Teaching Toward the Telos of Critical Thinking: Genre in Business Communication

Abstract

The implementation of genre theory in the business communication classroom could lead to the cultivation of critical thinking skills in students. The lack of a common definition of critical thinking skills across academia and the workplace creates a difficult end goal to pursue; therefore, teachers should consider explicitly teaching to the outcome, ortelos, of critical thinking through genre. This article examines a small corner of genre theory, identifies a genre theory framework for business communication, and discusses the implications of such a framework.

Keywords

pedagogy business communication critical thinking genre theory business writing telos

In September 2014,Business and Professional Communication Quarterly(BPCQ) released an issue that focused primarily on finding ways to teach critical thinking in business and professional communication classes. The purpose of this issue was to speak to the problem of teaching transferrable critical thinking skills. In her introduction,Knight (2014), editor of the issue, argued that “there is universal agreement among educators in the academy and managers in the workplace that critical thinking skills are essential for success at all levels” (p. 247). However,Knight (2014)and the authors included in this edition questioned whether or not critical thinking can be taught in the business curriculum.BPCQis, of course, not the first or only journal to question how and if critical thinking can be taught; yet the issue remains unresolved, and the debate about how critical thinking should be taught remains lively (Ayad, 2010;Bassett, 2016;Bloch & Spataro, 2014;Çavdar & Doe, 2012;Dyck, Walker, Starke, & Uggerslev, 2012;Harpaz, 2014;hooks, 2010;Howard, Tang, & Austin, 2015;Newman, 2012;Roberts & Billings, 2012;Thompson & Washington, 2015). Additionally, it is crucial to acknowledge that there is a gap separating the skills students have leaving college and the skills they are expected to have when they enter the workforce. If students leave college, and our classrooms, unclear about which genres they will need to compose and why, this gap will remain, or worse, the gap will grow. Critical thinking skills, in concert with genre, could be more fully explored in business schools to prepare students for the workforce. First, it would be useful to better understand the trouble with teaching critical thinking in the business communication classroom.

Definitions Within the Literature

It is useful to review concurrent definitions of critical thinking to identify the disparities among definitions in the field as well as within the workplace. The September 2014BPCQissue reinforced the need for continued conversation about ways in which to teach critical thinking in the business classroom.Knight (2014)invoked American sociologist William Graham Sumner to define “what we now call critical thinking as ‘the examination and test of propositions of any kind which are offered for acceptance, in order to find out whether they correspond to reality or not’” (p. 247) and emphasized this definition as a point for authors to move from within the issue. Although Knight suggested Sumner’s definition of critical thinking can be considered universal, the authors of the first article in the edition offered a different perspective altogether, one that focuses on what critical thinkingdoesversus how it isdefined. In other words,Bloch and Spataro (2014)saw the acquisition of critical thinking skills as fluid rather than static. While critical thinking is not the focus of the article, Bloch and Spataro came to the conclusion that their students have good critical thinking skills if they can conduct a root cause analysis, recognize and evaluate assumptions, generate creative alternatives, minimize biases in their thinking, construct and deliver a clear argument, clearly communicate their ideas, and embrace curiosity (p. 254). The articles following Bloch and Spataro’s emphasis on the outcomes of critical thinking skills do not explicitly mention a definition of critical thinking. Those articles discuss the importance of oral exams (Burke-Smalley, 2014), how impromptu assignments can help develop communication skills (Yale, 2014), the examination of termination documentation (Duncan & Hill, 2014), and a survey on class size, delivery modes, assignments, and topics covered in business communication classes (Moshiri & Cardon, 2014). Essentially what the reader of the issue is left with is different definitions of critical thinking and many questions about the success of teaching critical thinking in the business communication classroom. TheBPCQissue does not represent an exhaustive corpus of texts that defines critical thinking and its teaching practices in the classroom. However, it does show just how difficult it is to come to one definition, even in a single issue focused on critical thinking. Therefore, one reason for the difficulty of teaching critical thinking skills in the classroom could be the lack of a common definition or outcome within our field (Grant, 1988).

Definitions Within the Workplace

Beyond the lack of a universal definition in business and professional communication, the difficulty of defining critical thinking extends into the workplace.The American Management Association (AMA, 2012), a nonprofit training organization, defined critical thinking in tandem with problem-solving as “the ability to make decisions, solve problems, and take action as appropriate” (p. 2). Yet a recentAMA (2012)study confirmed that “more than half of executives admit that their employees are ‘average’ at best in critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication skills” (p. 1). Executives have argued that critical thinking skills are crucial not only for current work practices but also for future jobs within the next 3 to 5 years (AMA, 2012, p. 3). While companies look for, and stress the importance of, critical thinking skills in employees, it is extremely difficult to find a corporation that defines what they mean by critical thinking. TheFoundation for Critical Thinking (n.d.), a rare nonprofit, blended the values of academia, business, and the community in order to define critical thinking as “that mode of thinking—about any subject, content, or problem—in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them” (para. 10). The foundation emphasized that a well-cultivated critical thinker should have the ability to raise vital questions, gather and assess relevant information, think with an open mind, and effectively communicate complex problems. Considering this version of critical thinking with those discussed above, we now have multiple definitions of critical thinking for a variety of situations and contexts across academia and the workplace.

Academia and business do, however, have similarities in their explanations of critical thinking. WhileKnight (2014)and theFoundation for Critical Thinking (n.d.)both offered definitions, it seems as though their focus is on the outcomes students should gain from learning critical thinking skills. Academia and the workplace emphasize a set of critical thinking skills they want students to gain, or what Aristotle defines astelos. Telos focuses the importance of education on teaching to the outcome. Instead of creating a universal definition for critical thinking that both academia and the workplace can use, it seems as though we can agree (to some extent, anyway) on the outcome, or telos, we want students to gain. The definitions listed above all suggest that students should be able to identify and understand knowledge that can be applied to other contexts.

Teaching Toward Telos Using a Genre Focus

One way to teach to the telos of critical thinking is to focus on genre. YetParetti (2008)argued that even when instructors teach “workplace documents,” or genre, students are able to repeat and write document formats, but they potentially do not understand how and why to adapt those documents in professional contexts (p. 491). Therefore, it is useful to contextualize workplace genres within professional discourse.Miller (1984)suggested that thinking about genre in terms of a “social action” would be helpful to understand that there is a situation surrounding a particular discourse classification, or document in business communication, that helps contextualize the creation of that genre. Genres are so embedded in their context thatSwales (2004)urged us not to see genres “as single—and perhaps separable—communicative resources but as forming complex networks of various kinds in which switching modes from speech to writing (and vice versa) can—and often does—play a natural and significant part” in the formation of genres (p. 2). Understanding what genres are and how they work in a complex network of other genres embedded in communities can help students understand why “workplace documents” are written and the role genres play in the broader communities within which they are situated. Therefore, we can teach students explicitly that they will need to use genre analysis in the workplace, and the act of them applying and adapting that knowledge to new contexts is exactly the telos of critical thinking that we are looking to establish in our students.

Genre theory suggests that we can offer our students knowledge (of analyzing and discovering how to write within the genre) in order for them to apply it to different contexts. Although some in our field have documented the use of genre theory in the classroom (Creelman, 2012;Kallendorf & Kallendorf, 1985;Pope-Ruark, 2012;Ruppert & Green, 2012;Walker, 2003), many of them do not focus on genre as a framework to teach. One scholar, in particular, focuses specifically on genre theory to teach business communication, but the focus is on nonnative speakers (Garzone, 2012). There has been little written about the potential affordances of the use of a genre theory framework in the business communication classroom to cultivate transferrable critical thinking skills.

Therefore, to teach for the telos of critical thinking, we can consider how we could integrate a genre theory framework to cultivate critical thinking skills for business communication students. In this article, I will suggest that the telos of critical thinking is the ability to identify and understand knowledge that can be applied to other contexts. In what follows, I offer an examination of a small corner of genre studies, how this pedagogy could encourage the transfer of critical thinking from the classroom to the workplace, and how business communication instructors might consider practical application of this pedagogy into their classrooms. This article asserts that students in business and professional communication are not being adequately equipped with critical thinking skills that transfer into the workplace; however, by explicitly teaching genre to achieve telos, we can cultivate critical thinking skills in our students. In the next section, I will explicate genre theory for its use in the business communication classroom. I will then end with the practical application of a genre theory framework, and implications of such a framework for use in future business communication classrooms.

While genre theory is vast and contested, a framework of how we might use it in the classroom can help us better conceptualize meeting the outcomes of critical thinking. Genre theory is mostly recognized by composition scholars who often use the framework in their writing classrooms. In her foundational article, “Genre as Social Action,”Miller (1984)explicated the emergence of formandcontent situated in a conversation within a bigger community of people. We better understand genre theory through the standpoint of the rhetorical situation—which, at its most basic level, considers the audience, purpose, and context.

Genre theory is not a neat, clean, boundaried framework to use as an analytical tool to help students critically think in the classroom. However, we can begin to see the impact of how teaching genre analysis throughMiller’s (1984)lens might help students understand the broader implications of writing within the workplace. Furthermore, it is imperative to understand the historical context, the exigence, and the genre’s broader place within the current context (Miller, 2015). Historically, we can analyze genres through how they emerged as genres, what traits they share with other genres like them, how they find their way in their community, and their fluid nature. Though, the historical conceptualization of genre is extremely complex and advanced—for both instructor and student—and difficult to understand and use as a framework within a business communication classroom.

The Dynamic and Social Nature of Genre

Ideally, while considering historical context within a genre theory framework, we need to teach students how to analyze both genres and how they work within their broader context in order to instill rhetorical and ideological understanding when encountering new genres (Devitt, 2004, p. 194). By doing this, we are teaching both “workplace documents” and how they are contextualized; therefore, students can understand the nuances of writing. Social action allows for students to understand documents within an interconnected network of other genres, previous writers, and previous contexts. If just the “form” of the memo were to be taught, the article summary, the proposal, and each genre would be decontextualized. Students might learn how to write the document in the classroom, but they would have no way to know how that document functions in the workplace. What makes students successful in writing genres for a class may not necessarily be the recipe for success for writing in that same genre in the workplace. Understanding genre within a broader context and with different audiences could be the key to cultivating critical thinking.

But, what does this all mean within the classroom? First, we need to explicitly introduce and then analyze the genre we are asking the students to write. For example, and as you will see in the next section, explicitly analyzing each genre that is introduced creates a framework that students can use over and over again to understand an unfamiliar genre. Next, as a class, we discuss the broader context and the historical context within which the genre is operating. I encourage my students to do research to trace the genre’s origins and how it is used in other contexts (specifically in contexts outside of the classroom). Finally, once students identify the various contexts of a genre, the genre is adapted to build on what exists but to operate rhetorically in the current situation. Genre framework and analysis are done through scaffolding.

Scaffolding

Granott, Fischer, and Parziale (2002)likened the act of developmental scaffolding in education to the building of the Roman and Greek arches. These arches “are logically impossible to construct: the central closing stone is needed for keeping the lateral supporting stones in place, and the lateral supporting stones are needed to keep the closing stone in place. Scaffolding solves this ‘logical impossibility’” (Granott et al., 2002, p. 146).Granott et al. (2002)argued that by creating a scaffolding for support, construction of the “impossible” can begin.

The scaffolding analogy, as it is used in education, allows for teachers to conceive of their teaching as “support” to help build the structure of knowledge. Ideally, once the knowledge is constructed, the teacher can remove the support systems, and the knowledge will remain. By using genre theory as a lens to help scaffold critical thinking, students’ structure of knowledge can, in theory, be much more sound before the support structures from the teacher are removed.

Practical Implementation

While not often explicitly acknowledged, students have genre awareness well before they reach college. Students have been asked to write essays and book reports, among other writing. Although students were not asked to identify the specific conventions, exigence, context, and purpose of those genres, the sheer repetition of composing within the genres helped students become effective writers within those specific genres. I suggest here that we continue to build on this knowledge but that we do so explicitly.Devitt (2004)suggested that students need to have several interactions with a particular genre, in a number of different ways, in order to see how it operates and to enable the writer to compose in that genre effectively. In this section, I will highlight important aspects of integrating a genre theory framework into the business communication classroom.

Audience Awareness

To begin the semester, I situated workplace and classroom documents as genres by creating awareness of genre theory language. In addition to laying the groundwork for genre theory language, I simultaneously introduced the importance of the business writing course. I created an assignment that focused on audience awareness and spoke to both genre and effective communication in business. As I began to introduce the concept of genre, I asked students to brainstorm a list of business writing genres that they might encounter in the workplace. Students identified genres such as memos, letters of recommendation, résumés, and cover letters. The goal of this first activity/assignment was to show students how messages can be composed differently based on the context (in this case, “topic”), the genre, and the audience. To offer a bit of context, and to tie in the significance of effective communication in business, I used examples from “Top 10 Times Miscommunication Ended in Disaster” byAndrew Moran (2014). Moran began his article by explaining that miscommunications can cause breakdowns in communication within the workplace, and can also cause catastrophic consequences within the world. Moran used examples such as a plane crash, media blunders, and the end of the Mayan calendar to showcase the importance of clear and concise communication. Therefore, I asked my students to use the miscommunications Moran explicated in his piece as context to create effective communication to multiple audiences through multiple different mediums that students identified as “workplace genres.”

The critical piece of this activityfor studentswas to understand how the message changed as the audience and medium changed. After the assignment, I asked my students to consider choices that were made when revising the genre for different audiences. As a class, we discussed tone, language, and even how the conventions of the genre could potentially change with each audience. The goal of the audience awareness assignment was to help students begin to understand that genres are fluid and not static. Genres can change and shift depending on why the genre needs to be written (the exigence), the audience, and the social situation within which it is situated.

The critical piece of this activityfor mewas to attempt to capture when critical thinking was happening—creating transparency of critical thinking for the students. While the students were in groups working on this activity, I heard one student note that he could not write a cover letter to a politician the way he would to a teacher. These moments are essential. Since students are in a classroom, moments where they are able to conceptualize, even abstractly, how genres need to be written differently in diverse situations are points when students are working toward the telos of critical thinking. As I mentioned in the introduction, in order to “achieve” critical thinking, students should be able to identify and understand knowledge that can be applied to other contexts. In this moment, the student identified that while he was using the same topic, he needed to change his tone, language, and style of writing to communicate to a different audience. Though the activity was within a classroom setting, students were able to identify changes in their communication across contexts.

Genre Theory Framework

Although asking students to write messages in different genres to different audiences is not a new or revolutionary idea, explicitly using a genre theory framework to teach toward the telos of critical thinking could be useful in a business communication classroom. Specifically, creating unusual topics and genres for students to compose within can help move their thinking past the surface level. Thinking back to the five-paragraph essay students were asked to write in high school, because this genre became “commonplace,” students likely did not question why they were writing within that particular genre. Asking students to compose unusual topics in uncommon genres forces them to think through why they made the choices they did. Since I asked students to write a number of different versions of the message for different audiences, they become more aware of their choices each time they composed within a new genre for a new audience. This assignment, then, provided support, or scaffolding, for students to begin to move toward the telos of critical thinking.

After the initial audience awareness in-class assignment, I assignedKerry Dirk’s (2010)“Navigating Genres.” Dirk’s chapter was written specifically for students in college, and I assigned a writing prompt for students to reflect on the reading (see theappendix). Dirk used a number of recognizable examples to help students understand the nature of genres: how to identify them, how they interact with other genres, how to understand their audiences, and why we should consider genre as a framework for analysis. While the essay is geared explicitly toward a first-year writing audience, it certainly has value in writing-intensive classes across disciplines that foreground genre in their pedagogy.

At the end of her chapter,Dirk (2010)emphasized several suggestions for analysis, which I modified for my business writing classroom:

What is the writer trying to accomplish?

What is the situation of the genre?

What is the purpose?

Who is the audience?

How much freedom does the writer have within the genre?

What is the location? (something that Dirk defines in her essay which is different from context; pp. 260-261)

I then continued to build on Dirk’s work, but considered the community and historical context:

What is the historical context of the genre?

Why was it called into existence?/Who used it for what? (its exigence)

How has it evolved over time?

How is it used now, and in what communities?

Then, to add form to content, I added,

What are the specific conventions of the text?

The questions fromDirk’s (2010)essay formed the framework for analysis that I explicitly referenced in my classroom for all assignments that followed. As a good example of a genre analysis, I assignedKayla Bruce’s (2014)“Cracking the Genre of the Resume.” In her article, Bruce analyzed the genre of a résumé as it is situated in social action. Using Bruce’s article as a guide, I asked students to analyze multiple genres. In groups, students used the genre analysis framework they were now familiar with to analyze the following genres, one per group: a cover letter, a thank-you letter, a request for a letter of recommendation, a letter of recommendation, and a memo. These genres were purposely vague. I mentioned to the groups at the start of the assignment that it might be helpful to create a scenario for their genres. At this stage, students struggled with understanding the importance of creating a scenario for which to use the genre. However, as they began to analyze their genres, they would ask clarifying questions about what kinds of memos, for example, they were analyzing. I would respond with answers like “Well, where does your person work?” Asking students to create a specific scenario helped them understand that the decisions they made about the person, the place, and the context would change how they analyzed each genre. In other words, it was my attempt to make those static genres (as we often see them operate within the classroom) more social and fluid.

As I walked around the room during this assignment, I noticed that important considerations were being made about how to create résumés depending on the company. For example, one student mentioned that because a family member was applying for a job at Google, she built a website to convey her skills instead of a traditional paper résumé. When I used this as an example with the rest of the class, students also noted that a résumé as a website would be inappropriate to Goldman Sachs. As a class, we further explored choices like these. Once again, these were points when students were thinking critically about how to transfer a genre from one context to another.

Every time I introduced a new assignment, I began with putting students into groups to analyze the new genre on their own, with the help ofDirk’s (2010)modified framework. Working together, the class would then compose solid examples so students knew what to expect when drafting their assignments. Since I did the same actions over and over for every assignment, my hope was that students began to form a habit of analysis. In other words, when students enter the workforce and their boss asks them to write a genre in the workplace, my hope is that their default will be to analyze the genre to better understand how it operates within a broader social community in order to write the genre effectively.

Gaps in Genre Theory/Critical Thinking Framework

Clearly, I find value in conceiving of ways to integrate a genre theory framework into a business communication classroom. However, at the end of the semester, I asked my students to write a white paper as a group. Previous to the white paper, students individually wrote analyze and recommendation (A&R) reports where they were asked to analyze a specific problem within a company and offer recommendations to alleviate the issue. Before the A&R report assignment began, as a class we analyzed the A&R report genre by using the framework outlined in previous sections. However, when students were asked to analyze the white paper genre on their own, they struggled. In other words, once I removed the scaffolding at the end of the semester, the structure did not seem strong enough to stand alone. Students even expressed frustrations in evaluations at the end of the semester that not enough direction was given for the completion of the white paper. So, what happened?

First, I think that our college classes primarily front-load information but do not have the opportunity to test the structure once the scaffold is removed. If students cannot retain or apply the knowledge they gained during the semester within the same class, how are they going to transfer that knowledge into the workplace?Brent (2011)questioned if students can transfer rhetorical knowledge from the classroom into workplace at all (p. 397). Although there was evidence in my classroom that students were thinking critically through a genre theory framework by adapting to new situations, they were still within a classroom setting—not in a workplace. While this article is not focused on transfer, it does beg the question: What is the purpose of the classroom?

Second, while I taught students how to use the genre framework as a class, I did not pay special attention to their ability to operate within the framework as individuals. If there is a case of too much scaffolding, I might be guilty of overloading direction early in the semester. Therefore, in the future, I will work to develop a course where students have support but are much more autonomous in learning to compose within a genre theory framework.

Conclusion

At the beginning of this article, I argue that in the business communication and writing classrooms there is still a lot that can be done to focus on the development of critical thinking skills. More importantly, a genre theory framework offers potential in helping students cultivate critical thinking in our classrooms. One critical barrier in teaching critical thinking is the lack of a common definition about the scholarship in our field, along with unclear definitions in the workplace. The common thread among the literature in the field and the workplace is, although not explicit, the importance of teaching to the outcome, or telos, of critical thinking. A genre theory framework in the business classroom could lead to adaptability. More specifically, a genre theory framework can help students identify and understand knowledge that can be applied to other contexts, which ultimately is the end goal, or telos, of critical thinking.

My hesitation with encouraging a genre theory pedagogy in the business communication classroom, especially to those who are unfamiliar with genre, is that we have the potential to walk into the content/form debate. In composition theory, instructors privilege the process of creating content versus focusing merely on form. Yet, in business communication, form is often at least as important as content, if not more so. In other words, if we are not contextualizing genre as a social action (Miller, 1984), then we run the risk of valuing the conventions of a particular genre over its content. In essence, teaching the genres of business communication in its own right is useful for students. Yet using genre theory to understand how to analyze genres within their broader contexts is what helps to cultivate critical thinking.

What is unique about a business communication classroom is that the corpus of genres is considerably shrunk when we think about the kinds of assignments we assign and the kinds of writing we anticipate students will do in the workplace. In addition, many business writing genres, such as memos, meeting minutes, proposals, résumés, and cover letters, are available in templated form, even from within Microsoft Word (which is problematic, and only further stresses the importance of teaching genre explicitly). If students download templates, there is no careful consideration that goes into the development of the genre. Genre theory allows us to contextualize those documents that students will write in the workplace; it gives life to a genre and allows for mutations of the templates offered on Microsoft Word. When students understand how and why they are writing within a genre, within a context, and for a specific audience, they have agency to make rhetorical choices to alter the genre to fit the needs of the individuals involved. When students feel that they have agency to write within a genre—knowing its conventions and historical context—but can change the conventions based on context, critical thinking happens. When students can then take those skills and transfer them into the workplace, it shows evidence of the telos of critical thinking.

While I saw sparks of critical thinking happening in my classroom through the use of a genre theory framework, I certainly have room for improvement in the development and practice of genre theory framework in the future. Longitudinal research could be done to follow students into their workplace to see how genre theory might be implemented when they are asked to write. Then, the difficult work would be to consider how critical thinking should be measured. Regardless, valuable research is missing from our literature about understanding the development of critical thinking across contexts.

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Rebecca Morrisonis a visiting assistant professor at Miami University where she teaches business communication. Her areas of interest include professional writing, genre, and writing center theory and practice.

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