A Comparison of Training Options for Machine-Tool Workers

尽管信息和服务业是美国经济增长的源泉，但加工和工具工业对国家的经济福祉仍然至关重要。由于缺乏训练有素的工人，这个行业正处于某种危机之中。该奖项授予伊利诺伊大学，将支持一名文化人类学家的研究，以评估和比较宾夕法尼亚州西部机床技术的五个教育项目。其中两个项目是创新的、灵活的培训学生的尝试，另外三个是传统的公共和学徒项目。该项目将采访学生、家长、老师、辅导员和机床公司经理，了解他们对相关技能的定义以及他们观点背后的个人价值观。利用传统的人种学方法、实地实验和经验抽样，该项目将评估最普遍的机械加工就业培训形式的优缺点。这项研究很重要，因为当前社会对学徒制和职业培训的兴趣，作为纯学术项目的替代方案，假设我们知道如何培训人们从事熟练的蓝领工作。这种关于人们在不同教育和职业培训经历中表现背后的价值观本质的基础研究，将对规划者评估如何提高我们经济中这一基础部分的实力有价值。

In spite of the focus on information and service industries as the source of economic growth in the US, the machining and tooling industries are still vitally important to the economic well-being of the nation. This industry is in somewhat of a crisis due to a shortage of trained workers. This award to the University of Illinois will support the research of a cultural anthropologist to assess and compare five educational programs in machine-tool technology in western Pennsylvania. Two of the programs are innovative flexible attempts to train students, and three are traditional public and apprenticeship programs. The project will interview students, parents, teachers, counselors and machine-tool company managers on their definitions of relevant skills and the personal values which underlie their opinions. Using traditional ethnographic methods, field experiments and experience sampling the project will assess the strengths and weaknesses of the most prevalent forms of training for machine-tooling employment. This research is important because the current societal interest in apprenticeship and vocational training as an alternative to purely academic programs assumes that we know how to train people for skilled blue-collar jobs. This sort of basic research on the nature of values people have which underlie their performance in diverse educational and vocational training experiences, will be valuable to planners in assessing how to improve the strength of this fundamental part of our economy.