Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Discourse Analysis of Training Programs

该奖项支持的人类学研究将研究那些试图扩大未被充分代表群体参与的项目。与侧重于大规模社会规划的研究不同，该项目将着眼于规模较小、成本较低、专注于培训个人的企业的有效性。首要的研究问题是，这种更实用的方法，尊重个人的选择和能动性，是否与更大规模的方法一样有效。这是一个重要的问题，因为所有社会有时都必须要求其公民对不断变化的环境作出反应。决策者需要了解个人行为与更大的社会进程之间的关系，以便作出必要的反应。这项研究将在美国进行，使用候选人培训项目作为研究地点。研究人员将评估这些项目如何理解、制定战略，并促进目标群体的领导力。研究人员将使用人种学方法的组合来收集数据，包括：在培训课程中参与观察；针对不同群体的节目话语收集与比较分析培训教材文本分析；与培训师和学员进行半结构化访谈；还有档案研究。这项研究的结果将有助于更好地科学地理解个体行动者如何可能或可能不会产生社会变革。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The anthropological research supported by this award will study programs that are trying to broaden the participation of underrepresented groups. Unlike studies that focus on large-scale social programming, this project will look at the effectiveness of smaller, less costly undertakings that concentrate their efforts on training individuals. The overarching research question is whether this more practical approach, which respects individual choice-making and agency, is as effective as larger scale approaches. This is an important question because all societies must sometimes ask their citizens to respond to changing circumstances. Policy makers need to understand the relationship between individual acts and larger social processes in order to bring about the necessary responses. The research will be undertaken in the United States, using candidate training programs as research sites. The researcher will assess how these programs understand, strategize about, and promote leadership by targeted groups. The researcher will collect data using a combination of ethnographic methods including: participant observation at training sessions; the collection and comparative analysis of discourse collected at programs targeted at different groups; text analysis of training materials; semi-structured interviews with trainers and trainees; and archival research. Findings from the research will contribute to better scientific understanding of how individual agents may or may not produce social transformation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.