Saturday, October 17, 2015

James M. Dubisnky--"More than a Knack: Techne & Teaching Technical Communication


More than a Knack: Techne & Teaching Technical Communication: [1]
Dubinsky, James M
Technical Communication Quarterly; Spring 2002; 11, 2; ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection pg. 129 


"In this article, I argue for a more deliberate emphasis on teacher training by reinvigorating techne as a concept that is far more than instrumental or prescriptive. If we prepare prospective teachers to master the techne of teaching, we encourage them to become user-centered, reflective practitioners who understand the critical need for situational use of knowledge" (129).

"This shortage of graduates trained in technical communication and its pedagogical perspectives can lead to a formulaic, forms-based pedagogy that hinders reflective practice and emphasizes a system-centered, as opposed to a user-centered, perspective" (129-130).

"These unprepared or underprepared teachers ask students to imitate the discourse of the workplace without asking for or offering a more complex reflection about the cultures that produce that discourse or the ethical issues involved in its production" (130).

Some argue that this problem can be solved if teachers learn on the job. By osmosis the teachers, by teaching, will absorb and display good teaching practices. Dubinsky argues that this creates what Aristotle called a knack for something. Teachers that teach via a knack "don't necessarily become user-centered, reflective practitioners who possess the techne of teaching. Without such a techne, they may have a knowledge of how to solve problems, but usually they lack the 'know-how' or strategies needed to navigate the changing dynamics of classrooms that are, by nature, temporal and indeterminate" (130).

Knack based teachers "teach students to be tool users rather than pratitioners who use tools and reflect upon their uses" (130).

Teaching a techne of teaching will allos teachers to emphasize knowing how, which is a "rhetorical knowledge, contingent and governed by rules of art rather than rules. Teachers who combine knowledge of what they teach with practice--the day-to-day experiences with students--become more effective teachers" (131).

--Art of Knack? Techne and Technical Communication

Most in the academic community eschew techne  because they view it as a rule governed art that sits below the theoretical values of episteme.

This reduces techne to a knack or pure technique, which makes those who use it "mere practitioners." 

Dubinsky argues that techne bridges the gap between praxis and theory. "More importantly they overlook techne's connection to civic duty" (131).

Knacks become known through repetition. Aristotle said 'knowledge and understanding belong to art rather than to experience' because artists 'know the cause,' and men of experience 'do not.'

"I argue that the techne of medicine is similar to that of the techne of teaching in its reliance upon the contingent and indeterminate and the fact that both patients and students are human, which means that what works for one won't necessarily work for all" (132).

--Techne and Teaching

"One cannot prepare teachers to handle classrooms by providing them with rigid lesson plans and rules. It is more productive to teach them to handle situations as they arise, giving them principles of teaching or rules of art...they will likely learn to make the right decision based on context and student needs (133).

"Because techne is 'a reasoned state of capacity to make'...it also requires a knowledge of the end of the making (the telos). (133).
 
"I envision the teaching of writing as a techne that requires knowledge of the purpose and the audience--in this case the students who are, in reality, 'the thing(s) made.'" (133).

"However, while learning to do and reading about doing are essential, they are not sufficient to explain techne

"an essential component to acquiring, mastering, and articulating the logos is to have someone present who can act as a vehicle to bring into language what might have lain dormant in experience only. In terms of teaching, then, if a reflective practitioner has been 'paying attention' and wants to make her implicit knowledge explicit, to bring to light the logos, she needs someone who will help her reflect in new ways 'with a view to refining the skills, on the why of what [she] is doing'" (134).

technitai-- someone who is a practitioner but can explain the reasons behind the thing that they do.

"Possessing a techne of teaching means that teachers are able to respond to signals. They respond not based on rules; they respond artistically" which "comes about through a combination of experiences: learning the history of what has gone before, studying the theories of those who have conducted research--and most importantly--learning to see from a variety of perspectives" (134).

--Focusing on the Student: Writing Teacher as User-Centered Practitioners

The difficulty of teaching far outpaces many other vocational activities that have to do with static objects, like wood or bicycles. Teachers are completely the masters of the object they're working with 'a network of other people who are also agents and with whom he is bound up in relationships of interdependency'" (135).

--User-Centered Approach to Teacher Training

"If we want to emphasize ends and believe that we have an ethical and moral responsibility as makers, then we need to focus on students (the audience/users) as real people in real situations and our assignments as their tasks" (135),

"We also begin to build in an abiding concern for what uses will be made of what we teach...we need to reflect on what occurs there and how it is received and used by students. When we do so, we become far more than 'product-model- testers; we become product designers and reflective practitioners who integrate theory and practice in mobius loop (136).

Classroom work should mirror workplace work. 

"the focus shifts from the system and its designer to the product and its users. Both require a full understanding of the complex situations in which students and users are immersed. Both require a willingness to experiment, to 'test' what one develops or helps to develop" (136).

"If we as a discipline, want to transform our classrooms into learning communities and generate critical thinking in order to focus on the ends of use, then we need to study and learn from classrooms where such attempts are being made. We need to hear about those attempts, examine the theoretical underpinnings of those classrooms, talk about the successes and the failures, and study the drama present there. We need to value the practice of the everyday activities of the teachers and students whose stories about 'know-how' have been cut off from the discourse of the profession" (136).

--Recommendations
  •  work in a classroom with at least one other teacher in the discipline
  • collaborate with teachers in other disciplines
  • collect teacher narratives and examine them for their clinical moments in the context of both a methods course and with a master-craftsperson. 
--Researching with Teachers

"The techne of teaching is a collaborative activity that will require some resource allocation and courage from those we might call master teachers...This work could be coordinated with methods courses, which, I argue, should be available every semester and required in the very first...I elarned that theory comes from observation and doing, that we develop our theory in the process of making...I learned that a critical element of techne...is its reliance on the concept of kairos...that makes the techne of teaching so powerful and difficult to quantify" (140).

--Collaborating with Teachers in Other Desciplines

"Thinking through what one does and why one does it--translating implicit knowledge into explicit knowledge--is a means of making it teachable to others" (140).  

"Such collaborations enable us to engage in interdisciplinary discussions about pedagogy, the place of writing, and students" (141).

"This work would assist all parties--teaching partner, students, and prospective teacher--by demonstrating the kind of pedagogy that techne is built upon: collaboration, questioning, and dialogue" (141).

--Collecting Teacher Narratives

"reflective practitioners come to recognize that our knowledge and experiences are not universal" (141).

--Conclusion

"what we believe about students lies at the heart of our implicit theories and beliefs about teaching" (142).

"teaching writing is an art or techne, in which the binaries of theory and practice, form and content, research and teaching are no longer valid. A more appropriate metaphor is a mobius loop, a continuous loop that turns constantly on itself, where theory becomes practice, teaching becomes research" (142).

"Teacher education programs should model the teaching and learning approaches advocated by the discipline and promote the vision of the profession. In addition, such programs should teach students not to accept blindly a set of prescriptions or techniques that someone hands down. Instead, they should help students learn as much as they can about the classroom, the content area, and the students, while also encouraging them to question and engage in conversation" (142).
 
  1. If we're going to be a discipline, we need a shared, agreed upon knowledge base.

"By revitalizing techne, tempered with phronesis, I believe that our field can challenge those who have driven a stake between knowing and doing and make teaching technical communication a 'matter of conduct rather than production...a matter of arguind in a prudent way toward the good of the community rather than of constructing texts.' By so doing, we take what Aristotle called a 'reasoned state of capacity to make' and show that it is both a knowledge and a 'capacity for action' that can benefit students and society" (143).

  

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