It’s been a while since I wrote something like this here. I suppose it’s because these kinds of things always leave me with a strange mix of excitement, embarrassment, and a certain discomfort. But anyway, here it goes: I’ve written a pamphlet (or at least that’s what I’ve called it in almost every conversation I’ve had about it, because I still don’t quite see it as an academic book in the usual sense).
It’s titled Teaching is Deciding. University Teaching Beyond Method (Enseñar es Decidir, la docencia universitaria más allá del método, it is written n Spanish)
Over the years, many colleagues —especially from university and secondary education (yes, Xenia, you)— have asked me to recommend “a good manual” for “how to teach.” Something to get started. Something to help them find their bearings. And I’ve always felt a bit uncomfortable in that conversation.
Not because there aren’t good books. There are, and many of them. But I’ve never been fully convinced that recommending one was really the best entry point. Because very often those manuals —even the good ones— make you enter pedagogy as if you were diving headfirst into something overwhelming: concepts, frameworks, terminology, structures… that, if you’re not already inside, can feel more intimidating than inviting.
And I wanted something else.
Something closer to a conversation than to a manual. Something that doesn’t tell you “this is what you need to know,” but instead places you in a position from which to start thinking. Something that doesn’t force you to adopt a language or a way of seeing from the outset, but allows you to enter gradually, without feeling like you’re getting everything wrong all the time.
This text started as exactly that: loose notes, questions that didn’t quite close, fragments that kept coming back —expanded through a deep process of reflection that was partly sparked by my electoral adventure :-D). Many of them came from memories of conversations with colleagues, from classes, from readings, or simply from that uncomfortable feeling that there are things in teaching —in how we talk about it, in how we think about it— that we accept as valid far too quickly.
For quite some time, I actually had no intention of sending it to any publisher. I simply started writing it and thought I would upload it somewhere —maybe here on the blog or share it in a talk. Not because I thought it wasn’t “finished” (that feeling never really goes away), but because I wasn’t sure it made sense as a book. It was more of a text I needed to write in order to organise my ideas, to clarify things for myself, to see how far some intuitions I’d been carrying for a while could go. The chapters were short, and I didn’t want to fill it with citations… just write.
Before even considering sending it anywhere, I decided to do something that felt more important: to get it out of my head.
And once it was out, being who I am, I shared it with three friends. But not just any kind of friends. Three of those you don’t consult to have your ideas confirmed, but precisely for the opposite. The kind who read carefully, generously, and with whom I have enough trust to know they won’t be condescending —and that we respect each other enough not to lie. The kind who will tell you something doesn’t hold, even knowing how much you’ve put into it.
The idea was quite simple: to see whether the text had any life beyond my own frame. Whether it made sense. Whether it irritated for interesting reasons or simply because it wasn’t well constructed. Whether there was something there, or just an accumulation of more or less well-written intuitions.
What mattered most was that all three agreed on something I wasn’t at all sure about: that the text deserved to exist out there.
I still had plenty of doubts (and I still do), but at some point I decided to trust that external judgement more than my own inertia (although I admit I’m still not entirely sure whether that says more about the text or about their patience as readers). In any case, it is now in the editing process at Transmedia XXI, whose editorial team has decided it’s worth publishing —which, honestly, still feels a bit strange to say out loud, but at the same time fills me with satisfaction.
The idea is to have a small print run, but for the text to remain open and available for anyone who wants to read it… with a CC license, but with the care of an editorial collection I deeply respect… that was clear to me from the very beginning. Because, ultimately, I strongly believe that this is the way it makes the most sense for it to circulate. That’s why it will remain open —both the book and the audiobook.
And yes, I could write a more or less structured summary of what it says. But honestly, I’m more interested in telling where it comes from… and why I call it a pamphlet. Because some texts are born with the intention of being books —in academia, we know that well. This one wasn’t.
During the time I’ve had it “in between,” I’ve called it a pamphlet not only out of caution, but out of honesty. Because this text does not aim to organise the field, nor to offer a complete map, nor to become a reference for anything. It does not seek to close conversations, but rather to open them. To unsettle things a bit. To provoke questions where sometimes there are only inherited certainties.
This “pamphlet” is, precisely, about thinking pedagogy without taking it for granted. About questioning some of the things we do —and especially how we justify them— in teaching, particularly in higher education, though not only. About looking with a certain suspicion at our routines, our discourses, even our good intentions. It’s not a text against anyone. But it’s not a neutral text either. And, at its core, it also comes from a very specific discomfort.
I don’t know if this is that text, but at least it is the attempt.
As I’ve hinted, I’ve also recorded the audiobook… and I hope it will be available very soon… I’ll keep you posted, that’s for sure.
For now, both the written text and the audiobook are only available in Spanish —they were conceived and created in that language— but they are written with the hope and intention that anyone, from anywhere, might still find their way into them.