To Write or Not to Write?
Is it a good or bad idea for a university academic to be writing textbooks at the moment? Are current conditions helpful or hostile? More particularly, what impact has the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) had on the status of textbook writing? And are there any signs from that last round of a change in policy or expectation?
But what do we mean by a textbook in the first place? Sure, its a book for teaching and learning and its written primarily with students and teachers in mind. But dont all academic books seek to teach and invite to learn, and arent we all in a fundamental sense students of our subjects? More pointedly, where exactly do we draw the lines between, say, elementary introduction and comprehensive companion; or between a reader of primary or secondary materials (itself a tricky distinction) and a collection of keyessays (whether specially commissioned or gathered retrospectively)? Dont we need to distinguish a mere pot-boiler from a genuinely fresh synthesis?
We also, inevitably, need to sort out what we mean by research. Sure, its what the particular subject community says it is, but there are differences within as well as between the arts and sciences; and even in applied or professional areas research can be applied and professed in a wide variety of ways. Certainly it cannot be exclusively limited to so-called discovery research, emphasizing discovery of the new and previously unknown. But there may still be anxiety about extending it to what may be termed recovery research, emphasizing recovery of the old and grasping
what was perhaps once known but may now be known differently. In any case, in practice most of us tend to move between or beyond these merely imagined poles. We explore the old/new in pursuit of the un/known. Our research is necessarily retrospective and recursive as well as prospective and progressive. It is in the fullest sense re-search — with an essentially dynamic and variable emphasis upon both elements, simultaneously or by turns.
All these issues have a direct bearing on what it is we think we are doing when we are communicating and developing our subject — whether as textbook and/or research monograph, for students and/or peers. Now that the immediate euphoria or depression of the last RAE has passed we have a sober view of the real costs and consequences: Is it worth it? What was it in the first place? Did it drive a wedge — or forge links —between teaching and research?
Textbooks are, I suggest, extremely sensitive and symptomatic indicators in these areas. They are exactly on the cusp of the Higher and the Education in Higher Education, and they flourish or languish according to the prevailing culture. For deeply principled as well as immediately practical reasons, then, it is important that we swap stories and compare histories about the appeals and perils of textbook writing. The latter is arguably the most palpable and durable interface between teaching and research. We are repeatedly enjoined to do both. But are we really encouraged and enabled to link them in this way? And what are the penalties as well as the prizes for attempting to do so?
A ‘disciplinary’ matter?
I speak from — but not for — the Arts and Humanities. Some of my colleagues in History or French or Music, not to mention my own subject of English, may have quite different takes on this. And perhaps things are widely different in the Sciences or Social Sciences, where papers rather than books are more central to research culture and study generally. Whats the news and what are the views from textbook writers in Biology or Geography, for instance? How representative is the observation made last November by Peter Atkins, a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and himself a well-established textbook writer (Times Higher Education Supplement Text-book Review, 30.11.2001, p. xii). Emphasizing the disincentives of the current climate in UK Higher Education, he observes:
The structure of British research is now such that the income of departments is so highly geared to research papers that Head of Departments are compelled to stamp on the green shoots of potential textbook authorship.
Has anybody at Oxford Brookes recently felt themselves to be stamped on — or felt compelled to be doing the stamping — I wonder? Or, to invoke a more familiar metaphor, what forms might the various sticks and carrots take? One may be that textbook writing is something that consenting academics are expected do in private in their own time (at weekends and in the holidays, say) and expect neither departmental recognition nor support for. (I have been fortunate in my department in this respect. Others, I know, havent.)
Another carrot — or perhaps its a stick (depending whos wielding it) — is that writers of textbooks are commonly supposed to make pots of money, and therefore shouldnt expect to dip into university coffers and public funds, too. (The premise of this is sadly untrue, as all but a very few writers of textbooks will confirm. Most writers dont make nearly enough to make up to their nearest and dearest for all those weekends and holidays in which they may be near —locked away upstairs — but anything but dear.)
Academic folklore and misconception are rife in these areas. It would be good to know from other people engaged in such activities what is really going on. Do they feel valued or marginal — on a money-spinner or a hiding for nothing...?
Changing climate – or rate of exchange?
So, is the climate for textbooks, along with other kinds of academic activity, currently changing? Or perhaps we need a less natural metaphor. After all, its a pretty hard-headed and palpably artificial environment in modern education. Maybe we had better talk of a political-economic notion of rate of exchange and of the relative value of textbooks.
My own experience is complex and contradictory and may or may not indicate a general trend. For instance, in the last but one RAE (1996) it was judged expedient to enter my work (a large textbook and associated articles) under Education. This was because, though the content was firmly within my area of English, the methodology was directly concerned with innovative pedagogy (in this case, ways of grasping texts through kinds of rewriting — parody, imitation, adaptation, etc.). The result was that my department got some money in from Education (who got a 3a) whereas we got nothing from our own entry (which got a 2). However, this last time round (2001), in the context of a substantially re-formed department, we decided to re-enter both that book and another larger textbook and associated chapters to the Englishpanel as such. Formal written feedback from that panel was generalized and non-specific, so its impossible to be sure how they perceived individual items and entries. However, it is difficult to believe that wed have got what we did (a 5) if my work had been entirely ruled out. And, indeed, spoken feedback by the chair of the English panel at a professional meeting later (Oxford, 26 April 2002) confirmed that they had adopted a capacious yet discriminating policy. They had not automatically discounted textbooks simply because that is what they were called by publishers, any more than they had automatically approved supposed ‘research' articles in prestigious specialist journals. The criterion in every case, he insisted, was that the work should be of substantial national or international significance to the subject or a part of it. This statement, coupled with the fact that several of the panel members were themselves writers of influential textbooks, was food for comfort.
It should be stressed, however, that none of this guarantees how things will be viewed next time round, in some future incarnation of the RAE. The precise constitution and balance of particular panels will inevitably be different. And the general ground-rules may be changed — and the goal-posts moved — yet again. (One disappointed Head of an English Department recently told me that she now wished they had entered a writer of a particularly well-known textbook, but had been advised against by the chair of the previous panel.). No doubt we are all aware of similar horror or scare stories. It would be good to compare notes on these, between as well as within disciplines, and preferably before not just after the next event.
We also need to keep a weather eye on the turbulent forces that are producing such partly unpredictable conditions. And as with global warming or acid rain, if there are changes in climate or atmosphere it is precisely because we have helped produce them –albeit accidentally, as a by-product. Indeed, if there is an increased need or demand for textbooks at exactly the same time as there is a potential threat to the production and supply of good ones, it is because weare collectively responsible for many of the contradictory processes that are contributing to this complex state of affairs.
Here, for instance, are some of the general educational and economic conditions that ought to favour the writing of textbooks at the present time:
- The sheer number and variety of students now in HE and the inability of libraries (even with the purchase of multiple copies and restricted borrowing arrangements) to cope with the demands on books and journals.
- The demand of fee-paying students and their parents for well-structured and resourced courses —in short, value for money.
- The fact that web-based learning, while hugely powerful in some ways, still needs a facilitating base or framework of paper as well as people: even the more free-standing systems (e.g. the Open University) build their multi-medial provision around core textbooks and course-books.
- The now relatively well-established subject-based Learning and Teaching Support Network and the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme; both are into their third year of running and already with many textbook and web-based projects in the pipeline (some of my own included).
In addition, there are some specific conditions here at Oxford Brookes that may be particularly conducive to the design and writing, encouraging and enabling of textbook writing:
- an explicit policy linking teaching and research, including internal seed-corn funding for small-scale projects along with notable success in securing large external funding (many of these have led to enhanced course materials and resources).
- a vigorous Publishing Department combining wide experience and expertise in publishing as a business as well as a subject study, including advanced work on the book-web interface (e.g. the MA in Electronic Publishing) and close links with localinternational publishers (Blackwell, OUP, etc.)
But there are also reasons why all these potentially promising conditions may not be sufficient to support a pervasive change in climate’— why the exchange ratemay continue to be set against textbook writing. Put baldly, but with some crucial qualifications, they are:
- Continuing domination of the RAE — if the latter remains skewed towards discovery research rather than re-covery re-search, and if the full value of both is not recognised across the board (differences and divisions in culture between, say, the Sciences and Humanities may continue to be crucial here).
- Continuing confusion about what it is we are really supposed to be doing and accountable for in HE — if an integrated vision of Higher Education is not forthcoming (by combining the functions of Teaching Quality and Research Assessment, for instance).
So what, finally, has all this got to do with textbook writing? Everything, I would insist. And as this is the premise upon which the present argument rests, I shall conclude it in terms that are both theoretical and polemical.
A manifesto for textbook writing:
- Textbook writing is a central, sensitive and symptomatic indicator of all that we do. Textbooks come into being and operate precisely on the cusp of teaching with research, of education with economics, and of a vision of knowledge as personal empowerment and satisfaction with one of knowledge as public commodity and techno-political power.
- Textbooks are the main interface where the notion of the subject in general is embodied in the particular heterogeneity of all the subjects who study it; it is therefore the major tool whereby subjects in every sense have lasting effects.
- Textbooks are also the main site where the fundamental structure and significance of the discipline is communicated and debated. It is therefore not only the place where the existing territories are consolidated and boundaries reinforced; but where the work of inter- and cross-disciplinary re-definition and re-negotiation goes on — publicly and accountably, amongst ones peers as well as students and, sometimes, a more general public.
- Textbooks are thus where specialist knowledge and skills are accumulated and made generally accountable as well as accessible. Thats why a good textbook is precious — and a bad one pernicious.
- In sum, the writing of good textbooks should be central — not marginal — to our higher educational mission as teachers and researchers.
This article was first published in Teaching Forum (an online magazine for teaching staff at Oxford Brookes University) no. 50, Autumn 2002
Newsletter Issue 5 - April 2003
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