Carolyn Rude’s Mapping the Research Questions in Technical Communication is quite the hardy piece of reading material. While, I think, the longest piece we have read, in reflection for this essay I think it is one of the most interesting pieces which struck a chord with me.
Referring mostly to my notes, which are a source for my first reaction to the piece, I think would be a good place to begin. “What kind of research do you do in your field?”
Being a math major, specifically focusing in pure mathematics, this is a question I have received countless times. Not that technical communications haven’t, but it is funny to hear this from a journal written by someone who seems to know what they are talking about. Being a math major, a lot of what I do, does get questioned by my peers, family and myself. For example, a well-known sequence, the Fibonacci Sequence, has many well recorded and observed properties. A research question posed by one of my professors was, rather than beginning the sequence: 1,1; why not: i,1? Beyond that, I like how questions like this come to me, and after reading this article it makes me think: why?
Rude talks about the struggles and processes of a field to define itself in the modern day and age; while on my hand, I study a field which is over two millennia old. Yet, there are many similarities. While many people might think of math being solely equations, formulae, and bad teachers; a lot of math is practical and has strong relations to technical communications. ESPECIALLY pedagogy.
A branch of mathematics that I know very limited about, is math education. This field, from what I know, is solely focused on pedagogical method in classrooms, book design, curriculum design, and rewriting the tale, that all kids hate math. So in a way technical communication and math education have a lot to gain from one another, as Rude points out.
If I recall correctly, rude poses the questions about pedagogy: “What should be the content of our courses and curriculum? How shall we teach students best practices, history, and possibilities? How shall we negotiate competing claims for content and pedagogical methods and compete for academic resources?” Which makes me think of the recent swap to common core, and the methods I was taught by a company I worked for when I taught math. To no one’s surprise, the swap to common core caused a lot of clash with current students and current teachers. The aching question caused by this change was, why? Why did we do this? This order makes no sense. This often being the reply of students and teachers; but how about the people who came up with this? A lot of what common core is supposed to do is supposed to make the focus of math courses more pointed and with clear goals. William Schmidt and Richard Houang are both somewhat the founding fathers of common core and are professors in curriculum. I know that common core went through many drafts, but often as a purist myself now, I find it hard to believe that this is the best outcome.
Rude talks about the mapping metaphor, and without a doubt I can once again apply this to my own experience. In mathematics, there are certain fields and topics which are deemed more valuable than others. Student’s ability to calculate, and do flat computations is more important to their viability in college and the job market than other skills; which is a byproduct of the mapping created for students when they begin their math journey. But is that really all students need? Rude makes the argument that in any field, all topics are struggling to fight for space in their field for recognition.
In the latter half of the Rude’s piece, she talks about what writers do beyond the academy-what they write, how they get information, how an orientation to users and usability shapes their thinking, how they collaborate, and how they use technology-has led to an innovative curriculum within English studies. This also related to a question in practice: How can I use this? Although I think a lot of what math people learn in school is used, I also think that a lot of it is NOT used. Which drives the question in math education, how do we move students from learning methods, and memorizing formulas, to discovering their own mathematical experience. Although I am senior in college, it took me many years to learn that math is simply not just memorization and pattern matching, there is infinitely more value in the work I’ve spent hours pondering on than the years of calculations I’ve completed.
I think that a lot of the things we talk about in this class, especially about technical communication has a lot of relation to my experience with the above work. I learned a lot about control of language and making sure that I say what I mean and mean what I say.
PS. I feel like I've made a shitty Buzzfeed rant article
Rude, Carolyn D. “Mapping the Research Questions in Technical Communication.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, vol. 23, no. 2, 2009, pp. 174–215., doi:10.1177/1050651908329562.