Chapter 3 : Identity as an Analytic Lens for Research in Education

In todays fast changing and interconnected global world, researchers in a variety of areas have come to see identity as an important analytic tool for understanding schools and society. A focus on the contextually specific ways in which people act out and recognize identities allows a more dynamic approach than the sometimes overly general and static trio of race, class, and gender. However, die term identítyhas taken on a great many different meanings in the literature. Rather than survey this large literature, I will sketch out but one approach that draws on one consistent strand of that literature. This is not to deny that other, equally useful approaches are possible, based on different selections from the literature. When any human being acts and interacts in a given context, others recognize that person as acting and interacting as a certain kind of person or even as several dif-ferent kinds at once (on the notion of kinds of people and the ways in which dif-ferent kinds appear and disappear in history, see Hacking, 1983, 1986, 1994, 1995, 1998). A person might be recognized as being a certain kind of radical feminist, homeless person, overly macho male, yuppie, street gang member, community activist, academic, kindergarten teacher, at risk student, and so on and so forth,