My teaching philosophy is rooted in the specific methods of my field of expertise, which is philosophy. As a teacher, my main goal is to provide my students with the skills and expertise required by their philosophical training. This aim requires a delicate alignment of the teaching and learning process with the defining features of philosophy as both argumentative practice and historical discipline.

Although the core of (Western) philosophy is the argumentative analysis of reality, it would be naïve to believe that the discipline and its learning process are limited to this crucial feature. The history of philosophy has some methodological specificities that may impact on the teaching and learning process: historical contextualisation, linguistic obstacles, cultural distance, etc. A common tendency in the teaching of these sub-disciplines is to minimise the exposure to these specificities by means of simplification. Simplifying philosophy and its history, however, is a delicate and risky matter. It is usually done either by focusing on some well-known philosophical problems and major philosophers or by sterilising the class from any historical and/or cross-cultural issues, supposedly considered as superfluous. The main risks of this approach are banalisation and misconstructions. They must be avoided as much as possible. The aim of a good teacher, especially when philosophy is considered, should not be to simplify the contents of her class but to make that content understandable and appealing. In my experience, students react enthusiastically when they face well-construed learning challenges.

It is my conviction that the practice of philosophy must be mirrored by the teaching of philosophy. For me, this key assumption means that my teaching must employ systematic analysis, historical contextualisation, and comparative interpretations depending on the specificities of the course I teach. Inductively, I take my students to a gradual questioning of their unspoken assumptions, both philosophical and historical. Deductively, I lead them to analyse implications and tensions within the philosophical frameworks we discuss. In my experience, from a combination of these two approaches, students achieve a critical understanding of the materials and are able to synthetise and apply it to their own philosophical analysis.

The cornerstone of my teaching philosophy is my commitment to critical teaching and learning. My learning experience, as a student, was grounded on the old-fashioned patterns of what Paulo Freire calls “the banking system of knowledge”. Assuming that students are like empty vessels to be filled by the teacher’s knowledge, this method of teaching is based on arrays of notions to be learned and repeated, without any problematisation, application, or critique. Yet, teachers are not jars of knowledge pouring notions into the students’ minds. This method is not only wrong but also detrimental because real learning requires an active application of knowledge to new settings and the students’ critical engagement with it. The process of teaching and learning is a structurally critical process. And as such, it implies active learning as a set of methods and techniques by which the students directly engage with the knowledge produced in the classroom and question, challenge, and apply it to different situations.

In reason of its own disciplinary method, the teaching of philosophy and the history of philosophy thrives by adopting the principles of the universal design for learning. In my courses, I make use of a wide range of means of engagement, expression, and assessment. Such richness provides my students with an extended ground in which they can practice their skills through active learning. And it contributes to fostering cognitive empathy and diversity as intrinsic values, which I nourish in my students and encourage them to apply in their discussions and lives.