Identity: Understanding Ourselves & Configuring Ourselves in Relationships - Essay Sample

Introduction

Identity has several meanings, but its purpose has changed from the traditional one used to denote character, attitude, or race of an individual. In this context, identity is used not only to label someone as being smart, beloved, or delinquent, as people use to refer to themselves and others. in essence, identity is much about how people come to understand themselves, and how they get to configure themselves in the areas they are participating in, and the relationships they have with the people in and out of these areas or worlds. The paper will begin by giving an analysis of the four frameworks that include narratives, figured worlds, social identity theory, types of identity, and modes of belonging. The analysis will be based on comparing and contrasting their constraints and affordances. Next will be to discuss how these theoretical frameworks can be used to investigate. Finally, it will include an argument for the use of Gee's theoretical framework to investigate teachers' identity development in international schools in a qualitative study.

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Comparing and Contrasting the Affordances and Constraints of The Frameworks

Narratives Approach

According to Van Lankveld et al. (2017), human beings were created to be natural storytellers, and they do so in many forms, such as reality TV shows, traditional folklores, and daily conversations. It is in the nature of people to develop stories about themselves with details about their lives and what such experiences mean to them, and share them. In today's psychology, this is known as narrative identity, and it imagines the future while also reconstructs the autobiographical past (Van Lankveld et al., 2017). The narrative identity has both advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages of the approach is that when narrators get redemptive meaning from their adversity and sufferings, then they tend to find pleasure in the corresponding high levels of generativity, psychological well-being, and other markers of successful life adaptations.

Another affordance of the narrative is that it entails the theme of redemption, which points to the broader way in which humans tend to adapt to their adversities by making sense of narrative sense from their lives. According to research by Van Lankveld et al. (2017), adults to end up enhanced or strengthened from their negative experiences usually engage in a two-step process that is effective in seeing them through their adversities. In the first step, the person usually makes a reflection on their negative life experiences by thinking long and deep about their negative experiences and how such experiences felt like to them. They also engage their selves on what the experiences may lead to and the roles that such experiences may play in the overall life of the individual. In the second step, the person reflects on their positive life experiences and self and makes positive resolutions to such events (Sfard & Prusak, 2005). Both the two steps are of significant help to the person, as the first step helps with personal growth while the second one helps in bringing happiness.

People who narrate their negative experiences such as learning that their child is disabled, or coming to terms with a divorce, through thoughtful and detailed accounts of struggle and loss tend to score higher on psychological maturity independent indices. Besides, such individuals also show increased maturity over the next two years. Such people tend to construct storied accounts emphasizing on growth, learning, and positive personal transformation. In the narrations of sufferings, there is always the production of lessons learned when one engages in self-exploration, and this enriches the life of the person in the long run (Sfard & Prusak, 2005).

Self-narration, in this process of becoming modern, has risen to become the practice ground and modern parameter for setting the self apart from me as the actor and I as the speaker. Acts of displacing and thematizing the self as a character in past space and time become the grounds for other actions that are related to self. Such actions include self-reflections, self-disclosure, and self-critique. In turn, all these enable moves towards better self-awareness, self-understanding, and self-consciousness; and these, in turn, can lead to acts of self-discipline, self-control, and self-constraint. Within this process, what comes further to light is an increasing integration and differentiation between me and the I, and concurrently between the dimensions of we vs. them.

However, there are also constraints to this framework of identity. The first constraint of narrative is that it does not properly cover the element of self and others. The relation between selfhood and narration needs to be considered as the identity framework is to be effective (Sfard & Prusak, 2005). Out encounter with others is the case that people make sense of the actions others engage in by including them in narrative frameworks. Another challenge is the challenge of the experiential self. Under this concept, assuming that self is a univocal concept is an unacceptable oversimplification since there can never be only one level or type of self to reckon with. People need to operate with a different level or dimension of selfhood that the one the address of that narrative account (Sfard & Prusak, 2005).

Figured Worlds

The concept of figured worlds is not an independent concept but rather an element of the larger idea of self and identity theory. Figured worlds are one of the four concepts that are suggested to be sites producing identities. The concept suggests that people figure who they are in relation to the social types and through the activities populating these figured worlds, and in social relationships with the people performing these worlds (Holland et al., 1998). Figured worlds are activities that are culturally constituted and socially produced, such that people come to mentally and conceptually produce new identities or understanding of self. The following are some of the affordances and constraints of figured worlds theory with regard to identity development in teachers (Holland et al., 1998).

The affordances of figured worlds include the following. Firstly, they are a cultural phenomenon when people enter or get recruited, and such development occurs through their participants' work. Figured worlds also work as contexts of meaning where there is the significance of social encounters and the positions of people matter (Holland et al., 1998). The particular activities that find their relevance in these worlds acquire meaning from them and are positioned in particular places and times. Thirdly, another affordance of figured worlds is that they distribute people by relating them to sceneries of actions. As a result, activities that have relations to such worlds are occupied by common social types and host to a sense of self by individuals (Holland et al., 1998).

Therefore, figured worlds are traditions and processes of apprehensions giving people form and shape as their lives interconnect with them. In this theory, people learn to recognize each other as some sort of actor, which sometimes come with emotional attachments, attach and recognize some act while ignoring others, and valuing certain outcomes and not others. Whether people are recruited into such acts or enter particular figured worlds by some means, it all depends on their personalities and their personal social history.

Figured worlds as a framework to identity also have constraints. One of the constraints is that we may enter them based on our social positions or rank, while also denying to outsiders in other figured worlds. Whereas we may learn some figured worlds fully, there are those that we may miss by contingency while also entering some figured worlds on a temporary basis, peripherally, and also only coming to assume positions of prestige and power (Holland et al., 1998).

Social Identity Theory

In social psychology, social identity theory is the study of the interplay between social and personal identities. The major aim of this theory is to predict or specify the situations under which an individual thinks of themselves as being a member of a group or an individual. Besides, this theory also puts into consideration the personal and social identities consequences for group behavior and individual perception (Stets & Burke, 2000).

The social identity theory provides an ideal motivational explanation of biases in in-groups. First, it is believed that judgment of individuals as a member of a group s associated with social comparison outcomes between relevant out-groups and in-groups. Another constraint of social identity theory is that under this theory, there are assumptions that people desire positive self-esteem and a satisfactory self-image (Stets & Burke, 2000). To achieve a positive self-evaluation as a group member, a positively distinctive in-groups must be ensured from the out-group.

It is usual that group members will try to make the in-group positively distinctive by engaging in social competition with members of out-groups. In minimal group experiments, for example, there is a consistent bias shown by people towards maximizing differential profit for their in-groups and maximizing in-group profit (Stets & Burke, 2000). It is the case even in situations where the total in-group profit suffers. There is no argument in theory on the importance of material considerations, but rather the group's position symbolic meaning, which is relevant to other groups, is a powerful motivational consideration.

Another affordance of the theory is in understanding responses to status inequality. One of the key portions of the theory from the onset was to explain the diverse reactions from members of subordinate and dominant groups. The reason why this was important is that the theory's assumption on the need for distinctiveness leads to the prediction that generally, an individual should find the most in-group bias the members of an out-group or those from groups with lower status since they have the least positive identity.

Another achievement of the theory is in stereotyping and perception of group homogeneity. The theory has helped in changing the way in which stereotyping is though about by social psychology, and particularly the perception of homogeneity in groups, and its cognitive concomitant. One of the benefits of this new approach is when Tajfel (1981) sought to integrate social cognition emerging trends with group-based motivations from Social Identity Theory (Stets & Burke, 2000).

Types of Identities

Identities have been seen by researchers to be a very important set of tools that can be used in understanding society and schools. When people are analyzed based on how they act out, then it becomes more dynamic than when we use the static trio of gender, race, and class. In literature, the term identity has taken different meanings. When an individual behaves or acts in a given way, then others may recognize him to be interacting and acting as a certain kind of person (Gee, 2000). He can also be seen as acting as several different kinds at the same time. Identities have played significant roles, and an individual can be seen to be a certain kind of a person depending on the various acts that they portray.

There are four major ways of viewing identity, and they include natural identity, institution identity, discourse identity, and affinity identity. The four identities are an indication of what it means to be a...