Teaching the Air Midwest Case: a Stakeholder Approach to Deliberative Technical Rhetoric
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 47, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2004 233 Teaching the Air Midwest Case: A Stakeholder Approach to Deliberative Technical Rhetoric —MEREDITH W. ZOETEWEY AND JULIE STAGGERS Abstract—What constitutes a cause is a particularly important question for those who teach or study technical writing. This article describes a case that helps students look beyond the technical “causes” of a commuter airplane crash in order to address the complex web of policies, practices, actions, and events that contributed to the crash. Using an approach grounded in stakeholder theory and ethical theory, students use real documents ranging from news accounts to Federal Aviation Administration policies to National Transit Safety Board hearing exhibits to identify systemic problems that contributed to the disaster. Working from particular stakeholder perspectives, they work collaboratively to develop and argue for policy changes that will help prevent future tragedies. The abundance of real documents that drive this case make it an especially useful tool for engaging students in difficult-to-teach subject matter, including the role of writing in the failure of technical systems, deliberative and judicial rhetoric, stakeholder theory, visual rhetoric, and ethics. Index Terms—Aviation, case studies, decision making, education, ethics, policy making, rhetoric, risk communication, stakeholder theory. Sauer’s work raises this question: What constitutes a When technical systems fail, our first impulse cause? That is a particularly important question for is often to speculate about causes. In a world with those who teach, or study, technical writing. It is the round-the-clock news, whenever a space shuttle question at the heart of the Air Midwest case, which burns up on re-entry, a ferry slams into a pier, or we developed for our introductory technical writing an airplane falls from the sky, news people and classes in the fall of 2003. The case asks students to expert commentators begin almost instantaneously look past the technical cause of a commuter airplane to speculate about the possibilities. Our need to crash to get inside the complex web of policies, know what happened runs deep. Usually, behind practices, actions, and events that precipitated the the scenes somewhere as the endless crawl on our deaths of 21 people. This case asks students to television screens raises and rejects causes, the official consider what constitutes a cause and challenges investigators—sometimes a small army, sometimes them to move past a discussion of “What happened?” one lone soldier—are beginning an investigation to to “Why? And how can we prevent it from happening determine what happened. again?” Technical systems are complex things, however, With the rise of various social perspectives in technical and often the technical cause of a failure is merely writing and as a nascent cultural studies approach a symptom of a system gone entirely out of whack, to the field begins to take shape, we see calls for the straw that broke the camel’s back instead of the scholars to situate their research and teaching in neat and easy single factor that caused the failure. In broader contexts [2]–[4]. This case, we hope, responds Rhetoric of Risk, Beverly Sauer’s research on rhetoric to those calls. As the investigation into the crash of Air surrounding mining disasters shows just how easily Midwest 5481 unfolded in 2003, we began to see an an investigation can become bogged down in the opportunity to develop a case that emphasized one of search for the “technical cause” of a failure while our central precepts: technical work and the writing entirely missing the role of communication practices associated with it have real, sometimes life-and-death, in precipitating the failure. Hence, an investigator consequences. More often than not, students come to in one case attributes the cause of a mine fire to an our classes with a fair sense of how writing connects overheated compressor but misses the constellation to their work, but they frequently have trouble seeing of “tightly coupled but unrelated events” that helped the larger picture and understanding how their work shape the disaster [1, p. 130]. fits into the global environment of the workplace or the world beyond the workplace. Because we see technical Manuscript received October 31, 2003; revised May 15, 2004. work and the writing associated with it—both the The authors are with the Department of English, writing that authorizes, generates, and legislates Purdue University, Lafayette, IN 47901 USA technical work and the writing that technical work (email: [email protected]). generates—as social and ethical action, we hoped to IEEE DOI 10.1109/TPC.2004.837969 develop a case that transcended the instrumental. 0361-1434/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE 234 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 47, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2004 While this case does provide students with an takeoff at the Charlotte, NC, airport. The plane took off opportunity to gain experience with technical genres into a clear, windy sky at 8:45 a.m., but never attained and develop practical skills, it also emphasizes both proper altitude. Instead, it veered left and clipped the technical work and writing as action that must be corner of a maintenance hangar before it crashed and socially responsible. exploded in flames, killing all on board. The flight lasted just 37 seconds from takeoff to impact [7]. The Air Midwest Case explores the intersections of Within hours, investigators began focusing on two technical work, judicial and deliberative rhetoric, factors that might have contributed to the crash. First, business, and ethics. In Aristotelian terms, judicial the plane’s elevator controller, a key flight-control rhetoric is the form of oratory concerned with making component, showed suspicious movements on the judgments about events in the past, the means of eight flights following a routine servicing two days which, as Edward P.J. Corbett notes, are “accusation earlier [8]. Second, the plane appeared to have been and defense” [5, p. ?]. In this case, judicial rhetoric weighed down by too much luggage. In the months takes center stage during the second unit, when that followed the crash, maintenance on its elevator students articulate arguments of fact, determining lift cable garnered much of the attention [9]. The which events and issues prior to the crash constitute National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) made significant causes. Deliberative oratory, again in a case at its hearing in May that an incorrect cable Aristotelian terms, is the form of discourse concerned adjustment limited the pilot’s ability to move the nose with deliberations about public affairs and politics, of the plane down as the heavy tail forced it up [10]. but, as Corbett notes, it can be more generally considered to be the form of discourse in which Slowly, however, a more complex picture emerged. we seek to persuade others to do something or Vertex Aerospace (formerly Raytheon Aerospace) and accept our point of view [6]. Both of these definitions Air Midwest blamed each other for the crash and of deliberative rhetoric are relevant for this case; severed their business relationship. Air Midwest particularly in the latter half of the project, students argued that Raytheon’s employees improperly are required to make persuasive arguments with an performed maintenance on the plane [11]. It has since eye toward the public or communal good. Pairing these been revealed that the workers who serviced the plane definitions of deliberative rhetoric allowed us to set were not employees of Raytheon at all, but rather, up a general definition of ethical action as respecting temporary workers employed by an outsourcing and caring for others, doing good and preventing firm in Florida, Structural Modification and Repair harm, and evaluating individual and group goals as Technicians, Inc., who had virtually no experience on they relate to those imperatives. This loose definition the Beechcraft 1900D [12]. The NTSB also suggested of ethics gave us the latitude to foreground ethics that maintenance worker fatigue may have played a from the outset, and then introduce different ethical role in the crash [13]. systems as the case progressed without privileging any particular system in advance. Our pedagogical For its part, Vertex argued in August 2003 that the objectives reflect this emphasis on ethical action: Charlotte plane was dangerously tail-heavy owing to • to encourage students to examine the relationship several factors including unusually high baggage and between technical work and writing and to consider passenger weights and an overbalance of passenger the consequences of that relationship for the public weight in the plane’s last five rows [14]. Weight • to engage students in a decision making process estimates may have been off by several hundred that requires them to collaboratively research and pounds because the flight’s first officer used the negotiate ethical solutions in the face of competing Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) approved interests weight averages (which have been updated since the • to enhance students’ awareness of the political crash) instead of actual baggage weights [15]. and ethical challenges of writing within particular institutions Finally, the picture was complicated by the crash on • to provide students with experience producing August 26, 2003, of a Colgan Air flight in the waters documents required by technical communicators