Article Abstract This paper highlights some connections between cultural psychology, educational psychology, and identity psychology. This aim is pursued through the constructivist view of conceptualized learning as building knowledge. It is contended that identities should explicitly be considered as part of this process. Useful approaches to explore the relationship between learning and identity are the Dialogical Self Theory (DST) and the Communities of Learning model (CoL), both of which demonstrate a shared interest in dialogue and constructivism. DST defines the self as being composed of a set of I-positions, which are constantly in dialogue and in movement. The CoL model conceptualizes the classroom as a set of cultural contexts where dialogues permit the analysis of context and also shape it. Empirical examples of how relevant concepts related to learning, such as motivation and sense-making, can be viewed as innovation of the self are discussed. Key Words Community of Learners, constructivism, identity, innovation of self, learning, motivation, school, sense-making
M. Beatrice Ligorio University of Bari, Italy
Dialogical Relationship between Identity and Learning From a cultural point of view, educational contexts are products of society but, at the same time, schools strive to change society (Bruner, 1996). In this twofold relationship between school and society an implicit assumption often emerges: students—especially the youngest—are not able to ‘speak’ for themselves, because they are not yet equipped with the necessary tools and resources to do so. Thus, experts feel a duty to ‘speak’ the voice of students. In order to let students express their ‘voice’—in the Bakhtinian sense (Bakhtin, 1981)—more understanding of how learning experience affects identity may be needed.
Dialogical Relationship between Identity and Learning To understand the relationship between identity and learning I propose to refer to the general framework of socio-cultural constructivism.
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Within this framework, knowledge is actively built in and through the sense-making process concerning all the events and facts people are exposed to. Socio-cultural constructivism also recognizes identity as being closely dependent on the context and as the outcome of a building process. The building processes of learning and identity are not separate but have great significance for each other. Within the socio-constructivist framework, the school mandate should be to form human beings able to build new knowledge and to change the society they live in, and not simply to fit into it passively (Langhout, 2004; Ligorio & Pontecorvo, 2005). To pursue this task, a theoretically grounded vision of the relationship between learning and identity is needed. Dialogical Self Theory (DST), as elaborated by Hermans and his colleagues (Hermans, 1996, 2001; Hermans, Kempen, & Van Loon, 1992), appears to be a good starting point. Before exploring DST, a finer definition of learning within the socio-cultural constructivism approach is needed.
Definition of Learning within the Community of Learners Learning has been conceptualized as a complex process, involving individual aspects as well as social and cultural dimensions (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Bruner, 1990, 1996; Cole, 1996; Pontecorvo, 2004; Rogoff, 1995). The constructivist and cultural approach contributes to the notion of going beyond the individual as a unit of analysis in the learning process and focusing, rather, on the group and the classroom. Learning is conceptualized as a knowledge-building process, overcoming the idea of learning as the final result of a transfer of knowledge from the expert to the novice (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2005). Knowledge-building allocates new power to learners: they are the real actors; they take responsibility and show initiative; they are required to self-direct and self-assess their own processes. It is the so-called sense of agency that Glaser (1996) indicated as a key factor to recognize when learning occurs. More recently, educationalists and anthropologists have converged on a vision of a human being capable of shaping society (Archer, 2000). For this reason, school, as a social institution, should provide a great sense of agency to students and should play a role in shaping learners who are able to (re)construct the meaning of concepts and ideas through reflection and social interaction. This new perspective requires many changes in educational psychology. In particular, great attention is devoted to the social and 94
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cultural processes activated through participation in the school context. In fact, learning is described as a process of ‘acculturation’, of progressive inclusion into a community by sharing norms, roles, and ways of talking (Hodges, 1998; Rogoff, 1995; Wenger, 1998). The description of a classroom as a community was first proposed by Brown and Campione (1990, 1994). They specifically refer to a ‘Community of Learners’ (CoL), and constructivism was an explicit source of inspiration. If schools are places where knowledge should be built, then schools should look like any other communities in which production is a fundamental goal. Two communities were used as models: the apprenticeship and the scientists. By combining them, Brown and Campione attempted to compensate the manual relevance of the first with the intellectual and semiotic dimensions of the second (Collins, Brown, & Holum, 1991). The two communities have in common a strong focus on producing a final artefact fulfilling different functions: a) it could be shared with the wider social community; b) it could represent a means of enriching and promoting the community culture; c) it could act as a historical function, which new classrooms could use as a starting point for their learning process. This kind of artefact represents an important link between school and society, not only because it assigns a role to school which is not confined into its own borders, but also because it fosters a new vision of the type of citizenship that school should engender through teaching and learning.
Dialogical Self and Learning Hermans’ DST is rooted in the American pragmatism of James (1890) and in the dialogical tradition of Bakhtin (1975). DST conceives the self as a dynamic multiplicity of I-positions changing over time and space (Hermans, 1996, 2001). Each position is endowed by one or more ‘voices’, thus the dialogism becomes polyphonic and this polyphony may generate new positions. A twofold relationship between position and voice is established: positions may have a voice of different strength and dialogue between voices generates new positions, provided by a new voice. Within this theory, innovation of self occurs mainly through three forms. First, a new position is introduced into the repertoire as the consequence of a significant event or thought that may occur (Hermans et al., 1992). The first day of school, for instance, represents well an event which is able to introduce a new position: that of the student. 95
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A second way to trigger off innovation of self is by moving a position from the background to the foreground and/or vice versa (Hermans et al., 1992). Participation in the life of the classroom could provoke this type of innovation. It could be the case of an unexpected good grade that could contribute to the projection into the foreground of a suppressed positioning caused by, for example, a tendency towards shyness or habitual non-appreciation by parents. A third form of innovation occurs when two or more positions are supporting each other or develop some form of cooperation so as to establish a new subsystem in the self. Teachers could, for instance, push a position such as the perfectionist, never happy with the results obtained, to trust classmates’ support. Collaborative learning could be introduced as a strategy to achieve good results. In this way, a new coalition would be introduced: the I-as-perfectionist would be the confederate of the I-as-collaborator. Any of these three patterns of innovation introduces more general changes in the I-positioning system. Learning should act as a promoter of positive innovation of the self, should strive to suppress negative I-positioning, and should introduce positive and more sophisticated I-positioning. In general, attending learning contexts should give students the opportunity to enlarge and reorganize their repertoire of positioning.
The Role of Dialogue I-positionings entertain a dialogical relationship with each other. The internal—among all the positions—and the external dialogue between I-positions and the ‘others’ make possible the narrative about who we are. The narrative is never fixed but changes according to situational cues, such as people around us, references to others who are relevant to us but not present, and ways of perceiving particular events and episodes. Dialogue is an important point for understanding and having access to the self. The stress on dialogue is also quite important for educational contexts. Dialogical interaction is one of the principles for knowledge-building within the Community of Learners (Koschmann, 1999). Ways of talking in schools have held great interest for educationalists for a long time. Discourse and argumentation strategies in schools have often been studied in order to highlight patterns of knowledge acquisition and construction (Alexander, 2004; Pontecorvo & Sterponi, 2002), as well as ways to participate and shape contexts (Hicks, 1996; Wertsch, 1991). Analysing classroom talk is not only a 96
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way of knowing what students think, but also a way of shaping what they think. Similarly, by analysing dialogical interaction educational psychologists can observe the trajectory of a learner’s participation in a certain practice and within a specific context (Bruner, 1996; Wenger, 1998). Therefore, dialogue is the chosen place to track down knowledgebuilding processes, social and cultural interactions, and identity development. The dialogue through which identity is conceptualized and built, when it takes place in an educational context, is a dialogue aimed at building a new sense of what is experienced and what is the self. In the following paragraph I will give some empirical examples of how this may happen.
Empirical Examples of Learning as Dialogical Identity Experience Learning is not only a cognitive and social experience, but also an identity experience. Who we are, what we are able to do, and what we will be, based on what we learn, are constantly challenged when we attend learning situations. Some empirical examples will be provided in this paragraph and are intended to demonstrate how learning and identity interweave. In so doing, some of the principles of the Community of Learners model will be discussed in the light of students’ and teachers’ I-positioning. The examples discussed here are extracted from some research projects that I coordinated. All of these projects are instances of CoL, and they have the common goal of expanding possibilities and modalities of dialogue into and across classrooms. Discursive and narrative opportunities were provided by setting up special activities both face-to-face and online. In fact, computer -mediated communication was always introduced into the research projects I refer to, although each project used different pieces of software. In all of the cases, communities were also formed outside of the classrooms and students could talk to peers in the virtual space provided by the software. In fact, I contend that certain types of internet environment—such as forums, blogs, chats, and three-dimensional virtual spaces—may play an important role in sustaining the narrative and dialogical nature of knowledge and identity construction. Therefore, including communication at a distance from the school’s activities may allow better visibility of the relationship between identity and learning.
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Motivation as Internalization of Otherness Motivation has always been of great relevance to educational psychology (Volet & Jarvela, 2001). Within the CoL, motivation has a strong social nature: students are motivated to learn what helps them to upgrade their status and their position within the community (Brown & Campione, 1990). Motivation is no longer an intrinsic quality of the students but rather a value within the context. Tracking down students’ positioning may help us to understand how to promote motivation. I propose to consider motivation as related to the interiorization of others relevant to the students—others considered as positive examples. In fact, students can see well-respected teachers or appreciated peers as positions to be interiorized. In a recent project aimed at introducing blogging as a tool to support the development of dialogical identities, students were required to answer the question: ‘What does it mean to you to go to school?’. These students were in the final grade in primary school, which in Italy pertains to children around 10 years old. The project was proposed to classrooms where the CoL model was implemented. By reading the notes students posted, the impression that teachers represented a great lever of motivation for them was strong. Students reported that teachers helped them not only with learning but also with growing up, and the relationship in which they engaged with the teachers was a source that allowed them to deal with the difficulties they faced in their lives. The following post is a perfect example: The first day when I got here, I didn’t know anyone, but in my mind, I told myself that the teachers were good and nice and now we have a very strong relationship. If we have trouble doing things, they are always ready to help us go through our uncertainties. Teachers are now a part of me as if they were half of my body; they know so many details about me. They helped me to find the other side of me that was obscured, that I didn’t know, they made me feel confident about talking and doing things, they gave me a ‘treasure’ that I will keep with me forever. (10-year-old student, female)
After five years of school, teachers were interiorized to such an extent that they were actually felt as if they were parts of the body. This interiorization allowed the student to discover aspects of the self that were ‘obscured’. Novel aspects of the self and parts of the teachers interiorized are defined by the student as a ‘treasure’ that allowed her to act and talk in new ways. These news skills can be considered outcomes of the learning process at least partially activated also by ‘pretending’ to be a teacher in situations like reciprocal teaching (Palincsar & Brown, 1984). This type of learning ought to have a higher motivation than just getting good grades: rather, students seem to be 98
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motivated by a desire to be like the teacher and an awareness that the ‘teacher-in-me’ prompts new parts in the self. The Need to Make Sense as Identity Innovation Within recent educational psychology, children are portrayed as social negotiators, constantly involved in the sense-making process of the world in which they are immersed. This is a social process through which they ‘acquire a framework for interpreting experience, and learn how to negotiate meaning in a manner congruent with the requirements of the culture’ (Bruner & Haste, 1987, p. 1). Bruner and his colleagues strongly emphasized the relevance of the ‘making sense’ activity as one of the objectives schools should pursue. The citizens ‘produced’ by the educational process should be able to make sense of culture, society, and the practices they are involved with, as well as their selves as persons. Some research proved that learning outcomes may be impacted by discordant interpretations of school practices given by students and by teachers (Cole, 1996; Grossen & Perret-Clermont, 1994). When the education task also involves personal aspects then the discrepancies between students’ and teachers’ perceptions are even more difficult to handle. A way to address this problem is to create tasks and contexts where students can talk about their thoughts and feelings and teachers help them to make sense of these. Implementing activities specifically dedicated to students expressing their personal perspectives and thoughts is one of the purposes of ICity, a project aimed at building virtual and face-to-face spaces explicitly dedicated to identity-building. During this project, narrative skills were fostered. Students were required to construct a story about who they are, who they would like to be, and who they were; they were also able to compare their own perception of themselves with how others see them, and they could articulate a vision about the others. In this project, a multicultural classroom was involved (4th grade, 9 years of age), and discussions concerning diversity—in different senses— would often take place. In the following excerpt, religious diversity was the main topic and the need to ‘make sense’ of what it means to belong to a certain religious belief emerged as being related to an identity position. Excerpt 1. Can you change religion?1 45 Student1: Student2 decided to change religion 46 Researcher: Ah this is interesting 47 Student2: Actually . . .
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48 Researcher: Why do you want to change religion, why? It is an interesting thing 49 Student2: Actually because to me there is not, at least for me, reasonable evidence of the existence of God 50 Researcher: What religion are you, from what religion to what religion do you want to change? 51 Student2: From Christian religion, actually I do not have a religion, eh . . .. I’m trying to find something that could make sense to me 52 Researcher: So you did not choose yet, you did not choose the religion you want to go? 53 Student2: I am searching . . .. 54 Researcher: And you, what do you think? How is it? Do you think it is right that he can change religion, he can choose, is he doing the right thing? 55 Student3: I think he can do it 56 Student4: I think he can change, I mean, if he starts something that can be stopped, making some mistakes and he can change as he wants. I think it is fair 57 Researcher: So it is ok if he changes religion 58 Student4: I think it is hard therefore it is bad to change religion because, eh from. . . eh from your religion let’s say to another religion everything is different because you have to change many things 59 Researcher: OK, this is what you think. And what about what does Student5 think? Tell us 60 Student5: I think he is free to change religion whenever he likes and to do everything he wants to do, eh but let me say, I would never do it 61 Researcher: Really? How come? 62 Student5: Bhè, because let’s say it is a religion
In this excerpt, two different visions of the relationship between identity and religion can be inferred. On one side there is Student2, who sees religion as a flexible and dynamic trait of his identity, as a positioning that can be changed. On the other side, Student5 perceives religion as a stable part of his identity that cannot easily be changed. For Student1, the fluidity of the religious I-positioning seems to be caused by a rationalistic vision (line 49: no reasonable evidence for the existence of God), revealing not a simple need to abandon one religion to embrace another, but rather to make sense of what it means to be religious. For this student the change of religion is a dialogical process through which the sense of this position is questioned, and the answer concerns a more general sense of who the person is, whereas for the other student the religious I-positioning is more rigidly connected to other I-positioning. In this case, a change of the religious I-positioning would consequently cause a change of ‘many things’ (line 58), meaning a more global identity innovation, based on a sort of an almost unwanted cascade effect—neither dialogical nor rational. 100
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Both of these different perspectives may be caused by exposure to peers professing other religions. In fact, the discussion from which Excerpt 5 was selected took place in a multicultural classroom. Students from other countries and other religions were part of the classroom and they participated a great deal in the ICity project. We know from specific research on this topic (Jackson, 2004) that religious education needs special care in order to be appropriately handled. Religions should be presented as different but dialogical perspectives on similar problems and as cultural answers to compelling human needs. When exposed to diversity, students seem to lose the sense of dogma that pervades religion—therefore, religion becomes a possibility and something that can be changed based on what makes more sense. Understanding and appreciating diversity, and considering it as a resource within the community, is not an easy goal. Multicultural classrooms are nowadays growing in European classrooms. This growth is often related to episodes of conflicts about religious symbols in classrooms or students wearing religious marks—like the Arabic burka. Students exposed to different cultural signs are facing the possibility of hybridization and of multiple identities (Hermans, 2004). Multiculturalism could enrich classrooms and individuals, as long as this issue is handled not only from the social and cognitive point of view, but also considering the impact on the dialogical identity. Teachers’ Positioning Beijaard and his colleagues (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004) describe teachers’ professional identity as a dynamic process involving interpretation and reinterpretation of life and professional experiences. Within a CoL, teachers see their professional identity continously challenged by the I-positioning switching process. In fact, the CoL model expects each of its members to experience the typical processes of the other members. That is to say, teachers are supposed to act—in certain cases—as learners, and at the same time they should acquire a research attitude—since researchers are a stable part of the community—when organizing, implementing, and assessing a project. The same switching of I-positioning is expected from students and researchers, so that the dialogical nature of the community is greatly increased. In this way, dialogue between different roles becomes an internal dialogue of I-positioning. This dialogue permits the enrichment not only of students’ identity but also of teachers’ professional identity. Examples of how such processes impact on teachers are selected from a project called Euroland, aimed at building the virtual three-dimensional land of Europe. 101
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Italian and Dutch students interact to fill an initial empty virtual world with cultural communities, for instance those of art, music, food, and tradition.3 During a final discussion, a group of students from Rome (8th grade; 13 years of age) exchanged personal impressions and thoughts about the project that had just ended. In the following excerpt, student–teacher switching of positioning clearly emerges. Excerpt 2. Swapping student–teacher position 63 English teacher: You said two or three times . . . in the classroom we are teachers, but when we go downstairs?2 64 Art teacher: Are we no longer teachers? 65 Martina: No, you are always teachers, but . . . 66 Federica: In the classroom more strict 67 Martina: More open! 68 Federica: More forcing us 69 Researcher: He said almost students 70 English teacher: Eh this is it! 71 Francesco: You have to learn from the experience as much as we do 72 Art teacher: Oh, bravo! 73 English teacher: Bravo! 74 Federica: You know Euroland more or less as we do and also you . . . 75 Martina: Also the relationship is different. I think because when we are in the classroom your goal is to educate us . . . and give us instructions. Whereas there . . . 76 Federica: To teach . . . 77 Martina: Eh! 78 English teacher: Whereas there? 79 Andrea1: But when? 80 Martina: Whereas . . . in Euroland, the same, you learn. But . . . I don’t know, it is different! 81 Researcher: How is it different? 82 English teacher: Maybe, as he was saying, in that case we, in this type of work, teachers in this type of work, with the computer that changes, so many tools, we are also learners 83 Andrea1: No, but there is . . . we, in the classroom we have to learn, because we don’t know what you know. But there with the computers, the technology . . . 84 Martina: We are the teachers . . . 85 Elisa: We are on the same base 86 English teacher: We are all learning! 87 Andrea1: We understand more than you, I mean but this . . . 88 English teacher: He said something that . . . 89 Art teacher: It’s true, it’s true! 90 Researcher: In some cases it’s true. For certain things, not for all. Each of us has his own experience 91 Andrea1: There is an exchange!
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92 English teacher: Oh! Look, I think this experience, if I may say my opinion, has generated an exchange, I mean we exchanged something, we exchanged experiences, potentialities, we exchanged. We were on a level . . . not as much as, I was not a teacher teaching you but I was also a person that . . .. 93 Andrea1: You were a bit more humanitarian! 94 English teacher: What? 95 Andrea1: You were a bit more humanitarian!
This excerpt emphasizes the Art teacher’s perception of a change concerning herself (line 64). Students specify that it is not a matter of role, but rather a question of showing different aspects of the self: when working in the computer lab teachers are more open, supportive, and less strict (lines 66–68). Martina (line 75) talks about a different relationship caused (in her opinion) by a more general change of the teachers’ didactical scope. The teachers’ intention is no longer to transfer knowledge, but to accomplish a collective project. By doing this, learning would still occur (line 80), but in a different way, as the English teacher also acknowledges (line 82). Teachers and students exchange their positioning: ‘we are also learners’, admits the teacher (line 82), and ‘We are the teachers’, declares Martina (line 84). The interaction is based on new foundations: it is no longer what each one knows that is relevant, but what account stems from exchanging experiences and potentialities (line 92). It is a human experience (‘I was also a person that . . .’, line 92) that can be read as an exchange of I-positioning. ‘You were more humanitarian!’ (line 93), states Andrea1, expressing in his own words the feeling of an innovation in the teachers’ identity system. Teachers considered Euroland to be a learning experience for themselves and, at the same time, students felt empowered because they could work on a more democratic and egalitarian basis with their teachers. Students had something to teach the teachers (they usually know more than adults about technology), with no risk for the teachers of a loss of status. They were very active; they took responsibilities and decisions, and they could see their proposals being taken seriously and actually realized. They internalized the teacher-positioning through the scaffold of their teachers, who progressively handed their positioning over to the students in exchange for the student-positioning. These new positionings sustained their excitement and motivation for this project.
Conclusions In this paper, the socio-constructivist approach is discussed as a means of considering identity as part of the learning process. DST provides a 103
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good lens for observing identity changes and allows us to analyse evidence of the relationship between learning and identity in learning communities. According to Bruner (1996), narrative skills and critical and divergent thinking are still considered as secondary in current school curricula. A reason for such lack of predominance could be traced to the fact that little relevance is granted to the emotional and affective dimension of the learning process. Conversely, to create new knowledge and to negotiate meaning about it is an experience that involves the emotional dimension as well as the social and cognitive. To strengthen each of these aspects, the macro-dimension of identity based on a dialogical dimension should be included in the curriculum. In fact, when educational theories refer to the dialogical nature of learning, this seems to relate more to an external dialogue between individuals. The internal dialogue within individuals, between the various I-positionings composing the self, is not yet a task taken up by schools. Two particular concepts—motivation and the sense-making process—have been discussed as good examples of means to innovate identity. Looking at the cases reported, one of the main conclusions that can be drawn concerns the need to include educational tasks and activities that openly interweave knowledge-building with identitybuilding in the school agenda. By highlighting the relevance of sustaining and developing students’ identity—as well as teachers’ identity—a comprehensive educational model about learning and identity can be promoted. The role school plays in devolving such a cultural model is not clear. In many nations, school as an institution is at a critical juncture. Aside from political and economical reasons, this may be caused by a cultural disorientation. School, as an institution, is no longer able to claim a clear role. The points I have raised in this article may help in defining the role school can take up in sustaining identity development. In fact, going to school does not only imply cognitive development, but also an extension of self-perception and an enrichment of competences and experiences useful in building a sense of personhood. Therefore, education should be able to consider all of these aspects. I am absolutely aware that more research is needed to develop this idea fully. For example, more multidimensional research should be carried out in order to take in account other agents involved in learning contexts—such as school administrators and parents. In fact, these are part of the dynamic of the dialogical learning process. Furthermore, of particular interest is to study further the role that internet-based environments mediating discourse and dialogue are 104
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able to play in supporting the relationship between identity and learning. Technology is an important cultural artefact, shaped by and shaping culture. Finally, explicitly introducing scaffolds to identity development into educational theories could help to solve a paradox that school faces concerning its function: as a ‘mirror’ of the society and, at the same time, as an institution supposed to promote social change. In fact, during the attempt to ‘voice’ the students, I found out that giving them the space to voice themselves—to bring their personal perspectives into school, to talk freely about who they are, who they would like to be, and what and why they like to learn—makes school a democratic and safe space where identities can be constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed. Notes 1. Turns are numbered in order to simplify reference to the comments. Students’ names are anonymised to preserve their privacy. 2. The teacher is referring to the computer lab, which was located at the ground floor. 3. The virtual community they are building here is actually about Dutch art. In order to maintain a positive interdependence between the participants, each one had to consider the culture of the partner country.
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Ligorio Dialogical Relationship between Identity and Learning
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Biography M. BEATRICE LIGORIO is Associated Professor at the University of Bari, Italy. She graduated in Psychology at the University of Rome, and in 1999 she received her PhD in Psychology of Communication from the University of Bari. She has been a NATO fellow collaborating in the Community of Learners model, designed by Ann Brown (University of Berkeley, CA). She also received a Marie Curie grant to develop virtual educational environments at the University of Nijmegen, Netherlands. She has collaborated in many European, international, and national projects, published several articles in international journals, and recently she edited two books in Italian about educational technology. She also edited the Italian translation of Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline (Cole, 1996). Her main research interests are educational technology, models of community, cultural psychology, virtual environments, dialogical approaches, digital identity, blended learning, and m-learning. ADDRESS: M. Beatrice Ligorio, Department of Psychology, University of Bari, Palazzo Ateneo, via Crisanzio, 1–70100 Bari, Italy. [email: bealigorio@hotmail.com]
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