Kline and Barker

I appreciate how Kline and Barker's idea of professional consciousness contributes to an actual sense of professionalism among practitioners. It reminds me of Light's points about how important the desire itself for professional status is. Kline and Barker's consciousness, in this sense, is a kind of collective consciousness, shared among (ideally) all technical communicators, and technical communication academics.

However, I wonder how achievable this is when considering Carliner's delineation of approaches to professionalism. Kline and Barker use the example of a Society for Technical Communication (STC) project with both practicing and academic participants. I think it's fair to say that most, if not all, the participants could be classified as formal professionals. While Carliner notes that some quasiprofessionals may join professional organizations, I'm not sure many would be inclined to participate in the summit the authors describe.

In this case, it's likely most participants already buy in to the project of professionalism. The barrier to creating a professional consciousness among these practitioners and academics is probably lower than it would be for non-members of organizations like STC. How likely are contraprofessionals to participate in a project like this? The first part of Kline and Barker's CANFA set of characteristics is "Collaborate." The more pressing grounds for collaboration are between those not currently engaged in professional efforts and those who are—regardless of whether they're academics or not.