I have collected my data by observing students, interviewing them and conducting focus group with them. I'd like to look at this data from the perspective of students' identity.
I'd like to know if I could use adjectives to describe and interpret the students' identities or if it is not necessarily just adjectives. Other than adjectives, how else can I describe students' identity?
Dear Ms. Khairuddin,
I once asked students to describe their fellow students; interestingly, some came up with categories such as "strawberry, " and "Ninja." They defined "strawberry" as those girls having an innocent look, and doing baby talks, and "Ninja" as those guys they saw as girl hoppers. So I guess in addition to using adjectives to describe identity, categorizing identitities using analogy may also be interesting.
The following link on "The Role of Students’ Identity Development in Higher Education in Computing" may also be of use.
https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:717705/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Hope my answer is relevant.
Sincerely,
Cameen
Dear Zurina khairuddin,
Thank you for the interesting question. As you have rightly observed, students entering classrooms possess a rich and complex identity behind them that are characteristically different from one another. As such, gauging students' identity can help teachers and practitioners to discover their abilities, aptitude and their objectives . This is essentially important because by becoming aware of learners' identity, teachers can unfold learners' attitudinal mental profile in order to assist them to reach maximum effectiveness. The main question is: How to measure identity? Using and analyzing students' verbal production ,both in written and spoken modes, seems to be the key method of measuring identities. Therefore, your focus on adjectives is quite appropriate. Of course, another technique has been introduced by Kettanun above. However, there are other useful techniques that can help you to triangulate your qualitative data analysis. The following links, are sources that I hope can be helpful.
Best regards,
R. Biria
https://www.practicalteacherresearch.com/uploads/5/6/2/4/56249715/meier21-29.pdf
https://msu.edu/~renn/TorresJonesRenn2009.pdf
https://www.analytictech.com/mb870/.../ryan-bernard_techniques_to_identify_themes_in.ht...
A great question and one that is worth pursuing. I have looked at this for adult students in vocational education and also doing tertiary prep programs, see this paper for starters. http://www.cdu.edu.au/sites/default/files/the-northern-institute/lc_journalvol1_2010.pdf
The concept has both psychological and sociological elements which or both ontological. The kind of statements students make about their identity respond to basic 'who am I' and 'where do I belong' questions. Looking for descriptive adjectives might be one way of assessing these views, but I think you need to look beyond simple descriptors. In my pre-tertiary class, I made identity formation a measurable goal, so I created a rubric on which I could assess or measure change, and it was quite interesting to see how that worked (quite well). I'd be happy to share that with you if you are interested.
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