Self and Social Identity in Educational Contexts

Kenneth I. Mavor, Michael J. Platow, Boris Bizumic, Kenneth I. Mavor, Michael J. Platow, Boris Bizumic

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317599753
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Psychology

This innovative volume integrates social identity theory with research on teaching and education to shed new and fruitful light on a variety of different pedagogical concerns and practices. It brings together researchers at the cutting edge of new developments with a wealth of teaching and research experience.

The work in this volume will have a significant impact in two main ways. First and foremost, the social identity approach that isapplied will provide the theoretical and empirical platform for the development of new and creative forms of practice in educational settings. Just as the application of this theory has made significant contributions in organisational and health settings, a similar benefit will accrue for conceptual and practical developments related to learners and educators – from small learning groups to larger institutional settings – and in the development of professional identities that reach beyond the classroom.The chaptersdemonstrate the potential of applying social identity theory to education andwill stimulate increased research activity and interest in this domain. By focusing on self, social identity and education, this volume investigates with unprecedented clarity the social and psychological processes by which learners' personal and social self-concepts shape and enhance learning and teaching.

Self and Social Identity in Educational Contexts will appeal to advanced students and researchers in education, psychology and social identity theory. It will also be of immense value to educational leaders and practitioners, particularly at tertiary level.

PART I
Introducing social identity in educational contexts

1
INTRODUCING SELF AND SOCIAL IDENTITY IN EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS

Promoting learning, managing conflict, facilitating change

Michael J. Platow, Kenneth I. Mavor and Boris Bizumic

The self, in one way or another, is a concept that pervades the education literature. Self and learning are, in fact, intertwined, with self often understood as the outcome of learning (Prosser and Trigwell, 1999; Ramsden, 2003) but also as an antecedent to learning (Abouserie, 1995; Kwan, 2009; Schmeck, Geisler-Brenstein and Cercy, 1991; Thomas and Gadbois, 2007). At times in the literature, the concept of self is explicitly examined and developed (Pajares and Schunk, 2002; Zimmerman, 2000); at other times, however, it is used in a manner that, at best, assumes a shared understanding with readers (Kuznetsov and Kuznetsova, 2011; Rodicio, Sánchez and Acuña, 2013; Wintre, Dilouya, Pancer, Pratt, Birnie-Lefcovitch, Polivy and Adams, 2011). In social psychology, the concept of the self, too, plays a profound role in explaining behaviours (Terry, Hogg and White, 1999), shaping attitudes (Greenwald, Banaji, Rudman, Farnham, Nosek and Mellott, 2002) and, indeed, guiding learning (Trautwein, Lüdtke, Köller and Baumert, 2006).

The work of social psychologists, however, seems often not to percolate too deeply into the education literature; this is not to suggest that the education literature has percolated deeply into social psychology – it has not, and to social psychology’s detriment. It is with this recognition that the current volume was conceived and written; specifically, it represents an attempt by social psychologists to introduce a set of social-psychological concepts and thinking into the broader education literature. ‘Introduce’ may be a bit presumptuous, of course, as many of the authors of the current volume (and, indeed, others) have been working on their independent research lines, each trying to make a mark within education. So, possibly more accurately, this book represents an attempt to provide a single focal point in which individual authors each review their diverse work in a forum that allows for a collective voice.

Two things come to mind as we pen these words. First, readers will quickly realise that the diversity of work we allude to above is mirrored in this volume. On the one hand, this diversity represents the more or less idiosyncratic foray into the world of education and learning that has thus far taken place. On the other hand, it reflects, in part, the genesis of this book itself: several of the authors were contributors to one of the Australian National University’s annual Spring Workshops in Social Psychology, a forum in which we strive to assemble researchers conducting like-minded research for intense and focused discussions. When planning this workshop, we sought a common intellectual theme. In this case, we realised that a particular analysis of self and identity – one in which these concepts are situated explicitly within a social context, are fluid and dynamic, and are both personal and social – was percolating into the realm of education, but in a rather ad hoc manner. The workshop, and this volume as one outcome of it, provided an opportunity to actualise a common voice that underlay the variety of work people were already doing. We describe relevant assumptions of this analysis below; they are also explicated in considerable detail by Haslam in Chapter 2 and, of course, by all of the authors in their own chapters as they highlight aspects that are relevant to their work.

Second, we are fully aware of the caution with which many educators and researchers in learning and teaching approach psychological analyses. Much criticism has been levied against traditional psychological models of learning from within the education literature (e.g., Billington and Williams, 2015; Bird, 1999; Bredo, 1997; Entwistle, 1997). But to our readings, many of these criticisms seem to be levied against particular psychological approaches. For example, Entwistle took issue with aspects of traditional behaviourist approaches to learning, analyses of intelligence, and cognitive-psychological learning theories. Although he recognised how and why it may be useful for psychologists (and others) to understand how, say, associations are learned between behaviours and external contingencies, and the processes by which memory operates, Entwistle felt that these approaches left unanswered key questions that many educators seek to answer. Indeed, educators have often sought to understand humans’ subjective understandings (e.g., Soltis, 1984), meaning-making (e.g., Tang, Delgado and Moje, 2014) and integration of ideas (e.g., Biggs, 1987; Songer and Linn, 2006) and may have (undoubtedly, some certainly have) found the explorations offered by psychologists to be lacking.

In the current volume, we intentionally and explicitly move beyond the models considered by authors such as Entwistle (1997) by invoking the self and identity as fundamental processes inseparable from learning. Indeed, as we outline more fully below, the contributions of this book provide conceptual and empirical analyses of how, why and when the self: (1) enables learning and produces motivation; (2) serves as both a conduit and a boundary to the management of conflict both within and between individuals and groups (including in the classroom); and (3) provides a means for change in both one’s own self (reflexively) and between individuals and groups.

Some assumptions underlying the social identity approach

Before we consider the manner in which the chapters of this volume provide insight into these three processes, we briefly review some key assumptions of the model of self and identity that underpins at least some aspect of all chapters in this volume. Again, a more full account of this model is presented by Haslam in Chapter 2. The model of self and identity that is adopted throughout this volume is based upon the combined theories of social identity (e.g., Tajfel and Turner, 1986) and self-categorisation (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher and Wetherell, 1987), collectively referred to throughout this volume as the ‘social identity approach’ (see also Haslam, Reicher and Platow, 2011; Haslam, van Knippenberg, Platow and Ellemers, 2003; Jetten, Haslam and Haslam, 2012). These two theories developed in particular from an established line of research and theory within social psychology but also drew inspiration from Gestalt psychology and sociology, and they were developed separately from behaviourist psychology (e.g., see Doise, 1978; Platow, Hunter, Haslam and Reicher, 2015; Robinson, 1996). Here, instead of revisiting the history of the development of the social identity approach or all of its conceptual and empirical twists and turns, or even many of its most clearly stated assumptions, we outline five key assumptions of the approach that are most relevant to the current volume.

First, the social identity approach assumes that people pursue meaning-making, not thought minimisation. This assumption is in explicit contrast to the ‘cognitive miser’ perspective (Fiske and Taylor, 1984) that has held sway in much of social cognition research; this latter perspective assumes that people have a proclivity (if not an outright preference) not to think if they can get away with it. Instead, and explicitly building upon the tradition developed by Bruner and his colleagues (e.g., Bruner, 1957, 1966, 1990; Bruner, Goodnow and Austin, 1956), within the social identity approach, the mind is seen as an ‘interpretive’ system (McGarty, 1999, p. 7). Humans seek to make sense of their environment and their place within that environment. To date, this meaning-making assumption has played its most prominent role in social identity analyses of stereotyping (e.g., Oakes and Haslam, 2001; Oakes, Haslam and Turner, 1994) and social influence (e.g., McGarty, Haslam, Hutchinson and Turner, 1994; Platow, 2007). Theoretical developments and empirical confirmations have clearly demonstrated, for example, that stereotyping is, in part, an active attempt at understanding and not of miserly thought processes (e.g., Berndsen, McGarty, Van der Pligt and Spears, 2001).

In the current context, moving now into the realm of education, this meaning-making assumption allows us to begin our analysis with a model of human learning as one of active growth through the pursuit of understanding. If we were, instead, to start our analysis of education with the premise that people simply respond to their environment with little to no thought, we would immediately limit the scope of that analysis, the breadth of questions we would ask, and the outcomes we would seek to observe. A social identity approach to education, then, assumes that under the right circumstances, people will actively interpret and seek to make sense of new information and experiences they encounter in their learning environments. What these ‘right circumstances’ are, of course, remains to be identified, with many of the subsequent chapters seeking precisely to do this.

A second assumption within the social identity approach is that the self-concept is both to-be-explained and an explanatory principle. On the one hand, the self is understood as the outcome of personal history, memory and expectations, a person’s current state, and his or her active online assessment of the context (i.e., meaning-making). In this manner, social identity theorists and researchers require a set of principles for outlining how the self is cognitively constructed. Self-categorisation theory provides these principles (e.g., Oakes, 1987). Once again, the theory builds upon Bruner’s earlier analysis that ‘all perception is necessarily the end product of a categorisation process’ (1957, p. 124), assuming that the self takes the form of self-categorisations – that is, cognitive groupings of the perceiver with (or without) others seen as the same, identical or interchangeable. How, why and when others may or may not share similarity with the perceiver remain the focus of other aspects of the theory, with some of these principles (and critical empirical tests) outlined in several chapters of this book, as well as in other (e.g., Haslam, 2004) books. A common feature, however, underlying these analyses is the view that the self-concept subsequently guides attention, creates motivation, filters information and serves as a basis for interpreting that information (e.g., Grace, David and Ryan, 2008; Haslam, Powell and Turner, 2000; Platow et al., 2007). Information is, thus, assumed not to be given in a straightforward, constant manner; importantly, this refers to all information, including that which is about self and others and, indeed, that which is the focus of educational contexts.

Thus, the self is seen to be a reflexive system in which it is constructed through similarity and difference judgements, while these judgements are themselves influenced by individuals’ currently salient self-concepts. Indeed, this reflexive process exemplifies and encapsulates the third assumption of the social identity approach, that the self-concept is dynamic and context-dependent. Within the social identity approach, the self is not understood to be fixed in any sense (e.g., Onorato and Turner, 2004), and this dynamic nature of the self is viewed as a normal psychological process that allows flexibility in behaviours to act appropriately in a dynamic world.

It is because of the assumption of a dynamic self-concept that we can outline a fourth assumption that, in any given situation, the self can be cognitively (subjectively) represented at either a personal level or a collective level. At a personal level, self is assumed to be represented as different from others; in self-categorisation theory terms, this reflects a cognitive representation of the perceiver categorised with no one else. It is what is otherwise referred to as one’s personal identity and is what many psychologists from other theoretical perspectives, and lay people, understand as being the true and only self. But the social identity approach rejects any assumed stability in the self, which means that self can be represented not only uniquely (i.e., personally) but also collectively. At the collective level, self is understood by the perceiver as the same as – rather than different from – others at some level of abstraction. This is referred to as a social identity (i.e., self as a group member), and is assumed to make possible group-based behaviours (e.g., Haslam, Postmes and Ellemers, 2003; Hogg, Hardie and Reynolds, 1995). This dynamic nature of the self and its ability to vary between personal and social identities lead to a final assumption that the personal self has no privileged status in defining a person. That is, unlike other analyses (formal or lay), the personal self does not represent a ‘true’ self that somehow imbues social identities with meaning. Both personal and social identities are assumed to be equally valid representations of the self, representations that emerge from the very sense-making process in which people engage as they (we!) move from situation to situation throughout their (our) lives.

Together, these five assumptions thus allow us to speak meaningfully of learners not simply as isolated individuals, each with his or her own idiosyncrasies, but as ‘students’ or as ‘consumers’ or as ‘women’ or as ‘psychology majors’. More importantly, these terms are not just a form of shorthand for our writing – these terms are assumed to capture meaningful self-representations that have knowable consequences, both promotive and inhibitory. The self is not a fixed entity – it is amenable to change with variation in the social context. Importantly, it is amenable to change with variation in experience, including formal and informal learning. Finally, and critically, self is not understood...