Positional identities in educational transitions: connecting contemporary and future trajectories among multiethnic girls

Abstract

The aim of this article is to study how young people view themselves as learners within educational trajectories, as an alternative approach to today’s emphasis on performance and standardisation. We study different learner positionings in transitions from one level of schooling to another, using the analytic concepts of ‘positional identities’ and ‘figured worlds’. The ethnographic data were collected over a two-year period as part of a large-scale ethnographic study in a suburban area of Oslo with a large percentage of families with immigrant backgrounds. We focus on two girls (aged 15) who represent different educational trajectories and positional identities. Their case histories illustrate how positional identities in educational transitions are a complex web of formal and informal influences beyond school. The students experience different trajectories and changes in positional identities as learners when entering upper secondary school, which have implications for their future orientations.

Keywords:

• educational transitions
• positional identities
• figured worlds
• gender

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Our use of the concept ‘immigrant population’ is based on Statistics Norway (2015) and describes persons who have either migrated to Norway or those who were born in Norway to two immigrant parents.

2. This larger project consisted of three cohorts each with 20 students (cohort one from preschool to 1st grade, cohort two from 10th grade to 1st year upper secondary school, and cohort three from end of upper secondary school to higher education or work). The study presented here focus on the data from cohort two (10 boys and 10 girls). The Project Leader is Professor Ola Erstad.