Understanding Guilt: An Observational Tool for Examining Student Social Identity Development
Location
Poster #1
Department
Teacher Education
Abstract
As part of my coursework and research within the Master of Arts in Teaching - Secondary Education Program, I aimed to better understand the relationship between student social identity development and educators’ decision-making. Specifically, amidst the contemporary political debate on appropriate curricula, there is a need for a method that allows educators to reflect on their curriculum and classroom management choices within the context of students’ identities. Drawing from theoretical frameworks introduced during my tenure as an NEIU student and a broader literature review on culturally relevant pedagogy and social-emotional development, I developed and piloted an observational tool that enables educators to examine teacher decisions and classroom interactions with identity construction at the forefront. Informed by Bank’s theory of multicultural education and the social identity models created by Hardiman and Jackson, the tool first prompts educators to reflect, on the level of multicultural curricular integration achieved in their specific lesson prior to implementing lesson. During lesson implementation, educators monitor students for behaviors and language associated with different phases of the social identity model, dependent on the students identity as either privileged or oppressed. Based on Hardiman and Jackson’s model, the observational tool recognizes that a student’s identity as privileged or oppressed varies depending on the facet of identity being observed (i.e. racial vs. socioeconomic vs. gender), and the context of the observation. Lastly, in post implementation the tool encourages educators to consider external factors that may impact student social identity construction, such as seating arrangements and discipline choices. In practice, I found the tool to be highly effective in capturing snapshots of students’ social identity development and fostering reflective practices for pre-service educators. There are also opportunities for refining the observational tool before its being further piloted by other educators; specifically, addressing how the tool could be modified, or a protocol created, to better assess student social identity development in relation to a whole unit of instruction versus an individual lesson.
Faculty Sponsor
J. Ruth Dawley-Carr
Understanding Guilt: An Observational Tool for Examining Student Social Identity Development
Poster #1
As part of my coursework and research within the Master of Arts in Teaching - Secondary Education Program, I aimed to better understand the relationship between student social identity development and educators’ decision-making. Specifically, amidst the contemporary political debate on appropriate curricula, there is a need for a method that allows educators to reflect on their curriculum and classroom management choices within the context of students’ identities. Drawing from theoretical frameworks introduced during my tenure as an NEIU student and a broader literature review on culturally relevant pedagogy and social-emotional development, I developed and piloted an observational tool that enables educators to examine teacher decisions and classroom interactions with identity construction at the forefront. Informed by Bank’s theory of multicultural education and the social identity models created by Hardiman and Jackson, the tool first prompts educators to reflect, on the level of multicultural curricular integration achieved in their specific lesson prior to implementing lesson. During lesson implementation, educators monitor students for behaviors and language associated with different phases of the social identity model, dependent on the students identity as either privileged or oppressed. Based on Hardiman and Jackson’s model, the observational tool recognizes that a student’s identity as privileged or oppressed varies depending on the facet of identity being observed (i.e. racial vs. socioeconomic vs. gender), and the context of the observation. Lastly, in post implementation the tool encourages educators to consider external factors that may impact student social identity construction, such as seating arrangements and discipline choices. In practice, I found the tool to be highly effective in capturing snapshots of students’ social identity development and fostering reflective practices for pre-service educators. There are also opportunities for refining the observational tool before its being further piloted by other educators; specifically, addressing how the tool could be modified, or a protocol created, to better assess student social identity development in relation to a whole unit of instruction versus an individual lesson.