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

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。职业教育是工业教育的子孙，在美国一些州的经济发展道路中发挥着关键作用。职业教育的倡导者认为，它为行业提供了训练有素的劳动力，并为个人提供了一条经济流动性的途径。批评者质疑，这种提供的职业机会是否会像二十世纪初那样继续集中在低薪工作上，从而加剧不平等并扼杀社会经济流动性。这一博士论文研究项目探讨了关于职业教育的意识形态发生了怎样的变化，以及这些变化对经济发展有什么影响。除了为人类学研究生在实证、科学数据收集和分析方法方面的培训提供资金外，还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分享数据和调查结果。将与HBCU的职业教育项目合作举办社会科学素养讲习班，扩大未被充分代表的群体在科学领域的参与。该项目通过对南卡罗来纳州低国家经济机遇区的研究，调查a)19世纪末20世纪初工业教育思想形成的基础；b)这些思想是否已经转变，如果是的话，在当代职业教育和劳动力发展政策和计划中是如何转变的。方法包括半结构化访谈、生活史访谈和对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。语篇和叙事分析的语言人类学技术将被用来评估和评估意识形态的形成和转变。该项目有助于教育人类学、关于发展的驱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NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力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.