Activity Theory and Its Implications for Writing Instruction    

Proposes that educational institutions continue to improve the uses of writing in society in two ways: extend writing across the curriculum efforts and raise the awareness of students, the university community, and the public to the role of writing in society by having those who study writing teach an introductory liberal arts course on it. Both are important steps toward removing the remedial stigma attached to writing and its teaching, and toward combating the myth of autonomous literacy that reinforces the remedial stigma.

Russell, David R. Iowa State University (1995). Articles>Education>Writing>Activity Theory

Border? What Border? Documents are Interfaces  

Documents are interfaces. In situations where documents help us do tasks - whether simple or complex - they look and act like software interfaces. Academics in technical communication are in the business of helping people learn to design, build, analyze, and assess these interfaces. Yet, only occasionally do we admit this responsibility. Judging from our curricula, our research journals, and our textbooks, we still view this responsibility as somehow distinct from what we do to teach 'technical writing,' 'technical editing,' or 'document design.' It isn't.

Hart-Davidson, William. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>User Interface>Theory

Critical Inquiry and the Internet: The Urban Legends Assignment  

The Internet is quickly becoming the dominant communications medium in this country. As such, it warrants the same type of critical examination as television and the news media. This paper explores integrating urban legends as a critical thinking component in communication courses that focus on electronic media.

Dyrud, Marilyn A. Association for Business Communication (2004). Articles>Education>Cultural Theory

Educational Aspects of Technical Communication: Overview and Application of Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

By discussing the modern technical communicator's audience with the presumption that they are individuals reading text, many technical communication theorists vastly limit and underestimate the role of the technical communicator. Indeed, Billie J. Wahlstrom writes that as new technologies have been developed over the years, '[technical communicators] have adopted an ahistorical approach . . . largely ignoring . . . luminal eras when changes in communications technologies caused profound cultural transformations' (Walstrom 131).[1] Moreover, arguments in technical communication theory frequently miss the fact that even though they can become wildly divergent, they may all seem appropriate to certain audiences and in certain situations. For example, Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver's The Mathematical Theory of Communication outlines a theory of communication in seeming contradiction to Carolyn R. Miller's in 'A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing.' But despite this conflict, we still find value in both of these theories. How is this possible? Are there any unifying theories that allow for such divergent theories to coexist? Indeed there are, but they require us to look at technical communication in a different way than what is presently assumed in technical communication discourse.

Larson, Jerrod. Orange Journal, The (2001). Articles>Education>Theory

Expressive Practices: the Local Enactment of Culture in the Communication Classroom    

As students participate in corporate communication classes, they may, on occasion, use the term culture to make sense of their experiences. The authors use Mino's idea of a learning paradigm to shift the emphasis away from teaching traditional theories of culture and use student-centered experiences to teach culture as an expressive practice. Using instances drawn from their own classrooms, the authors show how students can recognize the value of understanding their role in creating culture each time they choose how to act, how to evaluate others' behavior, and whether to label what is going on as cultural.

Wolf, Karen, Trudy Milburn and Richard Wilkins. Business Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Education>Business Communication>Cultural Theory

Instructional Design and Learning Theory

To students of instructional design the introduction and subsequent 'sorting out' of the various learning theories and associated instructional design strategies can be somewhat confusing. It was out of this feeling of cognitive dissonance that this site was born. Why does it seem so difficult to differentiate between three basic theories of learning? Why do the names of theorists appear connected to more than one theory? Why do the terms and strategies of each theory overlap? The need for answers to these questions sparked my investigation into the available literature on learning theories and their implications for instructional design. I found many articles and internet sites that dealt with learning theory and ID, in fact, it was difficult to know when and where to draw the line. When I stopped finding new information, and the articles were reaffirming what I had already read, I began to write.

Mergel, Brenda. University of Saskatchewan (1998). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Theory

Looking Beyond the Interface: Activity Theory and Distributed Learning  

Activity theory (AT) has for many years been used in studies of human computer interaction, such as computer interface design and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) (Nardi, 1996). In the last five years it has begun to be used to understand distributed learning, as technological innovations in education have often "seemed to be designed to exploit the capabilities of the technology rather than to meet an instructional need," to be technology-driven rather than theory-driven.

Russell, David R. Iowa State University (2001). Articles>Education>Theory>Activity Theory

Rethinking Genre in School and Society: An Activity Theory Analysis  

This article attempts to expand and elaborate theories of social "context" and formal schooling, to understand the stakes involved in writing. It first sketches ways Russian activity theory in the tradition of A. N. Leont'ev may expand Bakhtinian dialogism, then elaborates the theory in terms of North American genre research, with examples drawn from research on writing in the disciplines in higher education. By tracing the relations of disciplinary genre systems to educational genre systems, through the boundary of the classroom genre system, the analyst/reformer can construct a model of the interactions of classroom practices with wider social practices. Activity theory analysis of genre systems may offer a theoretical bridge between the sociology of education and Vygotskian social psychology of classroom interaction, and contribute toward resolving the knotty problem of the relation of macro- and microstructure in literacy research based on various social theories of "context."

Russell, David R. Written Communication (1997). Articles>Education>Genre>Activity Theory

Theory vs. Practice: the Ongoing Battle  

George Hayhoe calls it the 'gulf between classroom and workplace,' Katherine Staples calls it 'the schism between academic theory and workplace practice,' Bonita Selting calls it the 'schizophrenia of the curriculum' and Carolyn Miller calls it the 'virulent praxis/techne and academic/industry polarities.' The debate immediately struck me when I returned from six years as a technical writer, but is it just a difference of teaching methods, or is it also a question of exclusionary politics, a class issue? In her historical summary, Teresa Kynell notes that technical communication has the ''tag' of vocationalism' and Staples dates it from the early 'conflict between career education and the humanities.' What is the distinction between pure academics and practical learning? Is it that college teachers have a higher social status than workers?

Johnson, Carol Siri. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Theory

Toward a Post-Techne-Or, Inventing Pedagogies for Professional Writing    

This article examines the concept of techne in relation to situatedness. Techne is conceived as techniques for situating bodies in contexts. Although many theorists and practitioners in technical communication are working from ecological and posthuman perspectives with regard to interface designs, this article argues for extending those perspectives to workplace and classroom situations. Starting from a Heideggerian reading of techne, the article moves toward the concept of post-techne, which remakes pedagogical techniques for writing and inventing in institutional contexts.

Hawk, Byron. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>Education>Business Communication>Theory

What Is Not Institutionally Visible Does Not Count: The Problem of Making Activity Assessable, Accountable, and Plannable  

This hypertext examines from an activity theory perspective the vexed problem of assessment and its relation to planning, accountability, curriculum, and learning. Assessment although only part of the educational process has implications for almost all of education. Local, state, and federal policies that have put great weight and high stakes on a battery of assessment tools that stand outside the daily life of the classroom but are intended to hold classrooms, teachers, and schools accountable for results. While situated evaluation is an aspect of most human practices, institution-wide testing creates substantial difficulties for the local practices of each class, and particularly creates tensions between student-centered classroom practice and subject-centered expectations. Such tensions have been a continuing puzzle for progressive education. Dewey and his followers regularly preferred to keep evaluation and decision-making local, but for various institutional reasons had to seek larger ways of assessing student achievement without ever being able to develop fully appropriate assessment tools. The teaching of writing has faced a similar dilemma, with standardized forms of writing assessment setting reductionist definitions and expectations of writing, and not directing students towards the highest levels of accomplishment. This study considers genre and activity analysis as the basis for defining and assessing writing tasks through analysis of materials collected from a complex sequence of social studies writing assignments on the Maya from a sixth grade class.

Bazerman, Charles. WAC Clearinghouse (2003). Articles>Education>Assessment>Activity Theory