TO BE or NOT TO BE: Not a Simple Question

• In Event: Roundtable Session 75
  In Roundtable Session: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Critical Theories in Qualitative Research

Abstract

Through a 2-year ethnography, the researcher explored the negotiation of identity claims amongst students and teachers at Midwestern suburban high school that is experiencing increased linguistic/ethnic diversification. Using philosophies of Tugendhat, Heidegger, Carspecken, and Habermas, the researcher developed a new approach to analyzing identity. The new analysis articulates passive and active aspects of identity claims. The findings (1) demonstrate a long-held intuition that identity is situated and performed and, also, illustrate (2) that students’ negotiated identity claims involved taking both passive and active perspectives toward social expectations, and (3) that these negotiated claims shifted to more or less empowering modes in direct concert with students’ schooling experiences. The method is described in detail as are the outcomes of its use.

Author

• Barbara Dennis, Indiana University