The pages of Technical Communication Quarterly are devoted to exploring literacy activities and knowledge production in 21st-century organizations and to suggesting what technical communication educators can do to prepare students for the contemporary worlds of work and civic action. Many scholars have written about service-learning and client-based pedagogies as an effective means for preparing students to negotiate "real-world" writing situations, through which students seemingly develop stronger skills in rhetorical production, collaboration, project management, and ethical decision making. Technical communication scholars have paid less attention to another "real-world" pedagogical space, one that situates students' learning even more squarely within workplaces themselves: the internship site. Those who have written on the subject have argued that internships foster students' social, intellectual, and ethical development (Little, 1993; Reh-ling, 2000; Savage, 1997). Some have also described teaching activities that encourage interns to connect technical communication theory to their workplace practice (Gaitens, 2000; Hansen, 2004). Sides and Mrvica's Internships: Theory and Practice makes an important contribution to this conversation about internship-based pedagogy by explaining how faculty, site supervisors, and students can work together to create meaningful learning environments.
展开▼