"Novelty or Replication: A Pedagogical Foray into the Technical Communication Class"
About the AuthorJosephine Walwema received her MA in Rhetoric and Writing from the University of New Mexico. She is now a doctoral candidate in the Rhetorics, Communication and Information Design Program at Clemson University. Her research interests include the history of rhetoric, rhetorical theory, technology as human capacity, and mechanical technology. Contents |
Concluding ThoughtsInstructors deduce that learning has occurred when students demonstrate understanding of concepts and can thoughtfully apply precepts appropriately. As Gross writes, this will be a "lasting and stable" habit that becomes knowledge, "for knowledge is considered lasting and hard to displace from the mind" (30). Learning is deemed to have occurred if a student can confidently discuss her choices and explain her reasons for those choices. These tenets should inform the technical communication teacher at all times. Technical communication always already involves choices either actively or by default and because each of those decisions has ethical dimensions, students are expected to make the right choices in every instance. However, if we promote boilerplate and appropriation at the expense of novelty, we blur the lines between ethics and instrumentality. We betray the values of intellectual ownership and do a great disservice to students who may develop a distorted sense of authorship and origination. Further, we wind up intimating that individuality does not matter but expedience does. Thus, we should choose a situated ethics over expediency every time. A pedagogy that embraces invention, topoi, ethos, and ethics serves the technical classroom well. None of these concepts should be taught as an end in itself but as a part of a whole. A fitting document responding to the exigency proffered by the rhetorical situation ceases to be a habit, and instead, reflects knowledge. |