Traditionally, the focus has been on only one aspect of teaching: performance in the classroom. When assistant professors are considered for tenure, faculty peers observe their classroom performance. When job candidates are invited for interview, they give a classroom lecture. Often neglected or overlooked are the other activities which actually take more time and may even be more demanding and more meaningful for students. What makes a good syllabus? What makes a good test? What kinds of research projects are likely to help students learn? What constitutes a helpful comment on a student's paper? Questions like these have often been overshadowed by an emphasis on only one activity—performance in the classroom.

The three novels don't say much about teaching, but when they do, they give full justice to the range of activities that comprise teaching. The portrayals of the various activities of "teaching" in academic novels suggest that we need to disassemble the black box; that we need to look more closely at all the components that go into teaching, and not emphasize classroom performance to the near exclusion of the other activities that are equally critical to student success—how we prepare syllabi, how we design assignments, how we grade papers, and even how we talk with students in the hallways.

For some examples of how the academic novelists portray these varied activities involved in "teaching," see excerpted passages in Appendix A.