T. R. Girill
trgirill@acm.org
Technical Literacy Project
September, 2009 (rev. 2)
The value of learning effective nonfiction nonnarrative writing ("technical writing") for middle- and high-school students has been cited repeatedly in official and unofficial academic standards starting in the early 1990s. Technical writing finds endorsement in
Typical of policy studies that support technical writing was a two-year collaboration between American business leaders and the U.S Department of Labor called the "Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills" (popularly knows as the SCANS project). Many feared this effort would be pompous and pointless, but "much to everyone's surprise, it was a solid performance" (Johnson and Taylor, 1998, p. 225). The SCANS conclusions and advice are summarized and analyzed at length by several contributors to Expanding Literacies (Garay and Bernhardt, 1998), and the published results remain freely available today (even though the project ended in 1992) on a Department of Labor website (http://wdr.doleta.gov/SCANS).
The SCANS studies clearly revealed the direct relevance of technical writing competency for many jobs (including craft and service jobs for noncollege workers) in many ways:
In 1996 the National Research Council (NRC, part of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences) covered much the same ground as SCANS but with a narrower focus on science teachers, the programs that train them, and the curricula that guide their practice. Their 272-page proposal was somewhat misleadingly called National Science Education Standards (NSES, available free from the National Academy Press at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=4962#toc). The NRC's advice is addressed less to teachers, however, than to policy planners at district, state, and education-school levels.
Despite this level of abstraction, a thread of high-level support for teaching science communication in schools is clear throughout the document. For instance, the NRC argues that "student achievement...is enhanced by coordination between and among the science program and other programs...such as social studies [and] language arts" (p. 214). Besides the benefits of intellectual reinforcement of effective writing across the curriculum, "such coordination can make maximal use of time in a crowded school schedule."
A little later the NSES authors say more explicitly:
Oral and written communication skills are developed in science when students record, summarize, and communicate the results of inquiry to their class, school, or community. Coordination suggests that these skills receive attention in the language arts program as well as in the science program. (p. 214)
Benchmarks translate educational policies into more specific goals for planning curricula, textbooks, and student activities. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), for example, regards benchmarks "as reference points for analyzing existing or proposed curricula in the light of science-literacy goals" (AAAS, Benchmarks for Science Literacy, Ch. 14, p. 8). Though intentionally vague, authoritative educational benchmarks often serve as influential models. Suggestions here often reappear, sometimes almost verbatim, as ingredients in individual state content standards (see the next section for the California case).
Project 2061 (named for the next return date for Comet Halley) is a long-term effort to improve pre-college science education sponsored by AAAS. In 1993, Project 2061 carefully crafted and published Benchmarks for Science Literacy (BSL, http://www.project2061.org/publications/bsl/online) as a way to shape decision making in states and school districts. Besides the expected technical suggestions about what students should learn for specific scientific fields at various ages, these benchmarks have much to say about the role of effective writing in science.
"A central Project 2061 premise is that the useful knowledge people possess is richly interconnected" (BSL, Ch. 14, p. 6). Hence, for success as both
For this reason, the AAAS Benchmarks contain an extra chapter (Ch. 12) dedicated to cross-disciplinary "Habits of Mind." Here the authors itemize by grade-level bands the nonfiction writing (and speaking) skills that contribute most to their vision of full science literacy:
Grades 3-5.Remarkable here is that the AAAS Benchmarks, because of their source as well as their integrated approach to learning, aim to promote these communication skills in science classes led by science teachers, not (merely) in language arts classes.
Grades 6-8.
- Keep a notebook that describes observations made, carefully distinquishes actual observations from ideas and speculations...and is understandable weeks or months later.
- Write instructions that others can follow in carrying out a procedure.
- Make sketches to aid in explaining procedures or ideas.
Grades 9-12.
- Inspect, disassemble, and reassemble simple mechanical devices and describe what the various parts are for.
- Organize information in simple tables and graphs...
- Write clear, step-by-step instructions for conducting investigations, operating something, or following a procedure.
- Participate in group discussions on scientific topics by restating or summarizing accurately what others have said...and expressing alternative positions.
Almost a decade after the AAAS Benchmarks appeared, the nonprofit private American Diploma Project (ADP, 2004) reconfirmed both the need for stronger workplace literacy and the appropriateness of technical writing as an authentic way to meet that need in high school. This represents a somewhat more commercial look at the same issues explored by the AAAS scientists. This project brought together 29 industry representatives (across the spectrum from John Ascuaga's Nugget to Hewlett-Packard) and a similar number of academic literacy researchers to spell out benchmark abilities that high-school students well prepared for life should develop before they graduate.
One ADP benchmark concerns writing. Here Part C10 reads like an itemized list of just the techniques fostered by overt, careful practice with nonfiction instructions and descriptions. Students should be able to
...produce work-related texts...that [1] address audience needs, stated purpose, and context; [2] translate technical language into nontechnical English; [3] include relevant information and exclude extraneous information;... [4] anticipate potential problems, mistakes and misunderstandings that might arise for the reader; [and 5] create predictable structures through the use of headings, white space, and graphics, as appropriate... (ADP, 2004, pp. 33-34).Also noteworthy is that technical writing helps students meet other ADP benchmarks besides writing itself. Technical writing exercises also help students meet
The California state content standards (online at http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss) convert broad educational policies and benchmark goals into specific learning targets by grade level and school subject. The English-Language Arts content standards (covering reading and writing in separate but parallel lists) were adopted in 1997 and revised as recently as 2006. Distinct standards for science by grade level appeared one year later and were revised as recently as September, 2007.
The English-Language Arts content standards clearly expect students to develop basic skills for reading and writing nonnarrative nonfiction prose during middle school (and to start by grade 5). By high school, these standards call for students to be able to draft useful instructions and descriptions, and then to cultivate more complex and sophisticated skills (e.g., for assessing and revising technical text, their own and that of others) during their high-school years.
The connection between these California standards and basic technical writing activities is so direct that one can index the Technical Literacy Project exercises by itemizing the Language Arts standard(s) that each exercise supports. Separate online lists for reading and for writing summarize the relevant demands of each standard by grade level and link them to the (usually multiple) specific technical writing activities offered here that most clearly support that standard. To let you work in the reverse direction, a note at the end of each shared exercise identifies the reading and writing standards most relevant to it.
A tribute to the influence of the AAAS Benchmarks and NSES policies mentioned above is the extent to which California's science content standards also explicitly require learning the same technical writing skills cited in the English-Language Arts standards. And just as AAAS groups these communication goals together under "habits of mind" that contribute to all the different technical areas of science, so too the California science standards feature a separate, interdisciplinary category of learning goals called "Investigation and Experimentation." Here are some of the most explicit communication-related strands in that category (with their section numbers for grades 9-12):
So California state content standards, Language Arts and science alike, unambiguously commit schools to teaching basic technical writing skills across the curriculum. Unfortunately, because this calls for both language and science expertise, this goal is too often neglected by teachers in both programs.
Experience shows that standards support is necessary but not sufficient for integrating technical writing into science classes. Michelle Klosterman (Klosterman, 2009), discussing the parallel problem of including history (of science) in pre-college science education, noted that "...physical and intellectual resources may be the least understood and most undervalued challenge facing [science] teachers. Teachers can only teach what they know" (p. 15). The other sections of this handbook aim to supply those resources for technical writing.