Amanda Yesilbursa explains how Harry Potter’s boarding school Hogwarts could hold the key to better classroom interactions

Two years ago there were a series of events in my life that inspired me to devise some slightly unusual teachertraining techniques.

First, my twins had reached the age where they began to ‘get into’ J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, both the books and films. Repeated readings and viewings ensued during the winter break. Revisiting the series as a teacher-educator, I noticed the depictions of the highly ritualised school environment and the teachers in particular.

The second event was the sad loss of Alan Rickman and the effect it had on my prospective English language teachers. January 2016 witnessed many gloomy faces in the department and laments on social media over the passing of ‘Severus Snape’.

It struck home what an important place the eries had in the lives of some of my studentteachers. Indeed, many of them had been motivated to learn English in high school because of Harry.

“Teachers of all subject matters display their beliefs about content, 
learning and teaching in the way they set up interaction in the classroom”

Third, while all this was going on, I was preparing the schedule and material for a course on classroom interaction skills that I was to teach for the first time.

Why not incorporate the interest in Harry Potter and the images of teachers into my new course? Why not support academic readings on teachers’ beliefs and classroom interaction patterns with striking and engaging images of familiar teachers?

This way, it would be possible to tap into shared conceptualisations of teachers. Video clips provide concrete, objective records of behaviour and its effects on others.

Moreover, asking individuals to reflect on the behaviour of fictitious teachers, such as the Hogwarts teaching staff, can be less fraught with emotion than asking them to talk critically about real teachers who have had a significant role in their education.

OK, I know. Hogwarts teachers teach magic, not English.

But teachers of all subject matters display their beliefs about content, learning and teaching in the way they set up interaction in the classroom, and in the discourse they choose, often unconsciously, to bring about learning.

Anyway, who wouldn’t love to be able to cast an Accio Lingua Anglica spell and have their students fluent in English at the wave of a wand?

Although I originally had prospective English language teachers in mind, the activities I have developed are just as relevant for teachers of all levels of experience.

So, exactly how do the Hogwarts teachers help us to reflect on beliefs and classroom interaction patterns?

First, there are plenty of them, and they are varied and exist together within a single context, which provides continuity.

Second, the depictions of the teachers at Hogwarts are very stereotypical, even clichéd.

Their behaviour and way of dressing, and their subjects and methods of instruction fit in conveniently with other images of teachers in popular culture and literature.

The teachers I generally choose to focus on are Severus Snape, the potions master, Sybill Trelawney, head of the divination workshop, Gilderoy Lockhart, defence against the dark arts professor, and Dolores Umbridge, high inquisitor.

These characters provide sharp contrasts – Snape is severe, Trelawney a little dizzy, Lockhart narcissistic and Umbridge authoritarian.