Doctoral Dissertation Research: Security and Preparedness in U.S. Public Schools

安全是当今美国公立学校面临的最大挑战之一。许多学校不知疲倦地工作，以满足具有挑战性的需求，培养不仅是积极的学习环境，而且是所有学校社区成员的安全区的空间。由于学校的安全问题不同，他们对安全的概念也不同，以及他们的社区如何最好地为未来的安全威胁做好准备。该项目为一名人类学研究生提供资金，以实证性、科学性的数据收集和分析方法进行培训，将调查亲身经历在塑造美国公立学校学校安全倡议的未来中所起的作用。通过培养对学校安全问题更动态的理解，这个项目将提供更多关于安全问题在局部环境下影响学校社区日常工作的方式的理解。这个博士论文研究项目考察了过去的经历如何塑造公立学校对安全的文化理解。通过访谈、焦点小组、观察和档案研究，这个比较项目将探索如何在佛罗里达州两所公立高中实施学校安全倡议时反映安全担忧。该项目将利用混合方法(行为观察、访谈、档案分析和焦点小组)，以民族志的方式调查学校社区如何在制定学校安全倡议的过程中制定当地的准备概念。对数据进行主题编码和分析，以确定学校安全倡议、安全话语和安全模拟练习的观点是如何在不同的文化背景下开发和实施的。通过调查学校安全的做法，因为它们在历史上也与过去的经验和生活现实有关，该项目将安全研究从国家或国家学校安全政策的研究转移到更本地化的背景下，在那里生活和体验学校安全问题。该项目将对学校环境中的安全理论和人类学准备辩论做出重大贡献。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Security is one of the biggest challenges American public schools face today. Many schools work tirelessly to meet the challenging demand to cultivate spaces that are not only positive learning environments but are also zones of safety for all school community members. As schools differ in their security concerns, they also differ in their conceptions of safety and how their community can best prepare for future security threats. This project, which provides funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, will investigate the role that lived experience plays in shaping the future of school safety initiatives in American public schools. Cultivating a more dynamic understanding of school safety concerns, this project will provide greater understanding of the ways in which security concerns impact the day-to-day work of school communities in a localized context.This doctoral dissertation research project examines how past experiences shape cultural understandings of security in public schools. Through the use of interviews, focus groups, observations, and archival research this comparative project will explore how security concerns are reflected in the implementation of school safety initiatives as they operate in two public high schools located in the state of Florida. This project will utilize a mixed methods approach (behavioral observation, interviews, archival analysis, and focus groups), to ethnographically investigate how school communities formulate local notions of preparedness in the development of school safety initiatives. Data with be thematically coded and analyzed to ascertain how perspectives on school safety initiatives, safety discourse, and safety simulation exercises are developed and implemented in varying cultural contexts. By investigating practices of school safety as they have historically also become related to past experiences and lived realities, this project moves studies of security beyond the study of state or national school safety policy, to a more local context where school safety concerns are lived and experienced. This project will make significant contributions to theories of security, and anthropological debates around preparedness in the school context.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.