The Joint Accomplishment of Identity

Abstract

Identity has become a central concept in the analysis of learning from social perspectives. In this article, we draw on a situative perspective to conceptualize identity as a joint accomplishment between individuals and their interactions with norms, practices, cultural tools, relationships, and institutional and cultural contexts. Employing vignettes from our prior research, we examine the joint accomplishment of identity with respect to different levels of activity, including how identity develops in relation to the practices of a particular activity, how identity shifts over time across activities, and how more enduring communities and practices frame the ways that identity develops within and across activities. We illustrate, in particular, how a situative perspective on identity enables researchers to capture the dynamic interplay of individuals and resources, thus accounting for aspects of structure and agency in all social interactions.

Notes

¹ We define a “diverse” school as one in which at least three major ethnic or racial groups (e.g., White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Southeast Asian, Native American) are represented in significant proportions in the student body.