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© Unisa Press ISSN 1011-3487 SAJHE 28(1)2014 pp 10–27
A will to write
R. Barnett
Institute of Education
University of London
London, United Kingdom
e-mail: r.barnett@ioe.ac.uk
B. Leibowitz
Centre for Teaching and Learning and Department Curriculum Studies
Stellenbosch University
Stellenbosch, South Africa
e-mail: bleibowitz@uj.ac.za
Abstract
This article is based on an interview conducted by Brenda Leibowitz with Ronald Barnett,
noted author of over 20 academic books and 100 articles, at the Higher Education
Teaching and Learning Association of Southern Africa (HELTASA) 2012 Conference.
The interview deals with several topics including: the challenge of formulating and
articulating a definite thesis; the importance of polishing and crafting drafts; keeping
multiple audiences in mind; the different demands of writing articles and books; the
value of poetry and fiction; how to keep going as a writer; issues of identity; and
maintaining a will to write. The article continues with a set of joint critical reflections
on the nature of academic writing and concludes with the suggestion that writing can
enhance academics’ understanding of themselves.
Keywords: academic writing, writing to learn, academic identity, craft, audience,
creativity, voice
INTRODUCTION
The writing to learn movement (Emig 1977, 1983) has shaped worldwide the thinking
about the role of writing in the curriculum and its ability to enhance student success.
Is this interest in the value of writing for students’ learning not equally pertinent for
academics? Echoing Richardson (1994), who advocates the value of writing as a
mode of enquiry for researchers, Lingard, Schryer, Spafford and Campbell (2007:
516) write that ‘attention to manuscript production [is] a complex act of shaping
knowledge production’. Here, surely, is a productive link between the writing of
academics and the writing of their students, which is enriched by the academics’
interrogation of what they do when they write (Leibowitz 2000).
So what do academics gain by writing? What work is involved in crafting either an

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empirical or a conceptual article? And is there only one way to write a good article or
a good book – or, as writers about academic writing such as Sword (2012) maintain,
are there a host of different styles and approaches? And how might a writer form an
impression in the mind of the reader? These are some of the questions explored in an
interview conducted by Brenda Leibowitz (BL) with Ronald Barnett (RB), Emeritus
Professor of Higher Education in the London Institute of Education, author of over
20 academic books and over 100 peer reviewed articles and well over 100 other
pieces of writing. (The interview below is adapted from an interview conducted
at the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association (HELTASA) 2012
Conference from 28–30 November 2012.) Following the interview, we identify and
explore some broad considerations arising therefrom, both about academic writing
in general and about academic writing in the particular ield of education.
INTERVIEW
BL: We originally planned to call the session ‘writing to impress’, so as to
imply that when one writes, one would like to leave an impression upon
the reader. One of the phrases often quoted from your work is ‘the will to
learn’ (Barnett 2007). Another is ‘ontology trumps epistemology’ (Barnett
2003). This latter one appealed to me so much that I have inserted it into a
key policy document at my university. It clearly left an impression on me.
And then there is ‘the age of supercomplexity’ (Barnett 2000). It is quoted
so often, which implies that it has clearly made an impression on a large
group of people. Can we begin here then? How do you take an idea and give
it shape?
RB: First of all I set myself a problem. For a recent book of mine – Being a
university (Barnett 2011) – the originating problem takes the form of a very
simple question: ‘What is a university?’ That sentence is only four words
followed by a question mark, but it is an incredibly dificult matter. And in
each book of mine, there is usually a paragraph at the start and it sets up a
problem to which, as I start writing, I don’t know the answer.
In writing, I am faced just with the screen, with the cursor blinking away
and demanding words from me as author. And what I am trying to do –
in that encounter with the screen and that cursor – is to give myself some
intellectual space in addressing the problem before me. On which resources
does one rely in that writing and thinking endeavour? In the irst place, ideas
emerge through internal conversations.
I have a library of my own with probably around 2 000 volumes. I haven’t
read them all but I know my way around my library. However, it is crucial
to bear in mind that in the initial act of writing – except on occasions – I do
not allow myself to get up to consult material of any kind. The task here is

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R. Barnett and B. Leibowitz
simply to write and to think. But my library remains a resource, within my
mind. As I am thinking and as the words are forming, I am also in my mind
drawing on the books and the authors around me in my study. I am holding
internal conversations with those texts and those writers.
Over time, I have been successively drawn to the oeuvre of different
scholars, including Richard Peters, Paul Feyerabend, Ernest Gellner, Jurgen
Habermas and more recently Roy Bhaskar and (currently) Slavoj Zizek. On
each occasion, I have thrown myself into their corpus and worked hard at
getting on the inside of their thoughts, and then wanted to share some of
that understanding with the reader. Writers such as these are dealing with
large issues of life, being, knowledge, values, and communication; and so
I want to share with the reader how their ideas can help us understand the
university (even if they themselves never or hardly even wrote about the
university).
There is another major resource on which I draw. Despite – to some – its
apparent abstractness, all my work is autobiography. It arises out of practical
problems and issues that I have encountered over my 40-plus years in
professional life. I’ve been a course leader, a dean for several years and
a pro-director, and I’ve been in management team meetings. Events and
situations and things said – such as in a committee meeting – might present
me with a deep concern, even say as to the language and terminology being
used.And then, I’ve gone home to a writing session and have been so ired up
by, say, the managerial discourse, that that has given me energy, something
to engage with, to wrestle with intellectually and even to combat. In that
sense, I see my writing as a form of controlled passion.
Another resource for me has been that of poetry. I’ve tried to start the day
sometimes just spending 15 minutes reading poetry. This helps to widen my
repertoire of ways of seeing into things, of images and metaphors, and of
acute and even forensic attention to particular things, not relying on stock
phrases and words but inding particular words to do justice to the complex
matters with which one is engaging.
If we are not careful, organizational life will swamp us. It would crowd us
in in terms of time, but also crowd in on us intellectually. So we have to ind
spaces to ourselves. And that is what I do and then, as I am writing, as I am
working: I am setting myself little puzzles all the time that open spaces.
In starting a paragraph, I often don’t know how it is going to end. My writing
is, in that sense, creative. And simultaneously, I’m writing very much with
the reader in mind. In writing my books, I never write a sentence without
having a sense of an audience (actually audiences plural) and wanting

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to reach out to potential readers. But this is a further resource, since the
imagined comments and perspectives of readers present me with points,
objections and sentiments to which I need to respond.
Sometimes, it is as if I am in a coffee shop and I am talking to three or four
interlocutors who might be interested in some of my work, who might be
sceptical about my argument, whether on intellectual or practical or even
ideological grounds. How do I convince them? So part of the challenge is to
sustain an argument – the particular argument of the book that I am writing
– in dialogue with my imagined interlocuters.
There are also immediate textual resources. I will have the title of the book
on which I am working, a title of the chapter, and I will have a subheading of
the section on which I am working (subheadings are actually quite signiicant
for me for they provide a space for some playfulness that, in turn, can open
new paths of thought and insight) and each of these provide angles and
possibilities. And I have in my mind’s eye these people to whom I am trying
to reach out, and so the textual challenges are already starting to multiply, as
I form a paragraph.
A paragraph is crucial in writing, for paragraphs provide the building blocks
of a text. And just as the bricks in a building have to it together, and build
on each other, so each paragraph has to take account of those adjacent to it,
each one building carefully on the paragraph before it and opening to the
following paragraph. There are disciplines attaching simply to the crafting
of a single paragraph.
Some say that there are many long words in my work but, in fact, the average
length of words in my work is only ive characters because there are many
short words. I will not use a long word if I can use a short word – or a
technical word if a more accessible word is to hand – because I am trying
to communicate. It might sound presumptuous, but I am trying to change a
reader’s mind. Think of Marx in the British museum beavering away: blobs
of black ink on a white sheet can change the world. And in a more limited
way, that’s what I am trying to do, I am trying to open glimpses of other
possibilities for the university and higher education.
BL: I ind a lot of the people I know throw authors and references and big words
into their writing, which in fact the pundits on academic writing such as
Sword (2012) or Thomson and Kamler (2013) caution against. And what I
have noticed with a lot of your writing is that it looks deceptively simple. I
said to you once I thought it was sometimes very poetic. So people think ‘I
could have said that’ because it’s quite simple but then it’s quite obvious that
you’ve read all those philosophers so that it’s all there behind the surface.
Have you taken a conscious decision to make your writing accessible?

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RB: Absolutely, Brenda. I want the reader to be able understand my writing and
if she or he can’t understand my writing the fault is mine, it’s not theirs. I
have to make my writing intelligible to the reader. Who is the reader? Who
are we? We are busy people; we are tired people; we have families; we have
relationships; we have a job of work and we hardly have time to open a
book. It’s a few minutes on the bus, on the train or dropping off in getting to
sleep. Why should you give up your time to read any book of mine? And so
I am very conscious that there is this fragile relationship between writer and
reader.
With my books especially, I am thinking about the accessibility of the text
in several ways. I think, for instance, of the appearance of the text on the
page. (I remain sensitive to the length of a paragraph on the screen in front
of me and the length of the page it will occupy when appearing in print.)
I keep the length of my paragraphs and my sentences under tight control;
sometimes, my sentences have just two words. And I won’t throw a long
string of paragraphs at the reader without a sub-heading. Sub-headings can
help to impart the structure to the reader and if the sub-headings are short
and provocative, so much the better.
I am trying to write in a way, therefore, such that the reader will want to turn
the page. I want the reader to gain from it more or less immediately at some
level and then later on if you want to go back to it, the footnotes are there,
the bibliography is there and then you can go more deeply into things and,
the text itself, I think, can be interrogated at different levels.
My irst book – The Idea of Higher Education (Barnett 1990) – was based
on my PhD. However, as a task for that irst book, I asked myself, ‘Can I
write a book, say, for an engineer who has never read a book on education
in their life?’ The book was published and about ive to six weeks later, I
was in my room and the telephone rang. ‘Is that Dr Barnett? You don’t know
me, my name is so and so, I am a partner in a irm of consulting engineers.
Do you ever do any talks? I’ve just been reading your new book. Would you
like to come and speak to our partners?’ And I did feel that that was a kind
of vindication of what I was trying to do as a writer.
BL: You told us that you set yourself a puzzle and it sounds as if you write quite
spontaneously from there. It is very nice but I don’t know if it’s very helpful
for someone like myself because it implies that you are one of those lucky
people who sit down with an idea and start writing and things ‘just happen’.
So is it really as spontaneous as that, you set yourself a puzzle and you
explore, and things start to emerge? Or is there a mind that says, ‘Okay the
irst section will deal with this aspect of the problem and the second ...’?
How much conscious working or planning do you engage in and how much
is it just exploration?
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RB: I’m mainly talking about my books – I have to scale everything down for my
papers but, still more or less the same principles apply, in a reduced form.
For my books the planning stage is crucial. I always take a long time over
any proposal I send to a publisher. I spend much time in crafting my own
proposals because in that task I sketch out the architecture of a whole book.
For me, it is crucial that the architecture is made transparent and the best
way of doing this in my books is via the contents page. It is very important
to me that the contents sit neatly on one page so that that page immediately
displays the whole architecture of the book and in an attractive and inviting
way. This is crucial because I want the potential reader to see it at a glance.
Perhaps a browser in a shop (or on the internet) will allow themselves ive
seconds in glancing at the contents page and so I want that potential reader
to be immediately intrigued by the spaces being opened.
So much effort goes into designing the architecture of a book: How many
parts are there to be? How are the parts to work together? What is their
relationship? Why is this chapter here and not there? Everything is planned
with the argument and the thesis in mind, so that the book provides a set of
interconnected spaces that allows the thesis and the argument progressively
to move forward. This stage of the design of a book’s architecture is always
a perplexing and often daunting process.
This does not mean that, in advance, the whole argument is worked out
in ine detail. On the contrary, when a book proposal of mine goes to a
publisher, under each chapter title will appear just some four–ive lines of
notes and the publisher’s reviewers will have only those notes to indicate the
shape of the argument. So the proposal has both a very tight structure and
wide spaces for my explorations of the thesis that I want to advance in that
particular book.
A book proposal of mine, therefore, is a sequence of spaces which I want
to work through. How can I sketch out the whole book in advance of its
writing? After all, the writing of the book consists of going on a voyage –
with the reader – and while one has a sense as to the land one wants to reach,
one cannot know in advance just what (hopefully) interesting sights we will
see on the way. It is necessarily a voyage of discovery.
I have suficient experience as a writer to have conidence in myself now,
such that once I have a few points, issues, concepts and ideas, that is more
than I can handle in producing a chapter. Given the volume of my output, it
may appear that there, for me, there is an ease in writing but it is – for me –
an extraordinarily dificult and even painful process.
BL: Why is it dificult?
RB: With academic journals, the audiences are relatively conined and you can

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take things for granted. In Bernsteinian language, the codes (for journal
papers) are more elaborated and, simultaneously, more restricted. The codes
for book writing on the other hand are much more open but challenging
at the same time, since one is having to be sensitive to different registers,
positions and outlooks of potential readers. For a book, there are challenges
of explicitness, transparency and accessibility to multiple audiences so I
spell things out but one has to do that carefully with due sensitivity to the
reader.
Especially in my book writing I am building up the argumentative moves
patiently and explicitly. I am determined that the reader is never left with the
problem: how have we reached the proposition contained in this sentence?
How have we reached the key concept in this sentence? What does this
technical term mean? Why is this section here in this chapter? I am, in short,
trying my best as a writer to keep the reader with me and with the argument
and with the language of the text. (I am also, of course, making the argument
and clarifying the thesis to myself while I am writing and I need to convince
myself, and so the steps in the argument are crucial as a listener to/ hearer of
my own words in my mind’s ear.)
What I’m trying to do – despite its obvious pitfalls – is to do some of the
thinking for the reader. I am trying to help you see the argument and to
work at unfolding and developing the thesis with you (for which I am
contending). This means, irstly, formulating and being crystal clear in my
own mind as to the thesis itself. And that clarity emerges in my mind only
– and with dificulty – in the course of crafting a book. Secondly, it means
marshalling all one’s rhetorical forces carefully to develop and substantiate
that thesis for and with the reader. Thirdly, that set of rhetorical tasks means
never throwing a technical term at the reader but ensuring that the ground is
built up in advance such that the technical term becomes a shorthand for the
idea(s) that have preceded it. So I am interrogating my work all the time at
different levels: I am trying to imagine you’re reading it as I’m writing it.
BL: Yes, Helen Sword (2012) advises the writer to pay attention to proposition
construction, so as to do the work for the reader. Do you write and cross out
the sentence and try it again, or are you one of these people who writes a lot
irst, then goes back and corrects it? Or have you written it all in your head
irst so that when you write it out, it’s kind of perfect? Because I think those
are the three broad kinds of approaches.
RB: When I am writing a book, I aim in the irst place to complete a irst draft
as quickly as I can. Characteristically, that irst draft will take me about
six months to produce, and then I’ve got something to work on. I’m like a
sculptor: I have the block and it’s just beginning to come into some kind of
shape. And then, for the next ive months or so, I am chiselling it, reshaping
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it and then polishing it. It’s emerging in front of me, it is real material that is
emerging with a deinite and precise form of its own.
In the making of that irst draft, I keep pressing forward, in an urge to
complete that irst draft, and then comes the challenging and even painful
process of attending to that. In that redrafting and reworking process, my
chapters will undergo many re-readings (perhaps 12–15) as the argument is
reined in conversation – as it were – with other authors in engaging with
their works (largely in my footnotes at the end of my books) and made
evermore accessible. The text is, therefore, crafted.
As the text is reined, I am concerned not just with the large picture and the
overall argument but I am also focusing on the detail in a very close way.
After all, how can one create something that is going to reach out to multiple
audiences across the globe if one is not attentive to the detail? It is a matter
of being concerned both with the wood and the trees. Crafting a sentence
and a paragraph is not only about having a concern with the punctuation and
the syntax in a formal sense, or even the formal structure of the argument
(as one proposition picks up from and opens to another). It is about playing
with the text – and thereby with the rules of writing – so that it lows for
the reader. It is having a concern, for example, with voice, rhythm, and
metaphor.
BL: Ron, do you discuss your writing while you are doing it? Do you read bits or
let someone read drafts, or is it very private until it is very inished?
RB: In the front material of all my books there are acknowledgements and
typically these include mention of people that I’ve recently been talking to
about my intellectual work. But at the end of the list there are always ive
or six people to whom I sent the manuscript at quite an early stage to get
them to run their eye over it. I am continually amazed at the generosity of
intellectual and academics friends and colleagues. Why should they give up
time to take on such a task? It’s an extraordinary feature of academic life,
this academic generosity, which is still present in academic life despite its
dificulties.
BL: Ron, do you ever lose heart and have you ever had an extreme disappointment
with regard to your writing? If so, how would you motivate yourself?
RB: I’ve never lost heart, but it hasn’t always been easy. Even writers who gain
a living out of writing have writer’s block and I have my techniques for
working through it. I’m fairly disciplined about writing as you might sense
but this doesn’t mean I write every day. A mantra of mine is ‘a page a day is
a book a year’, and a page or two a day on most days over 40 years is a very
considerable quantity of writing.
A goal of mine, therefore, is a little writing on a continuing daily basis. If I

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have managed that for a writing session, that satisies me. I never sit down
and say ‘I’m going to write a book’ or even ‘I’m going to write a paper or a
chapter’. Normally, I just say ‘I’m going to write one page and a half’ and
having done that, characteristically, the writing task for the day has been
completed. Writing, therefore, is simply steady work.
And so when I am attending to my own writing programme, that is the pace
at which I go. If somebody wants me to write a paper, I might respond by
saying something like, ‘My writing commitments are taking me to May and
so I can offer you a draft chapter in June.’ And when it comes to writing a
book I might say to the publisher, ‘I will give you the manuscript on such and
such a day 15 months from now’ and I try to deliver that manuscript on that
day. I don’t always achieve this, and I’ve slipped on one or two occasions
but if you tell the publisher in advance they are usually understanding.
The important point is that of a steady rhythm, and being realistic and not
allowing it to take over one’s life.
BL: Ron, we haven’t really spoken about why you choose to write.
RB: This is a crucial matter. Why do we write? And how important is it to us?
I’ve never heard an academic in my life describing themselves as a writer
but, that’s how I see myself – as a ‘writer’. I see being a writer as at the heart
of my own academic identity.
For myself, the motivations are almost entirely from within; and these
internal motivations are at two levels. There is a rather diffuse level, of
wanting to write and to develop in public conversation and to communicate
my intellectual project. And my intellectual project – a project that has
sustained me for 40 years – is that of addressing a single question: ‘What
is a university?’ Or, rather, ‘What might a university be?’ And then, within
that project (a very speciic but still large project), there is a further level
of interior motivations arising from speciic matters that have presented
themselves to me successively in my working life and from my continuing
engagement with the literature.
And so each book – as I’ve remarked – is a working out of a compelling
set of issues and a very speciic thesis for which I want to contend (whether
as to the idea of higher education, what it is to be a student in higher
education, living with ideology in higher education, how ‘curriculum’ might
be understood in a university setting, what it is to be a university, and so
on and so forth). But with each book I have a strong will to communicate
to others across the world, wanting to convey why the topic of this book is
important and wanting to put forward an accessible and provocative thesis
to the reader.
There is, therefore, a strong compulsion within me to write, both to grapple
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with the matter of the university in the contemporary age and to engage very
directly with a particular set of issues that gnaws away and won’t let me
go, and to advance a particular thesis on the topic in question (a thesis that
characteristically emerges only in the writing and that is usually critical of
developments and ideas but yet which also goes on to proffer some positive
possibilities, if only at the level of broad principles); and to reach out to
potential readers across the world. I am faced, therefore, with an inner will
to write, that I’ve not been able to evade. Each book arises from pressing
concerns deep within myself.
I recollect that John Henry Newman wrote of the ‘bodily pain’of writing and
I empathise with that. In writing, I am pulling things out from within me. I
am not just pulling out ideas but I am also pulling out inner values, hopes
and aspirations (in reaching for a better way of understanding the university
and practising its activities). I am trying to give conceptual expression to
practical observations and concerns that have arisen in my professional life.
I am reaching deeply into myself to articulate inchoate feelings, murmurings
and presentiments and to form a precise thesis and this can be painful bodily
work. My writing is a way of forming a personal voice by allowing it to
emerge.
Speaker from the loor: When do you write, what time of day? And where?
RB: Now, as an emeritus professor, I work from home. But I am quite disciplined.
I’m at my computer at 08:30 every morning. Characteristically, I’ll start off
the day answering and dealing with the administrative labour of academic
life (not least in the daily round of emails) and then I turn to my writing
so that, by lunchtime, something tangible has been drafted and that might
complete the writing for the day.
Until recently I was a full time academic and even when I was a dean,
working literally 70–80 hours a week, and involved in up to ten meetings a
day, I would be writing at least two pages each day. How did I do that? I was
at my desk 07:30 in the morning. My personal assistant would get in at 09:00
and by that time, I had already written a page or more. Characteristically I
would be working on a paper for a chapter for a book or a paper for a journal,
and that was the morning’s writing task. In the evening I used to make sure
I went home relatively early. I’d have a snack and then I would write for a
further hour, 18:30 to 19:30. So it was very disciplined: an hour early in the
morning and an hour in the evening.
BL: I’ve noticed with one or two very proliic writers I know, you can write to
them in the morning and you often get a reply because you know that at

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04:00 or 05:00 or 06:00 every morning, that person is on the computer. So
it’s this regular amount of attention to what one is writing.
RB: It’s becoming professional about writing the same way we look for
professionalism in teaching or professionalism in research. Writing is
a demanding set of skills. Why can’t we become and think about being
professional in writing as well?
Speaker from the loor: You said that you’ve been a dean and in management
positions. My experience is that it is very draining, it just kills all your creativity, it
just sucks you dry. But how do you do build a bridge to move from one position to
the other, so that when you sit down at the computer you are the writer?
RB: Precisely because my writing, emerging from my interior concerns, is a
space where, in a way, I can become myself. And so adjectives like courage,
authenticity and integrity in writing are important to me. I will not hide
behind others’ writings; my work never consists mainly of commentaries
on what others have said. And I will not pick stock phrases or words off the
shelf. Every word and phrase has to be chosen and one has to be ready to be
held responsible for each word and phrase. (On occasions, I have received
an email or phone-call in which a question has been raised precisely about a
particular word or phrase that I have used and I feel that, rightly, I am being
held to account at that level of detail.)
And this is challenging; there is no hiding place. Brenda was saying my
writing is not stuffed full of references to the literature. They are there, they
are tucked away, but the text is me engaging directly with the reader. So in
writing, my challenge lies in formulating my thoughts and presentiments
such that I can most effectively engage with the reader.
The freneticism of academic life that can so easily consume one’s energies,
as I implied earlier, actually energises me. The ideologies of academic life
would be there, in my sight and hearing. So my writing has offered me a
space in which to engage with the professional and intellectual concerns that
have arisen in my experiences in academic life.
This is though a highly complex process. One has to convert one’s feelings
into words and into a story and an argument and a thesis that someone in
another country can follow. And I am moving the argument forward in a
structured and accessible way. It is not merely a cognitive matter but a matter
of one’s academic being, as it were; in my book writing, I give of myself
and even reveal something of myself. It is a source of satisfaction to me that
my work is read across the world, and translated into languages, because it
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means I am having some success in this set of writing endeavours.
Speaker from the loor: When you decide to write a story, a book, do you have a plot
of the whole story in your mind before you commit yourself to writing or does it
evolve during the course of writing?
RB: We may notice the words you have just used: plot and story. This is precisely
what am I trying to do, I am trying to offer stories to the world. I am writing
iction in a way. I am trying to say, ‘Look this is, this is something we are
familiar with, but let’s look at it in this way, and perhaps in a way you have
never seen before. Perhaps, too, the university that I am pointing to does not
exist – it is ictional in that sense – but perhaps, too, this story just might
be realized one day.’ (My work has, accordingly, been in part a search for
‘feasible utopias’ (Barnett 2011, 2013)).
As far as the detail is concerned, I will have set out the main thesis in the
outline for the publisher and formed a sense as to the main places to visit
on the journey but I won’t have identiied in advance precisely the sights
to be encountered. So for the book I have been completing (Imagining the
University) I struggled with its architecture, as to whether, for example,
there would be four parts or ive parts, and as to which chapters would fall
in this or that part.
Much effort went into sorting out a structure that was going to help deliver
the story, and the plot if you like, because there is a plot. It’s a kind of
whodunit. The European philosopher Gilles Deleuze (2001) talks about
detective novels in relation to philosophical writing. I am trying to work out
the plot: what is the nature of the murder and who committed it? That’s what
I am trying to do: what is the answer here to the problem I set up at the outset
of the book?
And the audience is slightly different for each book. So the book I have
just written – Imagining the University – was written especially with vice-
chancellors and rectors in mind. Perhaps vice-chancellors and rectors seldom
read books on education but an author has this responsibility, in my view, of
identifying the key set of audiences and orienting the text in that direction.
People sometimes come up to me at conferences and offer me their reactions
to books of mine; and one has, of course, reviews of one’s work coming at
one and comments from critical friends. Those voices are internalised and I
can imagine them as I am writing. So the answer here is that the outlines are
there but it’s inessed as the work takes shape.
Writing a book, therefore, is a little like trying to design a jigsaw puzzle
and putting the pieces together simultaneously. Logically, it’s an impossible

13. 22
task! The pieces can’t be assembled until the design is clear, but the design
cannot emerge until the pieces have been put together. But also, to pick up
the questioner’s metaphor, writing a book (of this kind) is also like being a
playwright: one has to determine which characters have the major parts and
who the minor parts, and who one is bringing into the centre-stage at any
moment and who retires either to the back of the stage or goes temporarily
to the wings.
Starting a new book, therefore, is both an exciting but also a daunting and
disturbing time. The demands of writing a book, articulating a sustained and
clear thesis, are considerable and we should have a space in academic life
where we acknowledge the challenges of such writing. It’s a privilege to
write but it also brings responsibilities. Is there not some kind of injunction
to write in a way that presents an interesting story that appeals to people,
that even delights people?
BL: I just want to distil some of the messages. The irst one was the importance
of writing every day. I think many people have that kind of rule. Another one
was the need to keep reading. You can’t write without reading. The third one
was that you did that writing for yourself, it was something that nourished
you. A fourth point was the need to become clear in one’s own mind as to a
particular thesis and authentically to argue for that. A ifth point was the need
to polish and craft the text. And the inal point was about being sensitive to
and caring about the potential reader, and writing with a particular audience
in view. Those would be the main take-home messages.
COMMENTARY
This interview raises, we suggest, three interconnected matters.
Firstly, there is the matter as to what it is to write as an academic. What conditions
attach to the enterprise of academic writing? What are its rules? What principles
might or should academics heed in the act of writing? What, indeed, is academic
writing? Is it (simply) a matter of intuiting certain techniques appropriate to certain
settings (its ‘genres’) or might there be potential moral virtues attaching to academic
writing? What, in other words, might constitute the ethics of academic writing?
Thesecondmatteristhatoftheacademicaswriter:towhatextentmightacademics
be considered to be writers? To what extent do academics consider themselves to be
writers? How do we understand the phenomenology of academic writing? Should
the term – ‘writer’ – here be surrounded by quotation marks, for perhaps writing
takes on particular dimensions in the academic domain? Perhaps it is a particular
species of writing; and perhaps academics are only honoriic ‘writers’?
The third matter is the more speciic matter concerning writing in the ield of
education. Does writing in the ield of education pose particular challenges or possess
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14. A will to write
23
particular characteristics? Does writing in the ield of education not itself become a
form of education? Does writing in the ield of education not acquire pedagogical
overtones? In what follows, we offer a limited set of observations in relation to each
set of issues and so for the most part, the questions that we pose must remain hanging
(perhaps to be taken up on a separate occasion).
The nature of academic writing
In relation to the irst issue, that of the character of academic writing, we want to
pick up a suggestion in the conversation that, in principle, academic writing is no
different from any other form of writing such as iction, poetry and non-iction
writing for wide audiences. It has it own demands in the form of tacit regulations
and disciplines but it is more than adherence to those regulations and disciplines for
it requires an inner will to write. The words do not form by themselves but are willed
by the author. As with any other form of writing, if it is to amount to anything of any
signiicance and is to be maintained over time, there has to be a will to write. The
rider – ‘in principle’ – is however crucial. For almost uniquely – apart perhaps from
journalism – academics across the world are not merely being expected to write but
actually required to write, on pain of losing their academic positions and livelihoods.
Furthermore, this output is subject to three levels of scrutiny. Firstly, academics’
papers are subject to the scrutiny of journal editors and of reviewers to whom the
editors turn. Secondly, papers, once published, are subject to the scrutiny of the
writer’s peers in the academic community, and may or may not in turn, be cited in
those other academics’own publications. Thirdly, increasingly, academics’published
work is being subjected to an evaluation exercise conducted under warrant by the
state through quasi-state agencies, in which universities are subjected to some kind
of public and often national audit.
Writing is becoming, then, again across the world, a deining characteristic of
what it is to be an academic and has become part of the governmentality of academic
life. But the double aspect of public audit and the requirement on academics to be
published (in legitimate outlets) is placing a heavy burden on academics, especially
those who do not yet see writing as part of their own self-understanding as
academics. (Perhaps they enjoy teaching or winning research contracts or engaging
in developmental activities for their universities.) Under such circumstances, an
issue arises as to whether the will to write can be cultivated, and if so just how it
might be cultivated. We see no reason why such a will to write cannot be developed
in individual academics but it is unlikely to develop without sensitive support and
encouragement. There is evidence of academics forming self-help groups (with
mentors and ‘buddies’) and activities – such as writing workshops and writing retreats
and so forth – but such efforts of encouragement and support will be more effective
where they have the demonstrable backing of senior managers within universities.

15. 24
The academic as writer
The second matter identiied above is that of the academic as writer. Although there
is an extensive literature – with various sub-branches – on academic writing for and
among students, and although there is a literature on ‘academic identity’, there is
virtually a silence in the literature about academics as writers (and only recently has
just such a literature started to form – see, e.g., Lee and Boud 2003; Murray 2013).
Such a near-absence in the research literature could relect a situation in which
the very idea that academics might consider themselves to be writers is not much
present in the academic world. There is, then, an issue concerning the academic-
as-writer: why might it be that academics do not often see themselves as writers
as such? That is to say, if asked to identify the categories with which they would
most strongly identify, categories such as researcher, scholar, teacher, course leader,
academic developer and even academic manager might be offered but the term
‘writer’ would be unlikely to be forthcoming. Even a fairly long list of academic
publications in the journals would not necessarily lead to a self-identity as a ‘writer’.
If true, this is a strange state of affairs, that individuals whose occupational role is in
signiicant part one of writing – who, in effect, are paid to write – would not quickly
and characteristically reach for the term ‘writer’ either in understanding themselves
or in projecting themselves to others.
Part of the explanation lies, we suspect, in the activity of writing not having
become an activity for collective professional relection. Writing among academics
is an activity that is simply performed and is not a matter for systematic inquiry.
Further, it is not even very often a matter – we would assert – for informal relection
among academics. In informal settings, academics would surely rather talk about
their research, their scholarly efforts (their views about author x), their teaching
or their consultancy activities or even their views on university reorganization and
bureaucratic procedures with the university than they would venture some relections
on the writing task itself.
Such a situation, in turn, can perhaps be understood to relect the fact that writing
is a taken-for-granted activity that acts purely as a conduit to research and scholarly
pursuits. Writing has become a form of technology, an instrument designed to
generate some economic or positional return (either personal or institutional), or to
advance ‘truth’or scholarly insights or to make an argument. It is not in itself a point
of engagement for academics.Academics are, thereby, expected to assimilate the arts
of academic writing as part of their initiation into their chosen discipline. The rules
and regulations of the requisite forms of writing, appropriate to each discipline, are
to be intuited and are not a matter for discussion.
The question here, therefore, is simply this: Under what conditions might the
academic community come to have a collective and explicit care about writing (that
goes beyond casual remarks in reviewers’ commentaries on journal manuscripts)?
Perhaps it may just be that the digital revolution, the coming of multimodality and
the various moves towards open-access communications will engender a debate
R. Barnett and B. Leibowitz

16. A will to write
25
about academic writing. For such developments are going to raise issues as to the
matter of the publics to which academic writing is oriented.
Writing in the field of education
The third matter that the interview raises is the more particular issue about
academic writing in the speciic ield of education. Education presents a particularly
pronounced instance of some general features of contemporary academic writing.
These include writing in different genres for different publics (in producing texts
such as consultancy reports, committee papers, blogs, articles for professional
magazines and newspapers, etc.) and writing for global audiences. Education poses
these general features of contemporary academic writing in a particularly sharp way
as a result of education being: (a) a huge enterprise; (b) of signiicant interest and
investment on the part of the state; (c) of large interest in the public sphere; and (d) of
broad interest across the world. As a result, there are manifold opportunities for
academics in the ield of education to communicate in different genres. More than
that, texts in the ield of education are liable to be read by multiple publics, who have
varying degrees of exposure to the academic ield itself. It follows that the textual
challenges of writing for multiple audiences impinge intensely on the crafting of a
book on education.
This is not unique to education. Public intellectuals in humanities and the social
sciences and perhaps especially leading scientists are seen to producing texts that
have wide appeal. But perhaps in education more than other disciplines there is a
particular requirement to be able to work in different genres. It is becoming part of
the professionalism of academics in education that they have a facility for producing
multiple kinds of text, each one of which is to be accessible to a greater or lesser extent
to multiple audiences. Questions arise, therefore, as to the extent that academics
within the ield of education come to have a sensitivity towards the varying codes
that govern different forms of academic writing and how those different codes can
be assimilated.
Being an academic writer in the ield of education, therefore, can pose particular
textual challenges to the act of writing itself and bring into view wider issues as to
academics’ professionalism. Is there not an injunction on academics in the ield of
education that, as part of their professionalism, they should be able to write in ways
that are publicly accessible?
CONCLUSIONS
Several conclusions may be drawn from this conversation and our ensuing relections.
Firstly, a signiicant proportion of academics write but probably only a relatively few
would describe themselves as ‘writers’. Being a writer as such is not part of the
self-identity of many academics. Secondly, and simultaneously, writing that reaches
out to multiple audiences and in different genres is coming to be part of what it is
to be an academic. Thirdly, academic writing is a craft with its own disciplines and

17. 26
demands but now academic writing faces the challenge of becoming much more a
matter of having public impact.
Lastly, the ield of education witnesses all of these challenges in a particularly
acute form. Accordingly, academics in the ield of education are faced with the
challenge of becoming public writers. By extension, writing in the ield of education
takes on a pedagogic character. For what is educational writing but an activity to
help readers to widen their understandings and of more fully becoming themselves?
In turn, it just may be that academics as writers become themselves. After all, if
academic writing can change the lives of their students, perhaps it can also change
academics-as-writers themselves.
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