Dissertation Research - Coaching as an Emerging Form of Professional Expertise

这项科学和社会论文改进基金为一篇博士论文提供了具体的“实地”研究资金，该论文考察了个人教练作为一个专业领域和一个拥有超过15,000名教练的新职业的出现，仅在美国就在不断增长。教练是一种专业服务，为客户在日常生活和工作中提供以行动为基础的指导。目前有几个不同的培训领域，有着不同的历史和认证实践，包括为高管、研究生或日常生活中的平凡任务提供培训。这个项目将分析教练作为一个新的专业和职业化领域的发展，以及改变美国人自我观念的熔炉。使用人种学方法，它将结合对专业教练和教练客户的访谈数据，以及在教练研讨会和会议上的参与者观察，以及对教练领域出版物的分析。数据的收集和分析将来自科学研究、文化人类学和社会学的理论工作和现有研究。指导这项研究的最初假设是：(1)通过内部和外部的差异，教练正在变得专业化，这有助于将教练定义为日常生活领域的一种合法形式的专业知识。(2)辅导是一种新兴的职业，它利用学术上的自我理论，但将其包装成一种新的专家自助形式。在这个过程中，它似乎正在形成一种新的谈论自我的词汇，它侧重于务实的行动和实践，而不是自我反思。(3)虽然教练可以被视为美国自助传统的延伸，但它在将自我改进定位为专家依赖型方面也具有矛盾的创新性。我的论文假设，这种新的专业知识正在影响人们如何就自我和个人主义的意义进行谈判。因此，教练提供了一个新的战略场所，以促进(A)专业知识和职业化的研究，在此基础上有社会学和科学技术研究(STS)的文献；(B)美国文化中自我概念(自立、自我完善和自我塑造)的转变，在此基础上有社会学、社会史和心理学的文献，以及在医学人类学和STS交界处的重要新兴文献；以及(C)自我概念变化的新兴文化和政治经济学。

This Science and Society Dissertation Improvement Grant provides specific "field" research funds for a Ph.D. dissertation that examines the emergence of personal coaching as a field of expertise and a new profession with over 15,000 coaches and ongoing growth in the United States alone. Coaching is a professional service providing clients with action-based guidance in their daily lives and work. There are currently several discrete fields of coaching with different histories and accrediting practices, including coaching for executives, for graduate students, or for the mundane tasks of everyday living. This project will analyze the development of coaching as a new field of expertise and professionalization as well as a crucible for changing notions of the American self. Using ethnographic methods, it will combine data from interviews with professional coaches and clients of coaching with participant observation at coaching workshops and conferences and analysis of publications in the coaching field. The data collection and analysis will draw from theoretical work and existing research in science studies, cultural anthropology, and sociology. The initial hypotheses guiding the study are: (1) Coaching is becoming professionalized through internal and external differentiations that help define coaching as a legitimate form of expertise over the domain of everyday life. (2) Coaching is an emergent profession that is making use of academic theories of self, but packaging them as a new form of expert self-help. In the process, it seems to be developing a new vocabulary of talking about the self that focuses on pragmatic action and practice rather than self reflection. (3) While coaching can be seen as an extension of American self-help traditions it is also paradoxically innovative in positing self-improvement as expert dependent. My dissertation hypothesizes that this new kind of expertise is influencing how people negotiate the meanings of self and individualism. Coaching, thus provides a new and strategic site to contribute to (a) the study of expertise and professionalization, on which there exist literatures both in sociology and Science and Technology Studies (STS); (b) the shifts in notions of the self (self-reliance, self-improvement and self-fashioning) in American culture, on which there exists literatures in sociology, social history and psychology, as well as an important emerging literature at the interface of medical anthropology and STS; and (c) the emerging culture and political economy of the changing notions of the self.