Telling Identities: In Search of an Analytic Tool for Investigating Learning as a Culturally Shaped Activity

Abstract

In this article, the authors make an attempt to operationalize the notion of identity to justify the claim about its potential as an analytic tool for investigating learning. They define identity as a set of reifying, significant, endorsable stories about a person. These stories, even if individually told, are products of a collective storytelling. The authors’ main claim is that learning may be thought of as closing the gap between actual identity and designated identity, two sets of reifying significant stories about the learner that are also endorsed by the learner. Empirical illustration comes from a study in which the mathematical learning practices of a group of 17-year-old immigrant students from the former Soviet Union, newly arrived in Israel, were compared with those of native Israelis.

Understanding Learning Culturally: Overcoming the Dualism Between Social and Individual Views of Learning

“…Wenger (1998), for example, makes much of the importance of learning as a process of identity formation. We agree with Sfard and Prusak (2005) that identity is a slippery and ill-defined notion. As already stated, we prefer the Bourdieusian concept of habitus, even though many writers find it troublingly vague (e.g.…”

“…Because of its integration of the discursive with the tacit and subconscious, habitus is a much stronger way of incorporating structure than Sfard and Prusak's (2005) concept of identity. They "equate identities with stories about persons" (p. 14), and then go on to argue that this way of understanding identity provides the missing link between learning and its socio-cultural context.…”

Invited Lectures from the 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education

“…Significant parts of the growing scholarship on mathematics teachers' professional identities draw on the broader scholarship on identity outlined above (Cobb and Gresalfi 2011;Hodgen 2011;Hodgen and Askew 2007;Horn et al 2008;Ma and Singer-Gabella 2011;Sfard and Prusak 2005). In what follows I do not claim to do justice to the field as a whole, but refer to four studies that I consider representative for a reasonably significant part of the field.…”

Professional development shaping teacher agency and creative insubordination

“…In spite of the numerous scholars who define identity (SACHS, 2001;SFARD;PRU-ZAK, 2005) or mathematical identity and agency (BOALER; GREENO, 2000;VAN ZOEST;BOHL, 2005) we have situated our discussion of identity and agency in the writings of Day (2004), Gutierrez (2013), and Passeggi and Cunha (2013).…”