Current Practices
In the last twenty years, professional writing researchers have favored an ethnographic research method, as adapted from anthropology. One of the key qualities of ethnography has been the researcher's access to the people, environment, and texts needed to gain insight and knowledge about a particular workplace. This method has allowed researchers to establish a strong theory connecting genres and activity systems in the workplace (Bazerman, Pare, Winsor, Freedman, Smart, and Russell to acknowledge a few). Being an observer of events, relationships, and hierarchical structures in the context where they are enacted allows researchers to study the structure and distribution of knowledge as the activities are happening (Bazerman, 1997). Genres have been established as regulating what counts as knowledge in an organization, who has access to that knowledge, and in what format they receive it. Activity systems structure how events take place, who plays what role, and the expertise level of players. Ethnographic research has made significant contributions to the academic world's understanding of workplace communication.
Research is Ideological

A reflection on current practices is bound to start conversations about ideology. All research is ideological in nature. We ask questions we feel are important; we employ methods that will emphasize specific types of knowledge over others; we shape our conclusions by checking them against our experience with the data. The true challenge researchers face are not technologic, economic, or global, but how fluctuations in these areas impact concepts of texts, writers, and workplaces and how researchers will be able to argue for the validity of the constructs spawned from these changes.

Furthermore, there is the need to recognize our own positions as researchers. Both physically and ideologically. Patricia Sullivan and James Porter in Opening Spaces offer a critique of researchers' claims of unbiased data collection and the idea that data can be completely collected. Providing the example of a basketball game, the authors detail how everyone comes to the game with different interests, seats, jobs or assignments, and goals for the outcome. While one person may be interested in the cheerleaders, others will watch the happenings on the court, and some are concerned with the opportunity to meet and mingle with friends. Even those watching the game will perceive it differently based on their knowledge of the game, the teams, and the players themselves. As researchers we need to ask ourselves what we bring to the game and how our seats affect what we see.
Method as Contextual
One assumption I must discuss is that ethnography is the proper method for future inquiries in professional communication. It is premature to focus solely on changes that need to happen to a specific method. Researchers must first start with the questions that new technologies pose for writing in the workplace. In the future, the methods we know should adapt to be able to answer the questions being asked by our community and ourselves. Cindy Johanek (2001) calls for a Contextualist Paradigm in composition studies, in which researchers set aside their bias towards a particular type of method and allow the context from which their questions arise and the nature of the questions themselves to direct one to the method that will best suit the inquiry. In professional writing, ethnography has been an excellent method for developing theory and pedagogy. However, researchers should be careful not to allow the method to dictate what questions we are able to answer or we may undermine the integrity of the discipline by only uncovering what we are willing to write about.
Critical Research

If researchers are to begin questioning their methods and the implications of the types of knowledge they are supporting by conducting particular types of research, they must also ask if our field is ready to move beyond observation and description of research sites. Nancy Blyler (1995) recognizes the ideological implications of research in professional communication. Professional writing is at a point where it is old enough to have laid a foundation. We can look critically at the research we conduct and the knowledge we further. Blyler (1995) notes "we have largely avoided discussing the tough questions concerning ideology: questions such as whose interests are advanced by our research and what kinds of social and institutional context are reproduced" (287). These sentiments are echoed again in Blyler (1998) when she argues for a critical perspective on research and cites Carl Herndl's call for researchers to look critically at our findings and the communication practices we are reinforcing in our students when we teach what we see happening in the workplace. If professional writing did not have a strong hold on ethnography and a foothold from which to start, we would not be able to take this critical perspective that is much needed. In order to conduct these critical examinations, we must go beyond the stance of ethnographer. To observe, piece together, and describe are no longer enough. There are a plethora of descriptions available; the real question is what do they mean for our students and those of us who inhabit the world influenced by the cultures we describe and the decisions that come from those cultures.

Critical research practices, ala Blyler and Herndl, are a part of radical pedagogy and suggests that research in the field should be examined in light of how we will bring it back into the classroom and use the results to help our students out of oppressed situations. Radical pedagogy aside, the critical perspective's goal of connecting to those being observed, allowing them to aid in developing the questions under investigation, and providing participants at a research site empowerment are all valuable points that must be at least be thought about in future professional writing research.

At the same time researchers in professional writing are dealing with instabilities in the location and traditional notions of what we study, we must realize that many of the questions these technologies are raising for our field are those that we attempt to answer in our studies of the discourse of others. Blyler (1998) cites Stephen Doheny-Farina as stating that "because 'a methodology is largely a rhetorical enterprise,' we ought to 'expose the arguments that guide our research actions' (263) The more we expose these arguments, he claims, 'the more ethical our research can be.'" (36). We have internalized the value of employing ethnographic methods to study the workplace. As researchers and teachers, we need to begin questioning not only the results and structure that we help to solidify by reporting on them, but the methods and research questions we use as tools to gather data.
It should be noted that Blyler's critical research is multi-disciplinary and has been adapted by those in sociology, anthropology, and managerial communications (p. 40). Critical research is not an alternative to ethnography or a new method for research; it is more of a methodology-an approach to putting the method into action. Feminist research can be provided as an example of critical research perspective because it problematizes traditional research methods and asks questions about the ideology behind research itself (Blyler, p. 41).

Method verses Methodology
Ethnography, as adapted from anthropology, is a method used to investigate the workplace. This method is conducive to and results in descriptive writing (see Blyler above). Contextual and Critical practices call for researchers to adopt a methodology. A method is a way to collect data, while the methodology is our lens on the data and contributes to our interpretations of the observations. Too often we in professional writing make observations and offer detailed descriptions without an attempt at interpretation or critical critique of the practices we are seeing or the ideologies we re-inscribe in our telling of our observations.
Stepping Back
A change in how methods are carried out will require reflection on the ideology at the center of current research agendas. The big question I started with was what technology means for research methods. I feel the opportunities brought on by changes in technology give us the chance to step back from traditional notions of ethnography as the best method, false fronts of the researcher as unbiased, and carefully constructed roles of researcher as not interfering. Changes in the world outside of academia provide us with the impetus for changes within. As teachers and researchers, we need to reflect on the questions we are asking to ensure that they will get results that can benefit someone other than ourselves and the tenure process.
created by: j. blankert
12 december 2003