Doctoral Dissertation Research: Vocational Education, Economic Development, and Socioeconomic Mobility

该奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117-2）资助。职业教育作为工业教育的后继产物，在美国一些州的经济发展方式中起着关键作用。职业教育的支持者认为，它为工业提供了训练有素的劳动力，为个人提供了经济流动的途径。批评人士质疑，现在提供的各种职业机会是否会像20世纪初那样，继续集中于低薪工作，从而加剧不平等，抑制社会经济流动性。本博士论文研究项目探讨了职业教育观念的变化，以及这些变化对经济发展的影响。除了为人类学研究生在经验、科学数据收集和分析方法方面的培训提供资金外，数据和发现将与经济发展专业人员、商会、职业教育和劳动力发展管理人员共享。将与HBCU的职业教育项目合作开发社会科学素养讲习班，扩大代表性不足的群体对科学的参与。通过对南卡罗来纳低地经济机会区的研究，本项目调查了a) 19世纪末和20世纪初工业教育中意识形态形成的基础；b)在当代职业教育和劳动力发展政策和项目中，这些意识形态是否已经转变，如果已经转变，是如何转变的。方法包括半结构化访谈、生活史访谈和参与职业教育计划和经济发展计划的低地居民的参与性观察。话语和叙事分析的语言人类学技术将被用来评价和评估意识形态的形成和转变。该项目有助于教育人类学、关于发展的动力和障碍的政治经济学理论，以及关于语言意识形态的语言人类学理论。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。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Vocational education, a descendant of industrial education, plays a key role in the approaches of some U.S. states to economic development. Advocates of vocational education argue that it provides a trained workforce for industry and a path to economic mobility for individuals. Critics question whether the kinds of vocational opportunities offered continue, as they did in the early twentieth century, to be concentrated low-paying jobs, thereby reinforcing inequalities and stifling socioeconomic mobility. This doctoral dissertation research project explores how ideologies about vocational education have changed, and what impact those changes have on economic development. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, data and findings will be shared with economic development professionals, chambers of commerce, and vocational education and workforce development administrators. Workshops on social science literacy will be developed in cooperation with the vocational education programs at an HBCU, broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in science.Through a study of economic opportunity zones in Lowcountry South Carolina, this project investigates a) the foundations of ideological formation in late nineteenth and early twentieth century industrial education; and b) whether those ideologies have been transformed, and if so how, in contemporary vocational education and workforce development policies and programs. Methods include semi-structured interviews, life history interviews, and participant observation with Lowcountry residents who are involved with vocational education programs and economic development initiatives. The linguistic anthropological techniques of discourse and narrative analysis will be employed to evaluate and assess ideological formation and transformation. The project contributes to educational anthropology, political economic theories about the drivers of and obstacles to development, and linguistic anthropological theories about language ideologies.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.