Teaching research methods is especially challenging because we not only wish to convey formal knowledge and encourage critical thinking, as with any course, but also to enable our students dream up meaningful research projects, translate them into logical steps, conduct the research in a professional manner, analyze the data, and write up the project in APA style. We also wish to spark interest in the topics of research papers, and in the intellectual challenge of creating a research report, but (...) we have learned just how difficult these goals can be from teaching undergraduates and from serving as journal reviewers: many submissions contain flaws such as elementary errors of logic (e.g., using a null control condition instead of a placebo or dummy treatment), tangled statistics, a lack of graphs, and ungrammatical, unclear writing that violates APA rules. Yet these manuscripts are written by university faculty, often with doctorates and years of experience. Even published papers may contain egregious faults (Standing & McKelvie, 1986). And although we have both published widely, we still hone our skills. It requires optimism to expect that a typical undergraduate will do better, on the basis of just a year or two of studies in psychology. In this paper, we describe a systematic set of methodology courses and two specific practices that we think can help. Methodology Courses as the Backbone of our Psychology Program How can methodology courses promote undergraduate involvem... (shrink)

Moving back and forth between the history of philosophy and the contributions of philosophers in his own day, Durkheim takes up topics as diverse as philosophical psychology, logic, ethics, and metaphysics, and seeks to articulate a unified philosophical position. Remarkably, in these lectures, given more than a decade before the publication of his groundbreaking book, The Division of Labour in Society, the 'social realism' that is so characteristic of his later work - where he insists, famously, that social facts (...) cannot be reduced to psychological or economic ones, and that such facts constrain human action in important ways - is totally absent in these early lectures. For this reason, they will be of special interest to students of the history of the social sciences, for they shed important light on the course of Durkheim's intellectual development. (shrink)

Theofan Prokopovych and Georgiy Konyskyi are the most prominent professors of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in the 18th century. Their courses (1707-09 and 1749/51) are well regarded among the researchers and translated into Ukrainian in 1980 and 1990 respectively. Both texts generally have been considered as original. However, after a careful examination, it possible to notice a strong influence of Prokopovych on Konyskyi. This publication provides a comparative critical edition of a section from both courses on the same topic, on the infinity. (...) The section is published together with the available Ukrainian translations. The four text are synchronized, so it is easy to track the same passage in all the texts. Since the texts of both authors are based on several manuscripts, the publication is accompanied with the apparatus criticus. Because there is no tradition of publishing critical editions of Latin texts in Ukraine, a detailed explanation of the rules of apparatus criticus is provided here. -/- At this stage, it is too early to give a full account of the connection between Konyskyi’s and Prokopovych’ courses; nevertheless, based on the published section, it possible to say that Konyskyi used Prokopovych text mostly verbatim. He made some structural rearrangements, added some comments and clarifications. His text sounds more logical and more easily to apprehend. Considering the main goal of teaching activity – to pass a common knowledge, clarity of explanation is a higher value, than originality. (shrink)

Moving back and forth between the history of philosophy and the contributions of philosophers in his own day, Durkheim takes up topics as diverse as philosophical psychology, logic, ethics, and metaphysics, and seeks to articulate a unified philosophical position. Remarkably, in these lectures, given more than a decade before the publication of his groundbreaking book, The Division of Labour in Society, the 'social realism' that is so characteristic of his later work - where he insists, famously, that social facts (...) cannot be reduced to psychological or economic ones, and that such facts constrain human action in important ways - is totally absent in these early lectures. For this reason, they will be of special interest to students of the history of the social sciences, for they shed important light on the course of Durkheim's intellectual development. (shrink)

College students struggle with the switch from thinking of mathematics as a calculation based subject to a problem solving based subject. This book describes how the introduction to proofs course can be taught in a way that gently introduces students to this new way of thinking. This introduction utilizes recent research in neuroscience regarding how the brain learns best. Rather than jumping right into proofs, students are first taught how to change their mindset about learning, how to persevere through (...) difficult problems, how to work successfully in a group, and how to reflect on their learning. With these tools in place, students then learn logic and problem solving as a further foundation. Next various proof techniques such as direct proofs, proof by contraposition, proof by contradiction, and mathematical induction are introduced. These proof techniques are introduced using the context of number theory. The last chapter uses Calculus as a way for students to apply the proof techniques they have learned. (shrink)

Biographies of Kurt Gödel tell that he gave in 1939 an introductory lecture course on logic at the University of Notre Dame. In the early 1930s, Gödel took part and presented many of hi...

We critically evaluate arguments in a recent Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics article by Svoboda, Adler, and Van Howe disputing the 2012 affirmative infant male circumcision policy recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics. We provide detailed evidence in explaining why the extensive claims by these opponents are not supported by the current strong scientific evidence. We furthermore show why their legal and ethical arguments are contradicted by a reasonable interpretation of current U.S. and international law and ethics. After (...) all considerations are taken into account it would be logical to conclude that failure to recommend male circumcision early in infancy may be viewed as akin to failure to recommend childhood vaccination to parents. In each case, parental consent is required and the intervention is not compulsory. Our evaluation leads us to dismiss the arguments by Svoboda et al. Instead, based on the evidence, infant male circumcision is both ethical and lawful. (shrink)

First published in 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper summarizes paired courses, a technique that is being used to incorporate the benefits of liberal arts into the business curriculum. This technique pairs a required business course with a liberal arts course that students take concurrently during a semester. The courses have overlapping themes and activities to build specific competencies that are desired by organizations, such as communication, critical thinking and problem solving, emotional intelligence, and organizational professionalism. These competencies are identified by exploring national surveys and (...) conducting a local survey of business professionals. The paired courses utilize a variety of exercises with the ultimate goals of building desired workplace-related skills in students and improving their practical reasoning ability. The exercises do this by strengthening students’ analytical thinking, understanding of multiple framing, and reflective exploration of meaning through various techniques. Many of the activities are explained in detail with some additional resources provided. Teachers can utilize the same activities or adapt them to their classroom. (shrink)

The inspiring true story of a teacher's experiences with her students and the life lessons she learned that can help others find joy and success. Crash Course chronicles the life lessons that Kim Bearden has learned during an award-winning career in education that has spanned three decades. Kim has taught more than 2,000 students, and each has shown her something about the world and the abundant capacity for love, resilience, and appreciation that we all possess. By sharing her students' (...) stories, she teaches their inspiring lessons to us all. Throughout the ups and downs of her professional and personal life, Kim found that her students were the light that illuminated her path; they were her sanctuary in the storm. From her challenges as a first year teacher, to her triumphs as the cofounder of the highly acclaimed Ron Clark Academy, Kim shares how children can teach each of us the importance of building relationships, abandoning fear, embracing one's unique gifts, and living with passion. Full of honesty, humor, heartbreak, and humanity, Kim's experiences show how children can help any one of us, despite life's obstacles, find the joy and significance in both our personal and professional lives. (shrink)

This is a companion to a paper by the authors entitled “Gödel’s natural deduction,” which presented and made comments about the natural deduction system in Gödel’s unpublished notes for the elementary logic course he gave at the University of Notre Dame in 1939. In that earlier paper, which was itself a companion to a paper that examined the links between some philosophical views ascribed to Gödel and general proof theory, one can find a brief summary of Gödel’s notes (...) for the Notre Dame course. In order to put the earlier paper in proper perspective, a more complete summary of these interesting notes, with comments concerning them, is given here. (shrink)

The entry of Ukraine into a new period of formation of all spheres of social, economic, political, and spiritual development, when the statehood is restored, the multifaceted revival of the Ukrainian people, the problem of national, spiritual and moral and ethical education of student youth is activated. Spiritually - the moral crisis of Ukrainian society needs urgent return to spiritual sources. Ukraine has historically been a Christian state, and a return to Christian norms of morality and ethics will help it (...) to re-emerge and take its place among European countries. The revival of Christian morality can change society and, above all, young people need it. Therefore, we see as one of the means of spiritual revival of the nation, the introduction of an optional elective course "Fundamentals of Christian Ethics" in Ukrainian secondary schools. This subject will enable teenagers to form a Christian value system that will be guided throughout their lives. (shrink)

The complexity and mysteriousness of mental processes during sleep rule out thinking only in term of generators. How could we know exactly what mental sleep experience (MSE) is produced and when? To refer to REM versus NREM as separate time windows for MSE seems insufficient. We propose that in each cycle NREM and REM interact to allow mentation to reach a certain degree of complexity and consolidation in memory. Each successive cycle within a sleep episode should contribute to these processes (...) with a different weight according to the time of night and distance from sleep onset. This view would avoid assuming too great a separation between REM and NREM functions and attributing psychological functions only to a single state. [Nielsen]. (shrink)

Friedrich Hölderlin has long been recognized as one of the greatest poets of the German language, but his importance to philosophy has surfaced only comparatively recently. Although Schelling and Hegel acknowledged Hölderlin early on as their equal, for a long time his philosophical thought remained unknown outside the small circle of his friends. Among the most prominent figures in the rediscovery of Hölderlin's thought is Dieter Henrich, who, in a series of highly influential studies over the last thirty years, has (...) shown that Hölderlin played a decisive role in the development of philosophy from Kant to Hegel, and hence in the formation of German Idealism. Among other things, Henrich demonstrated that Hölderlin, while still a student, launched a powerful critique of Fichte's _Wissenschaftslehre_ and outlined an alternative to the dominant view of the foundation of philosophy. This alternative proved pathbreaking for his philosophical friends, forcing Hegel, for example, to abandon his own Kantianism and, eventually, to give systematic articulation to a position that went even beyond Hölderlin's. This volume includes six of Henrich's most important essays on Hölderlin's philosophical significance. Among the topics discussed are Hölderlin's motivation and methodological orientation in his work on German Idealism, the intellectual atmosphere of Hölderlin's student years and the philosophical problems that occupied him, Hölderlin's attitude toward any first-principle philosophy, and the complex personal and philosophical relationships between Hegel and Hölderlin. The last essay is a long, detailed interpretation of one of Hölderlin's greatest poems, "Remembrance." In elucidating its lyric composition and structure, Henrich also seeks to show how it incorporates and develops Hölderlin's philosophical thought. (shrink)

Philosophy courses help students develop logical reasoning and argument skills or so it is widely assumed. To test if this is actually the case, we examined university students’ familiarity with the basic tools for argument. Our findings, based on a sample of 651 students enrolled in philosophy courses at six Greek universities, indicate that students who have prior experience with philosophy are more familiar with the basic tools for argument, and that students who have taken philosophy courses at the university (...) have stronger argument-recognition and argument-evaluation skills compared to university students with no prior experience with philosophy. Moreover, our findings suggest that students get more familiar with the basic tools for argument as their level of engagement with philosophy increases, and that they get significantly better at evaluating arguments when they become graduate students in philosophy. However, our findings also suggest that the majority of students in philosophy classrooms haven’t developed fluency in basic argument-related concepts and skills. To remedy this, we argue that philosophy instructors need to re-think the place that the teaching of argument has in philosophy courses, and the way that they teach students about argument. (shrink)

Constant risk to the confidentiality, integrity and the availability of information in our everyday lives and work has increased the need for responsible use and handling of information. Security education is becoming an integral part of any undergraduate curriculum in computer science and information systems. The evolving role of security in this digital era makes it nontrivial to decide the appropriate topics that need to be covered during the course duration in a way that all aspects of security deployment (...) are examined. The only approach to this challenge is to use student-oriented learning strategies to encourage the students not only to recognize relationships between concepts and comprehend the underlying structure of what is being learned but also expose them to methods where they are responsible for their own independent learning. The current study examines the experiences gained in COMP-431 Computer Security, a senior-level undergraduate computer security course using such methods, with an emphasis on the students’ reactions, perceptions, and experiences as well as the educator’s role in the teaching and learning process. (shrink)

This book has been specifically designed to support the student of the IB Diploma Programme in Theory of Knowledge. It will stimulate students to think about learning and knowledge from their own and from others' perspectives in a way that crosses disciplines and cultures. It will encourage reflection, discussion, critical thinking, and awareness of the ways in which knowledge is constructed, and will lead students to recognize the implications of knowledge for issues of global concern. The book is rooted in (...) classroom experience and provides class activities and supporting material for the whole of the TOK course. (shrink)

This paper recounts two university professors' experiences teaching a high school philosophy course for gifted students. The authors trace the differences between gifted high school students’ and standard undergraduates’ comprehension of philosophical concepts, general philosophical curiosity, and classroom participation in problem solving. The authors then offer recommendations on planning philosophy courses for gifted students and speculate on the value of philosophy in gifted programs.

Reingold, Reichle, Glaholt, and Sheridan reported a gaze-contingent eye-movement experiment in which survival-curve analyses were used to examine the effects of word frequency, the availability of parafoveal preview, and initial fixation location on the time course of lexical processing. The key results of these analyses suggest that lexical processing begins very rapidly and is supported by substantial parafoveal processing. Because it is not immediately obvious that these results are congruent with the theoretical assumption that words are processed and identified (...) in a strictly serial manner, we attempted to simulate the experiment using the E-Z Reader model of eye-movement control. These simulations were largely consistent with the empirical results, suggesting that parafoveal processing does play an important functional role by allowing lexical processing to occur rapidly enough to mediate direct control over when the eyes move during reading. (shrink)

Collected here are the written traces of courses on the concept of nature given by Maurice Merleau-Ponty at the Collège de France in the 1950s-notes that provide a window on the thinking of one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. In two courses distilled by a student and in a third composed of Merleau-Ponty's own notes, the ideas that animated the philosopher's lectures and that informed his later publications emerge in an early, fluid form in the process (...) of being elaborated, negotiated, critiqued, and reconsidered. Merleau-Ponty's project in these courses is an interrogation of nature, a task at the center of his investigation of perception, truth, and subjectivity. The first course, a survey of the historical elements in our concept of nature, examines first the Cartesian concept of nature and then historical and contemporary responses to Descartes, all with an eye toward developing a vision of nature more consistent with the findings of contemporary science. In the second course, Merleau-Ponty takes up the problem of the relation of nature to ontology in general. Here, the key question is how the animal finds itself in its world. Because the human body is ultimately "an animal of movements and perceptions," humanity is intertwined with animality. In the third course, "Nature and Logos: The Human Body," Merleau-Ponty assesses his previous findings and examines the emergence of the human body at the intersection of nature and Logos. This course, contemporaneous with the working notes for The Visible and the Invisible, allows us to observe the evolution of that work as well as to revisit the research he had begun in Primacy of Perception. In these traces: a new reading of Descartes; a measured appreciation of Schelling; an assessment of recent developments in the sciences that leads to the notion of the body as a "system of equivalencies"; and an examination of the phenomenon of life. We have a wealth of material that allows us to reconsider Merleau-Ponty's thinking and to engage his philosophical project anew. Before his death in 1961, Maurice Merleau-Ponty was chair in philosophy at the Collège de France. Robert Vallier is completing his doctoral work on Merleau-Ponty and Schelling at DePaul University. He has also taught at the Universite de Paris-X and at the College Internationale de Philosophie. (shrink)

These are all the answers to the exercises in Dr. Robert Zaslavsky’s An Introductory Latin Course: A First Latin Grammar for Middle Schoolers, High Schoolers, College Students, Homeschoolers, and Self-Learners. These answers are formulated to make the grammar that is being taught as transparent as possible to the learner. The goal of these answers is to encourage the learner to think as the Romans did, not to make the Romans think as we do.

Standards of professional legal education are developed by different organizations: in some countries these are governmental bodies, in others these are professional associations. Apart from a country these standards include Learning Outcomes which shape law schools’ curricula. Both American and European standards mention, to different extent, written and oral communication in the legal context, but a number and contents of subjects directed at developing and mastering professional communicative competency differ a lot. There are disciplines totally devoted to the competency named (...) as well as courses in which communicative skills are an integral constituent for their successful completion. The article goal is to find a place and role of a Legal English course in achieving learning outcomes connected with professional communicative competence. The methodology incorporated desk and field studies. The literature review is aimed at identifying current state of affairs in American law schools, as they provide first-class legal education recognized all over the world, and in Russian law schools, as the author works in this system and is interested in its development. A questionnaire was designed to explore Russian law school graduates’ assessment of practicality of subjects they had studied for their professional activities. The analysis of literature and Internet sources allowed to specify the ways of teaching written and oral communication in American law schools and to highlight the situation in Russian legal education. It shows that the Russian system is characterized by predominance of teaching theory of substantive and procedural rules of law and lack of curriculum disciplines aimed at cultivating skills and competencies. A survey of Russian law schools’ recent graduates indicates that most of communicative, in a broad sense, skills, which they use in their everyday work, were obtained within their LE classes. So, complementing a LE course with modules devoted to different aspects of legal writing and specific patterns of lawyer-client, lawyer-lawyer, lawyer-judge communication will definitely contribute to achieving learning outcomes which are put forward by legal education standards. (shrink)

The investigation that I am going to pursue here is part of a larger effort on my part to understand the relationship between Kant’s so-called “philosophical anthropology” and the development of early German anthropology since it is my sense that Kant had a determinate, if indirect, effect on the history of that separate field. For now this larger project has three main foci: an account of Kant’s philosophical anthropology in all its parts, an inquiry into Kant’s relationship to the theories (...) engaged by German anthropologists between roughly the 1750s-1790s, and finally, an effort to track the subsequent routes taken by German anthropology in the first half of the 19th-c. In this discussion I am going look at one particular trajectory in anthropological research where we can see Kant’s effect. (shrink)

But for us who are fifty years removed from these courses, they present in the clearest way possible what requirements we must still follow in order to determine what an origin or principle is. Indeed, “principle” is a word that Merleau-Ponty uses repeatedly in the courses. For Merleau-Ponty, the principle must be conceived neither as positive nor negative, neither as infinite nor finite, neither as internal nor external, neither as objective nor subjective; it can be thought neither through idealism nor (...) realism, neither through finalism nor mechanism, neither through determinism nor indeterminism, neither through humanism nor naturalism. What makes this principle so problematic for Merleau-Ponty is that none of these concepts and modes of thought can grasp the “residue,” or in more accessible terms, the “contingency” in which nature consists. Nature is contingent insofar as it is not a “reservoir” of possibilities. Instead, nature is hollowed out, a hollow that nevertheless presents in relief what is necessary for nature to be filled in. Even more, nature is, for Merleau-Ponty, eternally hollowed out, which gives it the sense of inertia, solidity, obstinancy, a sense of life as eternally self-regenerating, even a sense of “eternal return”. Here, however, we would have to raise a question: Does this conception of nature or life truly take account of finitude understood through the phenomenon of death? Unlike Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, it seems, has no answer to this question.-Leonard Lawlor, The University of Memphis. (shrink)

In the context of recent social changes in Central Europe, the article outlines the need for a change in the traditional syllabi for legal English classes. It deals with needs analysis as one of the most important sources of inspiration in syllabus design. First, needs analysis is situated within the methodology of English for Specific Purposes. Then, the rationale for a needs analysis survey among pre-service students in current legal English courses is presented and, finally, the findings are interpreted with (...) respect to the actual target situations that students are likely to encounter after graduation. The article concludes by pointing out that although pre-service students may have vague ideas about the use of English in their future jobs, course instructors should consider their needs and wants because they are crucial for increasing the students’ motivation. Instructors and course designers should, however, obtain information from professionals and former graduates as well because that will enable them to address the actual target situations most effectively. (shrink)

There is no straightforward inference from there being fictional characters to any interesting form of realism. One reason is that “fictional” may be an intensional operator with wide scope, depriving the quantifier of its usual force. Another is that not all uses of “there are” are ontologically committing. A realist needs to show that neither of these phenomena are present in “There are fictional characters”. Other roads to realism run into difficulties when negotiating the role that presupposition plays when we (...) make intuitive evaluations of the truth or falsehood of sentences involving fiction, for we may presuppose things we do not believe. This means that a judgment of truth, implicitly relative to a presupposition we do not believe, can be sincerely made by someone who, from a more austere perspective, would regard the judgment as false. (shrink)

This study inspected the effect of Massive Open Online Course and flipped instruction on EFL learners’ foreign language speaking anxiety, foreign language learning motivation, and attitude toward English learning. To fulfill this objective, the Oxford Quick Placement Test was given to 160 Iranian EFL learners, of whom 120 upper-intermediate participants were chosen and divided into two experimental groups—MOOC and flipped —and one control group. After that, all selected participants were administered a speaking anxiety questionnaire and a motivation questionnaire as (...) the pre-test of the research. Then, one of the experimental groups received an online-based instruction via Skype: one conversation was instructed to this group online every session. The other experimental group received the treatment via flipped-based instruction. The audio files and the texts of the conversations were sent to this group via the WhatsApp application because they all had easy access to it. On the other hand, the control group did not receive any Internet-delivered treatment yet was trained through a face-to-face method. This process continued until the last session, and after the treatment period, the post-tests of speaking anxiety and motivation were given to all three groups to determine the effectiveness of the treatment. Moreover, two attitude questionnaires were administered to the experimental groups to examine their attitudes toward the MOOC and the flipped models of instructions. The findings of the One-way ANOVA test, Post-hoc Scheffe test, and paired samples t-test showed that there were significant differences between the post-test of the experimental groups and the control group. The results indicated that the experimental groups significantly outflanked the control group after the treatment. Lastly, the outcomes showed that participants in both experimental groups had positive attitudes toward technological-based instructional environments. (shrink)

Grice’s notion of what is said has been challenged in many directions and, since then, there are a lot of new proposals to understand it. One of these new proposals claims that what a speaker said is not part of the speaker meaning. In that sense, the content said by uttering a sentence is not intentioned by the speaker but a purely semantic and syntactic matter. Kent Bach argues for this proposal and is the main exponent of it. My aim (...) will be to show that Bach’s arguments do not work. There are two different arguments in Bach (1994, 1999, 2001). The first, that I call the direct argument, gives us three reasons against the idea that what is said is meant by the speaker. My goal in the first section will be to show that these reasons are not conclusive. Bach’s notion of what is said should rest on the second argument, the indirect argument. In it, he argues that if what is said is not part of the communicative intentions of the speaker, then it is possible that the content said is not propositional. With this idea, Bach uses what he calls the IQ test.. (shrink)

"I define the Neutral as that which outplays the paradigm, or rather I call Neutral everything that baffles paradigm." With these words, Roland Barthes describes a concept that profoundly shaped his work and was the subject of a landmark series of lectures delivered in 1978 at the Collège de France, just two years before his death. Not published in France until 2002, and appearing in English for the first time, these creative and engaging lectures deepen our understanding of Roland Barthes's (...) intellectual itinerary and reveal his distinctive style as thinker and teacher. The Neutral (_le neutre_), as Barthes describes it, escapes or undoes the paradigmatic binary oppositions that structure and produce meaning in Western thought and discourse. These binaries are found in all aspects of human society ranging from language to sexuality to politics. For Barthes, the attempt to deconstruct or escape from these binaries has profound ethical, philosophical, and linguistic implications. _The Neutral_ is comprised of the prewritten texts from which Barthes lectured and centers around 23 "figures," also referred to as "traits" or "twinklings," that are possible embodiments of the Neutral (sleep, silence, tact, etc.) or of the anti-Neutral (anger, arrogance, conflict, etc.). His lectures draw on a diverse set of authors and intellectual traditions, including Lao-tzu, Tolstoy, German mysticism, classical philosophy, Rousseau, Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, and John Cage. Barthes's idiosyncratic approach to his subjects gives the lectures a playful, personal, and even joyous quality that enhances his rich insights. In addition to his reflections on a variety of literary and scholarly works, Barthes's personal convictions and the events of his life shaped the course and content of the lectures. Most prominently, as Barthes admits, the recent death of his mother and the idea of mourning shape several of his lectures. (shrink)

From February 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to closures of educational institutions to reduce the spread of infectious disease. This forced the U.S. education system into a massive experiment with online education. Despite conducting online bioethics education for nearly twenty years, our bioethics program, a joint endeavor of Clarkson University and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, was not immune to this disruption because our curriculum features intensive, one-week onsite courses. Even in the face of historic disruptions, it is (...) vital to ensure minimal interruptions to teaching and assessing students to provide effective education. This paper reviews the steps we took to successfully convert the onsite components of our curriculum to a synchronous online format, and it focuses on how we preserved instruction and assessment of practical skills that comprise these courses’ core. It also explains how we fostered interactive classroom environments. (shrink)

I argue that there is no straightforward inference from there being fictional characters to any interesting form of realism. One reason is that “fictional” may be an intensional operator with wide scope, depriving the quantifier of its usual force. Another is that not all uses of “there are” are ontologically committing. A realist needs to show that neither of these phenomena are present in “There are fictional characters”. Other roads to realism run into difficulties when negotiating the role that presupposition (...) plays when we make intuitive evaluations of the truth or falsehood of sentences involving fiction, for we may presuppose things we do not believe. This means that a judgment of truth, implicitly relative to a presupposition we do not believe, can be sincerely made by someone who, from a more austere perspective, would regard the judgment as false. (shrink)

Institution and Passivity is based on course notes for classes taught at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris. Philosophically, this collection connects the issue of passive constitution of meaning with the dimension of history, furthering discussions and completing arguments started in The Visible and the Invisible and Signs. Leonard Lawlor and Heath Massey’s translation makes available to an English-speaking readership a critical transitional text in the history of phenomenology.

Philosophy courses are compulsory in all high schools and vocational schools in Turkey. These courses give students a vision by showing how problems have developed historically and been discussed systematically. Since 2006, a new course, called “Education of Thinking” has been introduced as an elective course for 6th, 7th and 8th grade students. This course provides more opportunities for philosophical development in children’s activities. The aim of this course is to enable students to be “ a (...) subject” and “ a critical thinker” by doing philosophy and practising thinking skills.Education in philosophy is in fact the education of thinking. As indicated by Lipman, for the improvement of thinking in the schools, the most important dimensions of thinking to be cultivated are the critical, the creative, and the caring. Success in this education can be ensured by educating children in philosophy. In this paper, I will examine and share the benefits of doing philosophy in the classroom in Turkey. (shrink)

Purpose: We sought to examine the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) literature research and scholarship types, topics, and contributing community fields of training as a first step to charting the broader ELSI community’s future priorities and goals. Methods: We categorized 642 articles and book chapters meeting inclusion criteria for content in both human genetics or genomics and ethics or ELSI during a 5-year period (2003–2008) according to research and scholarship types, topics, and the area of advanced training of the (...) first-listed author. Research and scholarship type categories were developed and characterized through in-depth review of 95 randomly sampled publications from the larger group. Results: There is a single dominant approach to ELSI, which focuses on ethical and other social issues “downstream” of advances in genomics, the contributors to which predominately have advanced training in medicine or science fields other than social science. A comparatively low percentage of publications primarily offer policy recommendations, and these are much more likely to be written by those with advanced training in law than is the case for the literature as a whole. Social science studies predominately employ qualitative methods and vary significantly with respect to the extent and types of recommendations offered. Two further types of ELSI research and scholarship offer alternative models for so-called “normative” work in this field. Conclusion: Considering topics, training, and types of ELSI research and scholarship from the most recent past allows for a baseline perspective that is sorely needed in charting this field’s future course. (shrink)

Drawing on my experiences at a teaching-focused university, I show how locating the health humanities in first-year or introductory composition courses improves learning and offers an economical, flexible, and far-reaching approach to bringing a health humanities education to all baccalaureate-level learners, regardless of whether they aspire to careers in the health professions. In terms of improving learning, health humanities composition courses support the disciplinary aims of both fields. Accessible, relevant issues in the health humanities, such as interventions in health debates (...) or representations of illness and healthcare settings, nourish the cognitive and social conditions needed to develop college-level writing skills. The health humanities’ emphases on interdisciplinarity and suspending judgment also inform students’ writing abilities. Composition trains students to write rhetorically by considering purpose, context, genre, mode, and other factors when addressing an audience. This approach to writing helps pre-health humanists communicate intentionally and compassionately about health topics as well as the larger issues they call into question. Because students enroll in health humanities composition courses at an early, formative moment in their studies, they are poised to carry or “transfer” their knowledge to other courses, including those that might prepare them for the workforce. (shrink)

Since the curriculum is the core carrier to improve the level of talent cultivation in colleges and universities, strengthening the reform of course teaching and improving the quality of course teaching are fundamental to the survival and development of colleges and universities, and also an important part of higher education reform. In this study, a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and an entropy method were used to determine the weight of the core evaluation indicators of undergraduate course quality (...) improvement, including four first-level indicators of the curriculum concept, curriculum resources, curriculum organization, and curriculum effectiveness, and 12 s-level evaluation indicators and weights. Then, based on a case study of the first-class undergraduate course “Management” of Anyang Normal University, the way to evaluate the course by the AHP and entropy method was explained. Finally, according to the evaluation results, the ideas of course construction were put forward, such as changing the course concept, enriching the course resources, paying attention to the course organization, and ensuring the course effectiveness, so as to improve the quality of undergraduate courses and also to improve the quality of undergraduate talent training with the improvement of course quality as the starting point. (shrink)

This article describes an adjacency-pair organized course of action in the institutional context of customers calling an electronics repair facility to request the status of equipment they have previously sent in for repair. Relative to the majority of adjacency-pair sequences described in previous research, this course of action is rare in that it is essentially composed of three turns, including status solicitation, status response, and acceptance/rejection of status response. After defending this finding, we situate and discuss its significance (...) relative to prior research – in both ordinary and institutional contexts – on adjacency-pair sequence organization, including implications for sequence-based relevance rules, such as preference organization. Finally, we outline a possible general explanation for why some initiating actions set in motion essentially three-turn courses of action, and offer a candidate example in ordinary conversation. (shrink)

Reading, writing, publishing, and publicly presenting scientific works are vital for a young researcher's profile building and career development. Generally, the traditional educational curricula do not offer training possibilities to learn and practice how to prepare, write, and present scientific works. These are rather a part of lab meeting activities in research groups. The lack of such training is more critical in some developing countries because this adds to the rare opportunities to discuss and become involved in the exchanges on (...) state of the art scientific literature. Here the authors relate their experience in introducing a weekly 1‐day lab meeting in the framework of two previously organized 3‐month courses on “Bioinformatics and Genome Analyses”. The main activities which are developed during these lab meetings include scientific literature follow up as well as preparing and presenting oral and written scientific reviews. These activities prove to be useful for a student's self‐confidence building, for enhancing their active participation during the lectures and practical sessions, as well as for the positive impact on running the whole course program. Incorporation of such lab meeting activities in the course program significantly improves the capacity building of the participants, their analytical and critical reading of scientific literature, as well as communication skills. In this work it is shown how to proceed with the different steps involved in the implementation of lab meeting activities, and to recommend their regular institution in similar courses. (shrink)

Since the 6thCentury B.C., Philosophy was defined as the love of wisdom in Ancient Greece. And it has always discussed of truth, wisdom and the metaphysics of existence. Nowadays, courses on philosophy have been an integral part of the curriculum since the establishment of faculties of Theology (FoTs). However, the presence, significance and objective of those courses are, they unfortunately are still under discussion despite their almost seventy-year old history.Based on this problem, our study aims to determine whether FoTs students’ (...) attitudes towards philosophy courses differ from their beliefs in the relationship between religion and philosophy. This study`s sample group consists of FoTs students of Kastamonu University, Kyrgyz-Turkish Manas University and Osh University. The study`s sample consisted of 276 students from these universities. The data were collected using a “Philosophy Attitude Scale” (PAS) and a “Scale ofBeliefs in Philosophy–Religion Relationship” (SBPRR) which was developed for this study. T test, one-way analysis of variance and Pearson Correlation were used for the data analysis. Participants’ arithmetic mean scores on some PAS and SBPRRsubscales differed by gender, college, grade level, mother’s education level, number of philosophy courses taken at college but not by father’s education level and religious education and philosophy education before college. Many factors affect the negative attitude of the students toward the philosophical courses and issues; like the methods of teaching it and the contents of the courses and etc. For altering this negative conception towards philosophy, we should focus on two main things; teaching the future-parents and those potentially future teachers philosophy in a right manner. (shrink)

Entre los objetivos primordiales de la enseñanza de segundas lenguas está el desarrollo de habilidades comunicativas como base para la correcta comprensión. En el diagnóstico realizado al estudiantado de la Filial Preparatoria de las Ciencias de la Salud de Morón se evidenciaron limitaciones en dicho componente, porque no es capaz de comprender literalmente el texto, resumirlo, comentar la información ni emitir juicios y criterios. Por tal motivo este trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar aspectos esenciales del desarrollo de la comprensión de (...) textos con fines específicos en el estudiantado de los cursos preparatorios de las ciencias de la salud. Between the principals objectives of teaching second languages, it´s the development of communication activities to base for the correct understanding. Diagnose done to the students of the ¨Preparatory Filial in Health Science of Morón¨ we could watched limitations of this resource, because isn´t capable to understand the text textually, to summarize it, comment the information neither make judgments and opinions. By the way this project has like primary objective make a bibliographic revision of the fundamental aspects about the importance has de development of texts compression with specifics purposes in the students in preparatory courses of health ´s science. (shrink)

The processes underlying motor decision-making have recently caught considerable amount of scientific attention, focusing on the integration of empirical evidence from sensorimotor control research with psychological theories and computational models on decision-making. Empirical studies on motor decision-making suggest that the kinematics of goal-directed reaching movements are sensitive to the level of target uncertainty during movement planning. However, the source of uncertainty as a relevant factor influencing the process of motor decision-making has not been sufficiently considered, yet. In this study, we (...) test the assumption that the source of target uncertainty has an effect on motor decision-making, which can be proven by analyzing movement variability during the time course of movement execution. Ten healthy young adults performed three blocks with 66 trials of goal-directed reaching movements in each block, across which the source and level of reach target uncertainty at movement onset were manipulated (“no uncertainty”, “extrinsic uncertainty”, “intrinsic uncertainty”). Fingertip position of the right index finger was recorded using an optical motion tracking system. Standard kinematic measures (i.e. path length and movement duration) as well as variability of fingertip position across the time course of movement execution and at movement end were analyzed. In line with previous studies, we found that a high level of extrinsic target uncertainty leads to increased overall movement duration, which could be attributed to increased path length in this condition, as compared to intrinsic and no target uncertainty (all p <.001). Movement duration and path length did not show any differences between the latter two conditions. However, the time course analysis of movement variability revealed significant differences between these two conditions, with increased variability of fingertip position in the presence of intrinsic target uncertainty (Condition × Sampling point: p =.01), though considerably less than under high extrinsic target uncertainty (p ≤.001). These findings suggest that both the level and source of uncertainty have a significant effect on the processing of potential action plans during motor decision-making, which can be revealed through the analysis of the time course of movement variability at the end-effector level. (shrink)

The multimedia technology and computer technology supported by the development of modern science and technology provide an important platform for the development of college physical education teaching activities. To better play the role of network auxiliary teaching platform in college sports teaching and improve the effectiveness of college sports teaching, the construction method of multimedia auxiliary teaching effect evaluation model based on the random number forest algorithm is proposed. Through the specification of the random forest algorithm and the optimization of (...) the teaching quality evaluation index, the auxiliary teaching level of the college physical education network is analyzed, and the evaluation of the multimedia auxiliary teaching effect of the physical education courses is completed. The experimental results verify the effectiveness of the evaluation model designed in this article, with a user satisfaction of 72%. Teachers and students can use the evaluation model to improve the teaching quality and teaching efficiency, improve the management work, and promote the scientific, standardization, and specialization of physical education teaching management in colleges and universities. (shrink)

America's brash approach to philosophy, with its overemphasis on novelty but also deep concern for philosophy's connection with human life and destiny, gives rise to a type of thought which appears as without thoroughness or polish and as far removed from what the Germans like to call grundsätzlich. And indeed it must be admitted that few American thinkers have attempted to express a philosophic vision on the comprehensive scale of most classical philosophers. What we have lost in scope, however, we (...) have made up in precision; and one need have no hesitation in pointing to Peirce as an example of a philosopher second to none in his ability to formulate an idea with precision. Whatever the reasons, the main point is that American philosophy has invariably seemed negligible to Europeans, and they have not bothered to study it. (shrink)

This study aims to determine the opinions of teachers of Religious Culture and Ethics Course (DKAB) about subject-based classroom application in-depth. The research has been carried from qualitative research methods with a case study design. In order to determine the working group of the study, criteria sampling was used in the first stage, and the maximum diversity sampling method was used in the next step. The sample of this research consists of 8 DKAB teachers working in Ankara province. A (...) semi-structured interview form has been used as a data collection tool in the study. The data of the qualitative of this research has been analyzed with both descriptive and content analysis by NVivo 10 program. In order to ensure validity and reliability in the study, credibility, transferability, consistency, and verifiability strategies have been used. When the research data were analyzed, four themes were formed: positive opinions about the application, negative opinions and problems related to the application, contribution of the practice to religious education and training, and recommendations about the application. DKAB teachers find the application more positive than the classroom system. It has been found that the practice of subject-based classrooms is a motivational tool for Primary School students, while it causes some problems for lower secondary school and upper secondary school students.Summary: Learning environments are among the key elements in the acquisition of 21st-century skills. Classrooms are also a part of the learning environment. Classes are the learning environment in which teachers and students spend most of their education and training process. In this context, subject-based classroom application is one of the preferred methods in the arrangement of classrooms.Subject-based classroom application means that the teachers have a special classroom related to their branches in the school building, and students attend the teacher's classroom according to the syllabus. In this practice, the teacher can decorate walls, floor, ceiling, column, and beam of the classroom with students’ study materials such as banner, poster, painting, cartoon to make the course more effective and efficient and to create a psychological atmosphere called classroom atmosphere-air.This application aims to activate the student by enriching the classroom and make learning effective and efficient. The classroom equipped with appropriate equipment and materials provides a favorable environment for the implementation of effective teaching strategies. The application can create “class/classroom culture” by using ordinary meanings and symbols related to the course. It provides students the opportunity to exhibit their products and contributes to students' self-regulation skills development. Besides, real-life practices or practices close to reality can be brought into the classroom. As a result, permanent learning can be realized with the possibility of creating a shared living space and the number of sensory organs participating in learning.This current study aims to address in-depth information about the opinions of Religious Culture and Moral Ethics (DKAB) teachers in primary, secondary, and high schools regarding the subject-based classroom application. When the studies in the literature are examined, it is seen that the studies related to the subject-based classroom application have increased since 2010. However, it is clear that this research is directed towards social studies, geography, science, and mathematics courses and is based on the opinions of students, teachers, and administrators at the secondary school level. In the context of DKAB course, there has been no research including the views of teachers, students, or school administrators regarding the application of subject-based classrooms. This study is carried out revealing perspectives of DKAB teachers by examining their opinions on the subject-based classroom application and contribute to the field. The research was conducted with a case study design from the qualitative research methods. The participants consist of 8 DKAB teachers working in Ankara province. A mixed purposive sampling method was used to determine the study group. In the first stage, the teachers implementing the DKAB classrooms application were taken as criteria. In the next step, the study group was determined within the framework of the maximum diversity sampling method by considering the variables such as school level, gender, age, education level, duration of teachers' work. The data were collected through a semi-structured interview form with expert opinion. In the form, there are nine main questions and probe questions, which include questions related to subject-based classrooms application, the contribution of the application to religious education and training, the contribution of teachers to professional and personal development, the effect of teachers' belonging to the school, the effectiveness, and improvement of the application. Permission has been obtained from the Ankara Provincial Directorate of National Education and participants via consent form for the interview. The interviews were recorded in audio, 169.58-minute audio recording transcripts, and 52-page interview data obtained. The qualitative data of this research has been analyzed with both descriptive and content analysis by NVivo 10 program. In order to ensure validity and reliability in the study, credibility, transferability, consistency, and verifiability strategies have been used.When the data of the research were analyzed, the opinions of DKAB teachers about the subject-based classrooms application categorized under four themes; positive and negative opinions/problems about the practice, the contribution of the practice to religious education and teaching and practical suggestions. Under the theme of positive opinions on the application, positive aspects for the teacher, student, parents, and comparison with the classroom system were formed. According to the participants, the practice of DKAB classroom is a “facilitation” element for the teacher because of the factors such as the teacher not moving around the classroom, not carrying material, having freedom to organize the classroom, and material regularity. In this application, since the teacher has a class of his own, the teacher adopts and owns the classroom and the sense of belonging to school increases. This sense of belonging is felt so strongly that there is even a participant who plans to retire if the application is abandoned. The positive aspects of the application for the students are that; a classroom is a motivating tool, the boards and walls can be used, and the student has the opportunity to exhibit their activities. When compared with the classroom system, it was stated that as a result of the branch classroom practice, the school equipment could be better protected, class order and cleaning easier, and the success of the students would be increased.The negative views of the participants on the application were grouped under the categories of students, teachers, and parents. Not having a fixed class of their own, continually relocating and losing time in recess, staying in the classroom door when the classroom is locked, not adopting the classroom and lack of lockers constitute the negative aspects of the application for the students. The overuse of classrooms, less use of teachers' rooms, lack of communication between colleagues are the negative aspects of the application for the teachers. It was stated by (75%) most of the participants that branch classroom application contributed to the continual learning of students in religious education and teaching. To make the application more functional, DKAB teachers have proposed arrangements such as improving physical infrastructure, enriching teaching materials, and arranging school syllabus and keeping classrooms open. As a result, teachers find the application more positive than the classroom system. While it is a motivation tool for primary school students, it causes some problems for secondary and high school students, such as carrying bags, staying at the door, and wasting time. In this sense, the application is recommended to be applied in primary schools that have a sufficient number of classrooms. Also, the system should be applied in secondary and high schools where the number of students is low, or the number of classrooms is sufficiently provided that the problems experienced by the students are eliminated. School administrations and teachers need to take necessary measures to make the application effective and efficient. (shrink)

The challenge of updating the existing curriculum to meet the requirements of blended, interactive and gamified approaches is complex. This article presents the design and results of the application of a gamified activity that was used to enrich a blended Philosophy course taught for two years and taken by more than 450 sophomore students in a large public university in Russia. The combination of social search with multilingual communication became an important educational experience for the participating students.

The article addresses the issue of massive open online courses (MOOCs) which are based on the topics of humanities, social sciences and liberal arts. MOOCs developers promote them as the means of open and accessible education. Such courses target at the global audience and they can be efficient in dissemination of knowledge worldwide. Such courses have the capability of becoming a powerful tool for the emerging digital diplomacy. MOOCs can significantly increase the soft power of a political actor: state or (...) non-state. (shrink)

Environmental ethics has reached a certain level of maturity; further significant advances require reexamining its status within the larger realm of moral philosophy. It could aim to extend to nonhumans one of the familiar sets of principles subject to appropriate modifications; or it could seek to break away and put forward its own paradigm or paradigms. Selecting the proper course requires as the most immediate mission exploring the formal requirements of an ethical system. In general, are there constraints against (...) bringing our moral relations with different sorts of things under different mIes of govemance? In particular, how much independence can an environmental ethic (or ethics) aim to have? (shrink)

Interdisciplinary or team-taught courses pose special challenges and make special demands on the instructors. Yet they also offer special opportunities for learning—for instructor and student alike. This paper describes one such course taught at the University of Maryland by a historian (Kenneth Holum), an art historian (Elisabeth Pemberton), and a philosopher (James Lesher), focused on the art, politics, and philosophical environment of 5th-century Athens. Three themes emerged over the course of the semester: the centrality of the family in (...) Athenian society, the emergence of the individual as a new focus of interest in art and society, human nature as a new subject of study, and the phenomenon of cross-fertilization or ‘bi-sociation’ as the ideas developed in one field were adapted for use in other disciplines. For all their special burdens and challenges, courses such as this one can provide an opportunity to explore philosophical theorizing from a new perspective. (shrink)

This book, the third in a series on the life course, has significance in today's world of research, professional practice, and public policy because it symbolizes the gradual reemergence of power in the social sciences. Focusing on "self-directedness and efficacy" over the life course, this text addresses the following issues: * the causes of change * how changes affect the individual, the family system, social groups, and society at large * how various disciplines--anthropology, sociology, psychology, epidemiology--approach this field (...) of study, with consideration given to common themes and differences Finally, an effort is made to develop a multidisciplinary perspective unique to the study of self-directedness and efficacy. (shrink)

Massive Open Online Course is a new online education model that provides new opportunities and challenges for the development and reform of teaching in colleges and universities. This paper first builds a MOOC-based model of influencing factors of blended learning adaptability. Through investigation and research, it is found that the six influencing factors all have different ways and different degrees of influence on learning adaptability. Among them, learning motivation has a direct and significant impact on learning adaptability, and learning (...) self-efficacy not only has a direct and significant impact on learning adaptability but also has an indirect impact on learning adaptability through learning motivation. Teacher teaching has indirect effects on learning adaptability through learning self-efficacy, learning motivation, and learning support. Learning support not only has a direct and significant impact on learning adaptability but also has an indirect impact on learning adaptability through learning motivation. MOOC platform has a direct and significant impact on learning adaptability. The quality of course content has a direct and significant impact on learning adaptability through the MOOC platform and learning motivation. The creative results of this research are mainly embodied in the combination of theory and practice, exploring and forming related results based on MOOC-based college students’ learning adaptability. According to the MOOC-based learning-adaptive intervention model, teaching practice is carried out to verify the effect of the intervention model from two aspects of student procedural performance and result performance. Finally, in view of the problems existing in traditional computer teaching in colleges and universities, combined with the design ideas and basic characteristics of MOOC, the teaching mode reform of computer courses is analyzed and discussed, and a MOOC-based computer engineering education teaching mode is proposed. (shrink)