The problem addressed by Selfe and Hawisher in their article "A Historical Look at Electronic Literacy: Implications for the Education of Technical Communicators" is that, though electronics are now ubiquitous in the workplace, "...the profession itself knows less than it might about the social, economic, political, and educational factors that affect the acquisition and practice of electronic literacy, in either preprofessional or professional environments, and the nature of the support systems that technical communicators need..." (505). In order to help solve these issues, the authors examine how technical communicators have gained electronic literacy between 1978 and 2000. They focus on important factors influencing this acquisition and possible patterns that could inform more effective teaching.
Thus, the authors analyze the voluntary written responses from 55 members (interestingly, 46 females and 9 males) of a listserv dedicated to technical writing and conduct face-to-face interviews with 4 additional participants. They acknowledge the limitations of their sample (e.g. only one person of color, almost all currently consider themselves middle to upper-middle class, mean age 40), so they say that their article does not attempt to generalize results but rather provides a rich and personal history of electronic literacy acquisition (510).
Unsurprisingly, they find that autobiographical accounts of technological interaction are very different based on age, early exposure, and socioeconomic status. For example, in the 1970s and 1980s, interactions with technology involved programming and the transition from horror stories and FORTRAN to a less hostile but still limited view of electronic literary (an introduction to computer literary). Though two of the participants they interview, Barbara Evans and Doug Williams, have very different backgrounds (the authors describe Barbara as exceptionally talented with writing and technology though her life was full of ups and downs, while Doug is a regular, successful, 'middle-of-the-road' man), they both learn electronic literary largely in a workplace environment.
Conversely, in the 1980s and 1990s, college-aged students started receiving informal training in electronic literacy because computers were now such a part of everyday life, and they often relied on friends, manuals, and younger siblings to teach them instead of parents or teachers. Again, though the two interviewees' (Pauline Patterson and Angela Ashton) stories are quite different (Pauline is African American and from a working class family, while Angela is white and from a middle-class background), they both achieve a sophistication with computers during their education that Barbara and Doug had to obtain through years of work. However, in these narratives, the authors also stress the difference in exposure to technology between students based on race and economic status.
These autobiographies, along with their own experiences, lead Selfe and Hawisher to make six observations:
#1 A technical communicator who is fully literate now must be able to "read, write, and navigate in technological contexts" (528).
#2 Literacies have life-spans influenced by cultural ecology and technical communicators need to be flexible in response
#3 Race and class (and possibly age and gender) all influence the acquisition of digital literacy, and educational and professional institutions should provide programming to help ameliorate these effects
#4 Teachers in technical communication "may need to be increasingly active in learning to value and teach both emerging and fading literacy practices" (532).
#5 Technical communicators must learn emerging literacies from active self-engagement and interactions with peers
#6 We need to see electronic literacy as part of a cultural ecology in order to address the digital divide
Questions:
1. How has being able to "read, write, and navigate in technological contexts" (528) changed since 2000? How do we figure out what we need to teach in electronic literacy and what students are already familiar with? Is computer literacy a given? Is it still okay to learn on the job or informally (and does that carry the same weight)?
2. How do we as teachers decide what fading literacies to value? (I'm thinking about the controversy over some schools no longer teaching cursive, for example.) Is it simply uselessly nostalgic to miss some of that know-how, like Johnson claims in User-centered Technology?
3. How do we get students to take charge of their own electronic literacy and learn from peers while still valuing their formal education? Is it simply about providing them with the opportunities to use technology?
Connections:
One of the aims of this article is to address electronic literacy in the larger context of cultural ecology and therefore confront issues related to age, gender, race, etc. As evidenced by the title, the first article in chapter 6, "Learning Intercultural Communication Competence," also stresses the importance of the cultural component of technical communication. Thus, both works want readers to acknowledge diversity, the first explicit step in Beamer's intercultural learning model. In the following article, Thrush further examines the importance of multicultural awareness for technical communicators. She says to avoid claims such as "people are really all alike underneath" (416), because it implies a sense of cultural imperialism. By using personal narratives, Selfe and Hawisher underline individual differences that are also dangerous to ignore, even if these stories have the same outcome overall. Lastly Thrush, Selfe, and Hawisher all say that workplace diversity and the effect of subcultures are not well studied even within the United States.
Reading Lay's article, "Feminist theory and the Redefinition of Technical Communication" made me see the ethnographers stand-point in my article. For example, "ethnography does not claim that anyone using the same methods would come to the same conclusions" (438), and Selfe and Hawisher are careful to claim that their results are not able to be generalized, that they are providing a "rich history" instead of the "similarities or universals" (Lay, 438) sought by traditional science. They also align with the next article in making gender visible and echo some early feminist critics that women need "equal access...to education, credentials, and job opportunities" (Gurak and Bayer, 453). Though Selfe and Hawisher do not often engage specifically with gender in this essay (other than to say that it may determine whether or not an individual becomes electronically literate) they do provide the specific example of single-parent homes having less internet access, especially homes where the single parent is the mother.
Looking at definitions of important terms is useful for drawing connections in chapter 7. First and foremost, Self and Hawisher define electronic literacy as being able to communicate online. They state, "we mean the practices involved in reading, writing, and exchanging information in online environments as well as the values associated with such practices-social, cultural, political, educational" (506), and claim that their definition of electronic literacy is synonymous to digital or technological literary. What they want to avoid is talking about is simply computer literacy, which is the skill set required to operate a computer. Conversely, when Breuch defines technological literacy she encompasses both electronic and computer literacy; however, she reveals the dangers of taking a tool-based approach to technology and, even citing Selfe, acknowledges the importance of context, the social, political, and cultural factors that are linked to technology. Furthermore, though they do not specifically mention electronic literacy, Selber, Johnson-Eilola, and Selfe also indicate the importance of the social environment and cultural context. In looking toward the future of technical communication in the final chapter, Ornatowski also brings in society, this time to emphasize the importance of the technical communicator's role. "...in a society increasingly driven by technology, the technical communicator is becoming an important voice in determining how the issues involving technology...are framed and approached...Controversies over technologies often also reflect other issues and broader tensions in society" (597).
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