Back in 2007. Opening comments here, in case readers think anything has changed in the interim.
To be worth using, a detector needs not only (A) not get very many false positives, but also (B) get…
8 responses to “Blast from the past: What is an ‘area of competence’?”
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A question: Say one has done both an MA and a PhD, and the MA thesis and PhD thesis are in somewhat different areas. Could one claim the area(s) covered by the MA thesis as AOC's?
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GradStudent,
You can list whatever areas you want to. The key is that you are signaling a willingness and competence to teach in those areas you list. If you list areas but there is no indication that you really have such expertise, you will look like you have no credibility, and your application will not be considered. The easiest way to "prove" competence and expertise is to publish on a topic. As a matter of fact, as one's career moves on, and especially as one becomes a seasoned researcher, you tend to list fewer areas – you list narrow areas in which you are widely recognized as an expert. -
I don't really agree with the preceding comment. An AOS are areas in which you can do research and teach at the graduate level; you don't have to have published in the areas, though to be sure that lends support to claiming it as an AOS. But you have to be prepared to answer specialist questions about the subject in interviews, so don't list it as an AOS unless you're ready to discuss the topic with experts.
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At my school (a well-ranked program) we were initially told anything you have taught a course in or could easily teach a course in should be listed as an AOC. I objected, because I've taught a lower-division Phil Mind course, but when I think of how little Mind I've done, it seemed crazy to me that I would be qualified to call it an AOC. To my mind, an AOC is something that you could teach both a lower-division and an upper-division course in (with different content, not just harder or deeper examination). I do think that what you have or could easily teach is a good standard, but only with the rider that you need to be able to do it at the upper-division level
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That is bad advice. You can list 3 or 4 AOCs, and ideally they should have some coherence, otherwise hiring committees will be skeptical and view you as overclaiming.
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I just saw an advert that specified:
AOS: Philosophy of Language
AOC: Philosophy of LanguageThat's odd, right? I have always assumed that anything one lists as an AOS is also an AOC, but one only lists additional AOCs under the AOC heading. I don't usually see duplication, except perhaps for cases where someone lists a very specific AOS (like consequentialism) and a more general AOC (like moral philosophy).
But, if a department is filtering for AOC Philosophy of Language, is there a danger that one's expertise might be missed if listed as an AOS and not an AOC?
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Ben, I agree that that advert is odd, as I too think of AOS's as requiring strictly more expertise than AOC's. It's an interesting pedantic question whether (as you suggest) AOS's should automatically count as AOC's, making this ad be redundant, with Gricean maxims governing why we shouldn't list such redundancies on our CV's, or whether AOC should instead be defined as "Area of *Mere* Concentration" so AOS's would never count as AOC's, and it would be logically impossible for someone to have both AOS and AO(mere)C in the same topic. Either way, this ad is odd.
I haven't read the ad in question, but here are two plausible glosses on what they meant. One is that they also list it as an AOC to make clear that they really expect you to teach that, not just research in it — i.e., they're (mis)reading AOC as a teaching expectation and AOS as a research expectation. Another gloss is that they really mean they want AOS *or* AOC in Phil Language, something that I probably would have instead phrased by saying "at least an AOC in Phil Language" or "AOS: open, AOC: Phil Language".
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I saw that ad, and have seen several others like it before. I always just interpret them as signalling that the AOS is preferred, but that a strong AOC is acceptable, so long as the candidate would be competent to teach several upper-level courses in the area/do some supervising. So: you should know more than you usually need to know to claim an AOC, though not necessarily as much as you'd need for an AOS.
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