ABSTRACT
Education and identity have always been intertwined. However, it is only in the middle of the twentieth century that the term identity has been applied to refer to the personal attributes that influence and are influenced by education. But the term identity quickly caught on and assumed diversity of meanings in a variety of fields, including in education. The different meanings of identity reflect the broad interest in questions concerning who a person is; yet, they also contribute to misunderstandings regarding the term and to debates about the definition of identity. Three prominent approaches to identity in education are based on the psychosocial, social psychological, and sociocultural perspectives. The psychosocial conception of identity views it as the person’s comprehensive, partially unconscious, psychological structure that develops through negotiation of tensions with society’s expectations at different developmental stages. The social psychological conception of identity views it as the intersection of the person’s self-perceptions and self-definitions concerning personal and social attributes that are salient in a particular social situation. The sociocultural conception of identity views it as the contextual positioning of the person in a myriad of cultural meanings salient during participation in cultural activities. These perspectives provide complementary views on the variety of complex and dynamic phenomena that highlight the question ‘who is the person?’ Selecting a perspective for understanding or intervening in educational phenomena calls for considering the seeker’s worldview, position, values, self-perceptions, and goals – in short, their identity.
