Research and Pedagogy in CPT Part 2

The first thing I learned while reading the third section of Critical Power Tools is that Bernadette Longo must be a pretty important person in technical communication research, and you should probably cite her if you want to discuss cultural context and rhetorical boundaries. I was, in fact, most interested in her article because I'm partial to discussions about this qualitative/quantitative dichotomy and what knowledge is privileged and why. Without attempting to summarize the article, Longo argues that we need to examine technical writing beyond the limits of an organization and pushes for cultural studies as a part of technical writing research. I understand her points; however, I cannot help but think that other discourses and institutions have even more power through the guise of appearing "scientific". For example, Longo mentions that the engineers' data was ignored during the Challenger crisis and, for many, no amount of research is going to convince them that climate change is human-driven, because that would have economic consequences. Also, scientists may "...make princesses out of all these Cinderellas" (117), but we have to make sure to carefully quantify how sure we are that each one is really royalty. As I was reading this, an NPR report was discussing how confidence intervals are being linked to adjectives; for example, 'very likely' is 90% confident and 'extremely likely' is 95% confident. Thus, I do not think that the public always sees science or numbers as offering them "objective truths" (123).

"It's extremely likely that this outfit is going to allow you to dazzle the prince, and you know what that means!" 

I like the statement by Saur:

Regulations based on objective empirical data and experimentation can reinforce and support workers' subjective experience...we do not close a coal mine every time a miner feels a chill or hears an unexpected noise. As McCloskey concludes,"The alternative to modernism is not irrationalism" (168; cf. Dawes "Irrationality," Rational as cited in Saur, 183).

I see science as attempting to gather enough information to draw conclusions and to be useful, and I think the same is true for cultural studies. For example, one person may notice how an object is acting in a historical context, another author may notice something else and add to it, and another may use that historical context to examine a different object. Furthermore, this article (and others) brought up additional questions for me:

1. Is an "incitement to discourse" enough to validate cultural studies? Isn't that the goal of all (okay, the vast majority of) research?
2. Doesn't theory drive methodology, or am I confused?
3. Is technical writing conquering "users' native know-how" and transforming it into powerful scientific discourse? (117) Is it building on know-how? What might happen if we compare it to the goal later proposed by Salvo: "the technical communicator takes raw data...and transforms it into usable knowledge" (232)?
4. If we place a high value on speculative knowledge, does that bring up other power struggles? For example, do we value the speculative knowledge of a professor from Harvard over one from a community college? Doesn't the institution still reign?
5. What would technical writing and scientific discourse look like if it were 'open' (Salvo 236)? Is uncertainty a part of that? Would it be more exciting to read a text that includes the relationship between the author and research? What about the engineer, the technical writer, and the research?

I was happy to read Britt's article after Longo's because I was wondering how we should define an institution. However, I would like to know more about the levels she purposes:

At the most local level are sites such as composition classrooms; at the most global level there are disciplines (such as English studies) and macroinstitutions (such as the family or state). Situation in between are what Porter et al. call microinsitiutions/organizations (such as literacy centers or writing centers (Britt 135).

I like that the authors mention that we cannot always critique the local level to be effective, because that's part of my argument in 501. I also understand that institutions rely on rhetoric, and I thought it was so interesting how they emerge as taken-for-granted. However, I'm still not 100% sure I could define one. For instance, how do we know what separates a macroinstituation from a microinstitution? Is discipline synonymous with institution? Does that make 'the university' a macroinstitution? Therefore, when reading Grabill's article, I appreciated that he articulated the distinction between method and methodology, and I thought it was an interesting way to show that methodology is "shaped by a number of issues" (154), including ideology.

In terms of pedagogy, Henry's article reiterated technical writers' second class statuses, their tendency to be neglected, and their assumed role as "handbooks" (208). He suggests that technical writing in the classroom suffers because faculty hired to teach it are over-worked and underpaid; they don't have time to do meaningful work. Also, most of them don't have technical writing experience. After our discussion last week, I wonder how important experience in that specific arena is? Also, could there be problems with autoethonography if one is asked to do it without anonymity? One of the science programs I have heard of allows students to work for a government agency and write a chapter as part of their dissertation. Should it be problematic that organizations might read this work, knowing who published it?

Scott's article was useful because it provided some specific pedagogical strategies and examples. However, I think that it is possible to show that personal success and "civic involvement and democratic social reform" (242) can connect in helpful and motivating ways. Also, is service-learning the same as having an internship with a non-profit? How do we distinguishing volunteering from service-learning? I also found myself getting confused about his stance at certain points. For example, in the last paragraph of 246, he talks about how certain instructors would place questions and reflections near the end, which I'm guessing he is arguing against, but I was left waiting for a wrap up that he never provides. Later, when he fully articulates his stance, I appreciate it; I like that reflection is not an "afterthought" (250) or "more of an exercise [students complete] for their instructor and grade" (250), because I have experienced that before. Wills' work is also interesting, but I wonder how her argument would change (or wouldn't change) if she was discussing teaching undergraduates instead of graduate students. I also found some of the quotes in the afterward to be particularly powerful.

"...we might begin with the simple fact that language, as Jim Berlin often wrote, is never innocent. Language matters. The uses of language matter" (272).