Dennis McInerney - Is identity a relevant construct for understanding and enhancing learning?

4th July 2018 - Brown Bag Seminar

Presentation Title:
The Many Faces of Identity: Is identity a relevant construct for understanding and enhancing learning?

Topic:
Identity is a central construct in psychology. Identity in its many guises, including social identity, religious identity, and political identity, is used to explain personal involvement in a whole range of behaviors.
This presentation puts the concept of identity under the microscope in order to examine whether such a construct is also useful in understanding students’ involvement in learning and how they construct their role as a learner or non-learner.
You will be challenged to consider the heuristic value of the construct of identity and its importance for understanding learning behavior.
In particular, you will be introduced to the idea that in order for ‘identity’ to be heuristic it must be considered multifarious and malleable, and ‘deconstructed’ into more observable and measurable self-constructs such as self-esteem, self-concept, and self-regulation.

This presentation will:
• Examine the philosophical nature of identity.
• Consider some everyday uses of the construct of identity, and the inherent complexity of referring to what is meant by ‘identity’.
• Discuss identity from a psychological perspective including a range of theoretical perspectives and follow this with a discussion of the many faces of identity and education.
• Consider the deconstruction of the construct of identity into more observable, measurable and malleable components that educators, parents, and significant others may work with to enhance the identity of children as learners.