From the academy to the workplace: The formation of a professional communicator

CASDW 2012 Keynote Address

From the academy to the workplace:The formation of a professional

communicator

Natasha Artemeva(with Janna Fox)

Carleton University

1

•Initially, I was planning to review recent research that focuses on the development of professional communication strategies during the transition from the academic classroom to the workplace– But it turned into a discussion of my changing understanding of what

professional communication entails and what concepts we as researchers are wrestling with when exploring the learning of professional genres

•To avoid confusion, I start with several key definitions. Then I– Present current views on learning and transfer– Discuss current views on the nature of professional writing, discourse,

and genres– Briefly review a few current significant programs of research into the

academy to workplace transition– Provide an illustration from our research-in-progress – Discuss pedagogical implications and challenges that professional

communication education faces– List issues that must be addressed in future studies

N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address

2

Professional Communication

refers to the use of all forms of semiotic resources (linguistic as well as multimodal) in and for professional as well as academic communication, in both spoken as well as written contexts (Bhatia & Bremner, forthcoming)


3

The overall objective of Professional Communication research

•to understand and appreciate –how professional communication is used in specific contexts, and –whether and how professionals can be taught and trained to communicate appropriately in specific contexts to achieve their disciplinary and/or professional objectives (Bhatia & Bremner, forthcoming), that is, to become professional communicators

• Discussion of transfer- The question of transfer has occupied researchers’ minds for almost a century, starting from Thorndike's work in the 1920s up to the modern activity-theoretical studies.


4

Transfer of what?Between School and Work: New Perspectives on Transfer and Boundary-Crossing. Edited by Terttu Tuomi-Gröhn and Yrjö Engestrom. Boston: Pergamon, 2003. 344 pp.

•the possibility of transfer of learning is a key question for – the professional communicators who prepare to

work in distributed work environments, such as multiple interconnected workplaces and global economy, and for

– the educators who attempt to prepare future professional communicators for the world of work


5

•Currently, researchers do not necessarily interpret transfer as the effect of a prior task on the subsequent task of the same level of complexity (horizontal transfer) but rather see it as – a continual learning from one changing situation

to another, a more complex one: from one activity system to another (vertical transfer) (Tuomi-Gröhn & Engestrom, 2003)• In the latter case, work becomes distributed in time, and transfer

plays an important role in one’s successful performance of more and more complex tasks

• transfer becomes an important parameter of distributed work, as one’s ability to successfully cross boundaries between multiple activity systems reflects one’s ability to transfer learning and knowledge among contexts and to become a productive member of several activity systems.


6

Research into transfer from •FYC to other academic courses (a long tradition of research in the US, more recently, Wardle)•previously known genres to university genres (Artemeva & Fox; Freedman & Adam; Bawarshi & Reiff)– “If there is doubt about whether students can transfer

their rhetorical knowledge and skill to neighboring academic disciplines . . . [,] there is even more doubt about whether they can do so to the professional workplace . . .” (Brent, 2011, p. 397)


7

Recent views on professional writing/discourse/genres

Embodied nature of professional writing:– its recurrent nature, its goal-directedness,

and its intimate linking with technologies and with knowledge are always enacted in part through bodily and sensory means. (Hass and Witten, 2001, p. 416)•Such notions are consistent with the emergent

and developing perspectives on discourse as an embodied and multimodal phenomenon.

N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address8

The notion of writingIn this presentation, writing is understood as “inseparable from talking (and indeed, from sketching, movement, gaze, and so on)” – This view of writing “is part of a growing

recognition that what counts as writing is much more complex than was once believed. Indeed, focusing on written text in isolation” reduces and even distorts “its very nature (e.g., Lemke, 1998; O’Halloran, 1998)” (Artemeva & Fox, 2011a)


9

. . . multimodality has always and everywhere been present as representations are propagated across multiple media and as any situated event is indexically fed by all the modes present . . .. In this sense, all genres are irremediably multimodal; the question then becomes what particular configurations of multimodality are at work.

(Prior, 2009, p. 27)


10

•Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) pioneering treatment of text and image as multimodal, based on Halliday’s (1973, 1978) Systemic Functional Linguistics initially provided rather a “static” rendering (Bhatia, Flowerdew, & Jones, 2008, p. 129) of multimodality•Such text- and image centred approaches to

multimodality have recently been complemented by more dynamic approaches (e.g., Norris, 2004, 2008; O’Halloran, Tisse et al., 2011).


11

•These “dynamic” approaches consider “multiple semiotic resources” that include spoken and written “language, gesture, dress, architecture, proximity” or, from a cinematic perspective, “lighting, movement, gaze, camera angle, and so forth” (O’Halloran, Tan, Smith, & Podlasov, 2011, p. 110), all of which are studied simultaneously (e.g., O’Halloran, Tisse et.al., 2011). – Thus, given this more dynamic view, discourse has

been reconceptualized as “integrated in the flow of concrete social actions that go to make up ordinary and professional human practices” (Bhatia et al., 2008, p. 130).


12

Recent research on the transition from academia to workplace

In-depth, often longitudinal, research studies have been conducted over the past 20 years, investigating ways in which students and novices develop (or fail to develop) as competent communicators within their professions.

• To name only a few, Beaufort, 1999; Couture, 1986; Dias, Freedman, Medway & Paré, 1999; Dias & Paré, 2000; Freedman, Adam, & Smart, 1994; Lingard, Schryer, Garwood, & Spafford, 2003; Winsor, 1996

– An excellent review of this literature is provided by Anne Beaufort in Chapter 9, “Writing in the professions” in Smagorinsky, P. (2006). Perspectives on composition: Multiple perspectives on two decades of change. (pp. 217-242). New York: Teachers College Press.


These studies, in turn, have led to the development of a specific area of professional communication research that focuses on what has come to be called school-to-work transition. – This term describes the process that novices go

through when moving from academic institutions (such as colleges and universities) to the workplace.


14

Novices mastering (or resisting, or changing)

complex genresThe investigation of such complex,

multimodal genres requires multiple analytical and methodological approaches: – at the analytical level, both rhetorical and textual

approaches are important


15

Analytical and methodological approaches used in such studies

•RGS, AT, situated learning, including CoP, other social theories of learning and practice (Bourdieu, Giddens, Vygotsky, etc.), and their combinations (e.g., Bawarshi, Devitt, Freedman, Medway, Paré, Russell, Schryer)•Linguistic approaches: corpus (e.g., Gentil, Hyland), ESP (e.g., Swales, Tardy), pragmatics (e.g., Giltrow), SFL (e.g., Byrnes)•Multimodal approaches (e.g., Artemeva & Fox)•Methods: ethnomethodology (e.g., Beaufort, Freedman, Smart), case studies (e.g., Artemeva, Winsor)– A developing body of literature on school-to-work transition rooted in

these analytical and methodological approaches has presented us with rich data


•On the basis of their empirical research into school-to-work transition, some scholars (e.g., Dias et al., 1999; Freedman, 1993, 1995; Freedman & Adam, 1996, 2000a, b; Freedman, Adam, & Smart, 1994) expressed doubts that workplace communications can be taught and learned in the academic environment, while •others (e.g., Artemeva, 2008; Artemeva & Fox, 2010; Bawarshi & Reiff, 2011; Beaufort, 1999; Devitt, 2004; Brent, 2011, forthcoming; Ford, 2004; Jolliffe, 1995; Tuomi-Gröhn & Engeström, 2003) have observed that some transfer of learning and knowledge of rhetorical strategies across the contexts does occur under specific circumstances.


17

From the academy to the workplace: Examples of longitudinal research programs

Schryer’s work•“Socialisation into a community involves learning sanctioned ways of talking” (Schryer et al., 2003, p. 612) – Students (clerks) preferred it when doctors did not interrupt

their case presentations, while doctors saw the interruptions and immediate feedback as site for learning• “Thinking as a Student” vs. “Thinking as a Doctor”

•Exemplifies that school and workplace genres may be at cross-purposes


18

Paré’s work

•Le Maistre and Paré (2004) combine RGS and AT in order to develop a model of different activities that their participants are involved in as students in a classroom setting and as novice members of a community of practice (interns working in the workplace). •Le Maistre and Paré suggest that when a student becomes involved in professional practice, the objects of “the learning activity in the school (the theories, laws, methods, tools, and other artifacts of the profession) become ‘mediational means’ in the workplace” (p. 45).

•Exemplifies inherent differences in the activity systems


19

Situated learning and identity•a knowledgeably skilled identity (Lave, 1991; Lave and Wenger,1996) – closely linked to a growing novice’s sense of

professional competence (Smart & Brown, 2002)

Learning to communicate in a particular professional situation is part of the process of becoming a legitimate member of a particular community of practice.


20

Bazerman’s work•Bazerman (2002) discusses the interconnectedness of genre acquisition and the development of identity linked to a particular experience and activity. •He observes that individuals become committed to the identities they develop through participation in genres of a particular community, and – “in these ways genre shapes intentions,

motives, expectations, attention, perception, affect, and interpretive frame” (p. 14).


21

•Learning to become an accepted and functioning member of a particular workplace situation does not involve a simple transfer of knowledge and skills acquired in an academic setting directly to a professional setting (e.g., Artemeva, 2008, 2009; Dias et al.,1999; Smart & Brown, 2002) – return to the discussion of horizontal and vertical transfer

•A growing sense of a novice as a competent professional, that is, the development of the professional identity, contributes to the novice’s ability to act as an expert and enhances his/her capacity to learn in the workplace (Smart & Brown, 2002).


22

Learning genres of teachingUniversity mathematics (an illustration)

• in order to analyze the complex pedagogical genre of chalk talk, we needed a “multimodal record”:

…video is a multimodal record in which talk is kept in context and all modes are recorded sequentially… [enabling] researchers to rigorously and systematically examine resources and practices through which participants in interaction build their social activities and how their talk, facial expression, gaze, gesture, and body elaborate one another. (Jewitt, 2012, p. 8)


23

24

Our study, just like many studies of the school-to-work transition, originally focused on descriptions and use of professional communications genres used by mathematicians in undergraduate lecture classes, that is, we focused on repeating patterns


25

•An experienced English-speaking American professor teaching at an American university provided the following uninterrupted commentary, while simultaneously writing on the board:

. . . I'm going to put this in a little box [draws a box around a formula] because this is by far the most important formula today which we use to derive pretty much everything else. And this is the way that we're going to be able to compute these numbers. So let's do an example. This example . . . So we'll call this example one. We'll take [writes on the board: f(x) = 1/x] the function f(x) which is one over x.


26

Across all the observed local contexts, mathematics teachers enacted the same teaching genre through speaking aloud while writing on the board, drawing, diagramming, moving, gesturing, etc. As genre researchers, we identified this typified and recurring practice as chalk talk

N. Artemeva (with J. Fox)

CASDW 2012 Keynote Address

27

•Who are novices in our research?– Math students’ path through early

teaching•At this stage in our research, we are focusing on how novice mathematicians learn and execute these genres– What differs (Paré & Smart, 1994) in novice and

expert use of these genres, and why?


28

While chalk talk is unfolding, teachers are continuously cognizant of the positioning of new writing on the board in relation to the chalk talk already inscribed. We call this chalk board management board choreography (Artemeva & Fox, 2011; Fox & Artemeva, 2011)


29

Board choreography. Mathematics teachers sometimes ask the class if some of the least recent writing on the board can be removed; erase a section of what they have written, which they deem no longer necessary, for the continuation of their disciplinary narrative; use colored chalk to highlight parts of their writing; draw boxes around key elements in the lecture, divide the board into sections by drawing vertical lines; and/or move sliding boards in a highly systematic way. Both writing on the board and erasing takes into account the linguistic directionality of the text (e.g., right to left in English, French, Spanish, Swedish vs. left to right in Hebrew).


30

Our research indicates that chalk board choreography during the lecture is part and parcel of the genre of chalk talk. As an experienced mathematics professor stressed,– A lot of thinking goes into, in the

blackboard. You need to think what to keep, what to . . . erase, um, where to write it so that it would not get in your way . . . if you want to keep it for a while.


31

•All of our participants commented that a mathematics classroom must have a large chalkboard:

. . . ideally a good [class]room will have a huge wall of blackboard where you can move and where things can stay . . . for a long time. So it’s, the ability to go back to information that [was] . . . given 10, 20, almost 30 minutes before. . . . [because] in math . . . the density of information is incredible.

•Some participants expressed moderate satisfaction with multiple sliding chalkboards that can be found in many classrooms. However, they commented that multiple sliding chalkboards require even more complex choreography and thinking:

[There are] . . . . three boards that I can write on, . . . [that] I [will] use. So there’s a front board, a board behind it, and then the fixed board. And I think it’s best to write on the middle board first and slide that up, and then the second . . . the top board, and slide that up, and then the bottom board . . .


32

•Further, not only is the text ‘moving’ on the board, the teachers – are moving in space as well, – using pointing gestures to indicate relationships

between parts of the chalk talk narrative on the board, – signalling points, – highlighting key issues, – referring to problem sets and textbook chapters that

are not necessarily physically present in the classroom, and

– strategically positioning themselves physically in relation to the text written on the board or to the class as they speak.


33

•In an interview the post-doc commented that in teaching evaluations students had complained about his writing on the board, and he interpreted these complaints as negative comments on the quality of his handwriting. •He plans his “lessons in his head” and writes notes,

but doesn’t plan the board (cf. comments of experienced professors)•After having watched and discussed the video of his

teaching with a researcher, he noted that he did not know how to make his writing on the board organized and straight.


34

•An award winning Canadian professor:– When he was a PhD student at MIT, he

had a mentor who watched his video recorded lectures and commented on them in detail

– He still keep those e-mails and uses the feedback in his practice


35

Implications for teaching and research

•Mentorship•Current literature often puts an emphasis on such changes in academic communication training for future professionals as 1. service-learning and a shift from the

traditional stand-alone technical communication courses towards communication training integrated in disciplinary courses designed to assist students in developing professional communication competence.


36

2. Within an increasingly global marketplace and diverse workplace, discussions of intercultural communication (e.g., Haas & Bartolotta, 2011, 2012) have become important (e.g., Devoss, Jasken, & Hayden, 2002; Thrush, 1993). – Teachers and students of professional

communication now face the need to develop ‘global’ literacies for globalized markets (Matsuda & Matsuda, 2011; Starke-Meyerring, 2005);

– no less important has become the need to understand the relationships between language and power in different national and linguistic contexts (e.g., Grobman, 1999; Smart, 2006).


37

3. As Selter (2002) observes, rapidly developing tools of electronic multimodal communication may (and often do) lead to turning technical communication courses into software tools courses, which can be seen as a threat to effective teaching of complex multi-media rhetoric. – Technical communication instructors experience a growing

pressure to not only introduce students to new ways of communicating but also help them understand “the larger knowledge, social, and activity environments” and “the ways in which communications will mediate transformed work, citizenship, and personal relations” (Bazerman, 2011, p. 75).


38

4. The development of new types of professional communication education. Alongside the more traditional classroom training and online courses (e.g., St. Amant, 2007), technical communication programs have introduced other types of education:– client projects (as Katz proposed in 1998, “teachers need

to make an effort to involve nonacademic personnel in the review and evaluation of student projects...” p. 109)

– internships and co-operative education, where students join professional organizations for a limited time and work there as employees (e.g., Anson & Forsberg , 1990; Artemeva, 2005, 2009; Billett, 2004; Smart & Brown, 2002)


39

5. One of the major challenges that technical and professional communication educators face at the moment is the need to remain critical in their expectations of what can and cannot be transferred from the classroom to workplace contexts. – Further educational research into

transfer may help account for the “strategies that can, if not be transferred neatly to, at least be reapplied to other situations” (Brent, 2011).


40

6. A new theoretical concept has crystallized:– the concept of learning domain-specific

rhetorical genre knowledge not as an uninterrupted process of learning genre conventions that starts at school, but as an accumulation of what I have come to call ingredients of genre knowledge that are both acquired and learned by novices on their way to becoming full participants in professional practice.


41

These ingredients appear to include, but are not limited to, the knowledge of genre conventions--as Katz (1998) observed, "knowing the conventions is necessary but not sufficient for appropriate communication" (p. 18).


42

Both educators and researchers need to remember that written, oral, and multimodal discourses are

“typically deeply enmeshed, in locally specific ways, in the cultures, work activities, and socio-technical practices of professional organization”, so that “certain aspects of the knowledge of . . . genres may be thoroughly bound up with expertise “ and “the development of writing competency cannot [be] achieved outside of this context” (Smart, 2006, p. 206)


43

Issues for future research•The notion of novice vs. expert:– Novices’ ability to effect change (Artemeva,

2005) (Nadeane Trowse’s presentation later today raises a similar issue: novice vs. expert)

•Compliance vs. resistance (Anson & Foresberg, 1990; Katz, 1998)


44

Date post:	02-Jan-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	britanni-howell
View:	26 times
Download:	0 times

From the academy to the workplace: The formation of a professional communicator

Documents