Bordering on Difference: A Study of Identity and Space in an Elementary Classroom

• In Event: 29.082 - Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: 29.082-3 - Positive Identity Development in Words and Action

Abstract

This paper explores how a group of elementary students experience intimate and positional identities in relation to schooling and peer experiences. This paper utilizes semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observations, including informal conversations, afterschool events and events outside of school, focus groups, surveys and classroom artifacts to examine the ways in which students understandings and conceptions of difference are reflections of their psychical, social and symbolic spaces and schooling environments. These physical, social and symbolic educational spaces construct and shape how students come to understand both the borders of their intimate and positional identities, but also the role identity plays in their academic and social schooling experiences.

Author

• Matthew Green, University of Louisiana at Lafayette