A comparison of engineering and writing teachers' practices of reading and evaluating students' technical writing

Lore among technical writing teachers and students suggests that engineering teachers use different standards to evaluate students' writing than writing teachers use. This assumption leads some engineering students to discount the English department's technical writing course, and causes some writing teachers to question their own authority to teach technical writing. Previous studies have been based on the notion that a gap in standards exists. Few researchers have conducted the systematic, comparative studies of writing and engineering teachers that are necessary in order to define the dimension of the gap and its implications. Identifying and understanding the differences in the standards of writing and engineering teachers can not only contribute to our theories of discourse practices in the disciplines, but can also have practical benefits for teachers in the classroom and for administrators of writing programs.; This study answers the need for a systematic comparison of engineering and writing teachers' standards for evaluating students' technical writing. I asked four engineering and four technical writing teachers to read the same three student-authored feasibility reports, allowing direct comparison of the teachers' responses. The teachers read the papers aloud and expressed their thoughts aloud as they read, but in all other respects, they were to use the same processes they would normally use when evaluating students' papers.; This study indicates that the gap between engineering and writing teachers, standards is not as wide as generally assumed. In general, the engineering and writing teachers did not demonstrate substantially different emphases in their evaluations of student writing or in their ways of reading. The teachers rank-ordered the three papers similarly and divided their responses in similar proportions between evaluations of content, evaluations of form, comprehension practices, and metacomments. Under close analysis, the teachers' statements in a number of common evaluation categories appear to be based on similar standards and to be triggered by similar text features. In addition, significant differences that did emerge between the engineering and writing teachers' evaluations require complex explanations, not assumptions based on stereotype. The differences also suggest ways that engineering and writing teachers can learn about evaluation from each other.