ABSTRACTProblem-solving is central to technical and professional communication (TPC), but problem-solving's economic roots may not align with social justice. This article introduces socially just creativity: the ability to generate new or unique and effective ideas in conjunction with other members of a community to challenge unjust status quos and tackle wicked social justice problems. The article uses a case study to illustrate that conception. It concludes with recommendations for TPC practitioners to enact social justice creativity.KEYWORDS: Creativityproblem-solvingsocial justicetechnical and professional communication AcknowledgementsThank you to Sylvi for deploying creativity toward social justice and for sharing your story with me. Thank you to Dr. Erin Brock Carlson, Dr. Lynne Stahl, and Dr. Heather Noel Turner for prompting me to think more deeply about the relationship between problem-solving and efficiency (Erin), Uber's complex application of creativity (Lynne), and the relationship between DEI initiatives and social justice (Heather).Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Additional informationNotes on contributorsKrista Speicher SarrafKrista Speicher Sarraf is an Assistant Professor of Technical and Professional Communication at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, where she directs the Technical and Professional Communication Program. Her research draws on the interdisciplinary field of creativity studies to explore how technical and professional communicator use creative thinking to address wicked problems.

This article presents students’ experiences with hybrid grading contracts through a thematic analysis of data. We specifically focused on students’ perceptions of the grading contract’s role in improving their writing skills, issues of fairness, labor, and stress. We argue that the stressful conditions of COVID-19 illuminate the benefits and drawbacks of contract grading, especially regarding fairness and equity, when used at institutions that predominantly serve working-class students. This article can serve as an example of how graduate teaching assistants can use hybrid grading contracts in writing classrooms. We conclude with recommendations for instructors on how to adapt grading contracts to meet the needs of the students and suggest a future research agenda to examine grading contracts and stress levels.

Writing studies must conduct replicable, aggregable, and data-supported (RAD) research to understand the relationship between creativity and writing, including how writers use creative thinking to generate texts and how environmental factors mediate writers’ engagement with creative thinking. This article traces research on creativity from selected writing studies journals since the 2011 release of The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing. Through a systematic literature review, the findings show how RAD research supports domain-specific knowledge-building about writers’ creativity, which can help teachers, scholars, and practitioners to understand what counts as originality in writing, how writers produce creative texts, and how educational institutions can teach advanced writing skills that develop students’ creative thinking.

In 2017, more than a million Tweets were tagged to #MeToo. Some of these Tweets only posted “#MeToo,” while other Tweets described memories of sexual violence. Through an analysis of qualitative interview data, this article illustrates that sharing trauma using hashtag #MeToo helped participants to pattern their memories of sexual violence. It concludes with recommendations for future researchers to examine the intersections between trauma, memory, and the #MeToo hashtag.

Technical and professional communication (TPC) scholars have called for increased attention to creative thinking in the field’s writing practices. This article examines posts about creativity on two social networking websites and generates challenges, skills, and practices relevant to posters’ creative work.

By addressing how writing centers can work to help computer science students be ready for professional challenges related to writing in computer science fields, this study of computer science professionals and students illustrates how findings were applied to train a team of writing tutors. Drawing upon self-reports about writing in computer science jobs and writing in computer science classes, the authors identify both professionals' workplace writing challenges and students' perceptions of these challenges. Implications for writing center practitioners and researchers are discussed, including how writing centers can collaborate with computer science faculty to acquire resources, access the discourse of computer science assignments, and implement a similar training program in their centers.