April 3, 2019, by atyhg
The Power Of Teaching Is In Your Hands
Today I attended a super interesting Philosophy lecture here at the Uni of Notts about defining teaching. We discussed a fascinating paper by Fisher and Tallant (lecturers at the Uni no less!) who introduce teaching as judgement-dependent.
Don’t fear. I’m here to explain all!
1. The Problem With Teaching
‘What is teaching?’. An important but difficult question. Try it. Can you fully define teaching? Pretty hard right?
Two options have been given. Teaching can only occur:
If learning occurred, or
If there was intention to teach.
BUT, there seem to be cases of teaching that don’t result in learning or the ‘teacher’ has no intention.
2. A new option
Fisher and Tallant’s account of teaching can include learning and intention.
They say: ‘X is teaching iff, if a putative learner S is in ideal conditions, C, then S judges that X is teaching.’
Confused? I was too. But in the lecture, we unravelled the mystery.
3. You Have The Power
Essentially, you decide, as the person being taught, whether you’ve been taught or not. So long as you’re in ideal conditions e.g. not distracted/restricted, can say what you think and in the right environment.
4. Disadvantages/Advantages
Having no basic definition of teaching makes it hard for outsiders to determine teaching, as it’s a personal/private decision.
It may appear that someone can say ‘X is teaching’ and another say ‘X isn’t teaching’. But this difference is down to one person not being in ‘ideal conditions’. So, we can be wrong about what teaching is, if we’re not in ideal conditions.
A major benefit of the account is it doesn’t restrict who can teach. So even robots can teach if we’ve judged them to.
So, there you have it. Thanks to the Uni of Notts, you now have the knowledge and the power of philosophy. Pretty cool right?!
(All images from: https://giphy.com/)
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