Learning as Identity Formation: Implications for Design, Research, and Practice

Increasingly, research is acknowledging the importance of identity for understanding and supporting learning. Identity is a particularly useful concept for highlighting extraordinary individual experiences, interpreting rich social contexts, and viewing learning at multiple timescales, from an instant reaction to lifelong psychosocial development. However, identity is complex—it is conceptualized differently by various academic traditions. This inherent diversity can lead to a confusing or murky notion of identity. In this symposium, we clarify the concept, integrating the relevant theoretical perspectives of social and psychological identity to assess its implications to design, research, and practice. We provide concrete examples from our own research of the benefits of viewing learning as identity formation and the challenges to conducting such research. Learning as Identity Formation The learning sciences are manifold, acknowledging contributions from numerous academic traditions (education, psychology, computer science, design, etc.) and recognizing multiple perspectives on learning, both their power and limitations. Bransford and Schwartz (1999) argue that having a more fine-grained notion of transfer has powerful consequences for how we understand and promote learning. In his keynote at ICLS 2002, Roy Pea noted the limitations of the learning model imposed by the then-new “No Child Left Behind” legislation: that learning gains can be quantified through testing and thereby directly compared. In this symposium, we examine the perspective of learning as identity formation—people use their personal experience to actively construct their identity in relation to ideas, others, and to themselves. We provide concrete examples from our own work on the value of this perspective to design, research, and practice. As with any lens, there are limitations: While there is significant overlap, learning is not the same as identity formation (Nasir & Cook, 2009). On the other hand, important aspects of learning come into clearer focus. In the preface of his seminal book “Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas,” Seymour Papert (1980) describes his early fascination with the differential gear. “I believe that working with differentials did more for my mathematical development than anything I was taught in elementary school” (p. xviii). He viewed the multiplication tables as gears. His first brush with two variable equations (e.g., 3x + 4y = 10) immediately evoked the differential. The gears of his childhood served him as useful model to assimilate the world and to form his identity as a mathematician. While the cognitive component was significant, Papert credits more power to the affective component (his “love” of the gear) in shaping his life. Problematically, such a profound example of learning cannot be easily understood through conventional means: “A ‘preand post-‘ test at age two would have missed them” (p. xx). How can we study such experiences and use our understanding to facilitate them? To better understand the challenges involved, it is worthwhile noting the peculiarities of Papert’s experience. First, the learning took place largely outside a classroom. Second, the full story takes place over a long time, spanning from playing with toy trucks at age two to using his relationship with gears to inform his studies with Piaget and ultimately his theories of how the computer can support learning. Third, it was a highly individual story of identity formation. Papert admits that others would not have taken away the same things from those experiences. Fourth, it takes place in a larger social context, where he was able to use his passions to inform his school studies and his professional career. Characterizing learning in a larger social context has been well represented inside the learning sciences. In particular, communities of practice has been an influential framework to incorporate social aspects of learning. That theory originated with observations of how traditional methods of career training (e.g., tailors, butchers) have substantially different properties than school-based education. Lave and Wenger (1991) ICLS2012 Volume 2: Symposia