This article reports data from questionnaires assessing the day-to-day experiences that members of the technical communication field have in carrying out their research. The data revealed that most members experience at least some frustration and numerous constraints that prevent them from doing the kinds and amounts of research that they want to do and that may affect the quality of their research. In short, technical communication scholars face an array of challenges. This article presents examples of these challenges and ideas that respondents had both for lessening the challenges scholars face and for better preparing graduate students. It suggests several practical initiatives for addressing these challenges along with realistic strategies for implementing those initiatives.

There have been many attempts to assess the state of research in our field. This article is our attempt to both (1) synthesize recent analyses, opinions, and conclusions concerning the status of technical communication research and (2) propose an action plan aimed at redirecting our field's agenda for its research. We explore these questions: What are the recent research trends in our field? What is and is not promising about our recent approaches to research? Where do we need to go next? What are the critical components for a new agenda for our research?

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.

Situated learning theories offer useful insights into how learning to write can be supported and transacted through interactions between newcomers and experienced practitioners in academic and professional domains. Reporting the findings from a study of a mentoring relationship in physics, this article addresses how such processes work to teach composing in advanced academic contexts and what can make them more or less effective. The author identifies and discusses three factors that may constrain situated learning in such contexts and the transmission of authority that purportedly occurs through such learning. These factors include newcomers' existing skills for, and approaches to, composing, which may limit their acquisition and use of new skills; the implicitness of situated learning, which may pose difficulties for newcomers as they struggle to grasp the conceptual complexity entailed in composing disciplinary texts; and the location and distribution of authority in practitioner/newcomer relationships, which may inhibit newcomers as they struggle to acquire and establish their own authority by making original contributions to their fields.

In this article, we argue that one important criterion for evaluating qualitative studies of technical and scientific communication is whether we find our accounts meaningful and capable of redirecting our scholarly and professional practices. As a means of improving our understanding of the situations and practices we study, we address how to engage in our research in ways that not only are self-reflexive and dialogic, but that also solicit and use our participants' perspectives and authority—even when they may differ from our own.

Rhetorical studies of audience have portrayed readers as fictionalized constructs and as concrete realities. In contrast to such static portrayals, the actions and concerns of three physicists presenting their work to biologists, chemists, and physicists suggest a conception of audience that is social and dynamic. By entering into frequent collaborations with their readers, the physicists acquired knowledge that helped them to construct a persuasive account of their work.