Querying meanings of adolescent peer resistance: a school choice decision revisited

Abstract

For more than three decades, adolescent research within psychology has addressed developmental questions regarding resistance to peer influences from a psychosocial perspective, emphasizing autonomy development. Inferences about development have been drawn from age-related differences on peer resistance/conformity questionnaires. In this paper, we illustrate an alternative sociocultural/dialogical person-in-context approach to the study of peer resistances and development. This approach directs attention to the meanings of resistant acts as arising from adolescents' transactions with immediate and larger sociocultural contexts, and to the evaluation of development as qualitative system transformation. Our study concerns voiced resistance by eighth-grade girls to peer labeling of their sexual orientation because of the girls' choice (3 years earlier) to attend an all-girl college-preparatory middle school. Resistances expressed in interviews are evaluated within the context of current and prior I-other positionings surrounding the school choice, and we highlight the importance of considering (1) multiple rather than singular peer relations in adolescents' lives associated with connecting as well as resisting positionings; (2) meanings of ‘what’ is being resisted; (3) distinctions in how resistances are expressed; (4) emergent abstractions supporting the resistances; and (5) developmental change as a systems phenomenon.

Keywords:

• peer resistance
• sociocultural
• dialogical self
• development
• adolescent girls
• school choice
• middle school

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. US sixth grade students are generally ages 11 or 12, and eighth graders are generally ages 13 or 14.

2. Berndt's (1979) study also included assessments of conformity to parent influence (in neutral and prosocial domains). His vignette procedure has been used in a number of subsequent studies of peer influence (e.g., Bámaca and Umaña-Taylor 2006; Brown, Clasen, and Eicher 1986; Chan and Chan 2013; Santor, Messervey, and Kusumakar 2000; Sim and Koh 2003; Steinberg and Silverberg 1986).

3. The YWL school building, a remodeled elementary school, was smaller than other middle schools in the community and also, at that time, had comparatively fewer students and more limited extra-curricular offerings.

4. Stability within this framework does not imply stasis; it refers to dynamic processes of system maintenance (e.g., Bell 2009).