Theorizing Identities in a “Just(ly)” Contested Terrain: Practice Theories of Identity amid Critical-Poststructural Debates on Curriculum and Achievement

In K–12 schools throughout the United States, policies intended to increase student achievement, such as those associated with No Child Left Behind, often propagate deficit notions about minoritized students and overlook the interdependence of students’ identities, academic achievement, and classroom contexts. The classroom is an evaluative school setting in which students construct and negotiate multiple identities that are shaped by their ascribed and/or assumed positions as learners and achievers. This article explores how an identities-in-practice theory can reframe pivotal critical and poststructural debates on achievement and curriculum by problematizing conceptions of students’ multiple identities in the interest of education for social justice. Conceptualizing identities as multiple, intersectional, and contextual, as well as mediated by mainstream academic discourses, allows educators to consider how raced, classed, abled, and gendered identities (among many others), shape and inform experiences of curriculum and achievement for minoritized students in U.S. schools.