From textbooks to the real classroom: Implications for intercultural teaching in technical communication pedagogy

The increasing shift of the technical communication field towards a more global perspective has generated a perceived need for pedagogical practices to incorporate issues of intercultural communication. How to appropriately respond to this need in specific pedagogical scenarios has become a significant area of inquiry for many researchers and practitioners in technical communication, especially those specialized in intercultural technical communication. The study reported in this dissertation examines the technical writing instructors' attitudes towards incorporating intercultural issues and their teaching practices, the technical writing students' perceptions of intercultural issues and how such issues may be relevant to their expected professional practices, and the ways current technical communication textbooks integrate intercultural issues. The research methodology consisted of interviews of the technical writing instructors and students, a survey and a written questionnaire of the technical writing students, and the analysis of technical communication textbooks. The findings illuminate some underlying issues not only related to the internationalization of technical communication pedagogy but also to the conceptualization of intercultural communication, in general. First, the instructors' and the students' perceptions of the pedagogical realities of the introductory technical writing course prompt us to re-think the place of intercultural communication in such realities. Second, the participants' preference for the information acquisition approach to teaching and learning about intercultural issues suggests the need to problematize such an approach. Third, the conceptualization of intercultural communication by the participants and in the textbooks suggests the need to emphasize a critical perspective on language and culture when addressing intercultural topics in the introductory technical writing course. The research study has various implications, including the need to consider the course goals and the learning objectives as important factors to determine the place of intercultural communication in technical communication courses, the recognition that the information acquisition approach could be a relevant approach to teaching and learning about intercultural communication, and the need to build a strong theoretical understanding of the concepts of culture and language for a more theoretically updated internationalization of technical communication pedagogy.