Schools can play an important role in adolescents’ identity development.
To date, research on the
role of school in adolescents’ identity development is scattered across research fields that employ
different theoretical perspectives on identity. The aim of this literature review was to integrate
the findings on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development from different research
fields and to provide schools and teachers with insights into how adolescents’ identity
development can be supported. Using constant comparative analysis, 111 studies were analyzed.
We included articles on personal and social identity and on school-related identity dimensions.
Three groups of studies emerged. First, studies on how schools and
teachers unintentionally impact adolescents’ identity showed that, at school, messages may
unintentionally be communicated to adolescents concerning who they should or can be through
differentiation and selection, teaching strategies, teacher expectations, and peer norms. Second,
studies on how schools and teachers can intentionally support adolescents’ identity development
showed that different types of explorative learning experiences can be organized to support
adolescents’ identity development: experiences aimed at exploring new identity positions (in-
breadth exploration), further specifying already existing self-understandings (in-depth
exploration), and reflecting on self-understandings (reflective exploration). The third group
suggests that explorative learning experiences must be meaningful and situated in a supportive
classroom climate in order to foster adolescents’ identity development. Together, the existing
studies suggest that schools and teachers are often unaware of the many different ways in which
they may significantly impact adolescents’ identity development.
Introduction
Identity development is an important task in adolescence. Adolescents are supposed to be
concerned with developing educational and professional goals while shaping an image of who
they are and want to be. Previous research indicates that a relatively clear and stable identity
makes people more resilient, reflective, and autonomous in the pursuit of important life
decisions, while promoting a sense of competence (e.g., Flum and Kaplan 2006; Kroger et
al. 2010). However, it has been argued that developing a clear and stable identity has become
increasingly challenging due to processes of individualization, emancipation, and migration (e.g.,
Beck et al. 1994). School—a place where adolescents spend a lot of time—is an important
context where adolescents’ identity development can be supported: Here, teachers can help
adolescents to explore the identity implications of the new ideas, activities, or possibilities they
are introduced to at school (e.g., Coll and Falsafi 2010; Flum and Kaplan 2006; Kaplan and
Flum 2009; Kaplan and Flum 2012; Rich and Schachter 2012; Schachter and Galili-
Schachter 2012; Schachter and Rich 2011; Silseth and Arnseth 2011).
To date, the emerging body of literature on the role of school in adolescents’ identity
development is scattered across different academic disciplines (e.g., Schachter and Rich 2011).
Together, these studies cover a wide range of theoretical perspectives on identity development,
without there being a common research base. Scholars use the same terminology—identity—
while often relating to merely a small share of the studies performed on the role of school in
adolescents’ identity development and while being seemingly unaware of work performed by
scholars who adopt different theoretical perspectives and, consequently, research designs.
The scattered research field may cause research gaps and ways in which research from different
theoretical perspectives can complement each other to be overlooked. Additionally, it remains
difficult for scholars, schools, and teachers to determine what insights the literature on the role of
school in adolescents’ identity development does and does not yet provide, and, therefore, how
the development of adolescents’ identities can best be supported in school.
In this paper, we review the literature on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development
to answer the following research question: “What insights does the existing literature provide us
into the role of educational processes in adolescents’ personal, social, and school- and learning-
related identity development?.” We found literature on the influence of school experiences on
adolescents’ racial, cultural, ethnic, and gender identity too, and we acknowledge that education
plays an important role in the development of these identity dimensions. However, the articles on
the role of school in the development of these identity dimensions form an extensive research
field that would require a separate literature review (see, e.g., a review study on the racial
identity development of African-American adolescents by DeCuir-Gunby 2009). Therefore, we
decided to delimit our research scope to general identity dimensions (i.e., personal and social
identity) and more circumscribed identity dimensions that are education-related.
The aim of our literature review is threefold: to present an overview of what insights articles, in
which different perspectives on identity development are employed, provide us into the role of
school in adolescents’ identity development; to derive practical implications from the literature
to help schools and teachers support adolescents’ identity development; and to identify research
gaps while outlining future research directions to further examine the role of school in
adolescents’ identity development.
