Collaboration In The Technical Communication Classroom: Negotiating Team Contracts In A Pwi

Abstract

many others I cannot begin to list. I thank my significant other, my ISU family, and my biological family for their unending love and support. Most importantly, I thank the scholars and activists who have come before me, who continue to model the physical, emotional, and intellectual labor necessary to redress inequities and further the social justice turn. A. J. H. 1 CHAPTER I ENGAGING IN CONVERSATIONS ABOUT RACE, DISABILITY, AND GENDER: AN INTRODUCTION Ensuring that our research practices and pedagogies are inclusive has become an important and necessary task for technical and professional communication (TPC) teacher-scholars. As the TPC field is grappling with issues of systemic racism and the structural opportunities of Whiteness 1 , we are also trying to examine the ways that cultural-rhetorical research practices and pedagogies might encourage inclusivity in our research, in our classrooms, in the discipline, and in our institutions as a whole. We have reached a point where we can no longer ignore the overwhelming Whiteness of our field and institutions, and we must address the ways that institutionalized racism has silenced BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) teacher-scholars and students. The question we must ask, then, is: How can we, as TPC teacher-scholars, actively promote inclusive practices in a field and in institutions that continually (re)produce and normalize racist ideas and policies? With these specific issues in mind, this thesis examines how instructors might take up a cultural-rhetorical approach to teaching TPC and how we might negotiate team contracts 2 in a predominantly White institution (PWI). I would like to acknowledge upfront that as a graduate student, I have only taught first-year composition courses here at Illinois State University (ISU), and I have not had the 1 Throughout this thesis, I have intentionally made the decision to capitalize "White" when referring to the racial category. In my mind, to not capitalize "White" is to not recognize White as racialized, which risks reproducing Whiteness as the default. 2 Here, I am referring to team contracts in the pedagogical sense. The "team" constitutes a group of students who are about to engage in a collaborative endeavor/project, and the "contract" is a means through which the group of students may negotiate individual goals, differences in literacies and access, individual responsibilities, leadership roles, etc. I address team contracts more explicitly in chapter three.