientated class. Because philosophy is an activity, not something to merely memorize, I want my students to feel comfortable and (dare I say) even excited about participating in structured classroom discussions. I want my classroom, a learning community where mistakes are often viewed as opportunities for greater understanding, to be a dynamic medium in which students can safely exercise their philosophical skills. When students do philosophy---and not only memorize philosopher’s names and their respective theories---they increase their level of sophisticated thought and analyses.

Because the mark of a good philosopher is to ask interesting questions, my students are required to practice this skill by asking their own questions about related reading material. Indeed, asking questions is a daily (graded) requirement for every student! It seems to me that question asking allows my students to transgress from relatively simple to more complex forms of thinking, a vital cognitive resource in our increasingly complex world. When my students ask their own questions---rather than me proposing questions to students who are not prepared or not motivated to offer a response---they are more likely to find certain philosophical issues meaningful. That is, they soon discover that philosophy is relevant to their real-life experiences. When this occurs, retention and curiosity is enhanced. In short, when students ask their own questions they learn how to learn and how to become their own teachers: key components for developing sophisticated cognitive skills.