Identity Development of College Students

Advancing Frameworks for Multiple Dimensions of Identity

Susan R. Jones, Elisa S. Abes

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118482285
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Vita studentesca

Identity Development of College Students

Building off the foundational work of Erik Erikson and Arthur Chickering, Identity Development of College Students adds broad and innovative research to describe contemporary perspectives of identity development at the intersection of context, personal characteristics, and social identities. The authors employ different theoretical perspectives to explore the nature of context—how it both influences and is influenced by multiple social identities. Each chapter includes discussion and reflection questions and activities for individual or small group work.

Praise for Identity Development of College Students

"Susan R. Jones and Elisa S. Abes have provided us with a comprehensive and beautifully written overview of the evolution of identity development theory. This book reads like a novel while at the same time conveying important ideas, critical analysis, and cutting-edge research that will enhance student affairs practice."
—NANCY J. EVANS, professor, Student Affairs Program, School of Education, Iowa State University

"The authors masterfully present a holistic, integrative, and multi-dimensional approach to the identity development of today's college student. This text should be required reading for those engaged in research and practice in the areas of student affairs, counseling, higher education, and cultural studies."
—SHARON KIRKLAND-GORDON, director, Counseling Center, University of Maryland, College Park

"Susan R. Jones and Elisa S. Abes's work is ground-breaking—charting new scholarly territory and making one of the most significant contributions to identity literature in many years. Building on contemporary and traditional theoretical foundations, Jones and Abes offer new models of identity development essential for understanding a diversity of college students."
—MARYLU K. MCEWEN, associate professor emerita, University of Maryland, College Park

SECTION THREE
CRITICAL THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS AND MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

Interludes

Susan

The origins of my interest in critical theoretical approaches to student development and identity grew out of my doctoral course work. In addition to my course work in student development and women’s studies, I also took a course on phenomenology that required a significant amount of writing every week as well as a research project. My project explored the phenomenon of difference. This particular class and writing project took me into the realm of philosophy as I explored the work of Derrida, Levinas, and Heidegger in relation to the concepts of difference, otherness, and authenticity, and the question of “What is it like to be different?” As a child and young adult, I always knew I was different, even before I could put words to this feeling. This project enabled me to explore my own identity negotiations, which really serve as the foundation for all my scholarship, to this day. This project was also a creative one in that I could integrate into my work so many writers who had influenced my thinking and provided me with a “home” in my othered world. Such writers as June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, and Toni Morrison were introduced to me in my class with Bonnie Thornton Dill, and I quickly connected their work to the constructs of identity, difference, and otherness. Quotations from these writers made their way into my dissertation, including the lines from an opening soliloquy from the play Angels in America (which had just come out as I wrote my dissertation) about change and the nature of theory. A character described as “unimaginably old and totally blind” (Kushner, 1994, p. 12) exhorted, “Change? Yes, we must change, only show me the Theory … Show me the words that will reorder the world, or else keep silent” (p. 14). I loved this quote because it elevated the role of theory in social change, which, by illuminating unheard voices in student development scholarship and focusing on multiple identities rather than putting forth a singular view, is what I hoped to accomplish.

All of these influences served as a precursor to my interest in intersectionality and other critical theoretical frameworks as a way to add depth to an understanding of identity. I found that if I were going to explore such topics as race, sexual orientation, and multiple identities, particularly through a nonlinear, purely developmental lens, I needed to wade into the world of epistemology and different epistemological frameworks for studying and examining the topic of identity. This led me to critical theory and postmodern perspectives advanced by such scholars as William Tierney and Robert Rhoads, Patti Lather, Michel Foucault, and Susan Talburt. What these scholars and others provided were ways of thinking about issues of difference, identity, privilege, and oppression that were not present in the student development scholarship at the time. They also emphasized, as did the phenomenological approach I learned in my class, the importance of lived experience, both as a starting point to ground research and as a means to elevate the experiences of those often left out of scholarly discourse.

It is probably not entirely coincidental that my work in the area of intersectionality coincided with my return to the University of Maryland as a faculty member and my renewed connection with Dr. Thornton Dill, who was writing extensively in this area. At this time I was giving great consideration to what the next step in my multiple identities research should be. As I’ve noted earlier, I was humbled by the number of individuals contacting me from all over the world for permission to reproduce the Model of Multiple Dimensions of Identity (MMDI) and knew that there was more to be said on this topic. During an advanced student develop­ment theory class, it dawned on me that my students were asking great questions about the model and were extending my thinking in exciting ways. I began to consider ways to engage them in research or a project, beyond a discussion or reading group. I recalled reading an article on an autoethnographic project focused on Latinos/as in doctoral programs (see González & Marin, with Figueroa, Moreno, & Navia, 2002) and went back to reread this article to see if the methodology might be appropriate for a project focused on multiple identities and intersectionality. This was the idea that transformed into what was fondly referred to as “ARG,” or the autoethnographic research group, eight individuals (including me) engaged in the study of multiple social identities for over a year, using intersectionality as a framework (this study is discussed in detail in Chapter Six). Reading primary sources in critical race theory, queer theory, and intersectionality, and applying intersectionality in my research, have enabled me to understand identity differently and to ask new kinds of questions. Likewise, studying identity using these frameworks brings out different results and tells a different story—just like my identity story took on a new voice when told using the constructs of difference and otherness rather than sameness and commonality.

Elisa

As discussed in Section Two, my work with the Reconceptualized Model of Multiple Dimensions of Identity (RMMDI) was a result of my gravitation as a graduate student toward ideas associated with the MMDI, self-authorship, and privilege and oppression. When developing the RMMDI, Susan, Marylu McEwen, and I were concerned about its orderly presentation of the relationships among context, meaning making, and identity perceptions. Related to that concern, I also sensed we were missing part of the story by not explicitly considering the role of power structures. Although my own experiences, especially with religion and social class, have drawn me to ideas related to difference, at that time I was considering ideas about the relationship between power structures and meaning making primarily from an intellectual standpoint. Since then I have done more reflection, also from a personal standpoint. For instance, now in my forties, I believe I have fairly complex meaning making. Still, my lesbian identity occasionally is more salient to my sense of self than I would prefer. (I am someone who would prefer that it not be something central to who I am.) To elaborate further, our daughter is now a precocious three-year-old who soon will be asking about our family structure, and I need to be prepared for the ways that it will potentially influence her self-understanding. I gave birth to our second child during the time I was writing this book. I needed to invest in the time and expense of working with an attorney to procure documents that created legal protections in regard to the relationship between my partner and our children. (Our state, Ohio, does not permit second-parent adoptions.) I also know that despite my pure joy in being a mother, I cannot always expect a positive reaction from others, some of whom do not condone my family structure. Thus, despite my relatively complex meaning making, systemic oppression makes it challenging for me to determine for myself the salience of social identities and thus the nature of my identity.

I was initially drawn to queer theory because of how it interrogated the meaning of normal. I am certain that part of my resistance to the notion of a power-defined normal is a result of believing that I am about as “normal” a person as there is as a Jewish woman with a same-sex partner and two children. I typically forget that my beliefs and how my family looks are different from the beliefs and family structures of most others. Perhaps the most significant impetus toward my use of critical theoretical perspectives in general, and specifically queer theory, was my dissatisfaction with the story that a constructivist perspective was telling about the participants in my longitudinal study. This notion of asking who gets to define normal was one I heard from nearly all of the participants in the study, and there was something intuitively compelling to me about the idea of people having the agency to define their own norm. When the meaning-making development of the study participants appeared to be stalled, despite their efforts to work through challenging heteronormative dynamics within their respective families and peers, I questioned the normative assumptions behind student development theory. I reflected on the RMMDI’s meaning-making filter, and I questioned what it means to say someone is more developed than another person. More or less developed according to whose norm?

I was very fortunate to then collaborate with Dave Kasch, who at the time was working toward a master’s degree at Miami University, undertaking a student development theory project using queer theory. Dave, who was less socialized than I in constructivist scholarship as the primary approach for researching student development, and who also is one of the brightest thinkers about queer ideas I know, was instrumental in pushing me past some of my initial apprehensions. Although our work was challenging, the end product felt right to us in terms of the way we conceptualized the meaning of development, absent some of the normative assumptions against which college students are compared.

Although my work with critical theoretical perspectives began with an interest in queer theory, I don’t consider myself a queer theorist. My approach has been to take some of its complex ideas and apply them in an accessible manner. Indeed, there have been times over the past year when I haven’t been sure how much more I had to say in this arena. But then, very recently, the importance of continuing with queer ideas, especially how queer tenets can be extended beyond sexuality and gender, has touched me in a deeper way than it ever has. While finishing up the process of writing this book, my nephew was born with Down syndrome. Despite prenatal screenings, the disorder went undetected prior to his birth. The shock of this reality has caused me to grapple again with the meaning of normal. Sometimes I look at his beautiful face and I am saddened by the limitations he will most likely have in his life, how some of our dreams for him, like the dreams I have for my own children, will not be realized—how his life will be different. Then I catch myself. I question—different from whose life? Different from a norm? Whose norm? I remind myself that my nephew will lead a life that is his normal, not one that is defined by those with different abilities than he has. As with the lesbian students I have studied, the problem does not lie with my nephew, it lies with the ways in which society creates disabling conditions. It is difficult, though, to shift ingrained perceptions of reality, one’s own and those of others. It is my nephew’s story that is my impetus to continue this work about critical theoretical perspectives on identity and the meaning of normal with renewed vigor.

We were fortunate to have two of our colleagues join us in writing two chapters in this section. Stephen John Quaye brings expertise in critical race theory, and David Kasch, whom we previously mentioned, in queer theory. Here they share their stories of how they came to these theories.

Stephen

I started thinking about my racial identity for the first time as a master’s student. I always knew I was Black, but I never contemplated what that meant for me or those around me until studying college student development theories at the graduate level. As I reflected on my emerging sense of what it meant to be a Black man who was situated within a predominantly White context, I thought about what being Black meant to me personally and individually, as well as what it meant to be a member of a larger group of Black people both within my institutional context and in the larger U.S. context. I became increasingly frustrated that student development theories that were grounded in psychology tended to focus mostly on the individual, with some attention to the individual as a member of a group. But I realized that these theories usually did not enable me or my peers to consider the larger systems that had an impact on our individual identity constructions.

As I struggled with making sense of my identity as a Black man, I turned to a Black faculty member in my department to ask questions about Blackness. I completed an independent study with him in which we identified readings to help me grapple with the systemic influence of race on my life. We started with Cornel West’s Race Matters, and then shifted to bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress, and Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, which enabled me to explore critical theory for the first time. As I learned more about critical theory, I became fascinated with how this theory enabled me to critique social structures and provided me with a new language to understand issues of power and privilege. Yet the ideas by Marcuse seemed divorced from racial influences. Although West and hooks discussed race, I never saw language of critical theory in their work; similarly, I noticed that race was largely left out of critical theory analyses.

During this time, I came upon a reading on critical race theory that combined the critique of systems from critical theory with the racial awareness of West and hooks. I started immersing myself further in critical race theory, which enabled me to reflect on my Black racial identity but also consider the influence of systemic racism on my life. Thus, with critical race theory, I was able to focus on the individual situated within larger systems that are racist and make sense of what that meant for me as well as others. I continue to be interested in how to overlay critical race theory with student development theory to explore the challenges and outcomes of doing so.

David

My work with queer theory and student development began as an unexpected opportunity. During my first semester of graduate school, I approached Elisa about working together on a summer research practicum. I was a student in one of her classes and thought her research on lesbian students covered an important area of higher education that closely aligned with my personal and professional experiences. At that time, I had virtually no academic background in queer theory or lesbian, gay, and bisexual studies—just a wealth of experiences with gay and lesbian students who struggled within normative higher education. Fortunately, Elisa took me on as a research supervisee. To help me prepare for our work together, she suggested a doctoral course on queer theory in the English department. The class would provide me with some academic grounding for our work and would help her engage in some of the newer literature in the field via literature reviews I would write.

My experience that spring was overwhelming on all levels. Even with a liberal arts background and a particular interest in a wide range of philosophy, I had never encountered an...