Suchergebnisse

Engaging students early as researchers is a potentially powerful tool for both encouraging a diversity of undergraduates to consider career-tracks in disaster/emergency management and building the skills essential to those fields. Traditional faculty-centered, lab-based research apprenticeship models are limited in their capacity to scale. Within large, diverse public institutions, there is accordingly a challenge of how to make such experiences readily available to a variety of students with diverse backgrounds and levels of preparation. To this end, we designed the Global Ethnohydrology Study, a scaled research training and mentorship program that integrates undergraduates in data collection (through fieldwork) and analysis (through lab research) in to a multi-sited, multi-year research program on the perception of water and climate issues cross-culturally. Here we explain the strategy, outcomes, and some keys to success to this approach of broadening access to research experiences, and suggest ways educators could adopt similar strategies in their instructional designs.

AbstractWe use a mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses to examine 1354 survey responses from members of the American Anthropological Association about their practice and teaching of cultural anthropology research methods. Latent profile analysis and an examination of responses to open‐ended survey questions reveal distinctive methodological clustering among anthropologists. However, two historical approaches to ethnography remain prominent: deep hanging out and a mixed methods toolkit, with the former remaining central to the practice and teaching of all forms of contemporary cultural anthropology. Further, many anthropologists are committed to advancing research methods that account for power imbalances in fieldwork, such as through community‐based and participatory approaches. And a substantial number also teach a wider array of methods and techniques that open new career pathways for anthropologists. Overall, our study reveals a core set of ethnographic practices—loosely, participant‐observation, informal interviews, and the experiential immersion of the ethnographer—while also highlighting the great breadth of cultural anthropological research practice and pedagogy. The findings presented here can help inform how current and future anthropological practitioners and educators position themselves to meet the ever‐changing demands of community members, funders, clients, collaborators, and students.