Struggles and Negotiations of Identity: A Case of a Korean Immigrant Boy’s Identity Construction

• In Event: Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Asian Communities and U.S. Education

Abstract

In this study, I present a case of Korean immigrant high school student, Sungjin, on his construction of identities. Building on anthropologically- and sociolinguistically-oriented notions of contexts and agency in identity construction, I analyze interview and classroom observation data collected in an Advanced Placement (AP) Biology class for one school year. The analysis shows how models of identities in his school presented constraints to Sungjin and how he made sense of those constraints and negotiated the contexts and his identities, which involves distortion of and challenging to the identity models. With the findings, I discuss implications for analysis of identities, contexts, and agency, and the education of immigrant students.

Author

• Minjung Ryu, Purdue University