Being “Loud”: Identities-in-Practice in a Figured World of Achievement

Abstract

Discourses of achievement often overlook the interdependence of classroom contexts, students’ identities, and academic performance. This narrative analysis explores how high-achieving students of color construct identities-in-practice in a diverse urban middle school. By documenting explicit moments in which students construct identities-in-practice such as being “loud,” which are positioned as incompatible with “being smart,” I argue that high-achieving lower income students of color are disproportionately regulated by achievement discourses that position White middle-class norms as neutral. This article documents tensions between what it takes to achieve academically and students’ raced, classed, and gendered identities in order to reframe educational equity based on a theoretical framing of identities and academic achievement as interrelated and highly contextual.