EBSTC Technical Literacy Project Through the Eyes of History of Science

by T.R. Girill
STC Fellow

T. R. currently manages the East Bay STC’s Technical Literacy Project.

The year 2009 marks the tenth anniversary of the EBSTC Technical Literacy Project. Appropriately enough, two historians of science (Greg Macklem and Erik Peterson), concerned about "making history of science integral to the teaching of K-12 science," have as a side effect provided us with a revealing perspective on the unfolding of our own literacy project as well ("Beyond Gray Boxes," History of Science Society Newsletter, April 2009, online at http://hssonline.org/publications/Newsletter2009/April_education.html).

To effectively influence science students, Macklem and Peterson argue, history (and, by analogy, technical writing) must do the following:

1. Address the needs of current and future science teachers
   
   
2. Utilize history of science in a way that supports science teaching while still being responsible to the history itself
   
   
3. Provide concrete tools for teachers to take into the classroom
   

A look at the last decade shows how well our literacy outreach project has addressed these three needs in terms of promoting non-fiction writing skills in high school.

Address Current and Future Teachers

To meet the professional development needs of current and future K-12 teachers, the Project partnered with the Edward Teller Education Center (ETEC, http://etec.llnl.gov), which hosts training programs for science teachers every summer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Our technical-writing workshops at ETEC ranged from two hours to two days. Some who attended these sessions were in-service teachers who were looking for fairly immediate ways to improve the science literacy of their students. Others were pre-service teachers who were blending technical writing into their preparation for credentials and later careers.

Historians of science felt that, to help such classroom teachers perform differently, they would need "to create [a] new accessible pedagogical framework" for them. Fortunately, technical writing has found such a framework in cognitive apprenticeship, which regards development of nonfiction writing skills as quite like development of other complex professional skills. Our workshops shared this approach in person, while the project website now links every published exercise to cognitive apprenticeship as its underlying pedagogical context.

Support Science Teaching While Promoting Literacy

Historians Macklem and Peterson note that, in science textbooks, historical background is too often "separated in gray boxes, easily ignored by teachers and students alike." To avoid this fate for technical writing, we have always tried to link literacy skill building with science (and other) activities that happen in school classes anyway. We always try point out the role of effective communication in the lives of successful scientists and engineers. For example, in classroom visits to middle schools and high schools (as well as in the corresponding exercises shared on the website), the literacy project has:

• Applied audience analysis tips to constructing good abstracts and planning effective technical talks to classmates (both are common student activities),
  
  
• Applied description design techniques to safety problems or lab notebooks, and
  
  
• Applied content organization to crafting useful science-fair posters.
  
  

Provide Concrete Classroom Tools

This third goal has always been at the heart of the project, from which all our other activities have developed. By adapting these tools from real life situations, we offer an easy bridge from school practice to life after graduation (whether at college or in the trades). All were refined by working with underperforming students in some of California's most challenged schools.

We share two chief kinds of literacy tools:

• Guidelines — Some of these overt usability checklists are very general (for designing and revising instructions and descriptions in any context). Others are specialized, to help students handle specific communication challenges, such as planning slides to support a technical talk.
  
  
• Exercises — The project's gradually accumulated set of skill-building activities addresses the different needs of technical-writing students and their teachers. Students receive scaffolding (extra prompts or cues) to promote skill growth by using authentic examples. Teachers (in a paired version of each piece) receive time-saving annotations that summarize relevant empirical research and offer classroom-tested usage tips.
  
  

A Thank You and
An Invitation

This tenth anniversary would not be complete without giving public thanks to three people who were crucial to this project's success.

• STC member Lenore Weiss imagined the possibilities and made our first contacts with the Oakland Unified School District
  
  Associate Editor's Note: Read about Lenore's first efforts in the Nov./Dec. 1999 newsletter
  
  
• Virginia (Jean) Shuler, a deputy division leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, generously supported the project's school-day classroom visits
  
  
• Michael Jackson, academic director of the Media Academy (formerly part of Oakland's Fremont High School), bravely invited us into his grade-10 classes year after year.

We hope that our ongoing literacy outreach work will repay our great debt to them all.

To learn more about the literacy outreach project, to suggest a teacher who might want to host future technical-writing workshops for their classes, or to participate yourself, please contact T.R. Girill (trgirill@acm.org).