Attending Like an Engineer: Rhetoric, Design, and Professionalization

Attending Like an Engineer: Rhetoric, Design, and Professionalization

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Weedon, Jonathan Scott, Weedon
Language:English
Published: Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK 2016
Subjects:
Engineering
Rhetoric
Technical Communication
Online Access:http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1466168910
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spelling ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-case14661689102021-08-03T06:37:06Z Attending Like an Engineer: Rhetoric, Design, and Professionalization Weedon, Jonathan Scott, Weedon Engineering Rhetoric Technical Communication "Attending like an Engineer: Rhetoric, Design and Professionalization" is an ethnography of an engineering design course and a group of engineering students. This IRB- approved study consists of observations of the design course, 9 hours of audio-taped interviews with students and their professor, and 21 hours of videotaped student group work. The class I observed introduced students to the design process and rendered many of the constraints professional engineers work under as part of that process. By analyzing the data in light of rhetorical theory and theories of embodied cognition, I argue that the process of professionalizing student engineers into professional engineers is a practice of directing and training the students attention through learning design and learning to write. At base, the class has students engage in design work not to produce a product or a process, but to cultivate and display attention to the ways professional engineering work is carried out. Students come to attend to engineering problems not as textbook problems, but as problems that are thoroughly intertwined with real-world constraints. Students take up and contest the professional attention they are taught and bring it to bear on how they frame design problems; how they make judgments in the design process; and how they compose the genres of professional engineering.My study offers three important findings for technical communication, engineering education, and writing in the disciplines: 1) genre work introduces students to the economy of a profession's activities by composing texts that mediate and filter design efforts; 2) learning through design is a dynamic rather than transmissive process, where received disciplinary knowledge is contested and negotiated in the emergent embodied and social order of teamwork; 3) and a focus on how students are taught to attend closes the gap between learning to write like a professional and learning to think like a professional. Attending means selecting, structuring, and displaying disciplinary knowledge, forming a profession's practice and domain of scrutiny. 2016-09-13 English text Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1466168910 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1466168910 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.
collection NDLTD
language English
sources NDLTD
topic Engineering
Rhetoric
Technical Communication
spellingShingle Engineering
Rhetoric
Technical Communication
Weedon, Jonathan Scott, Weedon
Attending Like an Engineer: Rhetoric, Design, and Professionalization
author Weedon, Jonathan Scott, Weedon
author_facet Weedon, Jonathan Scott, Weedon
author_sort Weedon, Jonathan Scott, Weedon
title Attending Like an Engineer: Rhetoric, Design, and Professionalization
title_short Attending Like an Engineer: Rhetoric, Design, and Professionalization
title_full Attending Like an Engineer: Rhetoric, Design, and Professionalization
title_fullStr Attending Like an Engineer: Rhetoric, Design, and Professionalization
title_full_unstemmed Attending Like an Engineer: Rhetoric, Design, and Professionalization
title_sort attending like an engineer: rhetoric, design, and professionalization
publisher Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK
publishDate 2016
url http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1466168910
work_keys_str_mv AT weedonjonathanscottweedon attendinglikeanengineerrhetoricdesignandprofessionalization
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