Call for Papers: Special Issue

You are invited to consider submitting proposals for researched papers or best practices pieces in a special issue of the Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization entitled “Navigating the Global Training Terrain: New Literacies, Competencies, and Practices.” This issue, to be published in fall 2011, will focus on training in global contexts from the perspective of both those who train and those who learn. We seek submissions from a variety of perspectives including business, science, humanitarian practice, health, social advocacy, education, and government.

The Background

Navigating the Global Training Terrain: New Literacies, Competencies, and Practices
(to be published in September/the Fall of 2011)

The twenty-first century has been characterized by rapid transformation—technological, social, cultural, environmental, economic, and scientific. In this changing milieu, organizations and individuals must continually acquire new knowledge and abilities or be left behind. Influential entities such as the United Nations strongly advocate the pursuit of lifelong learning for individuals, while leading companies, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations seek to become what scholars such as Peter Senge have called “learning organizations” that can transform themselves through the learning of their members at all levels.

Training, or the structured development of skills, competencies, and up-to-date knowledge, is an increasingly important element in these pursuits. The shape of training may vary—formal or informal, face-to-face or technologically mediated, short-term or long-term—but the end purpose is always the same: to facilitate learning by individuals or groups, usually with the larger purpose of enhancing organizational quality.

Training is vital to the success of globally connected organizations and individuals, but success requires the trainers’ effective bridging of linguistic, cultural, and social distances. Only teams and individuals with facility in navigating diverse languages, cultures, technologies, educational practices, and rhetorical traditions will be able to successfully provide training to global audiences.

Professional communicators, whose discipline claims expertise in several areas relevant to training—including oral, written, and visual rhetoric, usability, information architecture, electronic collaboration, intercultural communication, and collaboration with translators—are well positioned to contribute to global training efforts or take on the role of trainers themselves. Yet, despite these advantages, the pool of research on training in global audiences is limited, especially within the field of professional communication.

The Focus of the Special Issue

This special issue of the Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization seeks to address this need by providing a space for scholarly research and best practices on the topic of global, organizational training. The issue, entitled Navigating the Global Training Terrain: New Literacies, Competencies, and Practices will focus on training in global contexts from the perspective of both those who train and those who learn, including current research and best practices. The special issue will also cast an eye toward organizational training as it is evolving towards the future.

The editors of the special issue welcome submissions from a variety of perspectives including business, science, humanitarian practice, health, social advocacy, education, and government.

Possible topics pertaining to the theory, teaching, and practice of training in global contexts include the following, among others:

• Intercultural considerations in the design and delivery of training
• Training and the social web
• Cultural intelligence for trainers and training audiences
• Language use and translation in training contexts
• Meta-communication and training
• Communities of practice
• Legal issues in global training
• Economic aspects of global training
• Assessment of global training
• Training from a distance

Submitting Proposals

Proposals (up to 500 words) for research papers, short best practices pieces [*], and tutorials are due by October 10th, 2010. Review criteria can be found on the Journal’s website at www.rpcg.org. Proposals should be sent as an email attachment to one of the guest editors of the special issue:

• Pam Brewer, Appalachian State University: brewerpe @ appstate.edu
• Jim Melton, Central Michigan University: james.melton @ cmich.edu
• Joo-Seng Tan: Nanyang Technological University: ajstan @ ntu.edu.sg

[*] We strongly encourage practitioners to submit best practices pieces on any of the topics identified in this CFP or on related topics. Best practices describe the training strategies, approaches, or methods that work in a particular situation or environment.

• What has worked and why?
• What has not worked so well, and what could work better?

Authors may use the following optional framework for best practices pieces: title, description, methods used, results, technologies used, and lessons learned. While the proposal and review process is the same for research papers, tutorials, and best practices pieces, final manuscripts for best practices should be shorter: approximately 1000 to 3000 words in length.

Production Schedule

The schedule for the special issue is as follows:

• 10 October 2010 — 500-word proposals due
• 15 October 2010 – Guest editors return proposal decisions to submitters
• 10 January 2011 – Draft manuscripts of accepted proposals due
• 1 July 2011 — Final manuscripts due
• September 2011 — Publication date of special issue

About the Journal

The Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication and Globalization publishes articles on the theory, practice, and teaching of technical and professional communication in critical global and intercultural contexts such as business, manufacturing, environment, information technology, and others. As a global initiative, the Journal welcomes manuscripts with diverse approaches and contexts of research, but manuscripts are to be submitted in English and grounded in relevant theory and appropriate research methods. The Journal is peer reviewed with an editorial board consisting of experienced researchers and practitioners from over 20 countries.

The Journal is free or “open access,” using PKP open source software and housed at East Carolina University.

The first edition is planned for September 2010, and it will be published thereafter on a quarterly basis. For more information, see www.rpcg.org.

Please feel free to share this CFP with others who may be interested. We hope that this special issue will represent academic and practitioner perspectives as well as multiple disciplines.

Do you have a colleague or friend who is not a member? Share this page of practical information about joining STC for the first time.

Existing members feeling the financial pinch should look at the STC recovery package offered by the Society.

If you’re torn between buying some software and paying for your membership, Madcap has a tempting offer – paying for your membership!

We hope to see you in STC in 2010!

Despite the current discussion about STC’s financial crisis, this is an excellent initiative that deserves support. The site definitely needs data, and only you can help provide that data. Add your name – or share with the people who should be in this database.

Currently, there are no listings for people in Europe. Case in point! We need the names of speakers based in Europe to add to the diversity of this database. Spread the word. Let’s make STC truly international!

Around the world

Of course, we are promoting the European angle. After all, we are the Europe SIG. We would definitely encourage speakers located outside North America and Europe to contribute to the database. Spread the word to colleagues in Russia, Africa, South America, Australia/New Zealand, all of Asia – everywhere.

Remember your speaker tips!

Wherever you speak, please consider all the people attending your presentation. I’m talking about those attendees who are hard-of-hearing. You do want everyone to hear what you have to say, right? The AccessAbility SIG of STC has a nice cheat sheet for you to use.

The STC TransAlpine Chapter (TAC) is holding its annual conference – and 10th anniversary celebration in Vienna, 8-10 June 2009. Updated information about workshops, conference topics, speakers, directions, prices are now available.

Do not miss the opportunity to join this memorable event which features world-known speakers, like Tom Johnson and Ellis Pratt! Register now, places are limited!

Looking forward to seeing you in Vienna!

The TAC Board
– CJ Walker – President
– Claudia Basso – Vice President
– Janette Lynch – Treasurer
– Dian Kjaergaard – Secretary

People on Twitter are already using the hashtag #stc09 to identify discussions about the Summit. We’ll have more about the Technical Summit in the days to come, but we have to mention one other conference right now. It is rather unique, and I must use a feeble adjective and declare it “the coolest conference in 2009″.

I’m talking about the UX Challenge, Arctic Edition. The challenge takes place October 9-10, 2009 in the northernmost city in the world: Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Talk about getting out of your usual environment to stimulate the creative process!

There is something awe-inspiring about the idea of attending a conference in an exotic location like Svalbard. Friends of this writer went to Svalbard as tourists during the month of November, and they felt their senses opening and being receptive to every moment on the trip as though they were children again, exploring the world.

Of course, such an experience will always depend on the participants. The STC host chapter in Atlanta is ensuring a warm welcome for all attendees – long underwear is not required! – providing a backdrop of great hospitality in Atlanta to complement excellent learning opportunities in the Summit sessions. There may not be polar bears in the conference rooms, but there will be many challenges to ponder together with talented technical communicators from all over the world.

Maybe the year’s coolest conference is actually in Atlanta in May?

Visit the Europe SIG’s updated web site regularly

This is the easiest resolution to keep because you’re here already – just  take a look round our brand new site and come back as often as you can. If you’d like to contribute, please contact our web manager, Karen Mardahl (k.mardahl@gmail.com)

Renew your STC membership

Although money is tight for everyone this year, STC membership gives you access to a worldwide community of technical communicators, writers, editors, illustrators, and educators, that you simply can’t get anywhere else. If you want to keep moving forward with your career, can you afford to let your professional affiliation lapse?

Volunteer to help the STC Europe SIG

You can get even more out of your STC membership not only by staying a member of the Europe SIG, but by giving up a little of your own time and effort to help the SIG move forward. We are still STC’s youngest and smallest Special Interest Group, and we need as much help as we can get. Being a SIG volunteer means that you help decide what kinds of activities the SIG promotes, and how we communicate with our members. So please, even if you can only manage a couple of hours a month, do get in touch. If you’d like to help with the SIG elections please contact Derek Torres (derekctorres@gmail.com). If you’d like to help with anything else, please contact me (david@farbey.co.uk) or Jen O Neill (writer@jennifer-oneill.eu).

With sincere good wishes for the coming year,

David

SIG Members participating in the panel include Vici Koster-Lenhardt, Leah Guren, Ray Gallon, and Derek Torres.

We look forward to seeing you in Atlanta!