Hi Everyone,

A few comments, sparked by this tread…

First, I’m grateful to those of you who like my book, and very grateful to those of you who have actually bought it.  One day I may get that conservatory from the royalties.  Just got a wicker chair at the moment …

I think it’s the only book out there that has extracts from real fellowship applications. And thanks to all of you who contributed those (which I anonymised in the book, but you know who you are). For those of you that don’t know the book, it’s available from all good retail outlets at a very unreasonable price:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Enhancing-Learning-Teaching-Higher-Education/dp/0335264166/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Lea+Enhancing&qid=1580045503&sr=8-1

When I ran a PG Cert, I took the view that no one book would cut it and chose a few main texts for each module.  On L T and A, I always stuck with Ramsden, Race, Biggs and Tang, and Fry et al.  Indeed, when I was putting my book together, I said in the preface that I expected people to consult these authoritative texts.  I considered my book to be complementary to these texts rather than in competition with them. But Cordelia Bryan did do a great job of covering some of this core knowledge in chapter one. I also love Cordelia’s book on HE assessment which I would consider an essential text – for the L,T and A part of a course, at least: Cordelia Bryan and Karen Clegg (eds) Innovative Assessment in Higher Education: A Handbook for Academic Practitioner 2^nd edition.

A key aim for my book was to stick to the mantra that I didn’t want to tell people want to think, but rather give people some things to think about.  Hence the contrasting perspectives throughout the book (e.g. pro and anti-learning outcomes). I wanted to convey that all HE pedagogy is contested territory.  I thought that would make the book stand apart, but still on the assumption that people would consult other texts.  I particularly liked Helen Beetham’s treatment of the digital world in the book – sticking to some key principles and issues, rather than discussing actual digital platforms, which come and go – and are discussed in more specialist texts.

I also wanted to widen the scope a bit more and talk more about the purpose of higher education and its curriculum, and also get some student voices in there. Picking up on Dilly’s point, I really like the piece written by Dave Thomas (p137) on being a black student confronted with a traditional UK HE curriculum, and the accompanying contrasting pieces by Denis Hayes, defending universal knowledge, and Celia Popovic, asking for more voices in the academy. 

Some of you may know my book on political correctness and HE, where it became clear to me that some people in HE think that arming minorities with the knowledge of the powerful will best promote their interests, while others think that a new curriculum and new knowledge is required.  If you are ahead of me here, no surprise that the latter are commonly accused of promoting `PC gone mad’. Very contested territory, which divides the political left, as well as the right from the left: John Lea Political Correctness and Higher Education: British and American perspectives

With hindsight (or was it good foresight) I’m glad I finished my L and T book with an opinion piece from Katja Hallenberg, a criminologist, on sustainability. But – to cement the contested knowledge point – naturally, we all choose what we consider to be the key issue of the day…

Not a textbook, handbook or course book, but I would consider Bill Readings to be essential reading for any course.  Because it hits hard at the whole question of what a university, or higher education, is actually for. Written in 1995, I would say that everything he discusses there is still very relevant today: Bill Readings The University in Ruins.

The other view I took – mainly because Fry et al had covered the disciplines well, was to look more at what was consistent across disciplines (rather than different).  I take the view that we can all learn from each other’s disciplines, and that the so-called uniqueness of disciplines is, in part at least, socially constructed, then crystallised, and then vehemently defended – sometimes for political reasons – e.g. to keep nosey staff developers away from the protected zone! The best bit for me when running a PG Cert was creating the space where cross-disciplinary debates could take place.

Finally, I was also minded that there will be many people seeking T and L recognition outside of a taught course so I wanted my book to be less of a course book and more of a handbook – to help those who may be putting their own portfolio of evidence together in order to claim a fellowship.  That was a publisher’s nightmare of course, because how do you promote a book about L and T across disciplines, when all books are in discipline silos, unless you resort to claiming that “this book is an essential course text for a PG Cert”?  Answers on a postcard if you are over 50, or in a blog if you are under 50.

All that said, we all love a course book, don’t we? I can’t remember being a student on a course where I didn’t seek out my comfort blanket `manual’.  If a comfort blanket is actually a `transitional object', then I suppose our duty (as teacher) is to point out (to the student) that once the core knowledge is assimilated, it’s then time to break free from the textbook…

Horses for courses…

John

John Lea