The identity-frame model: A framework to describe situated identity negotiation for adolescent youth participating in an informal engineering education program

Identity negotiation within peer groups during an informal engineering education program: The central role of leadership‐oriented youth

“…The identity research to date in the STEM education field has primarily focused on how youth develop and negotiate productive identities relative to STEM topics and careers, and how educators can support these processes (Brotman & Moore, ; Pattison et al., ). STEM‐related identities are shaped by culture and experience (Archer et al., , ; Bricker & Bell, ; Brown, ; Sayman, ) and are continually negotiated and revised through ongoing interactions with family (Leaper, Farkas, & Brown, ; Tenenbaum & Leaper, ), with peers (Aschbacher, Li, & Roth, ; Stake & Nickens, ), in the classroom (Carlone, Haun‐Frank, & Webb, ; Shanahan & Nieswandt, ), and during informal learning experiences (Polman & Miller, ; Tan et al., ).…”

“…The study described in this article was part of a multiyear effort to explore the engineering‐related identity negotiation of adolescent youth participating in an informal engineering education program implemented in both museum and afterschool settings. Our previous work described the strategies that youth used to negotiate identities during the program, the types of situated identities that emerged or were contested, and the connection between identity negotiation and the ways that participants understood and engaged with the engineering activities and content—or what we have collectively referred to as identity negotiation patterns (Pattison et al., ). One emergent finding from the research was the role that leadership‐oriented youth within peer groups appeared to play in affording and constraining the identity negotiation of other participants.…”

“…To understand the identity negotiation patterns of leadership‐oriented youth and how they influence the identities of other participants, we used the Identity‐Frame Model (Figure ), which emerged through our previous work with adolescent youth engaged in informal engineering education experiences (Pattison et al., ). The model is based on a situated perspective of identity (Falk, ; Gee, ; Norris, ; Penuel & Wertsch, ).…”

“…From this perspective, identity is a “rhetorical process” (De Fina, ) through which individuals, consciously or not, perform their identities and make claims to be seen as certain types of people relative to others and other cultural models. These claims, or identity “bids” (Carlone & Johnson, ; Pattison et al., ), can be recognized, supported, or rejected by others in an ongoing process of identity negotiation specific to the situation and context. Aligned with a broader mediated discourse perspective (Norris & Jones, ; Scollon, ; Wertsch, ), the model focuses on how the negotiation of situated identities occurs within specific contexts that have associated goals, expectations, and resources, all of which constrain and afford the identity negotiation process.…”

“…In our prior work (Pattison et al., ), we identified characteristics of each aspect of the model that we argued were particularly salient in the context of informal engineering education activities. For example, youth frequently made identity claims (performance and definition work; see Figure ), or were positioned by other peers and adults (recognition and positioning work), relative to their skills, knowledge, and competence working through the engineering activities and successfully completing engineering design challenges (situated identities).…”