METHODOLOGIES AND APPROACHES Static to Dynamic ... · METHODOLOGIES AND APPROACHES Static to...

METHODOLOGIES AND APPROACHES

Static to Dynamic: Professional Identity as Inventory,Invention, and Performance in Classrooms and

Workplaces

M. Ann Brady and Joanna Schreiber

Michigan Technological University

Although self-assessment is an important genre in both the academy and the workplace, it is often

static. The resulting fixed identities are problematic in a creative economy that requires fluidity.

Drawing on the work of Carruthers and Goffman, among others, we argue that memory and medi-

tation, encompassing inventory and invention and coupled with rhetorical performance, constitute

dynamic self-assessment.

Keywords: identity, invention, inventory, meditation, memory, performance

INTRODUCTION

We propose that, to prepare students for lives after graduation, technical communication

programs advance the concept of rhetorical performance portfolios and encourage students to

use memory inventories to engage in sustained self-assessment. Gaining a fuller and more com-

plex understanding of what they know now, in the moment, and how they feel about that knowl-

edge is valuable because such insights prepare students to critically engage with the creative

economy and offer them ways to articulate the value they bring to the workplace. Synthesizing

theories of memory work and everyday performance, we offer a new understanding of how such

preparation and engagement might be accomplished.

This paper focuses on self-assessment at two sites: technical communication programs and

the workplace. We suggest that technical communicators’ abilities to inventory, invent, and

perform are crucial if they are to engage as ‘‘full participants’’ (Sullivan, Martin, & Anderson,

2003) in the workplace and that these abilities should be fostered in technical communication

programs. Drawing on our collective experiences as a program director and a former technical

communicator in industry, now a graduate student, we begin with a review of conventional

portfolios as they are used in the academy.

Technical Communication Quarterly, 22: 343–362, 2013

Copyright # Association of Teachers of Technical Writing

ISSN: 1057-2252 print/1542-7625 online

DOI: 10.1080/10572252.2013.794089

We argue that these portfolio practices encourage students to view their current skills as static

and their future roles as fixed. As an alternative, we propose that portfolios be reconceptualized

as rhetorical performance (Goffman, 1959), based on memory work (Carruthers, 1998) and

designed to encourage students to inventory and to invent dynamic skill sets in keeping with

the complex roles they hope to assume after graduation.

Next, we turn to the workplace to illustrate how the creative economy (Bekins & Williams,

2006; Hailey, Cox, & Loader, 2010) challenges technical communicators to make their work

visible, as well as to recognize, explain, and move among multiple roles in industry. The field

of technical communication has recognized the invisibility of technical communicators’ work, or

at least the complexity of that work, as an obstacle for status and success for many years (e.g.,

Bekins & Williams; Faber & Johnson-Eilola, 2003; Hart-Davidson, Bernhardt, McLeod, Rife, &

Grabill, 2007; Johnson-Eilola, 2004). Hart-Davidson et al. call the work of the technical com-

municator both ‘‘fundamental and invisible’’ (p. 32). Complicating matters further, Redish

(2003) pointed out that, ‘‘in an era of increasing cost consciousness, we technical communica-

tors are under even greater pressure to justify our roles and our activities—to show just how we

add value and how much value we add’’ (p. 505). Many scholars have suggested that what

makes technical communicators valuable to organizations is their critical thinking skills (e.g.,

Bekins & Williams, 2006; Faber and Johnson-Eilola; Hailey et al., 2010; Johnson-Eilola;

Savage, 2004). Hughes (2002) contended that technical communicators add value beyond

cost-effective measures in the role of ‘‘agent of organizational learning’’ by making tacit knowl-

edge explicit (p. 283). Technical communicators, he thus advised, must start envisioning their

value in different ways (p. 284). Additionally, technical communicators need to think about

promoting their value in different ways.

If technical communicators are to establish their value and credibility in such an economy,

they face two challenges: First, they must make clear the value and complexity of their work

to coworkers and supervisors (status), and second, and perhaps more importantly, they must

understand their own roles (identity) as dynamic. We suggest that inventory, invention, and per-

formance play central roles in meeting these challenges, supporting our claim with one technical

communicator’s experiences with self-assessment in the workplace, the genre of performance

appraisal.

In conclusion, we note research that demonstrates how students take rhetorical strategies they

have acquired as undergraduates to the workplace, where they reinvent and refigure those stra-

tegies for new contexts (Brady, 2007). We contend that rhetorical performance is one such

boundary-spanning strategy.

TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION PROGRAMS

Instructors in technical communication programs use a variety of portfolios and theories to

teach students rhetorical strategies. We discuss those portfolios and theories in the next section.

Conventional Portfolios: Self-Assessment as Static Confirmation

Technical communication programs have used print portfolios for many years to accomplish two

intersecting goals: to track how students’ skills and abilities develop and to evaluate curricular

344 BRADY & SCHREIBER

design and the development of the programs themselves. Increasingly, programs are interested in

electronic portfolios as venues for the collection and assessment of student work (Yancey, 2004)

and as a way to assess and support teaching (Dubinsky, 2003).

Programmatic assessment in general and portfolio assessment in particular have benefitted

from the work of technical communication scholars who contend that bringing workplace

assessment practices to the classroom will better prepare students for their transitions from aca-

demic to nonacademic settings. ‘‘Authentic assessment’’ (Yu, 2010), for instance, proposes that

instructors become more aware of workplace performance–appraisal methods, ideally teaming

up with local business partners ‘‘to go beyond the classroom norm to examine how graduates

are assessed in the real-world’’ (p. 44). Sharing this information with students paves the way

for what Yu described as ‘‘the 360-degree employment review for which supervisors, peers,

and external clients as well as the employees themselves jointly participate in employee assess-

ment’’ (p. 47). Here, students might establish their own learning goals and assess their progress

in achieving them; peers might contribute, as well, by assessing each other’s team attendance,

task sharing, and goal setting. And, as Taylor (2006) suggested, instructors might recruit clients

to work with them on assessing student work on the documents for their particular project.

Students might thus come to see that assessment is not necessarily arbitrary but is grounded

in specific organizational contexts with particular methods and standards. Building on Taylor’s

design, Yu suggested that we ‘‘share with students these methods’ possible drawbacks in reality

so students learn not only to adapt to existing workplace activities but also to critically examine

the workplace status quo’’ (p. 49). Such pedagogical innovation benefits programmatic assess-

ment because it offers insight into how successfully programs are preparing their graduates for

workplace standards and practices, both practically and critically. The assessment has the poten-

tial to benefit students as well because it foregrounds for them the shifting workplace contexts to

which they are expected to adjust.

Sharing information with students about how professionals are assessed, however, does not

make clear to students how their own professional identities are dynamic, comprised of skill sets

and problem solving strategies that they must manage in every new position in which they

engage. Looking at the outcomes of authentic assessment, we can see how such inflexible, or

static, professional identities might be encouraged. Yu (2010) stated that the outcomes are

‘‘(a) to improve students’ performance on classroom assignments and their classroom learning;

and (b) to prepare students for transition into the workplace’’ (pp. 47–48). Although such goals

are important, Henry (2010) warned that assessment practices such as these, grounded in orga-

nizational cultures, might shape the technical communicator’s performance according to a fixed

expectation without manifesting itself in ways that the communicator understands as fluid and

might then maintain, alter, or adjust.

In this article, we build on the work of Henry and Yu by proposing that technical communi-

cation students be prepared to approach workplace assessment strategically as memory work

comprised of inventory, invention, and rhetorical performance.

Having reviewed more than 100 conventional portfolios submitted at Michigan Technologi-

cal University (MTU), this program director found that conventional portfolios have not been

effective self-assessment tools for students as they prepare for the workplace. In their reflective

letters, students often describe their skills as static and constant and their professional identities

as singular at best—for example, a Web designer or a documentation writer. At worst, reflective

letters obscure what students do not know about their professional identities.

STATIC TO DYNAMIC 345

Whether simplifying or obfuscating, descriptions such as these are troubling because they

indicate that portfolios do not serve students well. Specifically, portfolios do not afford technical

communication students—or the students do not take from them—the opportunity to assess their

work contextually, that is, to view it as dynamic and able to change and expand over time.

Instead, conventional portfolios prompt students to quantify and categorize their experience as

it has accumulated in a fixed period. Confirming what they have learned, rather than considering

what they might do with it, students thus seldom practice sustained self-assessment and are ill

prepared for the next stages of their professional lives.

One reason for students’ failure to recognize the complexity and possibility of their roles is that

most portfolios ask them to enumerate, categorize, and codify their skills and abilities and to reflect

on—to look back to—what they have learned: the theories, practices, and genres they have acquired.

They do not, however, necessarily encourage students to assess what they have acquired with the

goal of looking ahead to how this knowledge might be reimagined and applied in new ways or recon-

figured and reinvented for new contexts such as the workplace. Students accustomed to viewing their

work as static are thus unprepared to defend or explain their work as dynamic and meaningful or to

position themselves strategically in an organization when they enter the workplace.

The explosion of communication technologies and philosophies has transformed the work-

place into a dynamic space that requires technical communicators to demonstrate intellectual

curiosity, flexibility, and self-direction. Even if they have a particular job title and description,

they no longer work in one narrow path. They need to be model builders, synthesizers, story-

tellers, and explainers. Job applicants need to be able to describe their cross-disciplinary skills

and their adaptive problem-solving abilities. We contend that conventional portfolios do not pre-

pare most students for such expectations because they do not offer students the opportunity to

embody—that is, fully understand in the moment—their professional identities as technical com-

municators or the multiple roles they are capable of playing as they complete their educations.

Performance Portfolios: Self-Assessment as Memory Work and Performance

In the first part of this paper, we ask a question and offer one possible answer: How can

portfolios support students as they learn the practice of self-assessment in preparation for the

workplace? The program we work with at MTU has found itself more successful in doing so

since integrating portfolio performance based on memory work as one graduation requirement.

Technical communication seniors submit portfolios for programmatic assessment, just as many

do at other institutions. But MTU students also present their portfolios publicly, discussing with

a live audience how the abilities documented in their portfolios construct their professional

identities and prepare them to play multiple roles in the workplace.

To explain how performance portfolios work, we tap the history of memory work in

the rhetorical tradition. We explain how its components—inventory and invention—inform

performance portfolios as well as how performance theory provides a way to enact them.

Memory Work

Memory work is rhetorical in several different ways, according to philosopher and historiogra-

pher Carruthers (1998).1 First, drawing on premodern and Western monastic practices,2


Carruthers pointed out that the Latin word inventio (one of classical rhetoric’s five stages for

preparing a speech) engenders two related terms. The first term is ‘‘invention’’—the creation

of new or different ideas or thoughts. The second term is ‘‘inventory’’—the identification,

organization, and storage of diverse materials. Having an inventory, Carruthers suggested,

was a crucial first step to inventing: ‘‘The monks thought of inventory as concentration, ‘inten-

sity’ of memory, intellect, but also a mental attitude, what we might now call ‘creative tension’ ’’

(p. 15). So, memory work included an inventory of past events intended as heuristics—as ways

to invent content anew. Memory was not rote but a collection of experiences, taken from one’s

own life and used intentionally to make new ideas.

It was through meditation, a craft of thinking, employed to make things such as interpreta-

tions and ideas (Carruthers, 1998, p. 4) that Western monks infused their memory work with

emotion and imagination. Informed not alone by cognition, inventories were made more access-

ible to discussion (Carruthers, p. 2). Meditation was not, in fact, designed to train people simply

to recall facts or factual experiences for a test. It was intended ‘‘to give speakers the means and

wherewithal to invent material on the spot’’ (Carruthers, p. 9) as they addressed their com-

munity. Meditation thus raised questions such as How did these ideas arise? What was their gen-

esis? How does the knower feel about them? How might these concepts and emotions be

communicated? How might they be put to use to produce different ideas?

Second, like rhetoric, memory work was contextualized. Although issuing from an indivi-

dual’s experiences and emotions, memory work was intended for use in community: not so

much to persuade but to compose, in the sense of pulling ideas together. Assigning memory

to cognition alone relegates it to the individual mind (Carruthers, 1998). In Western monastic

tradition, the individual found value in community; rhetorical remembering was thus particularly

appropriate in this context in which individual memory contributed to new ideas generated in a

public community (Carruthers). We can see the public uses that memory serves in Carruthers’s

example of the Vietnam War Memorial. Here, diverse and individual names and memories are

‘‘composed,’’ or pulled together, to construct a public and historiographical experience.

We argue that applying memory work to technical communication portfolio practices

advances students’ preparation for their postgraduation lives. Before detailing our argument,

however, we turn to a discussion of performance—the means by which we propose that memory

work can be invoked and embodied.

Performance Theory

We contend that students must perform what they have learned from inventorying their past to

make explicit how that knowledge might be reinvented for new contexts. In doing so, we draw

on Goffman’s (1959) theory3 that people construct identities for themselves in their daily inter-

actions with others. Such performances are contextualized and fluid: As people move from one

situation to the next and interact with a variety of others, they create varying roles to suit those

situations and audiences. Always scrutinized by and negotiated with audiences, daily perfor-

mances are ‘‘for the benefit of other[s]’’ (p. 17) and require ‘‘expressive equipment’’ (p. 22),

such as appearance, verbal and physical expressions, bearing, and manner (p. 24) to dramatize

the characteristics that the individual shares with the community and that might otherwise be

overlooked (p. 30). One person, for instance, a university senior with a family and job, might


play the roles of student, parent, and professional in one day, changing clothes, demeanor, and

discourse to suit the varying contexts. Such a ‘‘live performance’’ often happens day after day

and, as Schechner (1993) pointed out, ‘‘Live performance has always been a good method for

looking at small-scale, face-to-face interactions’’ (p. 20). What is particularly applicable to our

proposal to transform student professional identities from static to dynamic is Phelan’s (1998)

comment on Schechner’s theories: ‘‘As Schechner has often pointed out, ‘twice behaved beha-

vior’ gets to be called ‘behavior’ because it is performed much more than twice’’ (p. 10). If such

is the case, then students performing the behaviors of their professional identities gain insight

into how those identities are constructed as well as the dynamism of that construction.

We can thus argue that performance stabilizes identity (Santayana, 1955). In other words,

because performance manifests ‘‘a desire for a place close to the sacred center’’ of a community

(Goffman, 1959, p. 36), sustained performance can fix a role, offering no alternatives. Addition-

ally, self-help advice, addressed to professional women in popular magazines and newspapers,

fixes the role of an ‘‘entrepreneurial self,’’ marking it as masculine and suggesting that women

must follow it to succeed in the workplace (Nadesan & Trethewey, 2000). In carrying out these

prescribed roles, women foreclose the possibility of performing them critically, thus reinforcing

gender stereotypes.

Indeed, portfolio performance might be challenged similarly if it were not linked to memory

work as self-assessment. Students might, in other words, perform the roles they have observed,

or believe they have been assigned, during their undergraduate work. If they have not engaged in

the sustained practice of self-assessment, they might mirror programmatic prescriptions and

expectations about the role that a technical communicator plays. Portfolio performances with

diverse and inquisitive audiences, however, do not encourage students to mimic others’ under-

standing of what a professional communicator does or to pander to the workplace. In keeping

with our argument, students need to be exposed to self-assessment as a genre over the course

of their undergraduate educations. We now turn to these sustained efforts.

Performance Portfolios: Self-Assessment as Dynamic Self-Invention

To accomplish portfolio performance as embodied self-assessment, students need to practice

self-assessment on an ongoing basis.4 In other words, they need to be clear about their own

strengths and interests and how these are dynamic, changing with changing contexts. A random

inventory is thus not sufficient. ‘‘Inventories must have an order. Inventoried materials are

counted and placed in locations within an overall structure, which allows any item to be retrieved

easily and at once’’ (Johnson, 2009, p. 11). Memory and meditation promote the kind of critical

thinking required for students to consider the meaning of their work and to embody it as they

establish their credibility. So, students must be given the opportunity to structure their inven-

tories, in part by explaining how those have evolved over time and continue to change as well

as to explain how they might be applied in the future. To ask students to demonstrate knowledge

such as this requires that faculty and programs support them in their self-assessment efforts.

Faculty must be ready to foreground the distinction between inventorying students’ work and

inventing students’ professional identities. Faculty need to be willing to ask students to

self-assess their abilities on an ongoing basis, both formatively and summatively, as they start

client projects, engage in co-ops, and complete classes. In addition to inventorying the skills they


have used in their work, students must be called to consider how those skills have changed,

depending on their experiences and how the purpose of the work has inflected their understand-

ing of what it means to communicate technical information in different contexts and to different

audiences. By doing so, faculty make explicit how significant student views of the technical

communicator are and thus how important self-assessment is in coming to these views.

Students must also be given the opportunity to consider the affective aspects of their work.

Foregrounding the role of emotion in work is a way to help students move from inventories to

the invention of their professional identities. Doing so is important because ‘‘everything we do,

everything we think is tinged with emotion . . . our emotions change the way we think’’ (Norman,

2004, p. 5). However, students’ references to the emotional aspects of their work in conventional

portfolios are often abbreviated or self-absorbed, beginning with comments such as, ‘‘I really like

this Web site that I designed’’ or ‘‘I’m proudest of my writing in this grant proposal.’’ Rhetorical

performance portfolios at Tech, on the other hand, insist that students use inventories to think

about their work as affecting and being affected by others. Our program keeps a collection of

portfolios, donated by graduates for the purposes of display and future instruction.

Faculty teaching classes at all levels of the program use these portfolios as models of rhetori-

cal choice. Instruction that points out how emotion influences design and textual decisions from

one project to another encourages students to appreciate how contextually saturated technical

communication is. In turn, an appreciation for the affective nature of technical communication

predisposes students to understand that inventory and invention include not only thinking about

one’s own work and one’s own identity but also considering how these are parts of, and affect,

larger contexts. Knowing that their portfolios can become a part of MTU’s collection, they

become more aware of their own location in its history and view the portfolios as representations

of technical communication’s changing nature, both in MTU’s program and in the workplace. In

addition, because students use their portfolios in interviews and at career fairs, the portfolios

come to represent not only their own professional identities but to affect the identity of the

program itself.

Programs also need to be involved in helping students prepare for portfolio performances,

although on a different level, that of the rhetorical. They need to be prepared to encourage a

location in and connection to the technical communication disciplinary community as well as

others that constitute the civic public, locally, nationally, and globally. These communities exist

both in the present—what students know now as the result of programmatic communities—and

in the future—how students might use what they know to come to different ways of thinking in

new communities.

The multiple intersections of present and future communities are complex, competing, and

conflicting. One path through the maze, although contingent and always and already transmo-

grifying, is for students to think rhetorically about the contexts in which they will perform their

portfolios. And, it is this holistic perspective that programs can encourage.

Tech, for instance, aims for diverse audiences. Local businesspeople and members of the

Society for Technical Communication (STC) Advisory Board, many of them STC graduates

now working as professional communicators, join students’ families and friends for the

half-hour interactive presentations. Representing different backgrounds and interests as well

as varying levels of understanding about what exactly technical communicators do, listeners

often ask questions that underscore for students the contingent nature of their professional

identities as well as the need for continual self-review.


Most importantly, programs need to make sure that students understand the purpose of port-

folio presentations: that they offer moments for embodied self-assessment—dress rehearsals for

the complex and perhaps conflicting roles they will play in the workplace. It is thus to the work-

place and the expectation—even the necessity—of self-assessment there that we now turn.

THE WORKPLACE

In the second part of this paper, we examine self-assessment in the genre of performance

appraisal for ‘‘Brenda,’’ a technical communicator at a small Midwestern company. We outline

Brenda’s evaluation process and show excerpts from a 2008 evaluation and a rebuttal to super-

visor comments written in response to her 2009 evaluation. These excerpts are intended to show

how one person engages in memory work to establish her identity and to address issues of status.

Brenda’s comments from both documents show an evolution from static inventory to inventory

and invention. First, we outline the performance appraisal process at Brenda’s company and then

analyze her excerpts from her written appraisals.

Performance Appraisal in the Workplace

Brenda completes an online form, Employee Evaluation (see Appendix A), each December on

the anniversary of her hire. The assessment process is outlined in the introduction of the form.

Employees are required to explain their contribution to the company’s team performance; con-

tribution is defined as ‘‘the combination of responsibilities, effort, and performance.’’ On the

Employee Evaluation, the company directs each employee to

prepare a self-evaluation that summarizes your responsibilities, accomplishments, areas for improve-

ments, short term goals and long term goals. You are to reflect seriously on your contribution and to

develop challenging and realistic goals.

The form is then broken into sections including evaluation questions, accomplishments, goals,

community, and supervisor comments. In the evaluation questions section, Brenda is required

to respond to the technical writer salary evaluation question, which prompts her to comment

on her most substantial projects, contributions to process improvements and cost control mea-

sures, occasions when she played leadership roles, and effort she has made to advance her skills

and knowledge. Under accomplishments, she compares her achievements over the past year with

the goals she stated in her previous evaluation. In the goals section, she comments on her goals

for the next year and on her long-term career goals. In the community section, she describes

community and professional organization activities in which she participates.

After Brenda has completed her performance appraisal, her supervisor is prompted to

describe Brenda’s overall performance, areas for improvement, and goals he has for her. Accord-

ing to the process outlined in the form’s introduction, Brenda’s supervisor’s supervisor and

human resources review the comments and discuss pay and promotion during that review.

Brenda is not present for this meeting, but she has the opportunity to review her supervisor’s

comments and she can either sign the form if she agrees or request to complete a rebuttal form.


Status and Identity Issues in the Workplace

To protect the anonymity of our research subject, we elected to include excerpts of responses but

to omit identifying information. One response detailed how Brenda’s role had changed to

include project management. In response to feedback on her 2009 evaluation, she wrote a rebut-

tal in early 2010. During 2009, a year of economic recession, her company underwent a hiring

freeze and fired several employees. Technical writers (TWs) were also redistributed, and Brenda

was required to take on the work of others who had moved to other departments. In her rebuttal,

she defended how her work differed from that of other TWs in the organization, how the com-

plexity of her work was difficult to see, and how discontent with her work was about lack of

resources rather than her performance.

Brenda’s evaluation and rebuttal illustrate the problem of visibility in the workplace and the

evolution of her memory work to address this issue. Visibility is complicated by two overlapping

factors: status (how others view and value the technical communicator’s role and work) and

identity (how technical communicators view and value their own work and role). Scholarship

has focused on technical communicators’ struggles with issues of status and identity in the work-

place, linking these issues to difficulties in asserting the importance of their work (e.g., Faber &

Johnson-Eilola, 2003; Johnson-Eilola, 2004; Savage, 2004; Sullivan et al., 2003). Status and

identity are related to the genre of performance appraisal because decisions regarding bonuses,

salary hikes, and promotions are influenced by these evaluations. When writing performance

appraisals, technical communicators project their understanding of their roles. Appraisals can

be seen as an opportunity to address existing status issues only if technical communicators

understand the dynamic nature of their roles and how to make explicit the implicit value of their

work. In other words, the outcome of performance appraisals depends on how others see you

(status) and how you see and present yourself (identity).

Technical communicators have critical thinking qualities that make them valuable to organi-

zations, but making such qualities explicit is difficult. Bekins and Williams (2006) asserted that

technical communicators are well positioned in this creative economy if we can ‘‘effectively

communicate the skills we bring to an organization’’ (p. 289). They noted the qualities of crea-

tivity and invention as ‘‘difficult to outsource’’ (p. 289), but these qualities are valuable only if

they are visible to the organization. Redish (2003) posited, ‘‘If you are having difficulty getting

resources or being appreciated, then you have to find ways to show how you add value’’ (p.

506). In other words, if critical thinking qualities like creativity and invention are what make

technical communicators valuable, then they need to find ways to demonstrate those qualities,

particularly when status is an issue. Memory work, we argue, is one such way. In the following

paragraphs, we use Brenda’s case to illustrate moving from an inventory of duties to memory

work when inventory operates in conjunction with invention. Finally, we show how Brenda

exemplified her memory work through rhetorical performance.

In her 2008 evaluation, Brenda indicated in her bulleted list of general duties and responsi-

bilities that her role at the company had expanded to include project management duties:

Project Manager Role expansion: I have expanded my day-to-day follow up on meetings to ‘‘ensure

that action items stay in view and get addressed in a timely manner.’’ Action items are assigned as

tasks with the combined use of Outlook and OneNote, which directs quick referencing back to the

appropriate notes.


She followed this description with a laundry list of action items (an inventory), categorized as

pertaining to either cyclical or noncyclical projects that were exemplary of what she tracked

and delegated. For example, action items for noncyclical projects included ‘‘prototyping,’’

‘‘investigations,’’ ‘‘sidebar meetings,’’ and ‘‘agenda set-up and follow-up process.’’ She

described prototyping:

Following lean development practices calls for prototyping of all possible solutions. While not all

prototypes will be adopted into the final solution, the valuable information is captured for future

historical reference.

Sidebar meetings required her to ‘‘select team members[,] collaborate [sic] with resources from

other areas and report back to the full group.’’ Brenda provided no description for the investiga-

tions action item. We can see this list as a basic inventory. Brenda’s list assumed that the reader

would understand the complexity and importance of these tasks. Further, by providing little

detail beyond general descriptions of the actions themselves, Brenda’s response provided no hint

at the complexity of her work. The extensive inventory of action items suggested she recognized

that the new project manager function of her job added responsibility and work. However, by

simply listing the tasks, she did not show properly their depth or significance. Even when she

provided descriptions, she focused on describing the action itself and did not provide examples.

She had the opportunity to provide for instances or outcomes of these activities that would illus-

trate how her work solved or prevented problems for the organization or what cost savings might

have been involved. For example, the item ‘‘investigations’’ sounded important but was lost in

the list, and Brenda did not explain what those investigations were; why they were important; or

how much time, effort, and ingenuity they required. The investigations item is but one example

of an opportunity Brenda had to illustrate the complexity of her role. (See Appendix B for a list

of excerpts of Brenda’s comments.)

Memory work goes beyond inventory of skills to linking inventory to invention as an ongoing

process. Memory compels technical communicators to not only catalog their work and experi-

ences but also to see multiple possibilities for its interpretation and trajectory so they can invent

or reinvent their role in an organization. Brenda may be providing us an inventory of what she

does, but by not providing a sense of how her work affects organizational goals or the com-

munity of people with whom she works, she is not relaying the full value of her work. The ident-

ity she is projecting in her evaluation carries out particular actions, but these actions are not

explicitly integral to the proper function of the department in which she works. Without the

invention component of memory work—the ability to bring all her work together to illustrate

how her role actually and uniquely functions in the organization—Brenda’s inventory projects

a static rather than dynamic role.

Identity is an issue for technical communicators who either see or express their work as

static—as predetermined and fixed activities. System thinking, or the ability to understand the

value and possibility of work along multiple paths, is ‘‘rare in technical communication because

we systematically define our work in limited ways’’ (Johnson-Eilola, 2004, p. 187). In recom-

mending system thinking, Johnson-Eilola argued that technical communicators are not seeing

their work as dynamic and as having a range of possibilities, thus automatically limiting the

ways in which they will understand their value and future as it connects to larger organizational

contexts. According to Johnson-Eilola, technical communicators frequently occupy low


positions in groups and teams and they need to be able to negotiate these situations effectively

(p. 186). This negotiation requires ‘‘system thinking’’ to ‘‘recognize and construct relationships

and connections in extremely broad, often apparently unrelated domains’’ (p. 186). Like

Johnson-Eilola, Bekins and Williams (2006) also pointed out that technical communicators tend

to see their work as static rather than dynamic (p. 288). Because the skills and knowledge tech-

nical communicators bring to the workplace are not static, neither are identities—that is, employ-

ees must be able to ‘‘float among identities’’ and ‘‘embrace’’ the skills of the creative worker (p.

289). Additionally, as Hailey et al. (2010) argued, successful technical communicators must see

themselves as strategists in these roles, ‘‘making strategic decisions and solving strategic prob-

lems as a matter of habit’’ (p. 139).

We see a change in Brenda’s analysis and explanation of her work when she completed a

rebuttal in 2010 (corresponding to her evaluation from the end of 2009). As outlined in the per-

formance appraisal process above, the rebuttal was a response to her supervisor’s feedback on

her written evaluation. In this document, she addressed her supervisor’s comments regarding,

among other things, a perceived lack of communication with the team leads whom she is

supposed to be supporting:

[Supervisor’s name] noted the frustration team leads have expressed to him pertaining to my lack

of communication, lack of active listening, not allowing them to set my priorities and not provid-

ing solutions to help requests. [Department=Product Line name] has 10þ team leads and I have

met with each of them individually to get an understanding of their frustration and desires, both

with my role and suggestions for improving my personal performance. The result was a long and

candid list that focused on the role I perform and other areas beyond this role. Every team lead

was willing to take the time to meet with me and provide his feedback. This communication

opportunity has provided insight to many team lead frustrations, which were not about my per-

sonal performance but rather about the need for more TW resources to replicate this role more

effectively across our projects. Again, I stress, complaints from team leads are about a lack of

resources, not my performance.

From this excerpt, we can deduce that her supervisor criticized Brenda’s communication and

organizational skills and that the team leads had complained. In her rebuttal comments, Brenda

did not simply defend that she had those particular skills. Rather, Brenda pointed out that the

team leads were confused about what her role entails. Further, she gathered evidence by discuss-

ing the complaints with each team lead, and she argued that they were not dissatisfied with her

performance. The issue was not her communication, listening, or organizational skills, but an

issue of resources:

At the beginning of 2009 there were 3 full time tech writers and 4 students serving the [product line

name] projects. By fall resources were down to one full time technical writer, myself. Although

expectations were somewhat adjusted, all the remaining duties=tasks (my own and those of both

the reassigned and the terminated resources) become [sic] solely my own. This placed me in an

impossible situation because no matter how many or how well I accomplished tasks, I was never

going to be able to cover all the needs of our projects.

My evaluation interprets this impossible situation to be my inability to supervise, prioritize tasks

and communicate with team leads, customers, and others. The evaluation glosses over [product line


name] lack of resources almost as if we were previously over-staffed in the tech writing area and that

if my ‘‘failure’’ points could be fixed, accomplishing the group’s expectations would be an easy

accomplishment.

Here her response inventoried how company changes had affected her work, and she used

this inventory to invent an alternative view of how her work should be viewed.

In addition, Brenda called attention to the complexity of her role, how her role functioned in

the larger organization, how it affected others, and how it was different from those of others who

shared her title. She went on to parse out the various technical writing roles:

A contributor to the team lead frustration with the TW role is that the role is visualized in three dif-

ferent ways:

. Student TW: Requiring no product knowledge and only a very limited skill set, basically any

warm body that reads and writes well can be trained on the job to be dedicated to an established

task or task set.

. Traditional TW: Reactive role in which a TW takes content supplied to him by engineers, etc.;

places it into the properly styled ‘‘container’’ document; and publishes it to [company specific

online document center name].

. Tech Communicator TW: Working proactively with champions,5 target audience representatives

and developers to generate an informational structure with reach-out and feedback components,

that can be part of the ‘‘maintained’’ knowledge foundation of a project or product. Focusing

on the quality and maintenance of a project’s content so it can be confidently leveraged for

sub-documentation=training needs. The Tech Communicator oversees our groups’ processes

and manages their execution. Plus . . ..

Athough all three types have value in specific situations, they are not the same and require different

knowledge and skill sets. The team lead whose needs can be met with one type could be frustrated working

with another type. Perhaps it would be worthwhile for team leads to identify their tasks and match them to

the TW role that could manage them and generate a strategy for seeking the TW support needed. Regard-

less, the solution to this problem is a supervisory issue.

Again her response was further contextualizing the issue as one that was an organizational issue

to be addressed rather than a problem with performance. At the heart of the problem was the

misunderstanding about what she actually did. The complexity of her work was invisible to

others in the organization, and she needed to defend how she added value. She explained that

she was most effective when others did not ‘‘feel’’ her work:

Much of my work is performed behind the scenes and involves honing our processes into executions

that are smooth, reliable, and effective cycle after cycle. Others reap the benefits of my efforts with-

out being aware of the actual tasks and steps involved. It is because I am performing the tasks of my

job successfully and effectively, that teammates do not ‘‘feel’’ the amount or complexity of the work

I execute.

She strategically used the rebuttal as an opportunity to invent a new organizational conception of

what successful technical communication work could be. She specifically pointed out that her


work was much more complex than others realized, and it was specifically because she was

performing her role effectively that they did not see her work.

As Brenda’s comments illustrate, inventory alone does not reveal the complexity and affect-

ive nature of her work. We can see the memory work of inventory and invention in her rebuttal

comments. To buttress her performance appraisal, Brenda developed a document (Appendix C)

to parse out her weekly work and show how it related to other individuals and projects in the

organization. The document is a table that explains topics rather than tasks, for example, how

the topics relate to goals, how they interrelate with the work of others, and how they relate to

continuous improvement. Brenda can use these documents when she writes her performance

appraisal at the end of the year, but more importantly, she showed her boss throughout the year

how her work affected projects, others’ work, and company goals. The document is exemplary

of rhetorical performance.

If it is true that technical communicators are valuable for their critical thinking skills

(Johnson-Eilola, 2004) and that they add value in their roles as ‘‘agents of organizational

learning’’ (Hughes, 2002), then they must learn how to use embodied rhetorical performance,

memory work, and meditation to embody and reveal their value. Embodied rhetorical

performance informed by memory and meditation requires technical communicators to apply

and reveal their critical thinking skills in more dynamic ways. Through inventory they

come to understand the possibility of their work, through invention they connect this com-

plexity to what is valued by the company, and through performance they embody and reveal

this value.

CONCLUSION

Technical communication researchers have demonstrated that students take at least some of what

they have learned in the classroom with them to the workplace, where they reinvent it for new

contexts and needs (Brady, 2007). We suggest that such is the case with inventory, invention,

and performance.

We have shown the necessity for addressing self-assessment in a critical and dynamic

way both in the academy and in the workplace. We argue that memory and meditation work

embodied by rhetorical performance requires students to go beyond listing what they have

accomplished to think about and articulate multiple meanings for their work for multiple audi-

ences. In this way, they can make visible the often invisible complexity of their work and the

critical thinking skills they embody. Brady’s (2007) work demonstrates that critical thinking

skills transfer from the academy to the workplace. We need to fortify these skills so that students

self-assess their work in an effort to make these skills meaningful and visible. In other words,

they make visible not only that they use what we teach, but that it is valuable to a creative

economy.

Brenda has had the benefit of someone to help her step back and reflect on the meaning of her

work and to review and provide feedback on her self-evaluations before she submits them. We

argue that students, to be successful technical communicators, must be prepared to engage in this

sustained self-assessment on their own. Requiring memory and meditation work and prompting

embodied rhetorical performance in students through performance portfolios is a critical path to

this goal.


NOTES

1. Scholars dedicated to examining memory as an inventional act are few. Carruthers (1998) acknowledged her debt to

Yates’s (1966) scholarship and pointed out that Yates ‘‘believed that the goal of the art of memory was solely to repeat

previously stored material’’ (p. 9). More recently, Bolzoni and Corsi (1992) edited a book on the ‘‘culture’’ of mem-

ory. Because Carruthers theorizes memory as ‘‘creative tension’’ (p. 15), her work primarily informs ours.

2. Eastern traditions have long explored meditation as a spiritual practice (e.g., teachings of Pema Chodron and Thıch

Nha�t Hanh). And women living and working in premodern convents (e.g., Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila) studied

and practiced meditation as well. Attempting to incorporate their work here, however, would do it an injustice. We

thus limit our scope to Western and monastic traditions.

3. Whereas recent scholars—for example, Judith Butler, Natalie Wilson, Susan Bordo, and Carole Smith-Rosenberg—

have analyzed gender as performance, we are interested in the performance of professional roles played out in the

workplace and thus focus on the theorizing of Erving Goffman, Richard Schechner, and Peggy Phelan.

4. Inventory and invention, as means to rhetorical performance, are introduced to first-year Tech students and woven

through subsequent courses as they move toward graduation.

5. ‘‘Champion’’ is a term used in both Lean and Six Sigma management systems.

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programs and beyond. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 21, 37–61. doi: 10.1177=

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Carruthers, M. (1998). The craft of thought: Meditation, rhetoric, and the making of images, 400–1200. New York, NY:

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M. Ann Brady directs the Scientific and Technical Communication program at Michigan Tech-nological University. Her research focuses on the intersections of technical communication andtechnology studies, rhetorical theory, interdisciplinary studies, and feminism.

Joanna Schreiber is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Technical Communication at MichiganTechnological University. Her research explores how standardization practices, particularlyscientific management systems, affect and are affected by technical communication.

APPENDIX A

Employee Evaluation

Introduction

Company values each individual’s contribution to our team performance. Contribution is

the combination of responsibilities, effort, and performance. We ask each individual to

prepare a self-evaluation that summarizes your responsibilities, accomplishments, areas for

improvements, short term goals and long term goals. You are to reflect seriously on your

contribution and to develop challenging and realistic goals. Be clear and concise in your

comments. If you refer to attachments in your comments, email them to your supervisor

and to evaluations.

After you complete your self-evaluation, your supervisor will write additional comments

about your responsibilities, accomplishments, and growth opportunities, and will add goals as


appropriate. Then their supervisor(s) and Human Resources representatives will also review.

During those reviews, appropriate pay is considered. Your supervisor will then review with

you the completed evaluation and approved pay.

Company complies with applicable government requirements regarding the collection, use

and retention of personal data. Evaluation data is kept within the United States.

Employee Information

Employee ID:

Last Name:

First Name:

Role: Technical Writer

Supervisor:

Department:

Region:

Office:

Location:

Employee Type: FT

Shift: Day Shift

Eval Type:

Eval Effective Date:

Date:

Supervisor Comments

Meet with your employee to review this evaluation.

Optionally, write any additional goals or action items discussed with the employee during the

presentation meeting. These comments will be displayed to the employee.

Evaluation Questions

Technical Writer—Salary Evaluation Question

Please comment below on your roles=responsibilities, your workgroup structure, and your

strengths=weaknesses. You are welcome to include general comments, such as workload, com-

munication, and team initiatives. In the subsequent sections, review your accomplishments since

your last evaluation; state your goals for the next evaluation period; and in the last section,

comment on your community activities.

For all these sections, please consider the following:

1. Comment on what you feel were your most substantial projects of the past year and

the outcome of those projects including quality of work and timeliness as it pertains


to deadlines and backlog. Include specific examples where your work has a direct

impact on a business outcome.

2. Comment on any process improvements and=or cost control measures you have con-

tributed to either individually or as part of a team. If possible, quantify those

improvements or savings in dollars, as well as any other benefits obtained.

3. Comment on any instances in which you played a leadership role on specific projects

or in your day-to-day duties. Include information on how you encouraged others,

built cooperation and teamwork to have a successful outcome.

4. Comment on the steps you took over the last year to advance your skills and knowl-

edge. Include books read, new software skills=applications learned and training

sessions attended.

Be complete and concise. Highlight areas where you put extra effort or focus, or where you

excelled. Write your comments in English. If this is difficult for you please contact your super-

visor or Personnel for assistance.

Comments by employee:

Accomplishments

Describe accomplishments against your previous goals and comment on additional accom-

plishments during your past evaluation period. Please include specifics and provide examples.

If you would like to copy accomplishments from the goals module, click ‘‘Add Existing

Goal’’ button.

Overall Accomplishments Comments by employee:

Goals

Describe goals for the next evaluation period. Include work responsibilities, training, pro-

fessional development, areas for improvement, and propose a plan of action for each. Use the

SMART goal formant (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound).

Also describe you long-term career goals and plans.

If you would like to copy goals from the goals module, click ‘‘Add Existing Goal:’’ button. If you

would like to create a new goal in this evaluation and the goals module, click ‘‘Add New Goal.’’

Overall Goal comments by employee:

Community

Describe community activities and professional organization participation including your role

within these groups. You may exclude names or terms that indicated protected status, such as

race, color, religion, sex, disability or national origin.

Comments by employee:

Supervisor Comments

Please use the following outline to comment on the employee’s overall performance. Perfor-

mance=responsibilities, Areas for improvement, and Goals or Plan of Action for this


evaluation period; be specific and include examples. These comments will be displayed to the

employee.

Comments by supervisor:

Approved Compensation

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Employee Acknowledgement

I acknowledge that my supervisor has reviewed this evaluation with me. I have selected below

that I agree or disagree. I understand if I disagree, I will be sent an email notification when the

Disagree form is ready to be completed.

APPENDIX B: EXCERPTS OF BRENDA’S COMMENTS

Comment One From 2008 Evaluation

Project Manager Role expansion: I have expanded my day-to-day follow up on meetings to

‘‘ensure that action items stay in view and get addressed in a timely manner.’’ Action items

are assigned as tasks with the combined use of Outlook and OneNote, which directs quick refer-

encing back to the appropriate notes.

Action items for non-cyclical projects, such as [Department=Product Line name omitted],

include:

1. Prototyping – following lean development practices calls for prototyping of all poss-

ible solutions. While not all prototypes will be adopted into the final solution, the

valuable information is captured for future historical reference.

2. Investigations

3. Sidebar meetings – select team members collaborate with resources from other areas

and report back to the full group.

4. Agenda set up and follow up process – An agenda is established for each meeting

through submitted information or as a final step of the previous meeting. An agenda

consists of three parts:

a. Task Review = Status = Investigation – which is a follow up on the previously

assigned tasks and investigations.

b. Focus Topic(s) – quick description of the main focus of the meeting. Preparatory

reference links and attachments are included.

c. End Game – the final minutes of a meeting are dedicated to:

i. Summary and review of assigned action items

ii. Task assignments = reminders = follow up

iii. Establishment of next agenda and schedule

Action items for cyclical projects, such as the [Department=Product Line name omitted], can

include non-cyclical project items as well as:


a. Weekly status

b. Request, investigation and prototype capture

c. Planning

d. Market Feedback – new piece

e. Weekly development status

f. Pre-Release

g. Release

h. Official Release including:

i. Distribution

ii. Publication to [Department=Product Line name omitted] SharePoint site

iii. Future: ??? Assembly of attachments

iv. Email

Comment Two From 2010 Rebuttal to 2009 Evaluation

A contributor to the Team Lead frustration with the TW role is that the role is visualized in three

different ways:

. Student TW - requiring no product knowledge and only a very limited skill set -

basically any warm body that reads and writes well, can be trained on the job to be dedi-

cated to an established task or task set.

. Traditional TW - Reactive role where a TW takes content supplied to him by engineers,

etc. and places it into the properly styled ‘‘container’’ document and publishes it to

[company specific online document center name omitted].

. Tech Communicator TW - working proactively with champions, target audience repre-

sentatives and developers to generate an informational structure with reach-out and feed-

back components, that can be part of the ‘‘maintained’’ knowledge foundation of a

project or product. Focusing on the quality and maintenance of a project’s content so

it can be confidently leveraged for sub-documentation = training needs. The Tech Com-

municator oversees our groups’ processes and manages their execution. Plus . . ..

While all three types have value in specific situations they are not the same, and require different

knowledge and skill sets. The team lead whose needs can be met with one type could be frus-

trated working with another type. Perhaps it would be worthwhile for team leads to identify their

tasks and match them to the TW role that could manage them and generate a strategy for seeking

the TW support needed. Regardless, the solution to this problem is a supervisory issue.

Comment Three From 2010 Rebuttal:

At the beginning of 2009 there were 3 full time tech writers and 4 students serving the [Depart-

ment=Product Line name omitted] projects. By fall resources were down to one full time technical

writer, myself. Although expectations were somewhat adjusted, all the remaining duties=tasks

(my own and those of both the reassigned and the terminated resources) become solely my

own. This placed me in an impossible situation because no matter how many or how well I

accomplished tasks, I was never going to be able to cover all the needs of our projects.


My evaluation interprets this impossible situation to be my inability to supervise, prioritize

tasks and communicate with team leads, customers, and others. The evaluation glosses over

[Department=Product Line name omitted]’s lack of resources almost as if we were previously

over-staffed in the tech writing area and that if my ‘‘failure’’ points could be fixed, accomplish-

ing the group’s expectations would be an easy accomplishment.

Comment Four From 2010 Rebuttal:

[Supervisor Name Omitted] noted the frustration Team Leads have expressed to him pertaining

to my lack of communication, lack of active listening, not allowing them to set my priorities and

not providing solutions to help requests. [Department=Product Line name omitted]’s Team

Leads and I have met with each of them individually to get an understanding of their frustration

and desires, both with my role and suggestions for improving my personal performance. The

result was a long and candid list that focused on the role I perform and other areas beyond this

role. Every team lead was willing to take the time to meet with me and provide his feedback.

This communication opportunity has provided insight to many team lead frustrations, which

were not about my personal performance but rather about the need for more TW resources to

replicate this role more effectively across our projects. Again, I stress, complaints from Team

Leads are about a lack of resources, not my performance.

Comment Five From 2010 Rebuttal:

Much of my work is performed behind the scenes and involves honing our processes into execu-

tions that are smooth, reliable and effective cycle after cycle. Others reap the benefits of my

efforts without being aware of the actual tasks and steps involved. It is because I am performing

the tasks of my job successfully and effectively, that teammates do not ‘‘feel’’ the amount or

complexity of the work I execute.

APPENDIX C

Topic Contact(s) Goal(s) Goal

Achieved

Goal

Achieved

How This

Contact

Strengthened

‘‘Reach-Out’’

Relationship

Follow-Up

. Action

. Plan

Continuous Improvement

Ways to Strengthen ThisRelationshipBrenda Contact

Ongoing Contacts=Follow-Up on Contact


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