ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the three dimensions of identity in the theory: identity, positionality, and agency. It explains how they constitute three critical developmental tasks young people face as they struggle to make sense of themselves as academic achievers, cultural beings, and worthy human beings. The role identities at the top of the hierarchy are more highly valued and therefore more likely to be enacted in social interaction than those at the bottom of the hierarchy. Role-identity theory attempts to explain the complexity of identity as it changes according to different social contexts, and to offer rules that determine which role identities come to the fore in any given situation. The core proposition regarding situated identity is that the individual does the composition of self — the individual composes himself or herself using the cultural material available. Positionality is the next dimension in the developmental trajectory of the situated-mediated identity theory.
