Raewyn ConnellYou also have to be respectful of your readers, and not talk down to them – a common
problem when specialists write for “the layman”. Think of yourself and your readers as
citizens of the same world, needing to exchange ideas, information and skills.
This is straightforward when the audience is a practitioner group. I have done research
in the sociology of education, and my key audience for this work is school teachers.
(With the research for Making the Difference , we workshopped our writing with groups
of teachers.) I know enough about teachers to respect their skills, and the complex
strategising they do in their everyday work. Bringing my research into their forums is
testing, but also exhilarating. I learn from them, and see my work contributing to theirs.
Dealing with mass media is different. Mass media usually work by fitting new
information quickly into old templates, and this happens with research stories too. How
often have you seen a news item that breathlessly reports a research “breakthrough”? –
and how rarely do research projects actually have the shape of a breakthrough! (It’s a
military term, by the way.)
Making the Difference (1982, Allen & Unwin) Putting energy into writing (Image: Flickr , DataRock @
SXSW by Kris Krüg)