Abstract This article explores the shift from observation of users to participation with users, describing and investigating three examples of user-centered design practice in order to consider the new ethical demands being made of technical communicators. Pelle Ehn's participatory design method, Roger Whitehouse's design of tactile signage for blind users, and the design of an online writing program are explored for the creation of a dialogic design ethic. The development of effective collaborative design methods requires meaningful communication between users and designers, and dialogic ethics can guide the development of effective and humane technological design methods.

Critical thinking pedagogy offers a supportive environment for teaching ethics in the professional communication classroom. Four important aspects of critical thinking which particularly encourage ethical thought and behavior are identifying and questioning assumptions, seeking a multiplicity of voices and alternatives on a subject, making connections, and fostering active involvement. Focusing on these behaviors allows an ongoing incorporation of ethics into many different aspects of the classroom.

Applying abstract ethical principles to the practical business of building a code of applied ethics for a technical communication department teaches students that they share certain unarticulated or even unconscious values that they can translate into ethical principles. Combining abstract theory with practical policy writing can teach technical communication students to become increasingly aware of ethical actions without restricting ethics solely to abstractions or rules.

Abstract This article proposes retrospective narrative justifications combined with classical concepts of habit formation as a theory of ethics appropriate for practicing technical communicators. To explicate the theory, the article draws on Alasdair Maclntyre's ethical theory, which involves habit formation and narrative theory; on apologia and account-giving theory; and on traditional ethical stances, such as the teleological and deontological doctrines. Special attention is given to the ends-means relationship and the tension between individual and corporate identity in technical communication environments.

This article takes a critical-analytical perspective on the concept of generational ethics at a corporate university site. Specifically, the article seeks to answer whether or not student-employees between the ages 21-35, commonly referred to as "generation x," hold different ethical stances than their instructors and older employees in the organization. Surveys were distributed to 68 students and 8 instructors at the facility to determine the extent to which students differed on six work-related values. Results indicate that students in the 21-35 age cohort did not exhibit popular expectations for "generation x." However, differences were found in the ways each generation reported work-related values. The study concludes that younger students conflicted with older students and instructors on issues involving organizational values. It is concluded that the younger students had not yet been fully socialized into the dominant organizational values of this company.

(2001). Guest Editor's Column. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 245-249.

As service learning becomes a popular pedagogical approach to technical and professional writing courses, instructors need to examine critically the causes of practical problems that arise when classroom work involves nonprofit agencies. Nonprofit management theory provides a possible solution in its discussion of some basic characteristics of organizations in the nonprofit sector. By understanding these characteristics, instructors and students might anticipate and solve problems they encounter.

While many technical communication instructors declare the benefits of client projects, too often instructors do not prepare students to interact with clients. This article reviews a qualitative case study that demonstrates the difficulty students can have interacting with clients. Interviewing, listening, and seeking clarification are behaviors that may help students identify client concerns and miscommunications more effectively.

Using an established university level internship program, this article discusses the issues of socialization and acculturation of interns into the workplace, motivation of student employees, and the relationships between education and training/workplace and academy. Evaluations by students and their supervisors reveal the significance of these issues for positive experiential learning.

Abstract Educational settings tend to provide highly specialized contexts for learning. In contrast, workplaces are increasingly multidisciplinary, presenting challenges often not considered in the technical communication curriculum. Our technical communication program is addressing this issue by building partnerships with programs in mechanical engineering and industrial engineering. In this article, we discuss a study of our initial semester matching technical communication students with teams of engineers in a capstone, client-based design course. We focus on challenges the students faced in the multidisciplinary, client-based experience. Based on our initial results, we suggest that academic and professional settings could do more to address the types of challenges identified. We call for a more inclusive pedagogy, one that expands the boundaries of technical communication and welcomes multidisciplinary experience in shared contexts.

This article explores the effect of classroom-workplace collaborations on student learning. Drawing on two case studies, I explore how classroom-workplace collaborations help us to teach professional genres. I examine how they replicate workplace activity and convey features of workplace genres and how they serve as transitional experiences for students. I also examine students' reactions to the feedback they received during the projects.

The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, the organization that accredits engineering programs in the United States, has shifted its focus to the documentation of student learning outcomes. This shift has prompted changes in the work of technical communication departments and programs that serve engineering, from the development of new courses to increased collaboration between technical and non-technical faculty. This article traces the development of ABET'S Engineering Criteria 2000 and identifies the effect of EC 2000 on technical communication now and in the future.

Professional technical communication often takes place within a larger organizational structure, a structure defined and constrained by both external (national or disciplinary) and internal (organizational) cultures. Thus, theories that help technical communicators analyze and understand organizations can be of especial importance. This bibliography overviews theories of organization from the viewpoint of culture, using five themes of organizational research as a framework. Based on this framework, each section introduces specific theories of international, intercultural, or organizational communication, building upon them through a series of related articles, and showing how they can be applied in the field of technical communication.

This article argues that the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer provides a useful theoretical framework from which to discuss ethical issues in the technical communication classroom. The article analyzes a previously published case study to demonstrate how hermeneutics can shed light on the ways that writers can be unconscious of ethical problems in their own writing. Finally, some suggestions for pedagogical applications are presented.

As women take part in the workforce in greater numbers and in higher positions, they need representation in visual images that will signify their achievements. Because portraits of women have for centuries highlighted their beauty and passivity, the poses, expressions, and props chosen in the past elicit similar readings in current professional women's photographs, readings in opposition to the typical power and authority awarded to male portraits. Women's portrait features may signify a more friendly and open personality than the formal male portrait shows and often represent women's interests and professional affiliations. Currently working women choose a wide variety of poses and props, and cultural readings of the features of portraits have begun to change. A trend towards more informal poses has allowed men's and women's portraits to use some of the same features. Communicators can help to change the conventionalized readings of women's portraits through careful document design that highlights women and their achievements.

(2001). Research Tactics for Constructing Perceptions of Subject Matter in Organizational Contexts: An Ethnographic Study of Technical Communicators. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 59-95.

This study explores two cases of professional communication among U.S. and South American personnel in one multinational organization in Quito, Ecuador. The results suggest that implicit in U.S. rhetorics of professional communication are valorizations of writing as a mechanism of regulating behavior, of universalism and individual reference points as rhetorical strategies, and of common‐law or precedent‐setting logic as compositional and interpretive strategies. However, many South American personnel seem predisposed to think of personal interactions as a mechanism of regulating behavior, of particular and collective reference points as rhetorical strategies, and of civil law logic as compositional and interpretive strategies. Thus, widespread claims about the roles of writing to “construct,”; mediate, or regulate organizational behavior need to be contextualized in the predominant rhetorical values of the organizational context.

Visual metadiscourse can provide design criteria for authors when considering the needs and expectations of readers. The linguistic concept of metadiscourse is expanded from the textual realm to the visual realm, where authors have many necessary design considerations as they attempt to help readers navigate through and understand documents. These considerations, both textual and visual, also help construct the ethos of authors, as design features reveal awareness of visual literacy and of the communication context. Visual metadiscourse complements textual metadiscourse in emphasizing the necessity of rhetoric in technical communication.

Identified in this article are 163 texts selected from a database of over 25,000 citations collected from five technical communication journals between 1988 and 1997. The texts—points of reference—represent the research, theory, and practice of technical communication.

Often the first of many documents written about patients, the emergency medical service's run report is a preprinted form on which providers record the events of an emergency. These forms are important analytically because they represent the practices and interests of the multiple professions engaged in caring for critically ill or injured patients. This article examines the historical evolution of a shared medical form and its impact on the professionals who use it.

This article presents a close reading of one chapter of the only guidebook written for physicians about the clinical management of breastfeeding. The medical discussion of the psychological aspects of breastfeeding articulates conflicting ideological views of women and their place in society, demonstrating how medicine reflects and contributes to a cultural context that is ambivalent about women's changing roles and the transformation of their practices as mothers. At stake is medicine's role in regulating maternal behavior.

Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. Ed. Stuart K. Card, Jock D. Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 1999. 712 pp. Information Design. Ed. Robert Jacobson. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1999. 357 pp. Information Architects. Ed. Peter Bradford. Introduction by Richard Saul Wurman. New York: Graphis, 1997. 235 pp. Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century. Robert E. Horn. Bainbridge Island, WA: MacroVU, 1998. 270 pp. Digital Sensations: Space, Identity, and Embodiment in Virtual Reality. Ken Hillis. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999. 271 pp.

This article analyzes the clinical protocol within the rhetorical framework of the drug development and approval process, identifying the constraints under which the protocol is written and the rhetorical form, argumentative strategies, and style needed to improve and teach the writing of this document.

Abstract This article investigates the quantitative and qualitative evolution of debate‐creating (DEB) vs. accounting (ACC) references in 90 French medical articles published between 1810 and 1995. My findings suggest that nineteenth‐century French academic writing tends to be more polemical or oppositional than cooperative by contrast to its twentieth‐century counterpart. These results suggest that the debate‐creating vs. accounting opposition could be a rhetorical universal of referential behavior in medical literature.

To provide modest insight into whether or not reading literature helps medical students communicate more effectively in the physician‐patient encounter, I conducted an ethnographic study of medical students taking a required three‐hour literature and medicine course. This article will demonstrate that although these medical students were embedded in the discourse of medicine, reflective writing enabled them to conceive medicine as an interpretive, personal, and idiosyncratic activity rather than as a stagnant diagnosis‐based process.

This article describes how disability studies can be used in a medical and science writing class to critically examine the assumptions of scientific discourse. An emerging, interdisciplinary field, disability studies draws on feminist, postmodern, and post‐colonial theory and extends their critiques to the medicalization of disability. Deconstructing the medical model of disability helps students understand how science is socially constructed. After conceptualizing disability studies, this essay discusses sample disability‐related classroom activities, readings, and writing assignments.

Writing/Disciplinarity: A Sociohistoric Account of Literate Activity in the Academy. Paul A. Prior. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998. 333 pages. Exploring the Rhetoric of International Professional Communication: An Agenda for Teachers and Researchers. Ed. Carl R. Lovitt with Dixie Goswami. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, Inc., 1999. 326 pages.

Abstract Technical editors ensure a document communicates with the reader. With XML, active server pages, and dynamic document creation, Web pages are no longer simple hand‐crafted text objects, but dynamic groupings of text assembled moments before the reader views the page. With dynamic documents, high‐level editing tasks will be, at best, vaguely defined during text creation. To maximize the information content, future technical editors require tighter control over information consistency and content.

This article recommends strategies academics can use to contribute to an issue of great interest in industry: how best to define, measure, and achieve quality documentation. These strategies include contextualizing quality definitions, advocating the use of multiple quality measures, conducting research to identify specific heuristics for defining and measuring quality in particular workplace contexts, and partnering with industry to educate upper management about those heuristics and the benefits of promoting technical communicators to the strategic role of organizational “gatekeepers of quality.”

Academic disciplines certify knowledge through publication in scholarly journals; therefore, peer review of journal articles is one method of authorizing someone's speech. It is possible, however, to see peer review and other strategies as methods by which elites silence or de‐authorize voices that pose a threat to their status. This article discusses four methods of forum control— peer review, denial of forum, public correction, and published ridicule. Examples are drawn from cases in science.

A three‐year experiment in integrating technical editing students into a multidisciplinary engineering design project developed several ways of helping students apply classroom learning to practical problems. Each year, the engineering students formed Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) and the technical editing students provided editorial support, first as full members of IPTs, then as separate editorial support teams. Research from cooperative learning and teamwork indicates strategies and techniques for best integrating the technical editing students.

The Presentation of Technical Information. 3rd ed. Reginald Kapp. Letchworth, Hertfordshire, UK: The Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators, 1998. 136 pages. User‐Centered Technology: A Rhetorical Theory for Computers and Other Mundane Artifacts. Robert R. Johnson. Albany: SUNY P, 1998. 195 pages. Ethics in Technical Communication: Shades of Gray. Lori Allen and Dan Voss. New York: Wiley, 1997. 410 pages. The Dynamics of Writing Review: Opportunities for Growth and Change in the Workplace. Susan M. Katz. Vol. 5 in the ATTW Contemporary Studies in Technical Communication. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1998. 134 pages. Essays in the Study of Scientific Discourse: Methods, Practice, and Pedagogy. Ed. John T. Battalio. Vol. 6 in the ATTW Contemporary Studies in Technical Communication. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1998. 264 pages. Outlining Goes Electronic. Jonathan Price. Vol. 9 in the ATTW Contemporary Studies in Technical Communication. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1999. 177 pages (including bibliography and indexes). Wiring the Writing Center. Ed. Eric H. Hobson. Logan, Utah: Utah State UP, 1998. 254 pages. Inventing the Internet. Janet Abbate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. 264 pages.

This article argues that professional writing researchers can help shape public policy by understanding policy making as a function of institutionalized rhetorical processes and by using an activist research stance to help generate the knowledge necessary to intervene. My goal is to argue for what activist technical writing research might look like, lay out an understanding of institutions that is helpful for influencing public policy, and illustrate the promises and the problems of both positions by using the case of a study focused on local HIV/AIDS policy making. According to this way of thinking, professional writing researchers can impact policy by helping change the processes by which policy gets made.

Practical experience teaches the difficulty and the messiness of democratic public policy processes. A discourse analytic perspective on rhetorical action in the institutional settings of policy work reveals the dynamics of effective agency. By simulating practical experience and by developing a discourse analytic perspective, academic instruction in professional and technical communication can show students what elected officials, governmental staff, and non‐profit non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) do to make or to implement policy.

This article examines a 1994 General Accounting Office (GAO) report on sexual harassment at U.S. service academies to determine how power structures affected the report writers' rhetorical choices. Employing postmodern mapping theories, the article identifies what is valued and devalued in the report's contents. Then it describes Congress's reaction to the report and speculates on the report's impact on public discourse and subsequent social action. It offers postmapping theory as a way of understanding the relationship between discourse and power in policy reports.

Our current national policy regarding sexual harassment, expressed through legal, economic, and popular discourses, exemplifies the Foucauldian paradigm in its attempt to regulate sexuality through seemingly authorless texts. Arguing that regulation through such "discursive technologies"; need not lead to the effects of domination that Foucault recognized, I propose a user‐centered approach to policy drafting that values the knowledge of workers as users and makers of workplace policy.

In this article, we analyze a two‐semester effort to integrate writing instruction into a multi‐disciplinary sophomore engineering design course in Northern Arizona University's College of Engineering and Technology. Specifically, we describe the programmatic implementation and assessment approach to evaluate whether student writing improved over the course of the semester. After discussing the reasons for taking a writing‐intensive approach to engineering, we analyze the results of a pre‐and post‐test administered over the span of an academic semester. Although the outcome of our assessment did not show significant improvement, we argue that writing instruction is important for increasing students’ overall learning skills. We conclude by pointing out several benefits and disadvantages of trying to assess writing improvement over two one‐semester periods.