Categories
Education Personal

You don’t have a right to believe whatever you want to

Do we have the right to believe whatever we want to believe? This supposed right is often claimed as the last resort of the wilfully ignorant, the person who is cornered by evidence and mounting opinion: ‘I believe climate change is a hoax whatever anyone else says, and I have a right to believe it!’ But is there such a right?

We do recognise the right to know certain things. I have a right to know the conditions of my employment, the physician’s diagnosis of my ailments, the grades I achieved at school, the name of my accuser and the nature of the charges, and so on. But belief is not knowledge.

Beliefs are factive: to believe is to take to be true. It would be absurd, as the analytic philosopher G E Moore observed in the 1940s, to say: ‘It is raining, but I don’t believe that it is raining.’ Beliefs aspire to truth – but they do not entail it. Beliefs can be false, unwarranted by evidence or reasoned consideration. They can also be morally repugnant. Among likely candidates: beliefs that are sexist, racist or homophobic; the belief that proper upbringing of a child requires ‘breaking the will’ and severe corporal punishment; the belief that the elderly should routinely be euthanised; the belief that ‘ethnic cleansing’ is a political solution, and so on. If we find these morally wrong, we condemn not only the potential acts that spring from such beliefs, but the content of the belief itself, the act of believing it, and thus the believer.

Such judgments can imply that believing is a voluntary act. But beliefs are often more like states of mind or attitudes than decisive actions. Some beliefs, such as personal values, are not deliberately chosen; they are ‘inherited’ from parents and ‘acquired’ from peers, acquired inadvertently, inculcated by institutions and authorities, or assumed from hearsay. For this reason, I think, it is not always the coming-to-hold-this-belief that is problematic; it is rather the sustaining of such beliefs, the refusal to disbelieve or discard them that can be voluntary and ethically wrong.

If the content of a belief is judged morally wrong, it is also thought to be false. The belief that one race is less than fully human is not only a morally repugnant, racist tenet; it is also thought to be a false claim – though not by the believer. The falsity of a belief is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a belief to be morally wrong; neither is the ugliness of the content sufficient for a belief to be morally wrong. Alas, there are indeed morally repugnant truths, but it is not the believing that makes them so. Their moral ugliness is embedded in the world, not in one’s belief about the world.

‘Who are you to tell me what to believe?’ replies the zealot. It is a misguided challenge: it implies that certifying one’s beliefs is a matter of someone’s authority. It ignores the role of reality. Believing has what philosophers call a ‘mind-to-world direction of fit’. Our beliefs are intended to reflect the real world – and it is on this point that beliefs can go haywire. There are irresponsible beliefs; more precisely, there are beliefs that are acquired and retained in an irresponsible way. One might disregard evidence; accept gossip, rumour, or testimony from dubious sources; ignore incoherence with one’s other beliefs; embrace wishful thinking; or display a predilection for conspiracy theories.

I do not mean to revert to the stern evidentialism of the 19th-century mathematical philosopher William K Clifford, who claimed: ‘It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.’ Clifford was trying to prevent irresponsible ‘overbelief’, in which wishful thinking, blind faith or sentiment (rather than evidence) stimulate or justify belief. This is too restrictive. In any complex society, one has to rely on the testimony of reliable sources, expert judgment and the best available evidence. Moreover, as the psychologist William James responded in 1896, some of our most important beliefs about the world and the human prospect must be formed without the possibility of sufficient evidence. In such circumstances (which are sometimes defined narrowly, sometimes more broadly in James’s writings), one’s ‘will to believe’ entitles us to choose to believe the alternative that projects a better life.

In exploring the varieties of religious experience, James would remind us that the ‘right to believe’ can establish a climate of religious tolerance. Those religions that define themselves by required beliefs (creeds) have engaged in repression, torture and countless wars against non-believers that can cease only with recognition of a mutual ‘right to believe’. Yet, even in this context, extremely intolerant beliefs cannot be tolerated. Rights have limits and carry responsibilities.

Unfortunately, many people today seem to take great licence with the right to believe, flouting their responsibility. The wilful ignorance and false knowledge that are commonly defended by the assertion ‘I have a right to my belief’ do not meet James’s requirements. Consider those who believe that the lunar landings or the Sandy Hook school shooting were unreal, government-created dramas; that Barack Obama is Muslim; that the Earth is flat; or that climate change is a hoax. In such cases, the right to believe is proclaimed as a negative right; that is, its intent is to foreclose dialogue, to deflect all challenges; to enjoin others from interfering with one’s belief-commitment. The mind is closed, not open for learning. They might be ‘true believers’, but they are not believers in the truth.

Believing, like willing, seems fundamental to autonomy, the ultimate ground of one’s freedom. But, as Clifford also remarked: ‘No one man’s belief is in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone.’ Beliefs shape attitudes and motives, guide choices and actions. Believing and knowing are formed within an epistemic community, which also bears their effects. There is an ethic of believing, of acquiring, sustaining, and relinquishing beliefs – and that ethic both generates and limits our right to believe. If some beliefs are false, or morally repugnant, or irresponsible, some beliefs are also dangerous. And to those, we have no right.Aeon counter – do not remove

Daniel DeNicola

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

Categories
Books Personal

The miscellaneous bookshelf

Through the threshold library

Miscellaneous bookshelf

Simply a list of all the other books I have read recently that has nothing to do with education or biology. Quite often, especially during term time, I just find I need an escape from thinking about learning and teaching. Horror and Sci-Fi/Fantasy is where I tend to go. Now that I am moving to China, I have parted company with many of my books and so want to keep a record of them here.

  1. What is this thing called knowledge? – by Duncan Pritchard. Read as part of Oxford Universities online CPD course – theory of knowledge
  2. Epistemology: Contemporary readings – edited by Michael Huemer
  3. Raising babies – by Steve Biddulph
  4. American Gods – by Neil Gaiman
  5. Neverwhere – by Neil Gaiman
  6. How the Marquis got his coat back – by Neil Gaiman
  7. Stardust – by Neil Gaiman
  8. The ocean at the end of the lane – by Neil Gaiman
  9. Anansi boys – by Neil Gaiman
  10. The rise and fall of D.O.D.O – by Neil Stephenson and Nicole Galland
  11. How to stop time – by Matt Haig
  12. Coraline – by Neil Gaiman
  13. The graveyard book – by Neil Gaiman
  14. Fragile things – by Neil Gaiman
  15. Smoke and mirrors – by Neil Gaiman
  16. His Dark Materials: The complete trilogy – by Philip Pullman
  17. Trigger Warning – by Neil Gaiman
  18. Norse Mythology – by Neil Gaiman
  19. Good Omens – by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
  20. The problems of philosophy – by Bertrand Russell
  21. Seven Storey Mountain – by Thomas Merton
  22. Seveneves – by Neal Stephenson
  23. Never let me go – by Kazuo Ishiguro
  24. Religion for Atheists – by Alain de Botton
  25. The Remains of the day – by Kazuo Ishiguro
  26. Fireflies – by Shiva Naipaul
  27. The Young Atheist’s Handbook: Lessons for living a good life without God – by Alom Shaha
  28. Raising girls – by Steve Biddulph
  29. Full catastrophe living – by Jon Kabat Zinn
  30. The moral landscape – by Sam Harris
  31. A Universe from nothing – by Laurence Krauss
  32. Nonviolent Communication – by Marshall Rosenberg
  33. The last child in the woods – by Richard Louv
  34. The Baroque cycle (3 books) – by Neal Stephenson
  35. The rational optimist – by Matt Ridley
  36. All the Evelyn Waugh novels and travel writing
  37. Game of thrones
Categories
Books Personal

My reads by year

Through the threshold library

My reads by year

A list of the all the books I have read each year.

2024

  1. Interview with the vampire – Anne Rice
  2. The Epigenetics Revolution – Nessa Carey
  3. Transformer – Nick Lane
  4. Dune – Frank Herbert
  5. Dune Messiah – Frank Herbert
  6. Children of Dune – Frank Herbert
  7. God Emperor of Dune – Frank Herbert
  8. Heretics of Dune – Frank Herbert
  9. Chapterhouse: Dune – Frank Herbert
  10. The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss
  11. The Wise Man’s Fear – Patrick Rothfuss
  12. The Three-Body Problem – Cixin Liu
  13. The Dark Forest – Cixin Liu
  14. Death’s End – Cixin Liu
  15. A Fire Upon the Deep – Vernor Vigne

2023

  1. Winter Ghosts – Kate Mosse
  2. In the Heart of the Amazon Forest – Walter Henry Bates
  3. Spare – Prince Harry
  4. Superior – Angela Saini
  5. Inferior – Angela Saini
  6. Black and British – David Olusoga
  7. Goodbye, Dr Banda – Alexander Chula
  8. Sad Little Men – Richard Beard
  9. Purple Hibiscus – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  10. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
  11. No Longer At Ease – Chinua Achebe
  12. Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
  13. This is not America: Why Black Lives in Britain Matter – Tomiwa Owolade
  14. Otherlands: A World in the Making – Thomas Halliday
  15. Sea of Poppies – Amitav Ghosh
  16. River of Smoke – Amitav Ghosh
  17. Flood of Fire – Amitav Ghosh
  18. Black Swan Green – David Mitchell
  19. Number 9 Dream – David Mitchell

2022

  1. Winners Take All – Anand Giridharadas
  2. Orientalism – Edward Said
  3. Poor Economics – Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
  4. The Great Education Robbery – Nigel Gann
  5. Mission Economy – A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism – Mariana Mazzucato
  6. The Tyranny of Merit – Michael Sandel
  7. Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  8. The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality? – Cheikh Anta Diop
  9. Capital in the 21st Century – Thomas Piketty
  10. What is Life? – Paul Nurse
  11. At the edge of uncertainty – Michael Brooks

2021

  1. Divided: Why we are living in an age of walls – Tim Marshall
  2. A brief history of neoliberalism – David Harvey
  3. Capitalism and Freedom – Milton Friedman
  4. Development as Freedom – Amartya Sen
  5. The Beautiful Tree – James Tooley
  6. Dictators without borders: Power and Money in Central Asia – Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw
  7. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism – Benedict Anderson
  8. Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack – Richard Ovenden
  9. The Debt Delusion: Living within our means and other fallacies – John Weeks
  10. Nations and Nationalism – Ernest Gellner
  11. 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism – Ha Joon Chang
  12. Decolonising the Mind – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
  13. A History of the Bible – John Barton
  14. The Wretched of the Earth – Frantz Fanon
  15. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa – Walter Rodney
  16. White Skin, Black Masks – Frantz Fanon
  17. The Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein
  18. It Takes A School – Jonathan Starr
  19. The Fortunes of Wangrin – Amadou Hampaté Ba
  20. Empireland: How Imperialism has shaped Modern Britain – Sathnam Sanghera
  21. Bite of the Mango – Mariatu Kamara

2020

  1. When breath becomes air – Paul Kalanithi
  2. The Dispossessed – Ursula Le Guin
  3. The Book of Humans – Adam Rutherford
  4. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
  5. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexander Dumas
  6. An American Marriage – Tayari Jones
  7. Four Ways to Forgiveness – Ursula Le Guin
  8. The Telling – Ursula Le Guin
  9. Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
  10. A Quiet Education – Jamie Thom
  11. The Way We Live Now – Anthony Trollope
  12. Let My People Go Surfing – Yvon Chouinard
  13. The Divide – Jason Hickel
  14. Global Education Policy and International Development 2nd Ed. – Verger et al
  15. Slade House – David Mitchell
  16. K & R – James Smythe
  17. Sultana’s Dream – Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
  18. Ghostwritten – David Mitchell
  19. Three Circles into One – William Waldegrave
  20. Less is more – Jason Hickel
  21. On fire: the burning case for a green new deal – Naomi Klein
  22. Debt: The First 5000 Years – David Graeber

2019

  1. Trivium 21c – by Martin Robinson
  2. Prisoners of Geography – by Tim Marshall
  3. The Left Hand of Darkness – by Ursula Le Guin
  4. I am Pilgrim – by Terry Hayes
  5. The Handmaid’s Tale – by Margaret Attwood
  6. Slaughter House 5 – by Kurt Vonnegut
  7. A Wizard of Earthsea – by Ursula Le Guin
  8. The Tombs of Atuan – by Ursula Le Guin
  9. The Farthest Shore – by Ursula Le Guin
  10. Tales from Earthsea – by Ursula Le Guin
  11. The Other Wind – by Ursula Le Guin
  12. The Three-Body Problem – by Cixin Liu
  13. The Righteous Mind – by Jonathan Haidt
  14. The Curriculum – Gallimaufry to coherence – by Mary Myatt
  15. School Leadership and education system reform – edited by Peter Earley and Toby Greany
  16. Rocannan’s World – by Ursula Le Guin
  17. Planet of Exile – by Ursula Le Guin
  18. City of Illusions – by Ursula Le Guin
  19. The Word for World is Forest – by Ursula Le Guin
  20. Single & Single – John Le Carré
  21. How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy – Julian Baggini
  22. The Coddling of the American Mind – Greg Lukinoff and Jonathan Haidt
  23. Blueprint: How DNA makes us who we are – Robert Plomin
  24. The New Silk Roads – Peter Frankopan
  25. The Paper Menagerie – Ken Liu
  26. All That Man Is – David Salazay
  27. The Bone Clocks- David Mitchell
  28. The Machine – James Smythe

2018

  1. What is this thing called knowledge? – by Duncan Pritchard. Read as part of Oxford Universities online CPD course – theory of knowledge
  2. Epistemology: Contemporary readings – edited by Michael Huemer
  3. What if everything you knew about education was wrong? – by David Didau – my review.
  4. Cleverlands – by Lucy Crehan
  5. Seven myths about education – by Daisy Christodoulou
  6. Making good progress? – by DaisyChristodoulou
  7. Why knowledge matters: rescuing our children from failed educational theories – by E.D. Hirsch
  8. Ouroboros –  by Greg Ashman
  9. What does this look like in the classroom? – by Carl Hendrick and Robin MacPherson
  10. The Sword of Honour Trilogy – by Evelyn Waugh
  11. Millionaire Teacher – by Andrew Hallam
  12. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – by Yuval Noah Harari
  13. Millionaire Expat – by Andrew Hallam
  14. Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China today, how it got there and why it has to change – by Jonathan Fenby
  15. A parent’s guide to raising kids Overseas (Volume 1) – by Jeff Devens
  16. Homo Deus: a brief history of tomorrow – by Yuval Noah Harari
  17. Fierce conversations: achieving success in work and in life, one conversation at a time – by Susan Scott
  18. The first 90 days, updated and expanded; proven strategies for getting up to speed faster and smarter – by Michael D. Watkins
  19. 21 lessons for the 21st Century – by Yuval Noah Harari
  20. Fahrenheit 451 – by Ray Bradbury
  21. Brave new world – by Aldous Huxley
  22. This is going to hurt – by Adam Kay
  23. Educated – Tara Westover

2017

  1. Raising babies – by Steve Biddulph
  2. A brief history of everyone who ever lived – by Adam Rutherford
  3. Patient H.M. – by Luke Dittrich
  4. The Serengeti rules – by Sean Carroll
  5. Battle hymn of the tiger teachers: the Michaela way – edited by Katherine Birbalsingh
  6. American Gods – by Neil Gaiman
  7. Neverwhere – by Neil Gaiman
  8. How the Marquis got his coat back – by Neil Gaiman
  9. Stardust – by Neil Gaiman
  10. The ocean at the end of the lane – by Neil Gaiman
  11. Anansi boys – by Neil Gaiman
  12. The rise and fall of D.O.D.O – by Neil Stephenson and Nicole Galland
  13. What every teacher needs to know about psychology – by David Didau and Nick Rose
  14. How to stop time – by Matt Haig
  15. Why don’t students like school? – by Daniel Willingham
  16. Coraline – by Neil Gaiman
  17. The graveyard book – by Neil Gaiman
  18. Fragile things – by Neil Gaiman
  19. Smoke and mirrors – by Neil Gaiman
  20. His Dark Materials: The complete trilogy – by Philip Pullman
  21. Trigger Warning – by Neil Gaiman
  22. Norse Mythology – by Neil Gaiman
  23. Good Omens – by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

2016

  1. How to raise an adult – by Julie Lythcott-Haims – my review.
  2. What is the point of school? – by Guy Claxton
  3. Making thinking visible – by Ron Richhardt – my review.
  4. Aping mankind – by Raymond Tallis
  5. Getting Darwin wrong – by Brendan Wallace
  6. The problems of philosophy – by Bertrand Russell
  7. Why evolution is true – by Jerry Coyne
  8. Faith vs fact – by Jerry Coyne
  9. Seven Storey Mountain – by Thomas Merton
  10. Seveneves – by Neal Stephenson
  11. Never let me go – by Kazuo Ishiguro
  12. What is the point of school – by Guy Claxton
  13. Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End – by Atul Gawande
  14. Religion for Atheists – by Alain de Botton
  15. The Remains of the day – by Kazuo Ishiguro
  16. Fireflies – by Shiva Naipaul
  17. The Young Atheist’s Handbook: Lessons for living a good life without God – by Alom Shaha
  18. Justice – Michael Sandel
  19. The vital question: why is life the way it is? – by Nick Lane

2015

  1. The brain at school: educational neuroscience in the classroom – by John Geake
  2. Classroom-based research and evidence-based practice – by Keith Taber
  3. Ways of learning: learning theories and learning styles in the classroom – by Alan Pritchard
  4. Pedagogy of the oppressed – by Paolo Freire
  5. Visible learning for teachers – by John Hattie
  6. Thinking, fast and slow – by Daniel Kahneman
  7. Raising girls – by Steve Biddulph
  8. Full catastrophe living – by Jon Kabat Zinn
  9. The moral landscape – by Sam Harris
  10. A Universe from nothing – by Laurence Krauss

2014

  1. Good work – by Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and William Damon
  2. Intelligence reframed – by Howard Gardner
  3. Contemporary theories of learning – by Knud Illeris
  4. Teaching as if life matters – by Christopher Uhl
  5. Nonviolent Communication – by Marshall Rosenberg
  6. The last child in the woods – by Richard Louv
  7. The sixth extinction: an unnatural history – by Elizabeth Kolbert
  8. Neanderthal man – by Svante Paabo
  9. The serpents promise – by Steve Jones
  10. The language of life – by Francis Collins
  11. Creation: the origin of life/the future of life – by Adam Rutherford
  12. Your inner fish – by Neil Shubin
  13. Life Ascending – by Nick Lane
  14. The Baroque cycle (3 books) – by Neal Stephenson
  15. The magic of reality – by Richard Dawkins

Earlier

  1. Bad Science – by Ben Goldacre
  2. Thirteen things that don’t make sense – by Michael Brooks
  3. The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks – by Rebecca Skloot
  4. The rational optimist – by Matt Ridley
  5. Quantum evolution: the new science of life – by Johnjoe Mcfadden
  6. The diversity of life – by E.O. Wilson
  7. Impossibility – by John Barrow
  8. Collapse – by Jared Diamond
  9. The self illusion – by Bruce Hood
  10. The selfish gene – by Richard Dawkins
  11. Genome – by Matt Ridley
  12. The secret life of trees – by Colin Tudge
  13. The man who mistook his wife for a hat – Oliver Sacks
  14. The Handmaid’s tail – by Margaret Atwood
  15. The Inheritors – by William Golding
  16. The Baroque cycle – by Neal Stephenson
  17. The greatest show on earth – by Richard Dawkins
  18. The song of the Dodo – by David Quammen
  19. The lives of a cell – by Lewis Thomas
  20. Fifty ideas you really need to know – by Hayley Birch
  21. The violinists thumb – by Sam Keen
  22. All the Evelyn Waugh novels and travel writing
  23. Game of thrones
Categories
Personal Teaching & Learning

What I learned about teaching biology this year 17-18

In 2016 I wrote this blog post. My answer to that question is now decidedly, yes. Content is King.

In this post, I want to explore why this is the case and outline what my ideas are now in relation to teaching biology.

The importance of content?

First, I should point out that a re-reading of my 2016 article makes me realise that I never concluded by suggesting content wasn’t king. Like all good questions, the article title helps to stimulate thought and a discussion about where we are at in our beliefs and in defending those beliefs. Really, the argument I was making was that teaching is not all about teaching content, but about teaching content AND encouraging critical thought with that content matter.

Content underpins everything. It underpins thinking. You can’t think without something to think about. It underpins understanding. You can’t understand something that is not represented as a propositional claim at a basic level. You can’t develop “skills” that aren’t grounded in some form of understanding.

When I am talking about content, I am referring to facts or propositional knowledge, statements that are thought to be true and are about the way the biological world is.

Propositional knowledge then must have primacy in teaching biology. To my mind, currently, propositional knowledge can be broken up into facts and concepts. Facts cannot be understood, they can only be known. Whereas concepts can be known and understood.

I think that to achieve deep, flexible, biological knowledge (flexible in the sense that it can be thought about in the abstract and applied in new situations) students need to achieve a conceptual understanding of the major themes in biology.

To do this they must first meet domain-specific examples. From those examples, they can then begin to pull out the commonalities to allow the mind to achieve an understanding of an abstract concept. My post here outlines how I went about this when teaching natural selection this year.

Learning domain-specific facts cumulatively builds to domain-specific conceptual understanding which accumulates in the learner being able to think in terms of these concepts and apply them elsewhere.

The importance of presenting content in the “right” sequence

Related to the idea of sequencing teaching so that we build up to conceptual understanding from specific examples, is the idea that we need to sequence teaching to avoid cognitive overload. To do this we need to think about which areas of the curriculum provide just enough challenge to engage students but not so much so they are overwhelmed.

In teaching biology, I think this is best achieved by teaching those areas with the least new propositional knowledge for the learner. Once the learner achieves mastery of this new knowledge then we can begin to add more.

In this sense, when trying to teach the understanding of the relationship of structure and function we may wish to look at studying the function first of any new example, before looking at the structures that support that function. Developing knowledge of the function of something might contain less instances of “facts” than the discrete structures that build up that function.

Once we have looked at lots of examples of, say, the relationship between surface area and diffusion, students will build up to the understanding of the relationship generally, and hopefully be able to apply this in new and novel ways.

Retrieval practice embedding content for the long-term

Drill and kill, right? Apparently not. My reading this year has convinced me that giving students the chance to practice retrieving information, not only builds their confidence that they can perform, and therefore reduces stress but also improves their ability to retrieve that information and therefore improves its storage in long term memory.

The same goes for learning the language of the subject and so now I try to begin my lessons with a fun low stakes retrieval practice activity. Low stakes in the sense that I do not record results and store them; students are not graded. For this I have prepared a deck of quizlet terms for the DP biology course and I alternate between using these or simply giving students a series of MCQ’s from last lesson, last week, last month and last term.

Interleaving & spaced practice – what might this look like in biology?

A year ago, on the Facebook AP/IB Biology teachers group, I first asked the question of what interleaving might look like in a biology course. I had been hearing a lot about interleaving during meetings and inset training from our DP Coordinator who is a Maths teacher. It seems that interleaving has been studied quite a bit in mathematics education.

When I asked the question, hardly anyone was aware of this concept amongst the biology teachers and I was stumped. I now have some ideas.

Interleaving or spaced practice is the idea that instead of learning all the content for a particular topic at once or in a set of continuous lessons, you space out the learning over time, revisiting topics over time.

In my experience, I have always taught a topic like cell structure and then moved onto the next topic, maybe membrane structure followed by membrane function – and I think that this is true of most biology courses.

In an interleaved curriculum these topics would be spaced out in time. Let’s imagine you have a 60min lesson every day with the same class, so five lessons a week. In an interleaved curriculum you may devote Mondays to cell structure, Tuesday to metabolism, Wednesday to plant physiology, Thursday to animal physiology and Friday to retrieval practice.

You would then teach the content of these units side by side over a number of weeks. It sounds a bit crazy but it has been demonstrated to improve long-term retention of learning and I am also excited by the possibility for the conceptual links you can make by teaching in this way.