Wiley Pop: Harry Potter and History

I’m reading my first book in the Wiley Pop Culture series, Harry Potter and History. The book is a collection of fourteen essays juxtaposing the magical world of Harry Potter with its Muggle counterpart – our real world. I’m almost three quarters through the book. What I’ve gotten out of it is a combination of fun historical factoids and some historical-sociocultural analysis. I’ve learned about the making and use of parchment in the medieval world, the collecting of bezoars, witch hunts around the world in Muggle history, and Nicolas Flamel – a character spanning both worlds.

My favorite discovery came from an essay by M. G. DuPree titled “Severus Snape and the Standard Book of Spells: Ancient Tongues in the Wizarding World.” His essay begins with the sentence: “Language is the foundation of magic.” I had not noticed that household spells such as Scourgify had roots mainly in English, higher-order spells (e.g. Expecto Patronum or the Fidelius charm) were mainly from Latin, and that healing spells such as Episkey had their roots in Greek, the language of physicians. DuPree also discusses the origins of Hocus Pocus and its connection to the transubstantiation rites of the Latin Mass that may not have been well understood by the medieval farmer who did not understand Latin, as well as the ancient origins of abracadabra and its counterpart Avada Kedavra.

Several authors chose to compare institutions, ideologies and politics between the Muggle and Magical worlds. A timeline in the beginning of the book juxtaposes major events in both worlds allowing the authors license and creativity to speculate how events in one sphere influenced the other. One author discusses the formation of the Statute of Secrecy and its importance in reducing the oppression of witches and wizards. (It is interesting how the word “witch” today carries negative connotations, while “wizard” seems positively out of this world!) Another author examines the rise of fascism with Voldemort’s rise. One can draw parallels between pure-blood mania and Aryan nation ideas. Aristocracy and class distinctions is yet another subject of analysis, as is the comparison (and contrast) between the British political system and the Ministry of Magic.

From an educator’s point of view, it was interesting to learn the history of the British public school through the ages – in this case, the U.S. equivalent would be a New England private prep boarding school. The author Susan Hall does a masterful job of tracing the rise of Eton, Winchester and Rugby while weaving in the Slug Club, the early ideas of Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and even nuggets of how J. K. Rowling might have breathed fresh air into the flagging boarding schools of old. Smeltings (Dudley Dursley’s school) and Stonewall High (which Harry would have attended if not for his Hogwarts letter) are described and explained in the context of a section titled “Unfogging the British Education System”.

Besides the Wiley Pop Culture and History Series (of which this book is a part), Wiley also has a Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series. There doesn’t seem to be a Chemistry and Pop Culture series; my previous reading of Wiley books were much drier chemistry textbooks or research monographs. Maybe I need to pitch a Potions for Muggles book. But first I’ll have to write some sample chapters...

Private Doubt, Public Dilemma

Private Doubt, Public Dilemma – Religion and Science since Jefferson and Darwin, is the title of Keith Thomson’s book based on his 2012 Terry Lectures. Thomson is an emeritus professor of natural history at the University of Oxford. He has written a number of books that delve into the history of Charles Darwin and the formulation of the theory of evolution. Since I’m participating in a college-sponsored living learning community on Faith and Reason, I have been reading a number of books that address the relationship between science and religion.

Given my interest in history, I enjoyed Thomson’s approach to the topic. In ten short and very readable chapters, he covers the social milieu, both scientific and religious in the nineteenth century where various upheavals were taking place – in geology, biology, philosophy and theology. Thomson weaves a story spanning the U.S. and the U.K., starting with Thomas Jefferson but concentrating mainly on Darwin. The Aggasiz-Gray and Wilberforce-Hooker-Huxley debates in both countries are described with historical quotes and letters of the day.

The crux of Thomson’s argument comes in the ninth chapter “The Decline of Authority”. Starting with a personal experience of flip-flop instruction he received on Alfred Wegener’s continental drift, and following up with the discovery (and initial discounting) of Sherwood Roland’s connection between CFCs and the ozone hole, Thomson argues for the importance of context of what else was changing in the pivotal years close to 1860. (As an aside, the Karlsruhe conference that same year was pivotal for chemistry! For the historically-inclined, here's a translation of the session accounts.)

Thomson writes: “… with each [change in authority], new doubts arose as well as new certainties. Whatever conflicts may have risen or been acerbated between elements of science and religion in, say, 1860, they were part of a much wider picture of change. And in the process of change, leaders of both religion and science have had to think seriously about what their new roles should be. Perhaps not enough.”

He goes on: “Individual opinion always changes before authority. It is in the nature of authority to change slowly; society would be unstable otherwise. And religious authority may change slowest of all. The dilemma comes when change can no longer be put off.” Thomson thinks that the way forward is in areas where both science and religion have “joint ownership” and can benefit from cooperation for the public good. He provides one example: environmental stewardship. One wonders if there are more. Thomson also points out the weaknesses of the conflict avoidance approach by separating religion and science into two non-overlapping spheres of influence. The problem, he says, is that the “claims of authority of science and religion, do in fact, overlap, intersect, and compete with each other.” Therein lies the crux of the public dilemma – the issue of authority, when politics and power come into play, which has become to some extent farcical in the U.S.

In my first day of class on atomic theory, we discuss the issue of where we gain knowledge and the role of trustworthy authority when we cannot “check certain things with our own physical senses”. While there isn’t much about chemistry in Thomson’s book, I enjoyed a small section in one of his early chapters about atomic theory. He quotes the Greek atomist Democritus: “Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.” In class we discuss how this might sound crazy from the sensory perspective, but I didn’t have time to discuss why, as Thomson puts it, “such a philosophy was dangerous; atoms, chance, and necessity neither explained nor required free will.”

There’s a great Cicero quote (who probably drew from Aristotle), prescient of today’s monkey-typewriter-Shakespeare probability argument, against the atomists: “Must I not marvel that there should be anyone who can persuade himself that there are certain solid and indivisible particles of matter borne along by the force of gravity, and that the fortuitous collision of these particles produces this elaborate and beautiful world? I cannot understand why he who considers it possible for this to have occurred should not also think that, if a countless number of copies of the one-and-twenty letters of the alphabet, made of gold or what you will, were thrown together in some receptacle and then shaken out on to the ground, it would be possible that they should produce the Annales of Ennius. I doubt whether they could possibly succeed in producing a single verse.”

It’s worth quoting from the Bible book of Ecclesiastes (1:9): “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Grading Participation: Early Stage Evolution

I finished Jay Howard’s excellent book earlier this week. His second-to-last chapter, “Making Online Discussions Work” was insightful and echoed much of the good advice from Michelle Miller’s book. The topic of today’s blog is on the final chapter: “To Grade or Not to Grade? And Other Conundrums.” I am still a novice in trying to figure out optimal practices in my different classes. This post traces the evolution in my thinking so far. I recognize that I am still in the early stages – and there is far to go before I reach a robust approach. I’m very glad for the many others who have gone before, and this is an area where science professors have much to learn from our non-science colleagues.

Like many other “old school” science professors, I started with having problem sets and exams count towards a student’s final grade. Problem sets, which can be worked on collaboratively, take up a low percentage. Exams, with individual work only, took the lion’s share of the grade. I did not assign any credit towards participation nor did I take attendance. Students could choose to attend and participate, or not. The exams would determine if they understood the material. This is not to say that I had dry, boring lectures. My students over the years will attest to the fact that the classes are interactive, and I pose lots of questions to students (and I do wait for their answers). I also keep the material interesting in a variety of ways to help as a motivating factor for students to attend class.

In my first year teaching General Chemistry (before online homework systems had made their debut), I was over-zealous. Besides the Final Exam, I had five in-class hour-long exams, and every non-exam week there was a problem set. This was a killer from a grading point of view. The next year I cut down the number of problem sets and exams, but this meant that many students did not keep up with the material through longer stretches. (If you fall behind, it’s a lot of work to catch up.) It was only in my third year that I added frequent low-stakes quizzes – 5 minutes on an index card at the beginning of class. To start, I would give maybe 14 quizzes during the semester and count the top 8 (for 4% of the course grade).

The quizzes turned out to be a boon to keep students motivated towards learning while allowing me to reduce further the number of problem sets and assign ungraded homework. At that point I had not read much of the research literature on learning suggesting that this was a good strategy. Over the years I’ve given more quizzes per semester and had them count for slightly more. In fact, in one of my classes this semester that meets twice a week, I’ll be giving 20-24 quizzes and counting the top 16 for 16% of the course grade. This lowers the grade assignment due to exams. (Homework and problem sets have always hovered in the 10-15% range.)

Then came participation. The way I started assigning participation as a grade was when I got my first class of first-year advisees who were also in my General Chemistry course. The college had various useful “College Skills 101” workshops sprinkled throughout the semester such as study skills, how to choose a major, time management, staying healthy in college, etc. One of my colleagues required all the students in any of his classes to stop by his office at least once for a short chat early in the semester. I decided that this was a good idea and assigned 3% for the students to attend some skills events and stop by my office. Students wrote me one paragraph about their experience attending a particular “workshop” – what they learned, and whether they found it useful or not. (That way I could give feedback to Student Affairs so that they knew what worked well and what didn’t.)

These early efforts at assigning some grade towards participation did not involve any in-class participation towards discussing the course material. It is only in the last several years that I have started assigning a participation grade towards thinking about the course material. I have mainly done two things so far. One has been to incorporate blogging outside of class time for the students to connect course material with their lives outside of my chemistry class. The other is to assign short written assignments in class based on the course material. (I usually provide the prompt before class so students can think ahead, and there is usually some discussion both in small groups and as an entire class on the topic. Then the last 5-10 minutes of class is spent writing.) So far this has not been assigned more than 10% of the course grade.

I’ve tried to keep track of the quality of in-class discussion, roving from one small group to another, cold-calling a range of students (after they’ve had a chance to discuss things with their classmates of course), among other things. I just haven’t quite felt comfortable assigning a grade based on those interactions. It’s hard for me to keep track of them and to ensure equity. This is where the online component is helpful for keeping track of things, not to mention it also levels the playing field for students who may be much more introverted or who feel less comfortable expressing themselves in English if it is not their first language. Thank to Howard’s book, I’m now looking more into student self-graded discussion. This seems an intriguing way to possibly accomplish several goals but I’ll have to think about it a bit more before incorporating it.

At the moment, exams still form the bulk of the students’ grade. I think this is appropriate in some of the standard courses that I teach: General Chemistry and Physical Chemistry. However I can see some variation in other courses that I teach to reduce how much exams count towards the grade. I have much more to learn in any case!

Grit and the Age of Hufflepuff

This past week J. K. Rowling tweeted about the “dawn of the age of Hufflepuff”. As Hufflepuff Hippo, this sounds like exciting news – except of course I don’t really know what it means. There is some connection to the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, to be released in 2016. Newt Scamander, the main protagonist of the movie (and the book) hails from Hufflepuff house. Given that movies are often accompanied by merchandise, we might be seeing a lot more Hufflepuff paraphernalia. Now that’s something I can be excited about! Most things out there look Gryffindor-ish.

I find it interesting in our Internet-enabled age with social media tools like Twitter, that there is now an avenue for famous people to make a (sometimes cryptic) statement that then spark pages of electronic ink speculating on every aspect of even a single sentence. Rowling has become such a figure. Legions of fans seem to hang on to her every word – after all she has the author’s authority. (Makes you think about where the word authority comes from!) This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as there is some critical thinking about what is being said by the authority figure. In the beginning of the semester, my class has a discussion about the existence of atoms (none of us has actually seen an atom) and how one obtains knowledge, and that learning by authority (as opposed to one’s own self-experimentation) can be a good thing especially if the author is trustworthy.

Let’s return to Hufflepuff for a moment. What are the traits of a Hufflepuff? Trustworthy, loyal and kind, dedicated, hardworking, patient, etc. Those sound like great traits! (For another assortment, see Buzzfeed’s 19 Reasons Everyone Should be a Hufflepuff, which also makes use of Twitter pronouncements by Rowling.) Sounds like it beats just being ABC: Ambitious, Brave or Clever. (As Hufflepuff Hippo, I am clearly biased.) The trait I have been thinking about this week, that applies well to Hufflepuffs, and that my students should hopefully learn, is Grit.

Grit makes one think of tenacity, a willingness to work hard to overcome obstacles, and having fortitude. As I’ve been thinking a lot about teaching and creativity lately, this reminds me of the oft-quoted Thomas Edison phrase: “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” If you equate creativity with genius (I’m not sure it is – but the two often get conflated), then it sounds like a helluva lot of grit is required. Another common phrase associated with creativity, specifically openness to new ideas, is Louis Pasteur’s “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

Much ink (both physical and electronic) has gone into examining whether grit and creativity are linked. Views vary widely across the spectrum as to how integral grit is to creativity. As both a teacher and a learner of new things, I experience firsthand the importance of grit in trying to accomplish a challenging task whether it be putting together a well-timed and coherent class activity that meets all the ambitious learning goals, or surmounting a roadblock that has stymied a research project. There is a temptation to do less than the best – and honestly I don’t always do my best. But having experienced the value of putting in the hard work and seeing the fruits of that labor are satisfying when it involves something I am interested in or care about.

There’s the rub. I think that grit leads to its best results in creativity and excellence when it is something you really do care about. Given that I care about my teaching, and the learning of my students, I’m quite willing to put in the work to get better and be more creative at it. In the parlance of the creativity literature, I’m intrinsically motivated. But not all my students are interested in chemistry. Many are there because it’s a requirement they have to fulfill but they show little interest in. They are extrinsically motivated. Grit now becomes a painful (“grit your teeth”) process that you just need to get over and then you can go on with the rest of your life, rather than a part of creative and excellent work.

I had an open and lively discussion in my chemistry for non-science majors class last week, where the students were free without repercussion to articulate how they are apprehensively viewing taking a chemistry class. (We structured the discussion around the question “Why is there little understanding of science among the general public?”) I was able to articulate why I specifically choose to teach this class year after year. (I don’t have to, and in fact could go through my career not teaching it.) I told the students that it is my hope that they will find chemistry both interesting and applicable to their lives, but they will have to work hard to understand it and that it will be worth the time and effort. I’m not sure everyone believed me, but that’s okay. (I also happen to teach Physical Chemistry – the dreaded class of Chemistry majors, where similar conversations take place, often in my office over problem sets.)

In the “old school” days, learning could be a torturous and gritty exercise. There are trends and pressures to “make things interesting and relevant” (which is not a bad thing) today but hopefully we don’t lose the importance of grit. Spoon-feeding our students (and many of them seem to want the “easy way”) is doing them a disservice. They need to learn to grapple with the difficulties – but it is incumbent upon us as teachers to improve how we motivate our students without watering down our expectations. Now that could be creative teaching in a new age of Hufflepuff!

Teaching for Creativity Part 2

I finally finished Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom, a collection of essays I described in my previous post. There were some good articles towards the end of the book. One was the long and comprehensive “Intrinsic Motivation and Creativity in the Classroom” by Beth Hennesey, which delved into the research connecting intrinsic and extrinsic motivation with creativity. While much of the research in the book discusses K-12 education, Diane Halpern’s chapter “Creativity in College Classrooms” highlights the connection between critical and creative thinking, and discusses the use of technology to facilitate creative activity.

The final essay was written by one of the stalwarts of the field, Robert Sternberg in the simple title “Teaching for Creativity”. His prose is lucid and very quotable. Here are my three favorite sections (the first is actually the opening paragraph):

“Creativity is a habit. The problem is that schools sometimes treat it as a bad habit. And the world of conventional standardized tests we have invented does just that. If students try being creative on standardized tests, they will get slapped down just as soon as they get their score. That will teach them not to do it again.”

“Like any habit, creativity can either be encouraged or discouraged. The main things that promote the habit are (1) opportunities to engage in it, (2) encouragement when people avail themselves of these opportunities, and (3) rewards when people respond to such encouragement and think and behave creatively. You need all three. Take away the opportunities, encouragement, or rewards, and you will take away the creativity. In this respect, creativity is no different from any other habit, good or bad.”

“Society tends to make a pedagogical mistake by emphasizing the answering and not the asking of questions. The good student is perceived as the one who rapidly furnishes the right answers. The expert in a field thus becomes the extension of the expert student – the one who knows and can recite a lot of information. As John Dewey recognized, how one thinks is often more important than what one thinks. Schools need to teach students how to ask the right questions (i.e., questions that are good, thought provoking, and interesting) and lessen the emphasis on rote learning.”

I must admit that when I first stated teaching, Sternberg described me very well as someone who emphasized the answering rather than the asking of questions. And yes, I would label the “good” students those that quickly and accurately provided the “right” answers. That tells you something about the narrowness of my questions and perhaps the level in Bloom’s taxonomy in which I was engaging the students. More recently, over the past several years, I’ve tried to change the way I ask questions. There’s nothing wrong with asking some of the lower-level Bloom questions – in fact they’re crucial to get everyone on the same page. But the teacher should not stop there, and neither should the student.

Yesterday, we were covering measurements and units in one of my classes. I planned several activities for the students to engage in to illustrate the key concepts. We started off with them trying to identify me as a perpetrator in a crime (guesstimating height and weight). This led to a discussion about how to calculate averages and when to use an arithmetic average, followed by discussing precision and accuracy, sources and types of errors, and how one makes measurements and calibrates a reference point. Then I used Archimedes’ Eureka moment by posing a number of questions both to get the students to think creatively and how to design an experiment. We calculated what the difference in water displacement might be between a solid gold crown and an alloy. (The quantity is much smaller than the students expected therefore requiring being creative about experimental design to measure as precisely and accurately as possible.) We then talked about the density of water, and I posed the question “How dense are you?” (to student chuckles) and talked about how you might estimate, calculate or measure your own personal density including methods that allowed you to stay dry during the measurement. This then led to a discussion of BMI (Body Mass Index). We did unit conversions, talked about S.I. units, and covered scientific notation.

I enjoyed the class. Hopefully the students did too – they seem engaged at least, although now that I know about the Norm of Civil Attention from Jay Howard’s book, maybe it’s not so easy to tell. Next up is delving into the structure of the atom, and reinforcing how science asks and answers questions.

A Different First Week of Class

Looking back at how I spent my time the first week of class last semester, things couldn't be more different. For one thing, I'm no longer department chair which frees up a chunk of time that would otherwise have gone to administrative beginning-of-semester issues. Although I'm teaching two classes this semester (rather than one last semester), I decided not to make major revamps of either although I am trying a few new things. Since I log my time closely, I was able to see that this past week I only spent 10 hours on class prep for both classes rather than the 25 hours I spent on a single class last time. I was rather ambitious last time by having a completely new first week (in terms of both content and approach). This time around, I was much more modest - recycling some old material amid a couple of redesigned short classroom activities. Also there was some amount of content overlap between the two classes.

The early part of the week was taken up with activities as a preceptor. I met my 18 new first-year (we're not supposed to call them "freshmen" any longer) advisees. There should have been 20, but two didn't show up for the meetings or for class. There is always some movement the first week when students have to swap classes and sometimes advisers. So far I've lost one and gained another so I'm still at 20. Since I did a good amount of class prep the week before, I had plenty of time to also meet with individual students and help them with any schedule changes. Several of my upperclass (soon we won't be able to use this word either) also stopped by to say hello. It's always fun to chat with them about their summer and their excitement about being back at school. (Yes, in general my students do seem happy to be back! It helps when you are located in an area with excellent weather.)

I was also able to make some progress in research, thinking about both my projects and my students' projects. My summer students are all continuing with research in my lab this semester and I was able to meet with all of them to do some paperwork (to sign up for credit) and to briefly discuss how to move their projects forward. I also had the luxury of catching up on some journal reading - mainly browsing through some of the key journals in my discipline to see if there are any interesting or relevant articles. (I try to also read articles that are interesting although not directly relevant to my research.) Since I have a course release from a research grant that I am using this semester, I should try to make more progress on the research front this semester.

It was great to be back in the classroom! I decided to put into practice a few techniques I had learned from Jay Howard's book on how to improve discussion in the college classroom. My plan was to avoid what is called the "norm of consolidation of responsibility" early in the semester and to get as many people involved in active discussion. My General Chemistry class has 20 students (who are also all my advisees) and my chemistry for non-science majors class has 40 students. Although I've learned the names of my 20 advisees (my focus for this week!), it will take me a while to learn the names of my other 40 students. Hence I did a lot of cold-calling on students, but gave them sufficient time to first gather their thoughts, write down some responses to my questions and also discuss them with one or two others sitting close by, before they had to speak up in class. Hopefully this sets up a good discussion atmosphere for the rest of the semester.


I'm already looking forward to Week 2 since I have some interesting activities planned for students! Well, I think they're interesting - we will see what the students think.

Amusing factoid: My first week of class would have coincided with Harry Potter's eldest son's first week at Hogwarts, at least according to J. K. Rowling.

The Norm of the Consolidation of Responsibility

As I begin a new semester, it’s good to be reminded of how to maximize classroom time to engage students in dynamic discussion. Hence I’ve been reading Jay Howard’s excellent Discussion in the College Classroom. The third chapter titled “The Challenge of Dominant Talkers” discusses the very common phenomenon where only a small number of students will actively engage and speak more than once. This seems to hold true even for small class sizes, unless the class is tiny (in the single digits). My classes are typically in the 20-40 range and I’ve certainly observed this to be the case. But I learned from Howard that there’s a name for this phenomenon: the norm of the consolidation of responsibility (started by Karp and Yoels in 1976).

Since there’s now a body of research into this norm, it is interesting to note some of the key findings. I’ll quote several sentences from Howard. “Students, particularly male students, have a tendency to significantly overestimate their level of participation in class discussion.” Apparently this can lead to “the perception that males dominate class discussion, which is not supported by the evidence.” Taking into account many studies, it turns out that student participation is overall similar regardless of gender.

Here’s another gender related observation. “Students will claim that instructor gender is not related to their level of participation in a course.” However it turns out that courses with women instructors have higher student participation in class discussion. Some suggested reasons to explain this include “female faculty members may be less likely than male faculty to rely on lecture as their sole pedagogical strategy.”

There are several other interesting correlations that Howard pulls together, but what was particularly useful in this chapter is his suggestions of how to overcome or reduce the norm of consolidation of responsibility. There are a few strategies on how to slow down dominant talkers, encouraging quiet students, creating an environment that aids non-native speakers, and making large classes feel smaller to the students. All these tips are familiar to those who read the literature on teaching and learning so there’s nothing earth-shattering here – but it’s a great reminder. So if you find this interesting, I encourage you to read Howard’s book.

A final interesting nugget in the chapter provided by Howard: In at least one study, “the great majority of questions asked by college professors were at the lowest cognitive level – memory-oriented questions.” Furthermore, “faculty in science, math, and engineering courses asked significantly more of these lower-level questions than did faculty in the humanities, sciences and arts.” This has now made me more conscious about the type of questions I ask in class. Turns out that the same study “did not find any significant differences by disciplinary area in the number of higher-order questions asked.” I’m not sure how to interpret this except that it might suggest that STEM professors ask more questions overall in class.

The next chapter is on “Students’ Differing Definitions of the Classroom”. I’m guessing that this means differing with faculty. I’m looking forward to reading it and being reminded of the student perspective!