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INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO TEACHING TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION

UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Introduction: Innovative Approaches to Teaching Technical Communication Tracy Bridgeford, Karla Saari Kitalong, and Dickie Selfe.................................................................................................................................................................................................................11 The Status of Service in Learning James Dubinsky..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................152 Breaking Viewing Habits: Using a Self-Conscious, Participatory Approach in the ITV Classroom Sam Racine and Denise Dilworth...................................................................................................................................................................................................................313 Bilingual Professional Writing: An Option for Success Elaine Fredericksen.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................474 Examining Discipline-Specific Instruction in Technical Communication W. J. Williamson and Philip Sweany.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................605 Technical Writing, Service Learning, and a Rearticulation of Research, Teaching, and Service Jeffrey T. Grabill...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................816 Notes toward a "Reflective Instrumentalism": A Collaborative Look at Curricular Revision in Clemson University's MAPC Program Kathleen Yancey, Sean Williams, Barbara Heifferon, Susan Hilligoss, Tharon Howard, Martin Jacobi, Art Young, Mark Charney, Christine Boese, Beth Daniell, Carl Lovitt, and Bernadette Longo.....................937 Story Time: Teaching Technical Communication as a Narrative Way of Knowing Tracy Bridgeford...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................1118 Hypermediating the Resume James Kalmbach......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................1359 Using Role-Plays to Teach Technical Communication Barry Batorsky and Laura Renick-Butera......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................14810 Who are the Users? Media Representations as Audience-Analysis Teaching Tools Karla Saari Kitalong.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................16811 What's Up, Doc? Approaching Medicine as a Cultural Institution in the Technical Communication Classroom by Studying the Discourses of Standard and Alternative Cancer Treatments Michael J. Zerbe.............................................................................................................................................18312 Learning with Students: Technology Autobiographies in the Classroom Dickie Selfe..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................19713 A Pedagogical Framework for Faculty-Student Research and Public Service in Technical Communication Brad Mehlenbacher and R. Stanley Dicks.....................................................................................................................................................................................................21914 At the Nexus of Theory and Practice: Guided, Critical Reflection for Learning Beyond the Classroom in Technical Communication Craig Hansen....................................................................................................................................................................................................23815 (Re)Connecting Theory and Practice: Academics Collaborating with Workplace Professionals-the NIU/Chicago Chapter STC Institute for Professional Development Christine Abbott..................................................................................................................................................................25416 Making Connections in Secondary Education: Document Exchange Between Technical Writing Classes and High School English Classes Annmarie Guzy and Laura A. Sullivan............................................................................................................................................................................27217 Ongoing Research and Responsive Curricula in the Two-Year College Gary Bays...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................29118 Extreme Pedagogies: Teaching in Partnership, Teaching at a Distance Billie Wahlstrom..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................304Endnotes..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................328References........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................336Contributors......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................352Index.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................356

Chapter One

James Dubinsky

During the last decade, a number of scholars/practitioners have explored the geographies of our fields, mapped the boundaries, and developed the landscape by building bridges (for example, Sullivan and Porter 1993; Blyler 1993; Forman 1993; and Allen 1992). One of the most important points in this discussion about identity has been the realization that to create a field of our own, we need to create our own major, one that will be independent and not subordinate. Sullivan and Porter (1993) explain that by

conceiving of writing as a major, professional writing breaks with the dominant service identity assigned to composition. The development of professional writing as an academic entity signals a key conceptual shift: from the traditional notion of writing as ancillary to some other subject matter (i.e., writing as service to some other set of concerns-whether business, engineering, literature, or rhetoric/composition) to a recognition of writing as a discipline in its own right (i.e., a view that sees writing itself as a specialty area and as a subject of study). (405-6)

As they make a claim for professional writing's independence, Sullivan and Porter highlight service as one of the essential terms in the discussion. They link it to "the traditional notion of writing as ancillary to some other subject matter" and recognize that, for the most part, those of us who teach writing have been and continue to be marginalized (and to marginalize ourselves) because of connotations and history associated with service.

Yet, even as Sullivan and Porter (1993) long to break from that "dominant service identity" in order to get us to change our collective clothes, so to speak, and put on the mantle of respectability (which for them is associated with research), they recognize that what we do, at least to some extent, is indeed service. They explain that even with writing as a major, English departments "can continue their service functions and continue to be seen in that service role by some in the university" (406). Thus, despite their desire to cloak our "service identity," they do not dismiss it entirely. Service, deeply rooted in the spaces associated with writing, manages to maintain a presence in the landscape even as Sullivan and Porter work to re-map and re-present it.

In this chapter, my intention is not to argue with Sullivan and Porter's goal of achieving disciplinary status. I agree wholeheartedly that writing should be a discipline in its own right and a "subject of study." I disagree, however, that we need to break "with the dominant service identity" to accomplish those objectives. For that reason, I begin an inquiry into the concept of "service," a word many members of the profession of English language studies seem to want to keep hidden away like Rochester's wife in Jane Eyre. I examine some of the negative and positive connotations of the term when it is used as a modifier, such as those associated with being a "service discipline" and with the pedagogy of "service-learning," suggesting that we in the field of technical and scientific communication should bring service out of the attic, redefine it, and accept it as an integral component of our missions. In particular, I believe that service-learning, when used fully and reflectively, has the potential to enable us to move beyond negative modifiers. By accepting service as essential to what we do, we redraw the lines of the discussion, make the definitions we want to advance explicit, and take an active role not only in creating a curricular geography but also in assigning ourselves a place on the academic map that best represents us. Such an active role might enable us to achieve parity with other disciplines within the institutions of higher learning and avoid the fates of the non-European countries represented by European mapmakers, who were often marginalized, regardless of their actual size or status (Barton and Barton 1993). More importantly, by accepting service as a key pedagogical goal, we revise our notion of scholarship and link practice and theory together in a manner reminiscent of classical Greece and Rome where rhetors worked to serve the public good.

THE FACES OF SERVICE

Use the term service, and you get many responses. On one hand, we have large, expansive definitions of service such as military service and service to country (the Kennedy inaugural speech or the 1993 National and Community Service Trust Act come to mind here), which are associated with volunteerism and duty. Linked to religious and social concepts, those who serve contribute to the public good and make their communities and country stronger (Bellah 1985; de Tocqueville 1974). On the other hand, there is a less expansive conception of service, the kind one expects while eating or shopping. Here, those who serve do so for pay or out of obligation or indenture, and there is little in the way of public advantage. The advantages are almost always private.

In academe, the word service has a long history. Having just completed my annual faculty activity report (FAR), I'm well aware of the three criteria that others use to evaluate me: teaching, research, and service. And I know that at my school, a large, land-grant university, of the three criteria, service is the least valued. To use a common metaphor, academic work is seen as a stool with three legs. Unfortunately, in nearly every instance, service ends up being the shortest leg (Martin, 1977, vii; Mawby 1996, 49), and those who do more of it have less stable places to sit. The concept is accorded far less respect than its sister concepts of teaching and research (Boyer 1990). Many members of the academy see service as subordinate to teaching and research, so that even if they acknowledge that a primary mission of higher education is to serve, they argue that teaching and research, as the means to the end, should receive the most weight. To give an example, what should count is the research that leads to the discovery of a blight-resistant strain of corn or the teaching of how to plant and tend it. The planting and tending, the labor of bringing that plant to bear fruit, have far less weight.

In our discipline, the argument has long been that we don't have a subject of study. Our mission is not to discover new strains of corn or new processes for planting; our mission is to help those who do the discovering communicate their knowledge. Thus, most academics, including many of our colleagues in literature, justify their treatment of us because, for them, we exist in the less expansive mode. Our departments and courses exist because members of the university have a need for us. We are paid, so to speak, to provide others with services they need to do their work that will benefit the community. Returning to Sullivan and Porter's discussion, one can see that implicit in their desire to be rid of the term is the belief that when service is used as a modifier, what or who it modifies is second-rate (as in "Oh, they're a service discipline" or technical writing is "merely a service course"). Used in this manner, the term service falls into the second, less expansive mode; it is pejorative and condescending. Those involved in such work are more servants than equals, providing something necessary, yet something mechanical-a skill that other disciplines see as separate from their endeavors.

SERVICE AS CONDUCT BECOMING A DISCIPLINE

In the military where I spent fifteen years of my adult life, I learned that there are actions or conduct that "become" one. These acts represent what is best about one's profession; they exemplify it, and members are expected to enact them by living in accordance with a code of conduct. So it goes for other professions as well, including that of teaching writing. We must know what is expected of us and live up to those expectations. Clearly, one of those expectations for teachers of professional writing is to teach students how to write well. Doing so is central to our profession; to deny otherwise is to bury our heads in the sand. More important, doing so-teaching students how to write well-is no easy task. To teach students how to write well, we need to understand what we're doing; we need to study both the act of writing and the teaching of the act of writing. We also need to study the effects those acts of writing have on others and use that knowledge to improve our teaching. Our work is a circle involving experiential learning-one that might be best expressed by Kolb's (1984) Learning Cycle, which combines concrete experience, through a reflective stage, on to an analytical stage, to a testing step, ending where it began, back at experience. This work, which I've argued elsewhere is like a Mbius loop, is essential to our field (see Dubinsky 1998). We must involve the act and art of teaching writing in the discussion. The strategy, however, is to argue that what we do, our labor, is inseparable from our teaching and our research. Thus, our service is of a piece with our scholarship.

The Service Mission of Higher Education

Rather than deny what has much truth (that we do, indeed, serve as Sullivan and Porter assert) or try to find a way to cloak or cover up that service with some "higher" calling such as study, we need to yoke the two concepts of service and study together. My first reason is that, as I've already stated, not all connotations of service are derogatory. Those that focus on "conduct tending to the welfare or advantage of another" (OED) are positive. These definitions seem in line not only with our field's historical role as the discipline responsible for literacy instruction but also with the mission of many institutions of higher learning, which is often associated with the concept of service.

Relying on historical arguments and mission statements from colleges and universities, some scholars have been working to revive the concept of service. In Scholarship Reconsidered, Boyer (1990) argues for a redefinition of scholarship (the term associated with research that led to the uneven stool and a denigration of the concept of service when the modern university system was instituted). He wants to see a broader definition of scholarship, one that encompasses what he calls the "scholarship of application" (16), a concept in which "service [is seen as] serious, demanding work requiring the rigor-and the accountability-traditionally associated with research" (22).

Along these same lines, a diverse group of educators has been working to create situations that require "reflection-in-action" (Schn 1983), involving a pedagogy that has come to be called service-learning, "an expanding ... movement [that] educates students ... for the benefit of society" (Henson and Sutliff 1998, 189). With this pedagogy, there is an emphasis on the scholarship associated with what Aristotle called productive knowledge (Miller 1984; Phelps 1991; Schn 1983), which links thought to action and theory to practice.

SERVICE-LEARNING: KEY TO REDEFINING SERVICE

These goals of redefining service and yoking the words service and learning speak directly to the issue presented by Sullivan and Porter (1993). How can we argue for independence and disciplinarity when one of the most difficult tasks we face as writing teachers is that we are not teaching a "subject of study" only? In nearly every course in nearly every technical communication curriculum I've examined, there is a practical component associated with the subject of study. We don't teach just document design; we teach how to design documents. We don't teach just about desktop publishing; we teach how to publish using tools available on our desktops. Even when we teach "theory" courses, all too often the theory revolves around the acts of writing (our own or those whom we teach or advise). As a result, there is a tension between how much emphasis we place on that practical component and how much we place on the subject of study.

The question at this point is how to make the argument about service and disciplinarity without giving up or relinquishing the connections, both historical and practical, to the work of teaching writing. One means is to consider the pedagogy of service-learning, which connects service to learning and unites practice and theory. Service-learning is a pedagogy in process and one that hasn't yet stabilized, having, according to one scholar, 147 different definitions (Kendall 1990). Despite the many definitions, there is quite a bit of agreement about the essential dynamics of the pedagogy, much of it codified at a national conference sponsored by the National Society for Internships and Experiential Education in 1991 (Giles, Honnet, and Migliore). The term refers to activities that combine work in the community with education. The "service" component is activity intended to assist individuals, families, organizations, or communities in need. The "learning" involves structured academic efforts to promote the development (intellectual and social) of the student. It also involves testing and reflection (thus, the link to the Kolb cycle presented previously). Although there is still much research to be done, there is statistical evidence that demonstrates an improvement in students' learning and commitment to a concept of citizenship (Markus, Howard, and King 1993; Cohen and Kinsey 1994; Parker-Gwin and Mabry 1998).

The pedagogy of service-learning elevates service's status to that of an equal with learning, one that doesn't have to be hidden away. It yokes two terms (learning and service) together that many have seen as oppositional; learning, the goal of higher education-knowledge for knowledge's sake-is literally tied by the hyphen to service. I argue elsewhere for the essential nature of the hyphen, but suffice it to say that the hyphen introduces an element of reciprocity, which results in a leveling of the legs of the stool (see Dubinsky 2002). The hyphen brings together learning-by-doing and serving (applying what one learns to one's community/society). One cannot have service-learning without some action, some activity conducted by the learners for and with other human beings.

Doing, however, is only part of the equation. There is an added dimension of ethical and social growth, fostered by reflection and conversation, designed to increase the students' investment in society. Consequently, the term service-learning implies both a type of program and a philosophy of learning (Anne Lewis, quoted in Kunin 1997, 155). What isn't readily apparent in the two words that compose the term is the key component of reflection, the glue that not only holds the two words together but also makes the whole far greater than the parts. Service-learning requires that students do more than just serve or learn; they must understand why and whom they serve and how that service fits into their learning (Bringle and Hatcher 1996; Sigmon 1994).

Service-learning, used fully and reflectively, helps students develop critical thinking skills; it also prepares students for the workplace in a more comprehensive way than many other pedagogical strategies because students apply what they've learned by working to develop reciprocal relationships with real audiences. These relationships, which are directed toward change not charity, enable students to meet their citizenship responsibilities (Dubinsky 2002). Service-learning pedagogy enables us to make our courses "a matter of conduct rather than of production" (Miller 1984, 23; Miller's emphasis). Students learn skills they'll use in the workplace, and they gain a practical wisdom (phronesis) that enables them to be critical citizens (Sullivan 1990).

(Continues...)

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