A New Paradigm for Understanding Communication that Can Transform Engineering Communications Learning and Teaching

we are proposing, indeed already integrating into the curriculum, a new paradigm for understanding communication – communication as individual and social action. Our paper begins with a brief presentation of the current skills paradigm and a critique of the resulting pedagogy for communications learning and teaching. Next, we describe our new paradigm for understanding of communication. We then describe how such an understanding of communication can be integrated into engineering curriculum through the concept of genre and how discourse analysis enables us to study and to assess that integration. And finally, we briefly suggest how our alternative understanding might transform curriculum design in order to enhance engineering communications learning and teaching