Resonance or misalignment: A study of the academic-practioner border in the body of knowledge for Technical Communication

This paper reports on a content analysis study of the four main journals devoted to technical communication over five years using the Technical Communication Body of Knowledge (TC-BoK) project as the object of our coding system. These findings were compared with a Society for Technical Communication (STC) survey of its membership, mostly practitioners, and their ratings of topics from the same TC-BoK project to gauge concurrence of ideas that inform a body of knowledge for our profession. The findings show both resonance and misalignment between academics and practicing professionals.