±«ÓãÖ±²¥

Where do we learn to write the documents we use in the workplace, at school or on the job? How is this professional literacy achieved? Who should be responsible for instruction in professional writing? These are some of the central questions being addressed in recent research by Professors Anthony Paré and Ann Beer of the Department of Educational Studies at ±«ÓãÖ±²¥. Evidence already shows that university training can help students learn how to learn, but only on-the-job training will make them acquire professional writing skills.

Since the mid-1960s, researchers in the area of composition and rhetoric have been interested in how people learn to write. Originally, attention was paid mostly to students in schools, but in the mid-1980s the focus on research writing expanded to include non-academic writing in the workplace. There has been plenty said on the production of texts in various workplace settings, but very little research looked into how people learned to produce them. This is why Professors Anthony Paré and Ann Beer turned their attention to the workplace as a site of literacy learning and development.

They are currently collaborating with colleagues from Carleton University, Dr. Aviva Freedman and Dr. Peter Medway, in a SSHRC-sponsored research project titled "Relearning Writing for Work: Transitions into and within the Changing Workplace." The research team has investigated writing in academic and workplace contexts in the fields of architecture, engineering, management, public administration, and social work.

Their research has identified a widespread workplace belief that universities should be preparing people to write on the job. However, their study suggests that the purposes and expectations of writing in the two domains are very different. The notion of universities preparing students in any direct sense for writing in the workplace must be seen as problematic. As Professor Paré argues, "universities cannot both prepare students for the complexity of the contemporary world in all of the intellectual and social ways required, as well as prepare them for the specific demands of particular jobs."

The research team has discovered that the initial stages of learning to write at work happen one-on-one with a supervisor, who acts as a mentor to the student-newcomer. Newcomers then learn about the activities, values, history, and politics of the workplace, things that would be difficult to learn in a university classroom. Moreover, unlike the scheduled and sequenced teaching and learning of the school setting, the workplace offers spontaneous, serendipitous opportunities to learn. Newcomers must recognize and take advantage of learning occasions as they arise, and much of what is learned is so situation-specific that it can only be experienced (and appreciated) once in the workplace environment.

However, one of the things the university can do better is to help students learn how to learn. Academic preparation should help students recognize the value of remaining active, curious and self-motivated learners after they leave school. The study also indicates the need for professional organizations and companies to take greater responsibility for the education of the people they hire. Two books report the research teamÂ’s findings: Worlds Apart: Acting and Writing in Academic and Workplace Contexts, published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (1999), and Transitions: Writing in Academic and Workplace Settings (1999), published by Hampton Press.