Preface for Professors

To The Professor...
Teaching Comes Second

For four years as I wrote this book, I was paranoid about one thing: that I would end up not including someone’s pet topics. Then the answer hit me: if I miss, students will still get them—from you, and much better. Relieved, I focused instead on making sure I included everything else. I can’t say I succeeded.

As a teacher myself, I have gone through the cycle, sorting through all the reasons to adopt a book (or not). There have been different reasons at different times: a book that includes the latest academic theory-in-the-making; a book with some level of opaqueness so I would have a role; one set in the new cognitive, information processing framework; one with a post-modernist flavor; a book with cases; one that blends theory with practice. Now I will plead guilty: given my goal of making this a comprehensive textbook to serve the needs of our discipline, and following the wisdom of all our other textbook authors, I have ended up with a little bit of all of the above.

But I have strived to make all topics accessible to the student, so I named and renamed some concepts, and redrew a few flowcharts, and “decoded” many theories in student-speak. The resulting transparency now frees you from having to explain the basics and instead use the book as a launch pad for your own creative structuring of a hands-on learning experience for your students.

Guiding my writing throughout has been a singular goal, indeed an obsession: students should read it not because they have to, but because they want to. In this goal too, I have good company—all other CB textbooks do it, admirably well. I do it a little differently.

I made a choice: Teaching comes second; engaging the student comes first. A textbook can be good, very good. But can it also create excitement in the student about the subject itself? I wanted to absolutely, positively enthrall the student.

Toward that lofty goal, not fully met, here is my modest contribution, and I offer it for your consideration. And for a different kind of learning experience for your students.

Sincerely,
-bm