A Laboratory in Citizenship: Service Learning in the Technical Communication Classroom

This article presents an argument for and offers illustrations of service learning in technical communication courses and curricula. Alongside traditional internships that prepare students as future employees, service learning provides students with an education in engaged citizenship. This article reviews service-learning literature, discussing specifically the advantages of projects to students, faculty, and the community. The authors also describe three projects in which instructors and students integrated service learning and technical communication in innovative ways.

[1]  R. MacNichol.  Service Learning: A Challenge to Do the Right Thing , 1993 .

[2]  Deborah S. Bosley.  Collaborative Partnerships: Academia and Industry Working Together. , 1995 .

[3]  Jeffrey T. Howard,et al.  Service-Learning Course Design Workbook. , 2001 .

[4]  P. Freire,et al.  Pedagogy of the oppressed: an extract , 1997 .

[5]  Laura J Gurak,et al.  A Concise Guide to Technical Communication , 2000 .

[6]  L. Rehling.  Exchanging Expertise: Learning from the Workplace and Educating it, Too , 1998 .

[7]  Eleanor Novek,et al.  Service-learning Is a Feminist Issue: Transforming Communication Pedagogy , 1999 .

[8]  L. S. Schulman,et al.  THE CARNEGIE FOUNDATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF TEACHING. , 1940, Science.

[9]  N. Fenton.  The Personal Interview , 1934 .

[10]  Robert W. McEachern.  Problems in Service Learning and Technical/Professional Writing: Incorporating the Perspective of Nonprofit Management , 2001 .

[11]  Leigh Henson,et al.  A Service Learning Approach to Business and Technical Writing Instruction , 1998 .

[12]  Donald A. Schön.  The New Scholarship Requires a New Epistemology. , 1995 .

[13]  Cezar M. Ornatowski,et al.  Foundations for Teaching Technical Communication: Theory, Practice, and Program Design , 1997 .

[14]  Bruce Herzberg,et al.  Community Service and Critical Teaching. , 1994 .

[15]  Cecilia I. Delve,et al.  Promoting values development through community service: A design , 1990 .

[16]  Lewis A. Friedland,et al.  Civic Innovation & American Democracy , 1997 .

[17]  Donald Kennedy,et al.  Another Century's End, Another Revolution for Higher Education , 1995 .

[18]  Thomas Huckin,et al.  Technical Writing and Community Service , 1997 .

[19]  Elisa Stone,et al.  Service Learning in the Introductory Technical Writing Class: A Perfect Match? , 2000 .

[20]  Ellen Cushman,et al.  The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change. , 1996 .

[21]  Hillary Hart,et al.  Training in Technical Communication: Ideas for a Partnership between the Academy and the Workplace. , 1994 .

[22]  Louise Rehling.  A Comment on “Technical Writing and Community Service” , 1997 .

[23]  R. Crabtree.  Mutual empowerment in cross‐cultural participatory development and service learning: Lessons in communication and social justice from projects in El Salvador and Nicaragua , 1998 .

[24]  Benjamin R. Barber,et al.  An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America , 1992 .

[25]  Donald A. Schön.  Knowing-In-Action: The New Scholarship Requires a New Epistemology , 1995 .

[26]  Richard J. Kraft.  Service Learning , 1996 .

[27]  Louise Rehling,et al.  Doing Good While Doing Well: Service Learning Internships , 2000 .