Theorising Student Identity as Fragmented: some implications for feminist critical pedagogy

Abstract In this paper, I explore the narratives of a group of British adolescent comprehensive school students, attending particularly to diversity. I provide a critique of those poststructural analyses which understand the student as a composite of self‐contained homogeneous parts, offering instead an analysis of the self which is highly fractured, contradictory and shifting. This paper suggests that analyses of diversity must account for inner and outer diversity, and that inner diversity may account for student narratives which appear highly contradictory. It goes on to explore various solutions offered by educational researchers to diversity and to suggest that negotiation might supply the most fruitful alternative. Finally, I suggest some implications for an alternative feminist critical pedagogy which incorporates diversity of the self.