Understanding research methods textbooks: pedagogy, production and practice

Social science research methods textbooks are a resilient and highly cited area of academic publishing. Yet little attention has been given to the pedagogies these resources enact. This chapter examines what might be meant by textbook ‘pedagogy’. It considers how publishing shapes and delimits the range of pedagogies presented in texts, and we observe how textbook design norms iteratively shape, constrain and respond to contemporary ideas of methods pedagogy, teaching and online learning. The under-researched role of textbook authors, publishers and commercial dynamics as pedagogic ‘intermediaries’ in this process is explored. The authors argue that textbooks can be interpreted in part as ‘frames’ that are rooted in publishing cultures as much as in formal classroom deployment or independent learning. This interplay is key to understanding textbooks as pedagogical agents and interrogating the ways in which textbooks can spur productive thinking about pedagogy, media and learning.