Russell Marcus, the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Philosophy, presented a talk at the Teaching Hub at the 2025 Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA).
He presented “Two Dogmas of Philosophy Education” on Zoom as part of a special public forum with Dave Concepción of Ball State University titled “Festive Learning: Some Thoughts on In-Class Engagement.”
In his talk, Marcus identified two distinct and false assumptions that many philosophy teachers hold: that lecture is the most efficient way to teach philosophy, and that the goal of class meetings is the transmission of philosophical content.
“As research on active learning demonstrates, students are not well benefited by passively listening to lectures,” he said. “But even some proponents of active-learning strategies maintain the latter dogma, that our goals in philosophy classes are to get students to learn theories and concepts.”
He argued that “philosophical concepts are easily learned outside of class, especially given our current technological advances, including AI [tools] like ChatGPT” and said “class meetings should instead be centered around activities that ask students to apply theories and concepts, working collaboratively and building trust.”
