Jo Mackiewicz, Iowa State University – Learning Skilled Trades in the Workplace

Learning doesn’t stop once you’re in the workplace.

Jo Mackiewicz, professor of rhetoric and professional communication at Iowa State University, explains why.

Jo Mackiewicz is a professor of rhetoric and professional communication at Iowa State University. She studies the communication of pedagogical and workplace interactions. She’s written several books and numerous articles, published in Technical Communication Quarterly, Technical Communication, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, The Writing Center Journal, Composition Studies, and Written Communication. Her book, Welding Technical Communication: Teaching and Learning Embodied Knowledge , was published by SUNY Press in May 2022. Her latest book, Learning Skilled Trades in the Workplace, is based on her work as a welder/fabricator at Howe’s Welding and Metal Fabrication in Ames, Iowa. It will be published open access by Springer in 2025.

Learning Skilled Trades in the Workplace

How do people develop both depth and breadth of expertise in a skilled trade workplace? That’s the question that’s driven my work since I graduated with my welding diploma and began working part-time at a small welding and fabrication shop in Ames, Iowa. There, every day means shifting among metals, processes, tools, and machines. And every day highlights the challenge of developing competence across knowledge domains, such as tig welding stainless steel, stick welding overhead, and using a lathe to make spikes. It also highlights the challenge of developing deep expertise in any one knowledge domain.

How does anyone, then, develop depth and breadth of trade competence and, eventually, expertise? Scaffolded teaching expedites the process. In scaffolded teaching and learning, a more-expert person helps a learner solve a problem that would otherwise have been beyond the learner’s capability. The teacher controls the parts of the task that are too difficult so that the learner can focus on the task elements just beyond their current level of competence. For example, when first showing me how to use the lathe, my boss set the speed. All I had to do was concentrate on using two handles to move the carbide bit along the side of the spinning tube.

My research focuses on the challenges of learning a skilled trade in a workplace. Understanding these challenges and the ways people learn, we can facilitate trades learning and we can better appreciate those tradespeople whose depth and breadth of expertise keep our built environments running.