Exploring Teachers in Fiction and Film

Saviors, Scapegoats and Schoolmarms

Melanie Shoffner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138944404
• eBook ISBN: 9781317371670
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Film & Video

This book about teachers as characters in popular media examines what can be learned from fictional teachers for the purposes of educating real teachers. Its aim is twofold: to examine the constructed figure of the teacher in film, television and text and to apply that examination in the context of teacher education. By exploring the teacher construct, readers are able to consider how popular fiction and film have influenced society's understandings and views of classroom teachers.

Organized around four main themes—Identifying with the Teacher Image; Constructing the Teacher with Content; Imaging the Teacher as Savior; The Teacher Construct as Commentary—the chapters examine the complicated mixture of fact, stereotype and misrepresentation that create the image of the teacher in the public eye today. This examination, in turn, allows teacher educators to use popular culture as curriculum. Using the fictional teacher as a text, preservice—and practicing—teachers can examine positive and negative (and often misleading) representations of teachers in order to develop as teachers themselves.

Part I

Identifying With the Teacher Image

We teachers are rather good at magic, you know.

—Professor Minerva McGonagall

Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.

—Ophelia

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

—Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

1

Looking Into the Mirror of Erised

Transacting With Representations of Hogwarts’ Teachers and Pedagogy

Dawan Coombs
Jonathan Ostenson

The Mirror of Erised, a magical device introduced in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling, 1997), shows those who look into it their heart’s deepest desire. When the orphan Harry looks into the mirror, he sees his dead parents and relatives; Ron, the youngest brother from a large family, sees himself as captain of the house Quidditch team, emerging from the shadows of his siblings. If we, as teacher educators, were to look into the mirror, we might see our preservice teachers immersed in the field, gaining valuable experience with students in classrooms. Our preservice teachers might see clear-cut, easily applicable solutions to the challenges they expect to face in the classroom as practicing teachers.

Unfortunately, achieving these desires requires more than a longing gaze and wishful thinking. Still, we find the Mirror of Erised a fitting metaphor for the journey we took with our preservice teachers when we invited them to reread the Harry Potter series (Rowling, 1997–2007) through the eyes of a future teacher. Reflecting on representations of teachers and teaching, however fanciful they might be, helped our preservice teachers consider the realities of what they ultimately wanted to become as classroom teachers. In this chapter, we examine how representations of teachers and teaching portrayed in the series allowed our preservice teachers to apply learning from their methods courses to the Hogwarts context while deepening their understandings of the discipline. We conclude with a discussion of potential implications of this work for teacher education programs, particularly how transacting with representations of teachers in young adult literature may influence preservice teachers’ perceptions of their own ultimate roles.

Context of the Issues

Many children’s and young adult texts embody the notion of “erziehungsroman” or the “school story,” showcasing experiences of students, schools and education as part of the journey into adulthood (Atwood & Lee, 2007). The Harry Potter series embodies this concept well; amidst the fantasy-filled adventures of Harry and his friends, their stories provide fodder for discussion about real-life educational issues (Mullen, 2000). Multiple books in the series exemplify “the good, the bad and the ugly” (Booth & Booth, 2003, p. 313) in student-centered education as the Hogwarts teachers and system wrestle with principles such as differentiated instruction, cooperative learning, mentoring and Vygotskian social constructivist theories of modeling, scaffolding and relevance. Representative of actual student experiences with teachers, classes and individuals (Houston, 2011), the narratives also invite readers to contemplate moral issues in education (Glanzer, 2008) and to examine representations of educational systems, faculty evaluation and academic freedom (Sheppard, 2008).

Studies document the use of erziehungsroman literature as a means for preservice and practicing teachers to explore issues of diversity and teenage experience (Brindley & Laframboise, 2002; DeGroot, 2011; Mason, 2010), culture and pedagogy (Laframboise & Griffith, 1997) in conjunction with professional development (Back, Choate & Parker, 2011). We envisioned the Harry Potter texts working in similar ways. As the preservice teachers read through their “teacher lens”—developed as a result of semesters in methods courses and classroom observations—they would be better able to attend to details overlooked or seemingly insignificant in previous readings.

This notion of attending finds a theoretical basis in Rosenblatt’s (1995) transactional theory that explains how readers may produce different interpretations of the same text at different times in their lives, based on the conditions under which the text is encountered. She explains that these conditions may make readers “especially receptive or especially impervious to what the work offers” (p. 35). For our preservice teachers, being in the midst of their pedagogical training and on the cusp of their student teaching provided the conditions that allowed them to transact with ideas in new ways. Rosenblatt (1995) explained that readers approach texts with their own unique “personality traits, memories of past events, present needs and preoccupations” (p. 30) that influence how they respond to characters, situations and ideas presented in the text. In other words, meaning comes not just from the printed words but also from what readers bring to their reading.

Given this theory, we chose the Harry Potter series (Rowling, 1997–2007) in part because our preservice teachers grew up alongside Harry, Ron and Hermione as members of the Harry Potter Generation (Browne, 2009; Houston, 2011). Through multiple readings of the books, viewings of the movies and even participation in fan sites like Pottermore.com, their intense attachment and interest provided motivation to participate in the project and engage in dialogue with one another. More importantly, their immersion in the world of Harry Potter created a strong context within which to productively reflect on issues of teachers and teaching. Our conception of productive reflection comes from Moore-Russo and Wilsey (2014), who characterized reflection as productive when it considers teaching and learning in relation to the environment, the students’ needs, the subject and the teachers’ expectations; compares and builds on past experiences, others’ perspectives, educational theories and educational research; and emphasizes and integrates a variety of aspects of teaching.

The Harry Potter Book Club

During the 2013 fall semester, we invited all preservice English teachers enrolled in the methods courses at our university to join a book club examining portrayals of teachers and teaching in the Harry Potter series. Of those invited, Kelly, Natalie, Wendy, Rachel, Thomas and Scott (all names are pseudonyms) committed to reread the series with us. Our group of four women and two men, all White college students between the ages of 20 and 24, represented a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. All were accepted into the English teaching program but represented a range of abilities and academic achievement. They were not compensated for participating in the group, aside from what they gained in the discussions and exploration.

The club focused on one book in the series each month and met for a total of six 90-minute sessions. Each meeting began with the prompt, “What teaching and learning practices did you observe in the book?” which launched a free-flowing discussion, with preservice teachers responding to the question, referencing markings or annotations in their books and sharing insights they had while reading.

As researchers, our role consisted primarily of noting major topics and directions of discussion, recording observations of interactions and, at times, making connections between the discussion and educational research; on rare occasions, we highlighted significant insights we had while reading. Occasionally we asked follow-up questions to clarify a comment; at other times, we answered questions posed by the preservice teachers. Throughout, our main goal was to create a forum for them to discuss and explore their reactions, insights and connections.

Each meeting was audio-recorded and later transcribed by an undergraduate research assistant. We coded the transcripts, our observations and participant feedback and then conducted a thematic analysis of the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006), identifying themes that resonated in the group’s analysis of the books. Through this analysis, we identified ways in which the preservice teachers explored representations of teaching and how they applied those to their future experiences.

Transacting With Representations of Teaching

The preservice teachers engaged most frequently and meaningfully with three major representations of teachers and teaching: pedagogy, curriculum and students. In the sections that follow, we discuss the significance of these transactions for their understandings of the role of the teacher.

Representations of Pedagogy

The pedagogical approaches of various Hogwarts teachers became the focus of numerous book club discussions. For our preservice teachers, Lupin (Defense Against the Dark Arts professor by day, werewolf by night) and his nurturing pedagogy often represented approaches worth emulating, while the methods of Snape, Umbridge, Trelawney, Hagrid and even Dumbledore (at times) proved problematic. In a sense, the characters served as case studies where our preservice teachers could apply their own experiences as they critiqued. For example, Natalie explained,

A lot of teachers at Hogwarts are there not because of their teaching ability. Like Hagrid—I mean, I love the guy—but he’s a terrible teacher … He has no training, he has no curriculum, there’s no oversight. He apparently can do whatever he wants, which, as much as I love Hagrid, putting 13-year-olds in front of deadly beasts is probably not your best plan.

Concerns about preparation and training echoed throughout our discussions. As seen in Natalie’s comment, we observed preservice teachers taking on the role of classroom observer, critiquing teachers’ approaches and philosophies represented in the narrative while seeking to separate themselves from their personal feelings or sympathies for individual characters. In this way, they interrogated teacher intervention in students’ learning, the challenges teachers extended to students and the extent to which these activities motivated students.

Our preservice teachers quickly identified less effective teaching approaches in opposition to the student-centered, constructivist frameworks they were exposed to in their coursework. Professor Binns’s lecture-based history class was an obvious example, but other professors’ efforts fell into this category as well. During a discussion about one of Snape’s lessons, Thomas explained his understanding of student-centered versus teacher-centered approaches to instruction:

When Hermione tries to actually answer [Snape’s] question … he says, “I was under the impression that I am teaching this lesson, not you.” It’s so against the way we should teach. [His approach is] the old standard way of teaching with lecture: The teacher knows everything, and the students are helpless … He refuses any attempt at the students trying to teach each other.

In contrast, Lupin’s methods provided multiple examples of student-centered teaching and learning. In one lesson, Lupin challenges the self-doubting Neville Longbottom to defend himself against a fearsome boggart; Lupin clearly explains the steps of the defensive spell and even intercedes a bit when necessary but allows Neville to successfully dispel the creature. This narrative event provided an opportunity for our preservice teachers to consider how Lupin positioned students as competent learners.

Dumbledore’s methods, on the other hand, elicited more ambivalent responses from the preservice teachers. They criticized Dumbledore’s absence at key moments in the book, while simultaneously wondering if this absence represented a teaching technique by not stepping in, even when students seemed in dire straits (as with the fight with the mountain troll in the girls’ bathroom). They believed that Dumbledore displayed trust and confidence in students by allowing them to learn independently through hands-on, trial-and-error experiences, but they wondered about his methods. The tension they expressed in these discussions about Dumbledore revealed their efforts to integrate their own developing pedagogical understandings with the choices of these fictional teachers. At the same time, our preservice teachers became increasingly aware of how their expectations could inform the treatment of their future students. In speaking of Lupin’s confidence in Neville, Thomas explained what it suggested about his own interactions with students:

I think expectations are important not only for our students, because they’ll feel a sense of empowerment if we at least make our [high] expectations known. But also, even subconsciously we treat people differently, depending on our expectations.

This excerpt is representative of multiple instances throughout the meetings where Thomas wrestled with his responsibility to set high expectations. Many of the other preservice teachers also discussed moments in the novels when the characters were asked to accomplish feats that seemed beyond their ability and the role these tasks played in their learning.

As teacher educators, we recognize that the motif of adolescents facing challenges alone so they can grow and mature also has pedagogical implications that point toward teacher expectations for students and the challenges they provide for student growth. We were gratified to hear our preservice teachers make that same connection in their analysis of Hogwarts teachers. Our preservice teachers drew contrasts between teachers like Snape, Trelawney and Umbridge, who demonstrated explicit doubt in students’ potential for success because they lacked “the gift” for a particular sort of magic, and teachers like Lupin and Dumbledore, who pushed students to do hard things and provided support that enabled students to succeed. For example, after discussing why Lupin would challenge Harry to learn a particularly difficult spell that causes him to pass out, Scott explained,

I also think that failure is an important part of learning … a lot of times I think we do students a disservice if we’re not putting them in situations where we know they’re going to fail. It can be really hard, but I think you can learn so much in those situations and I didn’t have a lot of situations like that in high school.

Here, Scott brings his own school experiences, as well as his beliefs, into dialogue with the events portrayed in the book. Natalie echoed Scott’s idea when she concluded, “When the student has a good reason for learning and really believes they can do it, then maybe it doesn’t even matter what the teacher thinks,” suggesting the critical importance of student motivation. Rachel also noted that when Harry and others had a clear purpose for their learning, they experienced greater success, which she connected to her coursework:

In my practicum class we were talking about lesson plans and the objectives that we have and the “Students will be able to” phrase. Well, [my methods professor] mentioned you should tell your students what this phrase is so that they know what they’re supposed to learn … so they have some type of start as to where they should go.

Inspired by the innate curiosity displayed by Harry and company, Scott linked the conversation back to motivation as he referenced a TED Talk he watched about the relationship between curiosity and learning:

The greatest gateway to real learning is curiosity … No one inquires about something because they are asked to inquire. That’s not inquiry, that’s an assignment … But how can we make kids curious? Like really, sincerely curious, where they want to inquire about something?

His question, we feel, is a significant one, arising from the intersection of his own experience, his education and his reading of the books. Our preservice teachers often referred to the independent learning that Harry, Ron and Hermione engaged in outside of class to accomplish meaningful, relevant tasks: saving the hippogriff required significant library research, creating a polyjuice potion required creative problem solving and forming Dumbledore’s Army to supplement the school’s defensive instruction showed self-directed learning at its best.

Representations of Curriculum

As often as they explored questions of teacher practice, our preservice teachers also explored questions related to c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Identifying With the Teacher Image
• Part II Constructing the Teacher With Content
• Part III Imaging the Teacher as Savior
• Part IV The Teacher Construct as Commentary
• List of Contributors
• Index