Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization
Call for Papers: Special Issue
Navigating the Global Training Terrain: New Literacies, Competencies, and Practices
To be published in Fall 2011
Proposals (up to 500 words) for research papers, short best practices pieces (requirements detailed below), and tutorials are due by October 10th, 2010. Submission details follow the statement of purpose and scope.
Statement of Purpose and Scope
The pool of research on training for global audiences is limited, especially within the field of professional communication. A special issue of the Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization seeks to address this need by providing a space for scholarly research and best practices on the topic of global organizational training. The issue, entitled Navigating the Global Training Terrain: New Literacies, Competencies, and Practices, will focus on training in global contexts from the perspective of both those who train and those who learn, including current research and best practices. The special issue will also cast an eye toward organizational training as it is evolving towards the future.
Training is vital to the success of globally connected organizations and individuals, but success requires the trainers’ effective bridging of linguistic, cultural, and social distances. Only teams and individuals with facility in navigating diverse languages, cultures, technologies, educational practices, and rhetorical traditions will be able to successfully provide training to global audiences.
Professional communicators, whose discipline claims expertise in several areas relevant to training—including oral, written, and visual rhetoric, usability, information architecture, electronic collaboration, intercultural communication, and collaboration with translators—are well positioned to contribute to global training efforts or take on the role of trainers themselves.
The editors of the special issue welcome submissions from a variety of perspectives including business, science, humanitarian practice, health, social advocacy, education, and government.
Possible topics pertaining to the theory, teaching, and practice of training in global contexts include the following, among others:
- Intercultural considerations in the design and delivery of training
- Training and the social web
- Cultural intelligence for trainers and training audiences
- Language use and translation in training contexts
- Meta-communication and training
- Communities of practice
- Legal issues in global training
- Economic aspects of global training
- Assessment of global training
- Training from a distance
Submission Details
Review criteria can be found on the Journal’s website at www.rpcg.org. Proposals should be sent as an email attachment to one of the guest editors of the special issue:
Pam Brewer, Appalachian State University: brewerpe@appstate.edu
Jim Melton, Central Michigan University: james.melton@cmich.edu
Joo-Seng Tan, Nanyang Technological University: ajstan@ntu.edu.sg
Production Schedule
The schedule for the special issue is as follows:
10 October 2010 — 500-word proposals due
15 October 2010 – Guest editors return proposal decisions to submitters
10 January 2011 – Draft manuscripts of accepted proposals due
1 July 2011 — Final manuscripts due
September 2011 — Publication date of special issue
Requirements for best practices
We strongly encourage practitioners to submit best practices pieces on any of the topics identified in this CFP or on related topics. Best practices describe the training strategies, approaches, or methods that work in a particular situation or environment. What has worked and why? What has not worked so well, and what could work better? Authors may use the following optional framework for best practices pieces: title, description, methods used, results, technologies used, and lessons learned. While the proposal and review process is the same for research papers, tutorials, and best practices pieces, final manuscripts for best practices should be shorter: approximately 1000 to 3000 words in length.
About the Journal
The Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication and Globalization publishes articles on the theory, practice, and teaching of technical and professional communication in critical global and intercultural contexts such as business, manufacturing, environment, information technology, and others. As a global initiative, the Journal welcomes manuscripts with diverse approaches and contexts of research, but manuscripts are to be submitted in English and grounded in relevant theory and appropriate research methods. The Journal is peer reviewed with an editorial board consisting of experienced researchers and practitioners from over 20 countries.
The Journal is free or “open access,” using PKP open source software and housed at East Carolina University. The first edition is planned for September 2010, and it will be published thereafter on a quarterly basis. For more information, see http://www.rpcg.org.
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