Check out this recent statement adopted by the NCTE regarding 21st century literacies. Sound vaguely familiar? If you're a tech writer or have done anything remotely close to technical communication in the last 100 years, you'll note the eerie similarities among the literacies for readers and writers of the 21st century and those that have served tech writers from the birth of our identity-phobic discipline.
In 2002, Kelli Cargile Cook published an essay (Technical Communication Quarterly, v11 n1 p5-29 Win 2002) in which she imagined a framework for technical communication instruction based on six literacies: 1) Basic, 2) Rhetorical, 3) Social, 4) Technological, 5) Ethical, and 6) Critical. While Cook's focus was on a pedagogical framework, the outcomes of the objectives, lessons, and activities she imagined could and would quite cleanly align with the range of literacies adopted by the NCTE.
My point: Well, I don't necessarily think I'm trying to make one. It's the kind of inter-disciplinarity that I kept finding when I was preparing for my exams -- yes, the exams that I have yet to take. Regardless of my procrastination, the relationships across, through, and among disciplines is always intriguing and a bit reassuring... like maybe if someone else believes it, we surely can't be wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment