Trends in Curricular Matters for Science and Technology Journalism

Science and technology journalism encompasses a wide variety of endeavors, each involving professional communicators contributing in unique ways to a crucial understanding of contemporary society. An increasing number of educational institutions offer specialized concentrations in the separate, yet closely related disciplines of technical communication and journalism to prepare specialists sufficiently knowledgeable of the sciences and proficient with new technologies to report on complicated and often intricately related topics. This paper presents a study examining the essential characteristics of existing post-secondary educational curricula in science and technology journalism. The study specifically considered trends regarding explicit pedagogical emphases and learning objectives and how such programs are positioned within the academic community. Further, the study considered how different disciplines influence pedagogical emphases of their respective programs as well as the academic characteristics regarding internships and thesis requirements. Visual representations were developed using existing post-secondary program information. Patterns within topologically equivalent groupings were then studied to discern salient characteristics and meaningful trends regarding academic directions and pedagogical emphases