1. Resonance or Misalignment: A Study of the Academic-Practitioner Border in the Body of Knowledge for Technical Communication
Nancy W. Coppola, Professor,
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Saul Carliner, Associate Professor, Concordia University (Montreal)

2. What we reviewed: Reviewed every issue of JBTC, TC, TCQ, and Transactions on Professional Communication between 2006 and 2010
Why we chose these journals. Time Frame: We began this research in September 2010; we decided to use the most current literature from the beginning of our research project.
Journal Selection: We focus on the four main journal devoted to technical communication. With our goal of mapping our body of knowledge to our peer-reviewed journals – we needed to concentrate on those devoted to our profession.
Why we chose this time frame
Focused only on feature articles, teaching cases, and tutorials
Did not include commentaries, editorials, book reviews, and reviews of research published in other journals

3. How We Reviewed Adapted a methodology used by Klein
~360 articles
Adapted a methodology used by Klein
Separately reviewed each article, classifying:
Research method (expanding on Klein’s classifications)
Topic (using STC BOK)
Shared our independent assessments to reach conclusion
Compiled results
Drew conclusions
Averaged 6 hours a month on phone to discuss
From September 2010 to May 2011: 6 months

4. TC-BoK Portal Map (captured 9/27/10 from go-mapping
. TC-BoK Portal Map (captured 9/27/10 from go-mapping.com) Highlighted to Show Selected Coding Topics

5. Of the eleven identified knowledge topics in the TC-Bok, three topics appeared most frequently in our peer-reviewed literature and three topics least frequently. In this section, we will examine the top three—1) Information Design, 2) Deliverables, and 3 )Academic Programs – and the bottom three – 1) Business Knowledge, 2) Technical Communication Standards, and 3) About Technical Communication.” Figure 2 shows the TC-BoK topics coded from the least to most popular. It also shows the coding by journal which we show here for information only. We discussed the individual journal preferences in an earlier publication to answer these questions: What content does the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication publish? How does that compare to the content published by other journals in the field? (Carliner et al)

6. Comparison of Most and Least Popular BOK Topics
Top 4 Peer-reviewed Literature
Top 4 Practitioner Survey
Information Design & Development
Deliverables
Academic Programs
Research, Theory, & Practice
Bottom 4 Peer-reviewed Literature
Business Knowledge
Standards
About TC
Management
Information Design & Development
Collaboration
Business Knowledge
Deliverables
Bottom 4 Practitioner Survey
Research, Theory, & Practice
Academic Programs
Standards
Tool Knowledge
In mapping our body of knowledge to our peer-reviewed journals, we found the TC-BoK topics that academics address because most authors of our journals are scholar-teachers. We wanted to compare our findings with what practitioners had to say about the body of knowledge. Fortunately, we have the results of a May 2008 STC survey of its membership. The survey presented a table that listed the top-level topic headings of a draft site map defining the profession (this is the same TC-BoK portal from which we drew our topics). The instructions stated: “Please rate each of these content areas based on how important you think it is to include them in the "Technical Communication Knowledge portal.” The survey garnered 175 responses.
Figure 1 shows a comparison of the most and least popular Body of Knowledge topics as expressed by academics (primarily) who author the peer-reviewed journal articles and by practitioners (primarily) who are STC members and completed the survey.
Compiled by Nancy Coppola and Saul Carliner

7. Resonance or Misalignment
Information Design & Development
Deliverables
Research, Theory, & Practice
Business Knowledge
Academic Programs
Is there a problem with this picture?
If there’s a problem, what can we do about it?