Areas Of Teaching Competence

Worried about areas of teaching competence?

If you think you are not competent to teach in more than one or two areas (see the "Getting a Job in Philosophy" page), you need to work on it. While teaching experience is important, what the employer wants to know when it comes to areas of competence is not which courses you have actually taught, but which courses you could teach if you put your mind to it. To qualify as competent in an area, all you really need to have done is to have read some of the central texts and have a general idea of what the central topics, issues and arguments are in that area. You can do this by

  • going to an undergraduate lecture course
  • organising a reading group around a specific area
  • reading some books...

Below are some suggestions for books to read in order to acquire, or to check that you already have, competence in various areas. Some are introductiory textbooks; others are collections of papers.

Intro to Philosophy:
J. Perry & M. Bratman (eds.), Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings, OUP 1993

Critical Thinking:
D. Kelley, The Art of Reasoning, Norton 1998. (There is also a website associated with this book.) [link needs to be checked]

Epistemology:
P. Moser (ed.), Empirical Knowledge, Rowman & Littlefield 1996

Philosophy of Religion:
Pojman (ed.), Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology

Philosophy of Language:
A. Martinich (ed.), Philosophy of Language, OUP 1996

Philosophy of Law:
D.M. Adams, Philosophical Problems in the Law

Philosophy of Science:
C. Glymour, Thinking Things Through, MIT Press, 1992
A. O'Hear, Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, OUP 1989

Philosophy of Maths:
P. Benacerraf & H. Putnam (eds.), Philosophy of Mathematics, CUP 1964

History of Modern Philosophy:
R. Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy, Routledge 1989

Philosophy of Mind:
F. Jackson & D. Braddon-Mitchell, Philosophy of Mind & Cognition, Blackwell 1996
P. Smith & O.R. Jones, The Philosophy of Mind, CUP 1986

What about my areas of specialisation?

The standards are higher here. The obvious area or areas of specialisation will come from your PhD thesis, and from any papers you may have written that aren't on your PhD topic. As a general rule, think about what courses you would be happy to teach to graduate students -- that is, students who have already been through a basic undergraduate course on a given subject, and who are able to progress through the material at a much faster rate.

Philosophy @ ANU