4. Practical Applications of Research as Praxis?
Patricia Sullivan and James E. Porter’s article entitled “On Theory, Practice, and Method: Toward a Heuristic Research Methodology for Professional Writing” argues that technical writers in both the workplace and the academy need to rethink research methodology as praxis, “a type of conduct that negotiaties between positions rather than grounding itself in any particular position,” (302) rather than formula. Sullivan and Porter outline various research methodologies in which theory and practice remain separate from one another, methodologies that suffer from the limitations of both theory and practice in that separation. They explain that knowledge-generating power results from technical writing research that embraces multimodality and methodologies as heuristic guidelines.
I find this argument to be particularly interesting in its discussion of the binary between those in technical writing who favor practice and those who favor theory. We have had several conversations during our class sessions, during last week’s session specifically, about the “tension” between technical communication through the lens of the academy and technical communication through the lens of the workplace. In my opinion, Sullivan and Porter perfectly describe this tension:
“The cartoon version of this debate pits the working technical writer (who thinks the academics are theoretical people who are out of touch with the ‘real world’ and who cannot program their VCRs) against the academic professional writing teaching (who sees working professionals as people who have no time to read, think or reflect and who are more interested in what they are doing than in why).” (302)
In their discussion of this opposition, Sullivan and Porter seem to recognize the tension that we’ve been discussing in class. They posit, however, that the debate is less concerned with the academy versus the workplace and more concerned with theory versus practice. The writers argue that theory and practice are presented in binary opposition to one another even in technical communication classrooms in which particular pedagogical strategies cater to either theory or practice rather than a marriage between the two.
This particular issue, the privileging of theory or practice in the technical communication classroom, is of particular interest to me. Within the realm of this issue, Sullivan and Porter explain the experience of a technical communication student, Max, in interacting with specific users and revising documents according to their feedback. They conclude that Max was “not ‘attuned’ enough to practice, not sensitive enough to his data, to his observations of users; we could also say that he was not conscious enough of his own theory” (306). Essentially, Sullivan and Porter conclude that while the theoretical presence was there (“practice cannot be athetorical” (306)), Max failed to recognize any rhetorical theory of the situation which may have helped him respond to the users in less predictable, formulaic, more creative, knowledge-producing ways. While I appreciate Sullivan and Porter’s argument for approaching research as praxis, I wonder how this concept could be successfully integrated into technical communication pedagogy. A roomful of graduate students with various allegiances to either practice or to theory have been unable to come to a consensus about practical applications for a marriage of the theory and practice; how can we expect our students who have no workplace experience and working technical writers who may have no loyalty to academia to wrestle with this argument? Essentially, my greatest concern is in the practical application, especially in regards to undergraduate students, of this research as praxis argument.
Works Cited
Porter, James E., and Patricia Sullivan. “On Theory, Practice, and Method: Toward a Heuristic Research Methodology for Professional Writing.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Suart A. Selber. New York: Oxford, 2004. 300-313. Print.