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

1. From the academy to the workplace:The formation of a professional communicator Natasha Artemeva (with Janna Fox) Carleton University CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 1

2. 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

3. 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) N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 3

4. 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. N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 4

5. 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 N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 5

6. 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 toanother, 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. N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 6

7. 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) N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 7

8. 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 Address 8

9. The notion of writing In 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) N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 9

10. . . . 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) N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 10

11. 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). N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 11

12. 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). N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 12

13. 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. N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 13

14. 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. N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 14

15. Novices mastering (or resisting, or changing) complex genres The investigation of such complex, multimodal genres requires multiple analytical and methodological approaches: • at the analytical level, both rhetorical and textual approaches are important N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 15

16. 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 N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 16

17. 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. N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 17

18. 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 N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 18

19. 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 N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 19

20. 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. N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 20

21. 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). N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 21

22. 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). N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 22

23. Learning genres of teaching University 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) N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 23

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25. 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 N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 25

26. 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. N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 26

27. 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

28. 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? N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 28

29. 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) N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 29

30. 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). N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 30

31. 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. N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 31

32. 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 moveand 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 . . . N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 32

33. 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. N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 33

34. 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. N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 34

35. 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 N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 35

36. Implications for teaching and research • Mentorship • Current literature often puts an emphasis on such changes in academic communication training for future professionals as • 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. N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 36

37. 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). N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 37

38. 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). N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 38

39. 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) N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 39

40. 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). N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 40

41. 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 ingredientsof genre knowledge that are both acquired and learned by novices on their way to becoming full participants in professional practice. N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 41

42. 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). N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 42

43. 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) N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 43

44. 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) N. Artemeva (with J. Fox) CASDW 2012 Keynote Address 44