Alexandra Bradner combines thirty years of classroom experience with the latest educational research to help you design philosophy courses effectively and efficiently.

Each of the short eight chapters is built around a question: What kind of course are you teaching? Who is your student population? What materials will you assign? Brander walks you through the course design process through exercises and accessible overviews. She offers strategies for getting up to speed on a content area and direction on where to find data regarding how well students are prepared to produce college-level argumentative papers. She demonstrates the value of selecting materials that tell a particular story and casts learning objectives as reflective, work that one would expect from a teacher trained to think intentionally, clearly, and skeptically, and a teacher who cares about their students' learning.

Practical and packed with insights, this guide is informed by the latest learning theories in cognitive and educational psychology. It is for philosophers planning their first courses; mid-career philosophers looking to refresh their teaching and graduate programs in philosophy that are interested in giving their students an edge on the market.

Alexandra Bradner is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Kenyon College, USA. She is the current Executive Director of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT) and sits on the Editorial Board of the journals Teaching Philosophy and AAPT Studies in Pedagogy. As the former chair of the American Philosophical Association's Committee on the Teaching of Philosophy, she established the Teaching Hub, a national, two-day faculty development conference held three times each year. For the past four years, she has served as the evaluator for the Mellon Foundation's “New Currents in Philosophy” workshops, and has been selected to review grants by both the NEH and NSF.
Beyond her professional service work, she has taught more than 30 courses in twelve different philosophical disciplines at more than ten institutions–public, private, national, regional, large, small, secular, and religiously-affiliated.