Identity Exploration as a Tool to Enhance Academic Engagement and Growth

Abstract

Disenfranchised students often develop identity systems that are incompatible with their sense of academic competence and growth, undermining engagement with and persistence in secondary education. This chapter describes a classroom-based approach to enhancing literacy-related task engagement through students' identity exploration and development. The program was designed to address the unique needs of high school students from historically marginalized backgrounds but can be modified for other grade levels and populations. The program presented here guides practitioners and education specialists to integrate a sociocultural approach to identity negotiation within existing curricula. Beyond enhancing task engagement, identity work in classroom settings has the potential to build student agency and wellbeing and increase the likelihood that students will develop academic identities such as reader and writer.