One of the features of a seminar is that
it is a forum for student interaction and what can happen is that
students learn from one another. This can be in terms of transmissive
knowledge - being told something by another student that you didn't
know - but a lot more than this is usually going on. You can use
the seminar as a place to try out your own evaluations of the
material and your own ideas, about where the problems lie. But
even more important than using it to test out your ideas the process
of doing that with others can result in completely new understanding,
one that no-one had prior to the seminar taking place. A famous
developmental psychologist described the kind of dynamic learning
advance that can result in working together as our zone of proximal
development. He was making the point that achievements in a group
learning process are in advance of the developmental stage of
an individual. Vygotsky was mainly talking about children, but
his idea of the "zone of proximal development" (1978)
could be extended in the adult context to describe the sense of
new knowledge and deeper understanding for everyone being forged
in the process of discussion in a seminar.
There is a range of ways that the public, but safe and friendly
forum of the seminar can help you.
1. Checking your understanding - rather than just thinking of this in a yes/no kind of way, in a seminar you can set out for your peers your interpretation of, e.g., what qualia are and why they matter, and use their reaction and the tutor's to see if you are on the right lines.
2. Checking your progress - an important aspect of learning is reflecting on how you are getting on and the kind of reactions your contributions illicit in seminars can be a useful source of information to feed into that process of more general self-reflection, and a guide to where you need to put more attention.
3. Experimenting with an idea - seminars give you the chance to try out a perspective, 'try it on for size' and get a feel for whether you really do believe something to be the case. You can test out what others' reactions are likely to be.
4. Using the language - seminars give you the opportunity to try out specialist vocabulary in a relatively safe environment; this assists in reinforcing your understanding of key concepts and ideas.
5. Sharing problems - discussing difficulties in a text or a concept is a really good way to begin to understand it, or if you already did understand it to deepen your understanding. Asking a question can be as productive to everyone's learning as answering a question.
6. Exposure to a range of perspectives - meeting other people and talking about important ideas with them is a great 'horizons widening' experience. You can reinforce your knowledge of, e.g., Kant and find out what other people think of the notion of duty, how it operates in their lives, what ideas it summons up for them as well as being motivated to consider more deeply about you actually think about duty.
The difficult issue of mixed ability
Some students are concerned about seminar
groups containing people of very mixed abilities with regard to
philosophy. Philosophy involves subject knowledge (e.g., who said
what when, what the distinction is between the mathematical and
the dynamic sublime) and skills (e.g., being able to identify
when someone is using an unexamined assumption or making a category
error, and being sensitive to flaws in argumentation or just common
sense). For this reason, as well as reticence or even withholding
information because of feelings of ownership, it is actually very
hard to access each other's ability. If you could gauge philosophical
ability easily what would be the use? It is often the person who
hasn't understood something or has the courage to ask a very straightforward
question who can bring new problems to light or reveal other people's
assumptions.
There could be two reasons why students might want to complain
about the ability of others in their group. Either they believe
that they are behind and getting further behind because everyone
is talking over their head (in which case ask for clarification),
or they believe that they are particularly clever and are being
slowed down by those with less ability. Even if we admit that
some kind of gauging of ability is possible and revealed in a
straightforward way in seminars this does not necessary disadvantage
anybody. Most of the research on mixed abilities within a collaborative
framework (e.g., working on a task as a group in a seminar) has
shown that less able students benefit from explanations and help
offered by more able students (Hooper and Hannafin, 1988) and
that high achieving students also either benefit from mixed groups
(Webb 1980) or are at least not disadvantaged by not being in
a group of all high acheivers (Azmita, 1988). Given the importance
of dialogue, debate and constructing clear arguments in philosophy
I would imagine that the benefits of having a wide range of different
qualities, abilities and life experiences amongst the participants
is particularly helpful - try to relish the differences and learn
from them.
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