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Identity development in adolescence and adulthood.

Jane Kroger Jane Kroger Department of Psychology, University of Tromsoe
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.54
Published online: 27 February 2017

Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson was the first professional to describe and use the concept of ego identity in his writings on what constitutes healthy personality development for every individual over the course of the life span. Basic to Erikson’s view, as well as those of many later identity writers, is the understanding that identity enables one to move with purpose and direction in life, and with a sense of inner sameness and continuity over time and place. Erikson considered identity to be psychosocial in nature, formed by the intersection of individual biological and psychological capacities in combination with the opportunities and supports offered by one’s social context. Identity normally becomes a central issue of concern during adolescence, when decisions about future vocational, ideological, and relational issues need to be addressed; however, these key identity concerns often demand further reflection and revision during different phases of adult life as well. Identity, thus, is not something that one resolves once and for all at the end of adolescence, but rather identity may continue to evolve and change over the course of adult life too.

Following Erikson’s initial writings, subsequent theorists have laid different emphases on the role of the individual and the role of society in the identity formation process. One very popular elaboration of Erikson’s own writings on identity that retains a psychosocial focus is the identity status model of James Marcia. While Erikson had described one’s identity resolution as lying somewhere on a continuum between identity achievement and role confusion (and optimally located nearer the achievement end of the spectrum), Marcia defined four very different means by which one may approach identity-defining decisions: identity achievement (commitment following exploration), moratorium (exploration in process), foreclosure (commitment without exploration), and diffusion (no commitment with little or no exploration). These four approaches (or identity statuses) have, over many decades, been the focus of over 1,000 theoretical and research studies that have examined identity status antecedents, behavioral consequences, associated personality characteristics, patterns of interpersonal relations, and developmental forms of movement over time. A further field of study has focused on the implications for intervention that each identity status holds. Current research seeks both to refine the identity statuses and explore their dimensions further through narrative analysis.

identity status
identity formation
adolescence

Introduction

We know what we are, but not what we may be . Shakespeare, Hamlet

The question of what constitutes identity has been answered differently through different historical epochs and through different theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding identity’s form and functions. However, basic to all identity definitions is an attempt to understand the entity that, ideally, enables one to move with purpose and direction in life and with a sense of internal coherence and continuity over time and place. Despite the changing physique that aging inevitably brings and the changing environmental circumstances that one invariably encounters through life, a well-functioning identity enables one to experience feelings of personal meaning and well-being and to find satisfying and fulfilling engagements in one’s social context. The means by which one experiences a feeling of sameness in the midst of continual change is the focus of identity theory and research.

Historically, concerns with questions of identity are relatively recent. Baumeister and Muraven ( 1996 ) and Burkitt ( 2011 ) have noted how changes in Western society, specifically the degree to which society has dictated one’s adult roles, have varied enormously over time. Additional changes have occurred in the loosening of social guidelines, restrictions, and constraints, such that contemporary late adolescents experience almost unlimited freedom of choice in their assumption of adult roles and values. In Medieval times, adolescents and adults were prescribed an identity by society in a very direct manner. Social rank and the kinship networks into which one was born set one’s adult roles for life. In early modern times, wealth rather than kinship networks became the standard for self-definition. In the first half of the twentieth century , apprenticeship systems that prepared adolescents for one specific line of work were giving way to more liberal forms of education, thus preparing adolescents for a broad range of occupational pathways. A more liberal educational system, however, eventually required occupational choice in line with one’s own interests and capacities. In addition, many regions in the United States became more tolerant of diversity in attitudes and values, and gender roles became more fluid. Thus, by the middle of the twentieth century in the United States and many other Western nations, the burden of creating an adult identity was now falling largely on the shoulders of late adolescents themselves.

Into this twentieth century United States context came Erik Erikson, a German immigrant (escaping Hitler’s rise to power) and psychoanalyst, trained by Anna Freud. Erikson began his clinical work and writings on optimal personality development in the Boston area, focusing, in particular, on the concept of identity and identity crisis . As an immigrant, Erikson was acutely attuned to the role of the social context and its influence on individual personality development, and, as a psychoanalyst, he was also adept at understanding the roles of conscious as well as unconscious motivations, desires, and intentions, as well as biological drives on individual behavior.

Erikson ( 1963 ) first used the term “ego identity” to describe a central disturbance among some of his veteran patients returning from World War II with a diagnosis of “shell shock” (or currently, post-traumatic stress disorder), who seemed to be experiencing a loss of self-sameness and continuity in their lives:

What impressed me most was the loss in these men of a sense of identity. They knew who they were; they had a personal identity. But it was as if subjectively, their lives no longer hung together—and never would again. There was a central disturbance in what I then started to call ego identity. (Erikson, 1963 , p. 42)

Through identity’s absence in the lives of these young men, Erikson came to understand the tripartite nature of identity, that he believed to be comprised of biological, psychological, and social factors. It was often a particular moment in a soldier’s life history where soma, psyche, and society conspired to endanger identity foundations that necessitated clinical care. And, thus, it was through disruptions to individual identity that Erikson more clearly came to understand identity’s form and functions.

Erikson has often been referred to as “identity’s architect” (e.g., Friedman, 1999 ), and his initial writings on identity served as the springboard for many later theorists and researchers to examine further identity’s many dimensions. Erikson’s psychosocial approach will thus serve as the organizing framework for a review of research on identity development during adolescent and adult life.

Erikson’s Psychosocial Orientation

Erikson’s ( 1963 , 1968 ) understanding of identity views the phenomenon as a result of the mutual interaction of individual and context; while individual interests and capacities, wishes and desires draw individuals to particular contexts, those contexts, in turn, provide recognition (or not) of individual identity and are critical to its further development. Erikson stressed the important interactions among the biological, psychological, and social forces for optimal personality development. He suggested a series of eight psychosocial tasks over the course of the life span that follow an epigenetic principle, such that resolution to one task sets the foundation for all that follow. Identity vs. Role Confusion is the fifth psychosocial task that Erikson identified, becoming of primary importance during adolescence. Resolution to preceding tasks of Trust vs. Mistrust, Autonomy vs. Doubt and Shame, Initiative vs. Guilt, Industry vs. Inferiority are the foundations upon which one’s resolution to Identity vs. Role Confusion is based, according to Erikson; resolution to subsequent adult tasks of Intimacy vs. Role Confusion, Generativity vs. Stagnation, and Integrity vs. Despair all similarly depend upon resolution to the Identity vs. Role Confusion task of adolescence.

Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) postulated a number of key identity concepts that have served as foundations for much subsequent identity research. For Erikson, identity formation involves finding a meaningful identity direction on a continuum between identity attainment and role confusion . The process of identity formation requires identity exploration and commitment , the synthesis of childhood identifications into a new configuration, related to but different from, the sum of its parts. The identity formation process is extremely arduous for some, and the resolutions of a negative identity or identity foreclosure are two means by which the identity formation process can be bypassed. A negative identity involves identity choices based on roles and values that represent polar opposites of those espoused by one’s family and/or immediate community. Thus, the daughter of a Midwestern minister of religion runs away to become a prostitute in inner city Chicago. A foreclosed identity resolution also avoids the identity formation process by basing identity-defining choices on key identifications, mostly with parental values, without exploring potential alternatives.

Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) also proposed several further concepts for optimal identity development. A moratorium process, the active consideration and exploration of future possible identity-defining adult roles and values, was considered vital to optimal identity development. Erikson also became well known for his use of the term identity crisis , an acute period of questioning one’s own identity directions. And finally, Erikson stressed that while an initial resolution to the Identity vs. Role Confusion task often occurs during adolescence, identity is never resolved once and for all, but rather remains open to modifications and alterations throughout adult life. The strength of Erikson’s approach lies in its consideration of both individual and sociocultural factors and their mutual interaction in identity construction and development. Erikson’s model of identity development has wide applicability across cultural contexts and highlights the ongoing nature of identity development throughout adulthood. Weaknesses include his imprecise language, which at times makes operationalization of key concepts difficult, and his historically dated concepts regarding women’s identity development.

While other psychosocial models have evolved from Erikson’s original writings (e.g., Whitbourne’s [ 2002 ] identity processing theory, Berzonsky’s [ 2011 ] social cognitive identity styles, McAdams’s [ 2008 ] narrative approach), it is Erikson’s identity formation concepts, particularly those operationalized by Marcia ( 1966 ) (Marcia, Waterman, Matteson, Archer, & Orlofsky, 1993 ) that have generated an enormous volume of empirical research over past decades and will be the primary focus of subsequent sections of this article.

Erikson’s Psychosocial Approach and Marcia’s Identity Status Model

As a young Ph.D. student in clinical psychology, James Marcia was interested in Erikson’s writings but suspected that the process of identity formation during late adolescence to be somewhat more complicated than what Erikson ( 1963 ) had originally proposed. While Erikson had conceptualized an identity resolution as lying on a continuum between identity and role confusion, an entity that one had “more or less of,” Marcia proposed that there were four qualitatively different pathways by which late adolescents or young adults went about the process of forming an identity. Based on the presence or absence of exploration and commitment around several issues important to identity development during late adolescence, Marcia ( 1966 ; Marcia et al., 1993 ) developed a semi-structured Identity Status Interview to identify four identity pathways, or identity statuses, among late adolescent or young adult interviewees.

An individual in the identity achieved status had explored various identity-defining possibilities and had made commitments on his or her own terms, trying to match personal interests, talents, and values with those available in the environmental context. Equally committed to an identity direction was the foreclosed individual, who had formed an identity, but without undergoing an exploration process. This person’s identity had been acquired primarily through the process of identification—by assuming the identity choices of significant others without serious personal consideration of alternative possibilities. An individual in the moratorium identity status was very much in the process of identity exploration, seeking meaningful life directions but not yet making firm commitments and often experiencing considerable discomfort in the process. Someone in the diffusion identity status had similarly not made identity-defining commitments and was not attempting to do so.

Marcia et al.’s ( 1993 ) Identity Status Interview was designed to tap the areas (or domains) of occupation, political, religious, and sexual values that had been described by Erikson as key to the identity formation process. In Marcia’s view, however, the nature of the identity domain was not as critical to the assessment of identity status as was finding the identity-defining issues most salient to any given individual. Marcia suggested the use of clinical judgment in assigning a global identity status, the mode that seemed to best capture an adolescent’s identity formation process. It must be noted that Marcia and his colleagues (Marcia et al., 1993 ) have never attempted to capture all of the rich dimensions of identity outlined by Erikson through the Identity Status Interview; such a task would be unwieldy, if not impossible. Marcia does, however, build on Erikson’s concepts of identity exploration and comment to elaborate these identity dimensions in relation to those psychosocial roles and values identified by Erikson as key to the identity formation process of many late adolescents.

Subsequent to the original Identity Status Interview, several paper-and-pencil measures were developed to assess Marcia’s four identity statuses. One widely used measure has been the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (EOM-EIS II), devised and revised through several versions by Adams and his colleagues (Adams, Bennion, & Huh, 1989 ; Adams & Ethier, 1999 ). This questionnaire measure enables identity status assessments in four ideological (occupation, religion, politics, philosophy of life) and four interpersonal domains (friendships, dating, gender roles, recreation/leisure), as well as providing a global rating.

Different dimensions of identity exploration and commitment processes have also been identified through several recent and expanded identity status models (Luyckx, Goossens, Soenens, & Beyers, 2006 ; Crocetti, Rubini, & Meeus, 2008 ). Luyckx and his colleagues differentiated two types of exploration (exploration in breadth and exploration in depth) and two types of commitment (commitment making and identification with commitment). Exploration in breadth is that moratorium process identified by Marcia, while exploration in depth describes the process of considering a commitment already made and how well it expresses one’s own identity. Commitment making refers to deciding an identity-defining direction, while identification with commitment describes the process of integrating one’s commitments into an internal sense of identity. Later, Luyckx and his colleagues (Luyckx, Schwartz, Berzonsky, Soenens, Vansteenkiste, Smits, et al., 2008 ) also identified a process of ruminative exploration.

Meeus and his colleagues (e.g., Crocetti, Rubini, & Meeus, 2008 ) also identified three identity processes: commitment, exploration in depth, and reconsideration of commitments. Commitment here refers to the dimensions of commitment making and identification with commitment in the Luyckx, Goossens, Soenens, and Beyers ( 2006 ) model; exploration in depth corresponds to that dimension in the Luyckx model. Reconsideration of commitment refers to one’s willingness to replace current commitments with new ones. In this model, commitment and reconsideration reflect identity certainty and uncertainty, respectively, in the identity formation process.

Through cluster analysis, these two groups of researchers have extracted clusters that match all of Marcia’s original identity statuses. In addition, Luyckx and his colleagues (Luyckx, Goossens, Soenens, Beyers, & Vansteenkiste, 2005 ) identified two types of diffusion—troubled and carefree—while Meeus, van de Schoot, Keijsers, Schwartz, and Branje ( 2010 ) found two types of moratoriums—classical (where the individual exhibits anxiety and depression in the identity exploration process) and searching (where new commitments are considered without discarding present commitments). Work has now begun to explore the identity formation process during adolescence and young adulthood with these refined identity statuses, which hold interesting implications for understanding both adaptive and non-adaptive identity development.

Over the time since Marcia’s initial studies, the identity statuses have been examined in relation to personality and behavioral correlates, relationship styles, and developmental patterns of change over time. Most of the studies reviewed in subsequent sections address some aspect of identity development during adolescence or young adulthood; a later section will focus on identity development research during adulthood. It must be further noted that discussion of identity statuses here will be limited to general (or global) identity and its relationship to associated variables.

Personality and Behavioral Correlates of the Identity Statuses

Work utilizing Marcia’s original identity status model, as well as its more recent refinements, have focused on personality and behavioral variables associated with each identity status in order to help validate the model; such studies have produced some reasonably consistent results over time. In terms of personality variables associated with the identity statuses, Kroger and her colleagues (e.g., Martinussen & Kroger, 2013 ) have produced a series of findings utilizing techniques of meta-analysis. Meta-analysis is a “study of studies,” using statistical procedures to examine (sometimes contradictory) results from different individual studies addressing comparable themes over time. Results from such meta-analytic studies allow greater confidence in results than a narrative review of individual studies can provide. The personality variables of self-esteem, anxiety, locus of control, authoritarianism, moral reasoning, and ego development and their relations to identity status have attracted sufficient studies for meta-analyses to be undertaken and are described in the sections that follow. While a number of other personality variables have also been examined in identity status studies over the past decades, their numbers have been insufficient to enable meta-analytic studies.

An initial database for all studies included in the meta-analytic work described in the following sections was comprised of some 565 English-language studies (287 journal publications and 278 doctoral dissertations) identified from PsycInfo, ERIC, Sociological Abstracts, and Dissertation Abstracts International databases, using the following search terms: identity and Marcia, identity and Marcia’s, and ego identity. Cohen’s ( 1988 ) criteria were used to define small, medium, and large effect sizes. In some of the meta-analyses that follow, different methods were used to assess identity status (categorical ratings of identity status and scale measures of identity status). Separate meta-analyses had to be undertaken for studies utilizing each of these two types of identity status assessments for statistical reasons.

Self-Esteem

Ryeng, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013a ) undertook meta-analytic studies of the relationship between identity status and global self-esteem. A total of twelve studies with 1,124 participants provided the data for these studies. The achieved identity status was the only status to have a positive correlation with self-esteem ( r = .35), considered to be moderate in effect size. Mean correlations between self-esteem and the moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion statuses were all negative (−.23, −.23, and −.20, respectively) and considered small to moderate in effect size. All of these correlations were significantly different from zero, based on their confidence intervals. When identity status was assessed categorically, there was no difference in effect size between achievements and foreclosures on self-esteem measures. The effect size for the foreclosure-diffusion comparison ( g̅ = −0.19) was small to medium and also significant. Remaining comparisons evidenced small effect size differences in self-esteem scores. Findings here were mixed, as previous research had also produced mixed results on the question of whether foreclosure self-esteem scores would be lower than or similar to those of the identity achieved. Here, results show that only the achieved status (when the identity statuses were measured by continuous scales) produced a moderately positive correlation with self-esteem, while there was no difference in effect sizes between the achieved and foreclosed identity status when studies assessing identity status categorically were analyzed. Thus, the relationship between identity status and self-esteem may depend upon how identity status is measured.

Lillevoll, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013a ) examined the relationship between identity status and generalized anxiety through meta-analysis. Twelve studies involving 2,104 participants provided data for this investigation. Effect size differences in anxiety scores for moratoriums compared with foreclosures ( g̅ = 0.39) and for the foreclosure–diffusion comparison ( g̅ = −0.40) were small to moderate. Additionally the confidence intervals for both of these effect sizes did not contain zero, indicating a significant result. A significant moderate effect size ( g̅ = 0.46) was also found in the achievement–foreclosure comparison, but for men only. As predicted, foreclosures had lower anxiety scores compared with all other identity statuses except the achievement women. While it was predicted that those in the achievement identity status would have lower anxiety scores than those in moratorium and diffusion statuses, a small but significant effect size difference was found for the achievement–moratorium comparison only ( g̅ = −0.22). Thus, the moratoriums showed higher generalized anxiety scores than foreclosures, who, in turn, showed lower anxiety scores than the diffusions and male achievements. It appears that unexamined identity commitments undertaken by the foreclosures provided relief from the anxieties and uncertainties of uncommitted identity directions experienced by the moratoriums and diffusions.

Locus of Control

Lillevoll, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013b ) examined the relationship between identity status and locus of control. Some five studies with a total of 711 participants provided data for this study. A positive correlation between identity achievement and internal locus of control ( r = .26) and a negative correlation between identity achievement and external locus of control ( r = −.17) was found; these effect sizes are considered small to medium. The moratorium identity status was negatively correlated with internal locus of control ( r = −.17) and positively with an external locus of control ( r = .17), both considered small to medium effect sizes. The foreclosure status was negatively correlated the internal locus of control ( r = −.12) and positively with external locus of control ( r = .19), both considered small to medium effect sizes. The diffusions’ status was negatively correlated with internal locus of control ( r = −.15) and positively with external locus of control ( r = .23), both considered small to medium effect sizes. Apart from the moratorium findings, which were anticipated to reflect an internal locus of control, all other results were in expected directions. It appears that the ability to undertake identity explorations on one’s own terms by the identity achieved is associated with an internal locus of control. Moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion statuses are associated with an external locus of control.

Authoritarianism

The relationship between identity status and authoritarianism was investigated by Ryeng, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013b ) through meta-analysis. Some nine studies involving 861 participants provided data for this study. The mean difference between authoritarianism scores for the achievement—foreclosure comparison ( g̅ = −0.79) was large in terms of Cohen’s criteria and significant. The mean difference in authoritarianism scores for the moratorium–foreclosure comparison ( g̅ = −0.67) was medium and significant, while the mean difference in authoritarianism scores for the foreclosure and diffusion identity statuses was medium ( g̅ = 0.42) and significant. Other comparisons were relatively small and not significant. That the foreclosures scored higher on authoritarianism than all other identity statuses is consistent with expectations. Foreclosures often base their identity commitments on their identifications with significant others, rather than exploring identity options on their own terms; thus, the rigidity and intolerance of authoritarian attitudes seem to characterize the terms of their identity commitments, in contrast to the more flexible commitments of the identity achieved or moratoriums in the process of finding their own identity directions.

Ego Development

Jespersen, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013a ) examined studies utilizing Loevinger’s ( 1976 ) measure of ego development in relation to the identity statuses through meta-analysis. Eleven studies involving 943 participants provided data for this investigation. Odds ratios (OR) were used to examine frequency distributions of the categorical data. Results of correlational studies showed a moderate, positive relationship between ego development and identity status ( r = .35), which was significant. Results from categorical assessments of identity status also showed a strong relationship between identity status and ego development (mean OR = 3.02). This finding means that the odds of being in a postconformist level of ego development were three times greater for those high in identity statuses (achievement and moratorium) compared with those in the low identity statuses (foreclosure and diffusion). The study also found a moderate relationship between identity achievement and ego development (mean OR = 2.15), meaning that the odds of being in a postconformist level of ego development were over two times greater for those in the identity achievement status than remaining identity statuses. However, no relationship was found between the foreclosed/nonforeclosed identity statuses and the conformist/nonconformist levels of ego development, contrary to prediction (mean OR = 1.31). While results indicate a strong likelihood of being in a post-conformist level of ego development for the identity achieved and moratoriums, as one would predict, it is somewhat surprising that the foreclosure status was not associated with conventional levels of ego development. This lack of association requires further investigation.

Moral Reasoning

A meta-analysis of moral reasoning stages (using Kohlberg’s [ 1976 ] stages in relation to the identity statuses) was also undertaken by Jespersen, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013b ). Some ten studies involving 884 participants provided data appropriate for this study. Results showed a small positive mean correlation (.15) between identity status and moral reasoning development, which was significant. Results from categorical assessments of both measures indicated a strong relationship between high identity status (achievement and moratorium) and postconventional levels of moral reasoning (mean OR = 4.57). This result means that the odds of being in the postconventional level of moral reasoning are about four and a half times greater for the high identity status group (achievement and moratorium) than the low (foreclosure and diffusion) group. A strong relationship was also found between the achieved identity status and the postconventional level of moral reasoning (mean OR = 8.85), meaning that the odds of being in a postconventional level of moral reasoning were almost nine times greater for the identity achieved than for other identity statuses. However, no significant relationship appeared for the foreclosed/nonforeclosed identity statuses and the conventional/nonconventional levels of moral reasoning, contrary to prediction. While a meaningful relationship was found between postconventional stages of moral reasoning and the moratorium and achievement identity statuses, it is again surprising that no relationship appeared for the foreclosed identity status and conventional levels of moral reasoning. This finding warrants further investigation.

Additional Personality and Behavioral Variables

A number of additional personality and behavioral variables have been explored in relation to the identity statuses, but no further meta-analyses have yet been undertaken. With regard to the newer, more refined measures of identity status, some additional personality and behavioral associations have been noted. Luyckx et al. ( 2008 ) found ruminative exploration related to identity distress and low self-esteem, while exploration in breadth and depth were positively related to self-reflection. Furthermore, commitment-making (particularly identification with commitment) was associated with high self-esteem, high academic and social adjustment, as well as with low depressive symptoms. Crocetti et al. ( 2008 ) similarly found strong, positive associations between commitment and self-concept clarity, in addition to strong negative associations between in-depth exploration and reconsideration of commitment with self-reflection. Emotional stability was strongly associated with commitment and negatively with in-depth exploration.

Recent work has performed cluster analyses on the exploration and commitment variables, finding four clusters replicating Marcia’s four identity statuses (with the diffusion status including carefree and diffuse diffusions) and an undifferentiated status (Schwartz et al., 2011 ). In terms of psychosocial functioning, achievements were significantly higher than carefree diffusions on a measure of self-esteem; diffusions, in turn, were significantly lower than all other identity statuses on this variable. On a measure of internal locus of control, achievements and moratoriums were significantly higher and carefree diffusions significantly lower than all other identity statuses. On psychological well-being, identity achievements scored significantly higher and carefree diffusions significantly lower than all other identity status groups. For general anxiety, moratoriums and the two diffusion groups scored significantly higher than achievement and foreclosure groups, while the moratoriums scored significantly higher than foreclosures and the two diffusions groups on depression. These findings are generally in line with findings of earlier studies using Marcia’s original model.

Further behavioral studies in relation to the identity statuses have consistently found the identity diffusion status to be related to psychosocial problem behaviors. Delinquent behavior (e.g., Jessor, Turbin, Costa, Dong, Zhang, & Wang, 2003 ; Schwartz, Pantin, Prado, Sullivan, & Szapocznik, 2005 ), substance abuse (e.g., Jones & Hartmann, 1988 ; Laghi, Baiocco, Longiro, & Baumgartner, 2013 ), risky behaviors (e.g., unsafe sex, Hernandez & DiClemente, 1992 ), social, physical aggression, and rule-breaking (carefree diffusions, Schwartz et al., 2011 ), and procrastination (Shanahan & Pychyl, 2006 ) have all been linked with the identity diffusion status. By contrast, the identity achieved have demonstrated a low prevalence of all preceding problem behaviors, coupled with high levels of agency or self-direction and commitment making (e.g., Schwartz et al., 2011 ; Shanahan & Pychyl, 2006 ). Moratoriums have also scored relatively high on levels of social and physical aggression, although they have also scored high on a number of psychosocial measures of well-being (e.g., Schwartz et al., 2011 ).

Relationships and the Identity Statuses

While a number of relational issues have been explored in identity status research (e.g., parental attitudes toward childrearing, family styles of communication, and friendship styles), to date, meta-analyses have been undertaken to examine identity status only in relation to attachment patterns and intimacy or romantic relationships.

Bartholomew and Horowitz ( 1991 ) have proposed that one’s very unique attachment history and subsequent working models of attachment lead to one of four different adolescent/adult attachment styles, or patterns of relating to significant others; these attachment styles become activated particularly in times of stress. S ecurely attached individuals are at ease in becoming close to others and do not worry about being abandoned or having someone become too close to them. Furthermore, they are interdependent—comfortable depending on others and having others depend on them. Those using the avoidant attachment style find it difficult to trust and depend on others and are uncomfortable in becoming too emotionally close. The preoccupied (anxious/ambivalent) attachment group wants to be close to others but worries that others will not reciprocate and will abandon them, while the fearful attachment group wants to be emotionally close to others but are too frightened of being hurt to realize this desire.

These varied styles of attachment have been examined in relation to Marcia’s identity statuses among adolescents and young adults in a number of studies over the past decades, and recent meta-analytic work has explored patterns of findings across studies (Årseth, Kroger, Martinussen, & Marcia, 2009 ). From the large database of 565 identity status studies described earlier, some 14 had data suitable for meta-analysis (a full description of the database can be found in Martinussen & Kroger, 2013 ). A total of 2,329 participants were involved in this investigation. Weak to moderate correlations were found between identity status and attachment style when scale measures were used to assess each variable; the highest mean correlations were between the secure attachment style and identity achievement ( r = .21) as well as identity diffusion ( r = −.23). (Cohen, 1988 , regarded a correlation of .30 as moderate and .10 as weak.) The diffusion status was also weakly to moderately positively correlated with the fearful attachment style ( r = .19). Among categorical assessments of identity status and attachment style, results suggest there are real differences between the identity achieved and foreclosed as well as diffusion identity statuses, with the identity achieved far more likely to be securely attached than foreclosed or diffusion statuses. Data from these studies suggests that one’s relational experiences do have some links to one’s identity status.

According to Erikson’s ( 1963 , 1968 ) epigenetic principle, resolution to the task of Identity vs. Intimacy should set the foundation for resolution to the task of Intimacy vs. Isolation during late adolescence and young adulthood. In Erikson’s ( 1968 ) view, true intimacy involves mutuality and commitment, an acceptance of another with all of his or her strengths and weaknesses in an interdependent, sexual relationship. Erikson ( 1968 ) believed that genuine intimacy requires a sense of identity to be firmly in place, or the relationship becomes merely a tool to help resolve identity concerns for each partner. However, Erikson was unclear about the potential for gender differences in his theory, and a number of feminist writers (e.g., Gilligan, 1982 ) have stressed the importance of relationship issues for women to the identity formation process. Literature examining the relationship between identity and intimacy statuses for late adolescent and young adult men and women has often produced conflicting results.

Thus, a meta-analysis of the relationship between identity status and intimacy for men and women was undertaken by Årseth, Kroger, Martinussen, and Marcia ( 2009 ). Some 21 studies with a total of 1,983 participants were included in meta-analyses here. For studies utilizing scale measures of intimacy, results indicated a low to moderate effect size for men ( g̅ = .35) and women ( g̅ = .30) considered separately, as well as for the total group ( g̅ = .40). All results were significant and indicate that high identity status individuals (achievement and moratorium) scored higher on scale measures of intimacy than low identity status individuals (foreclosures and diffusions). For categorical assessments of identity and intimacy, the picture was somewhat more complex. Among men, the mean odds ratio of having both a high identity and high intimacy status was very high at 22.09, while for women the mean odds ratio was 2.61. In terms of percentages, some 69% of high identity status men were also high in intimacy, while only 23% of low identity status men were high in intimacy. Erikson’s epigenetic principle thus finds strong support among men. Among women, while 65% of high identity status women were also high in intimacy status, some 46% of low identity status women were also high in intimacy status. Thus, the low identity status women were almost equally distributed over high and low intimacy status groups. These results indicate Erikson’s epigenetic principle also was present for a large proportion of women sampled; however, the relationship was significantly stronger for men than women (p < .001), and reasons for this gender difference require further investigation.

Identity Status Change from Adolescence Through Adulthood

Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) had proposed that while making initial identity resolutions was a key developmental task of adolescence, identity remained malleable, open to further changes throughout adult life. Similarly, the identity status literature that has pointed to different patterns of movement during young, middle, and late adolescence clearly shows that identity will continue to meet challenges and, for some, the need for revision throughout adulthood. What are the most prevalent patterns of identity status change over the course of adolescent and adult life, and what are the key events primarily associated with these changes?

A number of studies addressing identity status changes over time have now been undertaken, and a series of meta-analytic investigations are perhaps the most effective means of summarizing common patterns of movement and stability in the identity status literature. Kroger, Martinussen, and Marcia ( 2010 ) investigated some 72 of 124 identity studies that contained developmental information from the larger database of 565 English-language identity status studies described earlier. Movement patterns were investigated in several ways.

When movements over approximately three years of late adolescence and young adulthood were examined longitudinally from data that assessed identity status in categorical terms, the mean proportion of adolescents making progressive identity status changes (D–F, D–M, D–A, F–M, F–A, and M–A) was .36, compared with .15 who made regressive changes (A–M, A–F, A–D, M–F, M–D, and F–D) and .49 who remained stable (A–A, M–M, F–F, D–D) over this time period. It is interesting that the mean proportion of those remaining stable in identity status was so high, especially during the time of late adolescence that Erikson ( 1968 ) has identified as central to the identity formation process. As anticipated, the highest mean proportions of progressive movements were from M–A (.46), F–A (.22), and F–M (.22). The highest mean proportions of those remaining stable were the committed identity achieved (.66) and the foreclosed (.53) statuses. The highest mean proportions of those making regressive movements were from A–F (.17) and M–F (.17).

For cross-sectional studies assessing identity status in categorical terms, the mean proportion of identity achievements increased steadily through the high school years, dropped upon university entry and increased to .34 by age 22 years. It was not until the 30–36 year age group that about half of the participants were rated identity achieved (.47). The mean proportion of moratoriums rose fairly steadily to age 19 years, which peaked at .42 and declined fairly steadily thereafter through the 30–36 year age span. The mean proportion of foreclosures dropped fairly steadily to a low at age 19 years of .12, but then showed and up and down movement throughout remaining ages to .17 in the 30–36 year age group. The mean proportion of diffusions declined fairly steadily from age 14–20 years of age (from .36 to .21), but by age 21 years, the diffusions rose again to .26 and showed up and down movement until the final 30–36 year age span (.14).

For cross-sectional studies using continuous measures of identity status, it was anticipated that achievement and moratorium scores would increase across age groups and foreclosure and diffusion scores would decrease over time. Studies here were based on data for early and mid-adolescents. The anticipated patterns were found, but all effect sizes were small. It may be that more pronounced identity status changes occur during and beyond late adolescence.

Additional studies of identity status change through middle and later adulthood years not included in meta-analyses have also generally found slow, progressive identity status movements over time. Fadjukoff, Pulkkinen, and Kokko ( 2016 ) analyzed identity status longitudinally in a Finnish sample of men and women drawn from the general population. Identity status was assessed at ages 27, 36, 42, and 50 years. Movement towards identity achievement was predominant on the overall measure of identity status, with women typically reaching identity achievement earlier than men. In a narrative analysis of identity pathways among women assessed from late adolescence through mid-life, Josselson ( 1996 ) found a diversity of identity pathways, with achievement and foreclosure pathways tending to be the most stable over time. Carlsson, Wängqvist, and Frisén ( 2015 ) have also examined identity status change and stability in a longitudinal study of young adults at ages 25 and 29 years in Sweden. Half of participants were coded in the same identity status at Times 1 and 2, while half who changed did so in a progressive direction. Additional identity processes of how people approach life-changing situations, the extent to which they continue to engage in meaning-making, and how they continue to develop their personal life directions were explored through narrative methods among foreclosed and achieved participants. Identity achievement was associated with continued identity development over time, while patterns for ongoing development among foreclosures were more mixed. McLean and Pasupathi ( 2012 ) have made a plea for the use of narrative methods that examine reconstructions of past events to supplement current understandings of the exploration and commitment processes involved on ongoing identity development throughout the life span. Additional identity processes may usefully be identified through such means.

Events Associated with Identity Status Change

An issue that researchers have been exploring over several decades is the question of what kinds of circumstances are associated with identity status change and, conversely, what circumstances are linked with identity status stability. Some hints have appeared in related literatures. For example, Helson and Roberts ( 1994 ) found that some optimal level of “accommodative challenge” or life stimulation is critical for adult ego development (referring to Loevinger’s, 1976 , model of ego development). Accommodative challenge is a circumstance or event that involves either a positive or negative disruption to one’s life. It may be that such life challenges are important to ongoing identity development over time as well.

Anthis and colleagues (Anthis, 2002 , 2011 ; Anthis & La Voie, 2006 ) have conducted several investigations into life events associated with identity exploration and commitment. In her “calamity theory of growth” model, Anthis ( 2002 ) has found stressful life events, such as divorce or job loss, to be associated with increased levels of identity exploration and decreases in identity commitments. She has also found increased levels of identity exploration to be associated with a “readiness for change” measure (Anthis & La Voie, 2006 ). Anthis suggests investigating how optimal levels of perceived conflict interact with other factors for different cohorts of people in exploring the role that life events may play in ongoing identity development during adulthood.

Additionally, Kunnen ( 2006 , 2010 ) asks if conflict may be the driver of identity change. In a study of freshman university students, she found that students who experienced a conflict in their career goals increased identity exploratory activity and also manifested a decrease in the strength of their present commitments. Furthermore, those experiencing conflict perceived more change in their commitments as compared to nonconflicted students. The types and levels of perceived identity conflict and the mechanisms by which conflict may stimulate or impair ongoing identity development are in need of further study. Lilgendahl’s ( 2015 ) narrative work reiterates the value of negative events and their potential for psychological growth during midlife, while events that are understood as positive are key to the formation of identity commitments during young adulthood.

Identity Development in Adulthood

Research into ongoing identity development during adulthood has taken several forms. Some researchers have attempted to understand the relationship between resolution to identity issues during late adolescence or young adulthood and the Eriksonian psychosocial tasks of adulthood: Intimacy vs. Isolation (young adulthood), Generativity vs. Stagnation (middle adulthood), and Integrity vs. Despair (late adulthood). Others have attempted to examine selected issues of identity during these specific adult life phases and whether or not identity cohesion and stability increase with age over the course of adulthood. The following brief overview presents some selected findings from these strands of identity research during various phases of adult life.

According to Erikson’s ( 1963 , 1968 ) epigenetic principle, resolutions to earlier psychosocial tasks will impact resolutions to all subsequent ones. Research to date has generally supported this proposal, with some caveats for the relationship between identity and intimacy, described in meta-analytic studies in a preceding section. The relationships among identity, generativity, and integrity have only recently become a focus of research attention, and they present important opportunities for future investigations. Beaumont and Pratt ( 2011 ) have examined links among Berzonsky’s ( 2011 ) identity styles, Intimacy vs. Isolation, and Generativity vs. Stagnation in samples of young and midlife adults. They found that the informational style (associated with identity achievement) was linked with both the capacity for intimacy and generativity, while the diffuse–avoidant style (associated with identity diffusion) was negatively linked with both intimacy and generativity. The normative identity style (associated with the foreclosure identity status) also positively predicted resolution to intimacy and generativity tasks of adulthood. Pulkkinen, Lyyra, Fadjukoff, and Kokko ( 2012 ) obtained longitudinal data from Finnish adults at ages 27, 36, 42, and 50 years on measures including parental identity, general identity, generativity, and integrity. Generativity scores (as well as scores for psychological and social well-being) were highest if parental identity was achieved by age 42. On a cross-sectional basis, Hearn, Saulnier, Strayer, Glenham, Koopman, and Marcia ( 2012 ) examined the relationship between identity status and a measure of integrity status. A significant relationship was found, with some 86% of integrated persons rated as identity achieved, while no despairing persons were. Those in the non-exploring integrity status (in which questions of personal life meanings were unexplored), the pseudo-integrated integrity status (in which the world was understood in terms of simplistic templates or clichéd meanings), and the despairing integrity status were most frequently in the foreclosed identity status. Hannah, Domino, Figueredo, and Hendrickson ( 1996 ) explored predictors of Integrity vs. Despair in a sample of later life adults, finding the most predictive and parsimonious variables to be trust, autonomy, identity, and intimacy, with no meaningful gender differences. Thus, Erikson’s epigenetic principle has found considerable support over time and illustrates the important role that identity resolution plays to the resolution of subsequent psychosocial tasks during adulthood.

While Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) had postulated the ongoing nature of identity development throughout adulthood, and Stephen, Fraser, and Marcia ( 1992 ) had first proposed the likelihood of ongoing moratorium–achievement–moratorium–achievement cycles in adult identity development, there have been relatively few efforts to examine the nature of change and continuity in identity development over the course of adulthood. While some early research has estimated the likelihood of a midlife identity crisis to be about 10% (e.g., Brim, 1992 ), recent work has pointed to ongoing times of identity crisis (or revision) during the later adult years as well (Robinson & Stell, 2015 ). Experiences of well-being have been examined in relation to adult psychosocial stage resolutions in the Rochester Adult Longitudinal Study (Sneed, Whitbourne, Schwartz, & Huang, 2011 ), where scores on both identity and intimacy measures in early and middle adulthood predicted midlife feelings of satisfaction and well-being. A sense of coherence and life satisfaction in later adult years has been fully mediated by resolution to Integrity vs. Despair (Dezutter, Wiesmann, Apers, & Luyckx, 2013 ). Much remains to be learned about ongoing identity development in the adulthood years, and the relation of identity to subsequent psychosocial tasks and additional personality variables.

What the Identity Statuses Mean

Through the decades since Marcia ( 1966 ) developed his identity status model, there has been considerable discussion in the literature about what the identity statuses actually mean and how best to assess them. Marcia ( 1980 ) considers identity to be a structure for organizing individual conscious and unconscious wishes, interests, skills, and talents within the framework of one’s biology and cultural context. His identity status model was intended to reflect the movement through Erikson’s ( 1963 , 1968 ) identity formation process, from an identity based on identifications (foreclosure status), through an exploration (moratorium) process, to a new configuration, based on but different from the sum of its identificatory elements (achievement).

In considering the question of what it is that actually changes in an identity status transition, Kroger ( 2003 ) has suggested that qualitatively different forms of ego organization underlie each of Marcia’s identity statuses. However, after an initial identity has formed, further use of the identity status model during adult life begs the question of what the identity statuses actually mean when applied to adults. While new identity-defining decisions may occur in adult life, is there an actual underlying structural change of identity? There may or may not be. There may actually be new or additional structures of ego organization that underlie the identity achievement status of adulthood, and future research could fruitfully explore this issue. Lile ( 2013 , 2015 ) considers structural identity boundaries for each of the identity statuses and offers some empirical support for a structural model of identity that underlies the identity statuses. Identity status research in adulthood should carefully consider the meaning that the identity statuses may hold when applied to a life phase beyond that for which they were originally developed.

Conclusions

Historically, the task of identity formation is a relatively recent phenomenon. Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) first used the identity concept in his clinical writings to describe that entity that seemed to be lacking in the lives of young men returning from combat in World War II. From Erikson’s early writings, several broad approaches to identity theory and research have emerged, laying differential emphasis on the psychosocial, phenomenological, and the contextual nature of identity. This article has reviewed some of the writings and research that have sprung from the identity status model of James Marcia ( 1966 , 1980 ). This review has documented meta-analytic work covering the associations of Marcia’s four identity statuses with various personality, relational, and behavioral variables, as well as documenting the most common patterns of identity status change and stability during adolescence and adulthood. The review has also documented the role that resolution to questions of identity plays in resolutions to ongoing psychosocial tasks of adulthood.

Further identity research could fruitfully explore both the meaning of the identity statuses in ongoing adult identity development as well as the processes and contents of identity changes during adult life. The role of regression in adolescent and adult identity development is poorly understand, occurring more frequently than can be predicted by chance alone (see Kroger et al., 2010 ). Understanding what kinds of regression there may be and whether or not specific types of regression are vital to ongoing adult identity development are important avenues for further identity research. And though identity concerns of adolescence have many parallels to identity issues of later adulthood, very little identity-related theory and research has been undertaken with older adults. (For example, individuals in both phases of the life span must adjust to important biological changes, deal with philosophical questions of life’s meanings, and readjustment to changing demands from social contexts.) It is hoped that this article will present a foundation upon which future psychosocial research into the process and contents of identity development from adolescence through adulthood can take place.

Why Identity Matters and How It Shapes Us

Verywell / Zoe Hansen

Defining Identity

What Makes Up a Person's Identity?

Identity Development Across the Lifespan

The importance of identity, tips for reflecting on your identity.

Your identity is a set of physical, mental, emotional, social, and interpersonal characteristics that are unique to you.

It encapsulates your core personal values and your beliefs about the world, says Asfia Qaadir , DO, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at PrairieCare.

In this article, we explore the concept of identity, its importance, factors that contribute to its development , and some strategies that can help you reflect upon your identity.

Your identity gives you your sense of self. It is a set of traits that distinguishes you from other people, because while you might have some things in common with others, no one else has the exact same combination of traits as you.

Your identity also gives you a sense of continuity, i.e. the feeling that you are the same person you were two years ago and you will be the same person two days from now.

Asfia Qaadir, DO, Psychiatrist

Your identity plays an important role in how you treat others and how you carry yourself in the world.

What Makes Up a Person's Identity?

These are some of the factors that can contribute to your identity:

Physical appearance
Physical sensations
Emotional traits
Life experiences
Genetics
Health conditions
Nationality
Race
Social community
Peer group
Political environment
Spirituality
Sexuality
Personality
Beliefs
Finances

We all have layers and dimensions that contribute to who we are and how we express our identity.

All of these factors interact together and influence you in unique and complex ways, shaping who you are. Identity formation is a subjective and deeply personal experience.

Identity development is a lifelong process that begins in childhood, starts to solidify in adolescence, and continues through adulthood.

Childhood is when we first start to develop a self-concept and form an identity.

As children, we are highly dependent on our families for our physical and emotional needs. Our early interactions with family members play a critical role in the formation of our identities.

During this stage, we learn about our families and communities, and what values are important to them, says Dr. Qaadir.

The information and values we absorb in childhood are like little seeds that are planted years before we can really intentionally reflect upon them as adults, says Dr. Qaadir.

Traumatic or abusive experiences during childhood can disrupt identity formation and have lasting effects on the psyche.

Adolescence

Adolescence is a critical period of identity formation.

As teenagers, we start to intentionally develop a sense of self based on how the values we’re learning show up in our relationships with ourselves, our friends, family members, and in different scenarios that challenge us, Dr. Qaadir explains.

Adolescence is a time of discovering ourselves, learning to express ourselves, figuring out where we fit in socially (and where we don’t), developing relationships, and pursuing interests, says Dr. Qaadir.

This is the period where we start to become independent and form life goals. It can also be a period of storm and stress , as we experience mood disruptions, challenge authority figures, and take risks as we try to work out who we are.

As adults, we begin building our public or professional identities and deepen our personal relationships, says Dr. Qaadir.

These stages are not set in stone, rather they are fluid, and we get the rest of our lives to continue experiencing life and evolving our identities, says Dr. Qaadir.

Having a strong sense of identity is important because it:

Creates self-awareness: A strong sense of identity can give you a deep sense of awareness of who you are as a person. It can help you understand your likes, dislikes, actions, motivations, and relationships.
Provides direction and motivation: Having a strong sense of identity can give you a clear understanding of your values and interests, which can help provide clarity, direction, and motivation when it comes to setting goals and working toward them.
Enables healthy relationships: When you know and accept yourself, you can form meaningful connections with people who appreciate and respect you for who you are. A strong sense of identity also helps you communicate effectively, establish healthy boundaries, and engage in authentic and fulfilling interactions.
Keeps you grounded: Our identities give us roots when things around us feel chaotic or uncertain, says Dr. Qaadir. “Our roots keep us grounded and help us remember what truly matters at the end of the day.”
Improves decision-making: Understanding yourself well can help you make choices that are consistent with your values, beliefs, and long-term goals. This clarity reduces confusion, indecision, and the tendency to conform to others' expectations, which may lead to poor decision-making .
Fosters community participation: Identity is often shaped by cultural, social, political, spiritual, and historical contexts. Having a strong sense of identity allows you to understand, appreciate, and take pride in your cultural heritage. This can empower you to participate actively in society, express your unique perspective, and contribute to positive societal change.

On the other hand, a weak sense of identity can make it more difficult to ground yourself emotionally in times of stress and more confusing when you’re trying to navigate major life decisions, says Dr. Qaadir.

Dr. Qaadir suggests some strategies that can help you reflect on your identity:

Art: Art is an incredible medium that can help you process and reflect on your identity. It can help you express yourself in creative and unique ways.
Reading: Reading peoples’ stories through narrative is an excellent way to broaden your horizons, determine how you feel about the world around you, and reflect on your place in it.
Journaling: Journaling can also be very useful for self-reflection . It can help you understand your feelings and motivations better.
Conversation: Conversations with people can expose you to diverse perspectives, and help you form and represent your own.
Nature: Being in nature can give you a chance to reflect undisturbed. Spending time in nature often has a way of putting things in perspective.
Relationships: You can especially strengthen your sense of identity through the relationships around you. It is valuable to surround yourself with people who reflect your core values but may be different from you in other aspects of identity such as personality styles, cultural backgrounds, passions, professions, or spiritual paths because that provides perspective and learning from others.

American Psychological Association. Identity .

Pfeifer JH, Berkman ET. The development of self and identity in adolescence: neural evidence and implications for a value-based choice perspective on motivated behavior . Child Dev Perspect . 2018;12(3):158-164. doi:10.1111/cdep.12279

Hasanah U, Susanti H, Panjaitan RU. Family experience in facilitating adolescents during self-identity development . BMC Nurs . 2019;18(Suppl 1):35. doi:10.1186/s12912-019-0358-7

Dereboy Ç, Şahin Demirkapı E, et al. The relationship between childhood traumas, identity development, difficulties in emotion regulation and psychopathology . Turk Psikiyatri Derg . 2018;29(4):269-278.

Branje S, de Moor EL, Spitzer J, Becht AI. Dynamics of identity development in adolescence: a decade in review . J Res Adolesc . 2021;31(4):908-927. doi:10.1111/jora.12678

Stirrups R. The storm and stress in the adolescent brain . The Lancet Neurology . 2018;17(5):404. doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(18)30112-1

Fitzgerald A. Professional identity: A concept analysis . Nurs Forum . 2020;55(3):447-472. doi:10.1111/nuf.12450

National Institute of Standards and Technology. Identity .

By Sanjana Gupta Sanjana is a health writer and editor. Her work spans various health-related topics, including mental health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness.

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Essay Samples on Identity

Talking about myself: unveiling my story.

Introduction Exploring one's own identity is a journey that unfolds through introspection, experiences, and self-expression. In this essay, I embark on the task of talking about myself, delving into various aspects that define who I am. From my background and interests to my values and...

About Myself

Nature vs Nurture in Shaping My Identity

Introduction The age-old debate of nature versus nurture delves into the intricate interplay between genetics and environment, unraveling the factors that contribute to our individuality. In this essay, I embark on a personal exploration of this theme, delving into how both nature and nurture have...

Discovering Identity: A Narrative of Self

We are all protagonists in the stories of our lives, navigating the twists and turns that define our existence. In this narrative essay, I invite you to join me on a journey through the chapters of my own life – a journey of self-discovery, growth,...

Exploring Language and Identity in "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan

Language is not merely a tool for communication; it is also a reflection of one's cultural background, experiences, and identity. In her essay "Mother Tongue," Amy Tan delves into the complexities of language and the profound impact it has on shaping an individual's sense of...

Language and Linguistics
Mother Tongue

Navigating College as a Middle Child: Embracing Individuality and Connection

Being a middle child has been an integral part of my identity, shaping my perspective and experiences as I embarked on the journey of college life. In a family dynamic where I straddle the line between older and younger siblings, I've learned to balance independence,...

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The Impact of Labelling and Identity in Healthcare

This essay will explain what labeling and identity is and why social workers should be aware of the impact of labelling when providing care. Additionally, it will describe why labelling patients can have a significant and negative impact on our interaction with them. I will...

Individual Identity

Evolving Identities: The Concept of Self-Identity and Self-Perception

For centuries psychologists, like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung have discussed the concept of self-identity and self-perception. In social sciences, identity refers to an individual's or party's sense of who they are and what defines them. As the human condition, we have evolved to form...

Personal Identity
Self Identity

The Struggle for Identity in Teenagers: Recognizing the Signs

As a teenager, we are all trying to figure out what our identity is. According to James Marcia, a psychologist, there are 4 stages of identity development: identity diffusion when the teen has not decided on his identity; identity foreclosure when a teen decides on...

Nature vs Nurture: Is Identity Innate or Learned

Introduction The idea of being loved whether it be by family, significant other, or even by society, is one that we all strive for in our day-to-day lives, however, is this love we are trying to receive based on things we have lack of control...

Nature Versus Nurture

The Fragility of Identity in Paul Auster's City of Glass

Introduction Identity is what makes you, you. The social aspect of identity plays a big part in who we see ourselves as. Our identity can be influenced by many factors. Culture, environment, family, friends, colleagues, and groups we associate ourselves with makeup who we are....

Identity Politics in Post-Independence South Asia: A Comparative Study

Introduction Identity alludes to how we understand and define ourselves. We at some point question ourselves as to who we are and where we belong. This is because our sense of identity or who we think we are, tells about our morals, guides our decisions,...

Nation Building
National Identity

Belonging and Wellbeing: The Role of Social Identity in Mental Health

Introduction Being part of a group offers us a feeling of belonging and support, and this in turn has positive outcomes for mental health and well-being. We define ourselves in line with a given social identity, internalising with a specific group and viewing members of...

Social Class

Best topics on Identity

1. Talking About Myself: Unveiling My Story

2. Nature vs Nurture in Shaping My Identity

3. Discovering Identity: A Narrative of Self

4. Exploring Language and Identity in “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan

5. Navigating College as a Middle Child: Embracing Individuality and Connection

6. The Impact of Labelling and Identity in Healthcare

7. Evolving Identities: The Concept of Self-Identity and Self-Perception

8. The Struggle for Identity in Teenagers: Recognizing the Signs

9. Nature vs Nurture: Is Identity Innate or Learned

10. The Fragility of Identity in Paul Auster’s City of Glass

11. Identity Politics in Post-Independence South Asia: A Comparative Study

12. Belonging and Wellbeing: The Role of Social Identity in Mental Health

Gender Roles
Gender Stereotypes
National Honor Society
Social Media
American Identity
American Dream
American Values

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Identity Development Process and Content:

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Identity Development Process and Content: Toward an Integrated and Contextualized Science of Identity Renee V. Galliher, Deborah Rivas-Drake, and Eric F. Dubow

Theoretical Essays and Innovations

An Integrated Developmental Model for Studying Identity Content in Context Renee V. Galliher, Kate C. McLean, and Moin Syed
A Dialectical Approach to Theoretical Integration in Developmental–Contextual Identity Research Jayson Seaman, Erin Hiley Sharp, and Andrew D. Coppens
A Complex Dynamic Systems Perspective on Identity and its Development: The Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity Avi Kaplan and Joanna K. Garner
A Theoretical Framework for the Associations Between Identity and Psychopathology Theo A. Klimstra and Jaap J. A. Denissen

Identity Content in Context

Ethnic Socialization and Ethnic Identity Development Among Internationally Adopted Korean American Adolescents: A Seven-Year Follow-up Alison W. Hu, Xiang Zhou, and Richard M. Lee
Longitudinal Relations Among Mexican-Origin Mothers' Cultural Characteristics, Cultural Socialization, and 5-Year-Old Children's Ethnic–Racial Identification Chelsea L. Derlan, Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor, Kimberly A. Updegraff, and Laudan B. Jahromi
Identity Exploration and Commitment in Early Adolescence: Genetic and Environmental Contributions Noam Markovitch, Koen Luyckx, Theo Klimstra, Lior Abramson, and Ariel Knafo-Noam
Identity Uncertainty and Commitment Making Across Adolescence: Five-Year Within-Person Associations Using Daily Identity Reports Andrik I. Becht, Stefanie A. Nelemans, Susan J. T. Branje, Wilma A. M. Vollebergh, Hans M. Koot, and Wim H. J. Meeus
Is Adolescence a Period of Identity Formation for All Youth? Insights From a Four-Wave Longitudinal Study of Identity Dynamics in Japan Kai Hatano and Kazumi Sugimura

Integration of Multiple Identity Perspectives

A Longitudinal Integration of Identity Styles and Educational Identity Processes in Adolescence Oana Negru-Subtirica, Eleonora Ioana Pop, and Elisabetta Crocetti
Interrelations Among Dimensions of Ethnic-Racial Identity During Adolescence Diane L. Hughes, Juan Del Toro, and Niobe Way
Longitudinal Relations Between Ethnic/Racial Identity Process and Content: Exploration, Commitment, and Salience Among Diverse Adolescents Yijie Wang, Sara Douglass, and Tiffany Yip

Integration of Identity and Other Developmental Processes and Outcomes

Racial Identity in the Context of Pubertal Development: Implications for Adjustment Rona Carter, Eleanor K. Seaton, and Deborah Rivas-Drake
Linking Delinquency and Personal Identity Formation Across Adolescence: Examining Between- and Within-Person Associations Natalie Mercer, Elisabetta Crocetti, Susan Branje, Pol van Lier, and Wim Meeus
Adoptive Identity and Adjustment From Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood: A Person-Centered Approach Harold D. Grotevant, Albert Y. H. Lo, Lisa Fiorenzo, and Nora D. Dunbar
Micro-level Mechanisms of Identity Development: The Role of Emotional Experiences in Commitment Development Mandy A. E. van der Gaag, Casper J. Albers, and E. Saskia Kunnen
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Identity Development

Identity development theory.

A well-developed identity is comprised of goals, values, and beliefs to which a person is committed. It is the awareness of the consistency in self over time, the recognition of this consistency by others (Erikson, 1980). The process of identity development is both an individual and social phenomenon (Adams & Marshall, 1996). Much of this process is assumed during adolescence when cognitive development allows for an individual to construct a ‘theory of self’ (Elkind, 1998) based on exposure to role models and identity options (Erikson, 1980). Erikson (1968) believed this period of development to be an ‘identity crisis,’ a crucial turning point in which an individual must develop in one way or another, ushering the adolescent toward growth and differentiation. Identity is formed through a process of exploring options or choices and committing to an option based upon the outcome of their exploration. Failure to establish a well-developed sense of identity can result in identity confusion. Those experiencing identity confusion do not have a clear sense of who they are or their role in society.

Identity development is vital to a person’s understanding of self and participation in their social systems. Adams and Marshall (1996) established that identity formation provides five functions: a structure and order to self-knowledge; a sense of consistency and coherence to beliefs, goals, and self-knowledge; a sense of continuity for one’s history and future; goals and direction; a sense of personal control of their choices and outcomes.

Erikson’s Identity vs. Role Confusion

According to psychosocial theory, we experience eight stages of development over our lifespan (Table 8.1), from infancy through late adulthood. At each stage, there is a conflict, or task, that we need to resolve. Successful completion of each developmental task results in a sense of competence and a healthy personality. Failure to master these tasks leads to feelings of inadequacy.

Figure 8.3.1 . Erik Erikson

Table 8.3.1. Erikson’s psychosocial Stages of Development


1	0–1	Trust vs. mistrust	Trust (or mistrust) that basic needs, such as nourishment and affection, will be met
2	1–3	Autonomy vs. shame/doubt	Develop a sense of independence in many tasks
3	3–6	Initiative vs. guilt	Take the initiative on some activities—may develop guilt when unsuccessful or boundaries overstepped
4	7–11	Industry vs. inferiority	Develop self-confidence in abilities when competent or sense of inferiority when not
5	12–18	Identity vs. confusion	Experiment with and develop identity and roles
6	19–29	Intimacy vs. isolation	Establish intimacy and relationships with others
7	30–64	Generativity vs. stagnation	Contribute to society and be part of a family
8	65–	Integrity vs. despair	Assess and make sense of life and meaning of contributions

Video 8.3.1. Erikson’s Psychosocial Development explains all stages of this theory.

Erik Erikson believed that the primary psychosocial task of adolescence was establishing an identity. Erikson referred to life’s fifth psychosocial task as one of identity versus role confusion when adolescents must work through the complexities of finding one’s own identity. This stage includes questions regarding their appearance, vocational choices and career aspirations, education, relationships, sexuality, political and social views, personality, and interests. Erikson saw this as a period of confusion and experimentation regarding identity and one’s life path. During adolescence, we experience psychological moratorium , where teens put on hold commitment to an identity while exploring the options .

Individual identity development is influenced by how they resolved all of the previous childhood psychosocial crises, and this adolescent stage is a bridge between the past and the future, childhood, and adulthood. Thus, in Erikson’s view, an adolescent’s central questions are, “Who am I?” and “Who do I want to be?” Identity formation was highlighted as the primary indicator of successful development during adolescence (in contrast to role confusion, which would be an indicator of not successfully meeting the task of adolescence). This crisis is resolved positively with identity achievement and the gain of fidelity (ability to be faithful) as a new virtue when adolescents have reconsidered the goals and values of their parents and culture. Some adolescents adopt the values and roles that their parents expect for them. Other teens develop identities that are in opposition to their parents but align with a peer group. This change is common as peer relationships become a central focus in adolescents’ lives.

The culmination of this exploration is a more coherent view of oneself. Those who are unsuccessful at resolving this stage may withdraw further into social isolation or become lost in the crowd. However, more recent research suggests that few leave this age period with identity achievement and that most identity formation occurs during young adulthood (Côtè, 2006).

Marcia’s Identity Statuses

Expanding on Erikson’s theory, Marcia (1966) described identity formation during adolescence as involving both exploration and commitment with respect to ideologies and occupations (e.g., religion, politics, career, relationships, gender roles). Identity development begins when individuals identify with role models who provide them with options to explore for whom they can become. As identity development progresses, adolescents are expected to make choices and commit to options within the confines of their social contexts. In some cases, options are not provided or are limited, and the individual will fail to commit or will commit without the opportunity to explore various options (Marcia, 1980).

Identity confusion/diffusion occurs when adolescents neither explore nor commit to any identities. Foreclosure occurs when an individual commits to an identity without exploring options. A moratorium is a state in which adolescents are actively exploring options but have not yet made commitments. As mentioned earlier, individuals who have explored different options, discovered their purpose, and have made identity commitments are in a state of identity achievement.

Figure 8.3.2. Marcia’s identity statuses. Adapted from Discovering the Lifespan, by R. S. Feldman, 2009.

The least mature status, and one common in many children, is identity diffusion. Identity diffusion is a status that characterizes those who have neither explored the options nor made a commitment to an identity . Marcia (1980) proposed that when individuals enter the identity formation process, they have little awareness or experience with identity exploration or the expectation to commit to an identity. This period of identity diffusion is typical of children and young adolescents, but adolescents are expected to move out of this stage as they are exposed to role models and experiences that present them with identity possibilities. Those who persist in this identity may drift aimlessly with little connection to those around them or have little sense of purpose in life. Characteristics associated with prolonged diffusion include low self-esteem, easily influenced by peers, lack of meaningful friendships, little commitment, or fortitude in activities or relationships, self-absorbed, and self-indulgent.

Those in identity foreclosure have committed to an identity without having explored the options . Often, younger adolescence will enter a phase of foreclosure where they may, at least preliminarily, commit to an identity without an investment in the exploration process. This commitment is often a response to anxiety about uncertainty or change during adolescence or pressure from parents, social groups, or cultural expectations. It is expected that most adolescents will progress beyond the foreclosure phase as they can think independently, and we multiple identity options. However, sometimes foreclosure will persist into late adolescence or even adulthood.

In some cases, parents may make these decisions for their children and do not grant the teen the opportunity to make choices. In other instances, teens may strongly identify with parents and others in their life and wish to follow in their footsteps. Characteristics associated with prolonged foreclosure well-behaved and obedient children with a high need for approval, authoritarian parenting style, low levels of tolerance or acceptance of change, high levels of conformity, and conventional thinking.

During high school and college years, teens and young adults move from identity diffusion and foreclosure toward moratorium and achievement. The most significant gains in the development of identity are in college, as college students are exposed to a greater variety of career choices, lifestyles, and beliefs. This experience is likely to spur on questions regarding identity. A great deal of the identity work we do in adolescence and young adulthood is about values and goals, as we strive to articulate a personal vision or dream for what we hope to accomplish in the future (McAdams, 2013).

Identity moratorium is a status that describes those who are actively exploring in an attempt to establish an identity but have yet to have made any commitment . This time can be an anxious and emotionally tense period as the adolescent experiments with different roles and explores various beliefs. Nothing is guaranteed, and there are many questions, but few answers. This moratorium phase is the precursor to identity achievement. During the moratorium period, it is normal for adolescents to be rebellious and uncooperative, avoid dealing with problems, procrastinate, experience low self-esteem, feel anxious, and uncertain about decisions.

Identity achievement refers to those who, after exploration, have committed . Identity achievement is a long process and is not often realized by the end of adolescence. Individuals that do reach identity achievement feel self-acceptance, stable self-definition, and are committed to their identity.

While Marcia’s statuses help us understand the process of developing identity, there are several criticisms of this theory. First, identity status may not be global; different aspects of your identity may be in different statuses. An individual may be in multiple identity statuses at the same time for different aspects of identity. For example, one could be in the foreclosure status for their religious identity, but in moratorium for career identity, and achievement for gender identity.

Further, identity statuses do no always develop in the sequence described above, although it is the most common progression. Not all people will reach identity achievement in all aspects of their identity, and not all may remain in identity achievement. There may be a third aspect of identity development, beyond exploration and commitment, and that is the reconsideration of commitment. This addition would create a fifth status, searching moratorium . This status is a re-exploring after a commitment has been made (Meesus et al., 2012). It is not usual that commitments to aspects of our identity may change as we gain experiences, and more options become available to explore. This searching moratorium may continue well into adulthood.

Video 8.3.2. Macia’s Stages of Adolescent Identity Development summarizes the various identity statuses and how an individual may move through them.

Supporting identity development

As the process of identity development can be a confusing and challenging period, how can adults support adolescents through this process? First, affirm that the anxiety, doubts, and confusion are reasonable and that most teens do not complete identity achievement before graduating high school. Exposing adolescents to various role models can help them imagine different roles or options for their future selves. Role models can come from within the family, schools, or community. Adults should talk with adolescents about their values, goals, and identities to help build awareness. They may be interested to know how others made decisions while developing their own identities. Finally, support the commitments that adolescents have made. Identity commitments can help someone feel grounded and less confused while they engage in identity exploration.

Identity Development Theory. Authored by : Nicole Arduini-Van Hoose. Provided by : Hudson Valley Community College. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/adolescent/chapter/identity-development-theory/ . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Identity Formation. Authored by : Tera Jones. Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-lifespandevelopment/chapter/identity-formation/ . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Psychology. Provided by : OpenStax. Located at : . License : CC BY: Attribution
Erikson's Psychosocial Development . Authored by : Shreena Desai. Provided by : Khan Academy. Located at : https://youtu.be/SIoKwUcmivk . License : All Rights Reserved
Macia's Stages of Adolescent Identity Development. Authored by : Tiffany Dickie. Located at : https://youtu.be/a8HIY_bqrVo . License : All Rights Reserved

The Role of School in Adolescents’ Identity Development. A Literature Review

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Published: 26 December 2018
Volume 31 , pages 35–63, ( 2019 )

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Monique Verhoeven ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9931-3968 1 ,
Astrid M. G. Poorthuis 2 &
Monique Volman 1

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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.

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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.

Literature Search

To find relevant studies, we consulted five databases that cover the disciplines of psychology, education, and the social sciences: PsycINFO, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Web of Science, Sociological Abstracts, and Google Scholar. Two search strings were developed, of which the first regarded the population of adolescent students and consisted of the following keywords: secondary education , middle schools , middle school education , middle school students , junior high schools , junior high school students , high schools , high school students , and high school education . This search string was combined with a search string on identity development that consisted of the keywords identity formation , identity development , identity construction , identity work , and identity process . A more elaborate description of our search strategy can be found in Appendix A (Online Supplement). The search was performed on 22 October 2015 and focused on peer-reviewed articles in English that were published between 2005 and 2015. In total, the search resulted in 3599 unique articles.

Selection and Analysis of the Literature

The abstracts of all 3599 articles were read by the first author to establish which studies possibly met our inclusion criteria. An overview of our inclusion criteria is presented in Table 1 . First, only articles using the term identity were included in the review study. Hence, to delimit the scope of the review study, we did not select literature on identity-related concepts such as self-concept (Marsh 1990 ) or possible selves (Oyserman et al. 2006 ). Second, we included articles investigating adolescents’ personal and social identity development. When it comes to more circumscribed identity dimensions, we included articles on the development of adolescents’ school- and learning-related identity dimensions (e.g., mathematics identity, learner identity). Third, we only selected literature that focused on the influence of educational processes on adolescents’ identity development. Studies in which school was merely described as a setting in which adolescents spend their time were excluded from the selection. Fourth, in this stage of the process of literature selection, we did not include studies that were published more than 10 years before we performed our search. We chose to do so because of practical reasons, namely, the limits of the project budget and the time constraints that we were faced with. Finally, we included both empirical and theoretical studies, because we were not exclusively interested in empirical findings regarding the role of school in adolescents’ identity development but also in how these findings could be interpreted.

Based on our inclusion criteria, 176 articles were included in the review. Subsequently, the authors, in pairs, read the abstracts of these articles for two purposes: first, to get an initial overview of the studies in our selection; second, to develop a preliminary coding scheme to analyze the full texts of the articles. In this stage, while being concerned presenting an overview of what insights articles that are grounded in different perspectives on identity development provide us on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development, we generated codes for the explicitly mentioned theoretical perspectives on identity development. We also wanted to know what research methods and designs were used by scholars who adopt different theoretical perspectives on identity development. Therefore, we coded the abstracts, when possible, for methodological information (i.e., research design, sample, type of data collection). We wanted to be responsive to the various identity dimensions that the different studies focused on, which is why we coded for these (e.g., literacy identity, science identity) too. Finally, to disentangle what insights the existing literature provides into the role of school in adolescents’ identity development, the abstracts were coded for the educational processes that were explicitly addressed in the literature. We stayed very close to the text in coding the abstracts. For example, codes such as “Role of teacher: negative non-verbal approach of some students,” “Role of teacher: paid attention to low performing students,” and “Role of teacher: explicitly communicating positive expectations towards students” were assigned to the abstracts.

In this process, we discovered that the articles could be allocated to at least one of the following three categories: (1) studies that provide insights into the educational processes through which schools, teachers, and peers may unintentionally (and often negatively) shape adolescents’ identity development; (2) studies that provide insights into the educational processes through which schools and teachers may intentionally foster adolescents’ identity development; and (3) studies that provide insights into the preconditions to intentionally support adolescents’ identity development in school. Aiming to contribute to the integration of research findings across different research fields, we categorized the studies first by the type of educational process that they identified and second by the theoretical perspective they were grounded in.

Next, the first author read and summarized the full texts. After reading the first author’s reports on the literature, the full research team decided to exclude another 71 articles from the selection that, based on the full text, proved not to meet the inclusion criteria. To prevent ourselves from overlooking key publications in the research field under study that may have been published either before or after 2005, we performed citation tracking, as recommended by Greenhalgh and Peacock ( 2005 ). We kept a list of relevant articles that were referred to three times or more as concerning the role of school in adolescents’ identity development in the articles we had already selected, and we added them to the selection when they met our inclusion criteria ( n = 6), apart from the criterion concerning the publication date. As a consequence, our final selection of literature comprised 111 articles.

Once we had further narrowed down our selection of literature to 111 articles, the first author coded the full papers with the previously developed coding scheme. Constant comparative analysis was used (e.g., Glaser and Strauss 1967 ) to compare and group the various codes on the explicitly mentioned educational processes in order to distill overarching processes from the data. To provide an illustration, the earlier mentioned codes “Role of teacher: negative non-verbal approach of some students,” “Role of teacher: paid attention to low performing students,” and “Role of teacher: explicitly communicating positive expectations towards students” were combined in the overarching process “Teacher expectations.” In a similar way, we distinguished other unintentional educational processes (selection practices and differentiation, teaching strategies, and peer norms), intentional processes (in-breadth exploration, in-depth exploration, and reflective exploration), and preconditions (meaningful learning experiences and a supportive classroom climate). Whereas some articles focused on one of these educational processes, others concerned the role of various processes (also see Table 2 ). The second and third author critically monitored the entire coding process and, in case of doubt, additional research team discussions were held. In Table 3 through Table 11 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), we alphabetically ordered the studies for the various educational processes and preconditions that we found and present brief summaries of each of the articles.

Characteristics of the Literature

The 111 articles were found across a wide variety of scientific journals ( n = 80). In total, 19 of the 111 articles were theoretical in nature. Among the empirical research papers, six articles were quantitative in nature and another set of seven articles employed a mixed-methods design. Seventy-eight articles exclusively used qualitative research methods and generally presented small case studies. Of these qualitative studies, 60 reported longitudinal research. Different identity dimensions were studied in the literature, ranging from science identities and art identities to learner identities on a more general level and personal identity on an even more abstract level. Personal and social identities were investigated in respectively 21 and 11 articles. Of the more circumscribed school-related identity dimensions, studies on adolescents’ Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics identity (STEM; n = 35), learner identity ( n = 18), and student identity ( n = 14) were most prevalent. The studies were conducted in a variety of settings—e.g., out-of-school science programs, literacy classes, schools’ hallways—and among a variety of samples such as bilingual high school students, honors students in a science class, or girls attending a middle school in a rural area. The majority of studies ( n = 62) was based on data that were collected in the USA.

Theoretical Perspectives on Identity Development

Different theoretical perspectives on identity development can be found in the studies included in our literature review. Half of the articles in our literature selection understood identity from sociocultural perspectives ( n = 55). The remaining articles were based on psychosocial perspectives ( n = 8), social psychological perspectives ( n = 4), sociological perspectives ( n = 4), a combination thereof ( n = 14), or they did not explicitly mention a particular conceptualization of identity development ( n = 26). In this section of the present paper, each of the identified perspectives will be discussed based on publications that were referred to in our selection of literature as core theoretical publications that form the foundations of the various theoretical perspectives on identity development. In the next sections, the findings that we distilled from the literature on the various educational processes through which adolescents’ identity development may be influenced will be discussed in relation to the theoretical perspectives on identity development that are employed in the selected articles (also see Table 2 ). In doing so, articles in which perspectives on identity development are (often somewhat eclectically) combined and articles in which no particular theoretical perspective on identity development is mentioned will be discussed together with the studies from the perspective they most strongly appear to relate to in terms of research focus and employed research methods. More information on the combined perspectives can be found in Table 3 through Table 11 in Appendix B (Online Supplement).

Sociocultural Perspectives

Researchers who employ a sociocultural perspective generally understand identity as a multidimensional phenomenon rather than a single entity (e.g., Gee 2001 ; Holland et al. 1998 ; Holland and Lave 2001 ): People are thought to develop a range of self-understandings, for example as a science student (a science identity), a reader (literacy identity), or a music student (a musical identity). On a more general level, people are thought to integrate these self-understandings into a learner identity, a student identity (the person one is in school, not exclusively concerning who one is as a learner), and a social identity (one’s societal position in terms of superiority and inferiority). On an even more abstract level, people are thought to integrate these identity dimensions, together with self-understandings that are neither school- nor learning-related, in their personal identity. Scholars adopting sociocultural perspectives understand a person’s identity to develop through this person’s participation in various sociocultural contexts, such as home, school, and work (e.g., Holland et al. 1998 ; Holland and Lave 2001 ; Wenger 1998 ). These contexts are social in the sense that in every context, through interaction and negotiation, different identity positions—or social roles—are made available, such as those of the creative, ambitious, and/or cooperative person. These contexts are cultural in the sense that they are characterized by specific sets of tools, norms, and values that guide people’s actions, goals, and ideas about appropriate ways to reach those goals (e.g., Holland et al. 1998 ). Researchers who understand identity development from a sociocultural perspective are concerned with how identity positions, and the way these positions are evaluated (for example, girls may not be stimulated to identify with technology; Volman and Ten Dam 2007 ), inform adolescents’ identities. They are also interested in how the tools, norms, and values that are explicitly or implicitly communicated through educational activities and learning contents impact adolescents’ identities. Based on adolescents’ previous encounters with tools, norms, values, and identity positions, adolescents are thought to develop their self-understandings. Moreover, these self-understandings are understood to inform adolescents’ current decisions and future goals. In other words, adolescents’ self-understandings connect their past, present, and future (e.g., Holland et al. 1998 ; Wenger 1998 ). Some sociocultural scholars examine identities as narratives. The primary interest of these scholars is in the self-understandings people share, for example in interviews, and how these self-understandings are informed by people’s experiences with tools, norms, values, and identity positions in the school context (e.g., Solomon 2007 ). Other sociocultural researchers use classroom observations to observe both the actions and activities of teachers and peers (that reflect certain norms, values, and available identity positions, while providing insights into often used tools) and adolescents’ demonstrated engagement in school and school subjects, as an indication of their identities (e.g., Bartlett 2007 ). A third group of sociocultural scholars in our literature selection combines the former two strategies and studies identity development through the interplay between adolescents’ engagement in school and their shared self-understandings by employing various ethnographic research methods (e.g., Anderson 2007 ).

Psychosocial Perspectives

Psychosocial perspectives are often adopted by scholars whose main focus is on the internal, psychological processes of a person’s identity development (e.g., Negru-Subtirica et al. 2015 ; Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry 2008 ). In the studies in our literature selection that adopted psychosocial perspectives, two key stages in the identity development of adolescents are distinguished: exploration and commitment. The process of exploration concerns the inquiry into new possible interests as well as the trying out of new activities in order to learn what values one considers as important and what goals one deems worth pursuing. In the process of commitment, adolescents are thought to make durable life decisions, for example when it comes to their education, profession, and worldview (Erikson 1968 ; Marcia 1993 ). With regard to the role of school in adolescents’ identity development, some researchers who employ a psychosocial perspective are concerned with educational activities and strategies that either foster or hinder exploration and commitment processes. These studies stress the importance of opportunities to try out and reflect upon various activities (e.g., Charland 2010 ). Other studies in our literature selection that employ a psychosocial perspective focus on the effect of educational characteristics (such as education level) on the identity stage in which adolescents find themselves (e.g., Negru-Subtirica et al. 2015 ; Sica 2009 ; Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry 2008 ). Scholars who adopt a psychosocial perspective are generally concerned with the process of identity development, rather than with the content of specific identity dimensions. Consequently, large-scale, quantitative survey studies that examine the developmental stage of adolescents’ identity are more common in this research field than in the sociocultural one.

Social Psychological Perspectives

Scholars adopting a social psychological perspective understand a person’s identity to consist of a social and a personal part (Tajfel 1978 ; Tajfel and Turner 1986 ). Of these two parts, the former concerns one’s, “knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel 1978 , p. 63). The extent to which one identifies with the social groups one knows to be a member of and the extent to which one has strong emotions regarding these group memberships (in terms of these social groups being inferior, equal, or superior to other social groups) is what constructs the personal part of one’s identity at a given point in time (Tajfel 1978 ; Tajfel and Turner 1986 ).

When it comes to the role of school in adolescents’ identity development, some scholars employing a social psychological perspective are interested in the attributes adolescents themselves ascribe to other groups of adolescents that, for example, differ from them when it comes to the high school track they are in (e.g., a prevocational track, a pre-academic track; Jonsson and Beach 2013 ). Others are more concerned with adolescents’ perceptions of the attributes other people (e.g., society in general) assign to adolescents in different high school tracks (e.g., Knigge and Hannover 2011 ) or in schools with a low- or high-status reputation (Marcouyeux and Fleury-Bahi 2011 ). Generally, survey studies that may comprise both open and closed questions are performed by scholars who adopt a social psychological perspective (e.g., Knigge and Hannover 2011 ; Marcouyeux and Fleury-Bahi 2011 ).

Sociological Perspectives

Like scholars adopting a social psychological perspective, researchers who employ a sociological perspective are concerned with adolescents’ group membership, the evaluation thereof, and the extent to which adolescents identify with these groups. Additionally, though, scholars who ground their work in sociological perspectives are interested in how group membership serves to include some people, while excluding others as a means to acquire status. The primary focus of scholars employing sociological perspectives is on how people move in societal power structures, create groups, and try to use their own individual agency to represent themselves in ways that they desire (Côté 2002 ; Foucault 1980 ).

Some scholars who employ a sociological perspective examine how people in adolescents’ school contexts (e.g., peers and teachers) can help them to use their agency to position themselves in desired ways (e.g., Robb et al. 2007 ). Others focus on how educational policies or discourses create new membership groups of achievers and failures (e.g., Anagnostopoulos 2006 ). Because scholars who adopt a sociological perspective are concerned with how structures are reproduced and with how people (can) use their agency, they generally employ qualitative research methods ranging from classroom observations and student reports, to focus groups and interviews.

The Hidden Curriculum: How Schools and Teachers May Unintentionally Affect Adolescents’ Identity Development

In our analysis of the literature, we identified 52 articles that focused on educational processes through which schools and teachers may unintentionally (and often negatively) play a role in adolescents’ identity development. These studies presented in these articles are often performed in formal education settings ( n = 48) and concern educational processes that are part of what could be called the “hidden curriculum” (Jackson 1968 ): through these processes, messages can be implicitly communicated to adolescents about who they are, should, and can be.

Selection Practices and Differentiation

Twelve exclusively empirical studies in our literature selection addressed the role selection practices at the school level or differentiation processes at the classroom level may unintentionally play in the development of adolescents’ identities. As can be derived from Table 3 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), seven of these articles concern qualitative research, four quantitative research, and one mixed-methods research.

The ethnographic studies by Solomon ( 2007 ) and Yi ( 2013 ) that are grounded in a sociocultural perspective together with ethnographic studies by Hoffman ( 2012 ) and Barnett ( 2006 ) that respectively combine perspectives on identity development or do not explicitly mention one focus on the link between ability grouping and adolescents’ identities. These articles are concerned with adolescents’ sense of proficiency in and belonging to mathematics classes (Solomon 2007 ), English as a Second Language classes (ESL; Yi 2013 ), wind band classes (Hoffman 2012 ), and cheerleading and dancing teams (Barnett 2006 ). In these school-related contexts, the contents of, respectively, the mathematics, student, musical, and social, personal and school identities that adolescents develop were examined. Together, the studies indicate that adolescents who are allocated to a high status group—and hence to whom certain positively evaluated identity positions were available—understand themselves as having something to contribute to their class, whereas this is not the case for other adolescents. The studies also found that adolescents in high status groups seemed to be rather engaged in class (which was considered to be an indication of their domain-specific identities), whereas the opposite applied to adolescents who were denied access to high status groups. Next, three survey studies in which psychosocial perspectives are employed, focused on the degree of identity exploration that adolescents in various school tracks engage in (Negru-Subtirica et al. 2015 ; Sica 2009 ; Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry 2008 ). Two of these studies found that adolescents in prevocational tracks were less likely to explore what vocational goals they deem worth pursuing later on in life than adolescents in pre-academic tracks (Negru-Subtirica et al. 2015 ; Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry 2008 ). However, Sica ( 2009 ) found that the former group of adolescents did engage in identity exploration but often out of a fear for who they might become (out of a fear to sense emptiness, or to forget about their dreams), whereas the latter group of adolescents tend to engage in identity exploration based on a positive perception of their future (Sica 2009 ).

Negru-Subtirica et al. ( 2015 ) and Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry ( 2008 ) argued that their findings could possibly be explained by the negative image of the prevocational track, combined with these students’ limited career prospects and the associated stigma of poverty. Yet, a survey study by Pfeiffer et al. ( 2012 )—in which no particular perspective on identity development was mentioned—suggests that adolescents who are in shorter-lasting tracks (such as the prevocational one) are more likely to be further in the development of their identities, because they will leave school earlier and are therefore closer to the developmental deadline of choosing a career path than students in longer-lasting tracks (like the pre-academic track). Hence, evidence on the role of tracking in adolescents’ process of identity development remains inconclusive.

Articles in which a social psychological perspective is adopted, either examined the attributes adolescents themselves ascribed to students in prevocational and pre-academic high school tracks (Jonsson and Beach 2013 ), or the attributes others ascribe to these students according to adolescents’ own perceptions (Knigge and Hannover 2011 ). For example, Jonsson and Beach ( 2013 ) asked 224 students from the pre-academic track in Sweden to list ten descriptive attributes of a typical student in the pre-academic track and ten descriptive attributes of a typical student in the prevocational track. These adolescents described the former type of student as hard working , with good career prospects , compliant and mainstream , whereas they assigned the latter type of student the following labels: daring , challenging toward authority , rebellious , lazy , substance abusing , and with defective language. Similar patterns were found by Knigge and Hannover’s ( 2011 ) German mixed-methods study when adolescents were asked what people in general think about students in the prevocational and students in the pre-academic track.

Two ethnographic articles in which a sociological perspective is employed were concerned with differentiation at the classroom level and found that adolescents’ experiences with school success or failure—being promoted or demoted (Čeplak 2012 ) or taking an obligatory homework class (Anagnostopoulos 2006 )—created socially constructed yet real status groups of students. However, neither these studies nor the studies that are grounded in a social psychological perspective (Jonsson and Beach 2013 ; Knigge and Hannover 2011 ) provide insights into whether and how selection or differentiation processes are internalized by adolescents in their identities.

Teaching Strategies

We identified 16 studies regarding the role teaching strategies may unintentionally play in the development of adolescents’ identities. As is shown in Table 4 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), these articles comprise one theoretical paper and 15 ethnographic studies. The nine studies in which sociocultural perspectives on identity development are used are concerned with (1) how teaching strategies inform opportunities to engage in the classroom and with the subject matter as constrained by tools, norms, and values and (2) how teaching strategies make certain identity positions available in the classroom. An illustrative example is provided by Horn ( 2008 ). In her longitudinal ethnographic research, Horn compared the teaching strategies in mathematics classes of two different high schools. In one of the schools, students were provided with cumulative sets of short mathematical problems to work on individually. In the other school, students and teachers collaboratively developed activities that supported multiple-ability group work. At the first school, the teaching strategy unintentionally communicated that “Math is something that you only have to remember everything that you’ve ever learned before. And you get to a point somewhere along the line where your brain says, ‘My brain is full.’ And you can’t go on” (student quote in Horn 2008 , p. 220). Hence, the first school appeared to invite adolescents to understand themselves as “just not a mathematics person” as soon as the cumulative learning content got too advanced. However, based on classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers, Horn found that the other school’s teaching strategy stressed instead that everyone is able to improve their mathematics skills for as long as they want to. This school did so by providing students who have different abilities and talents with opportunities to collaboratively work on mathematical issues.

Some of the studies grounded in sociocultural perspectives (Clark et al. 2013 ; Evnitskaya and Morton 2011 ; Horn 2008 ), as well as some of the ethnographic (Smagorinsky et al. 2005 ) and theoretical (Wallace 2012 ) studies that do not explicitly mention a theoretical perspective on identity development, were merely concerned with available opportunities to engage and present identity positions in the classroom setting. Other sociocultural studies (Anderson 2007 ; Aschbacher et al. 2010 ; Calabrese Barton et al. 2013 ; Carlone 2004 ; Lambert 2015 ; Rubin 2007 ), together with ethnographic studies that are grounded in combined perspectives on identity development (Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Cobb et al. 2009 ; Cone et al. 2014 ), or do not mention a particular perspective on identity development (DeGennaro and Brown 2009 ; Hamilton 2002 ), focused in addition on how adolescents developed their identities in relation to these opportunities and positions: Various researchers examined how opportunities to engage shaped students’ demonstrated (Anderson 2007 ; Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Calabrese Barton et al. 2013 ; Rubin 2007 ) and narrated (Aschbacher et al. 2010 ; Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Carlone 2004 ; DeGennaro and Brown 2009 ; Lambert 2015 ; Rubin 2007 ) engagement in the classroom as an indication of their identities. Others focused on how teaching strategies shaped adolescents’ self-understandings as capable participants in classroom contexts (Anderson 2007 ; Calabrese Barton et al. 2013 ; Cobb et al. 2009 ; Cone et al. 2014 ; Hamilton 2002 ; Lambert 2015 ), or on adolescents’ envisioned future in a particular field (Calabrese Barton et al. 2013 ) as an indication of their identities. Irrespective of how the various identity dimensions were operationalized, the abovementioned studies found that teaching strategies did unintentionally inform adolescents’ identity development. This finding is also supported by Charland’s ( 2010 ) ethnographic study in which a psychosocial perspective on identity development is employed. Based on interviews with 58 African-American students in art classes, this study suggests that teaching strategies in art classes that do not leave space for self-expression may discourage students to understand themselves as artists, to engage in visual art, and to further explore their artist identities.

Teacher Expectations

In our literature selection, we found 17 articles concerning the role teacher expectations may (often) unintentionally play in the development of adolescents’ identities. As can be derived from Table 5 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), these articles comprise one theoretical paper and 16 ethnographic studies.

Four of the articles that adopt a sociocultural perspective on identity development demonstrated, based on classroom observations and teacher interviews, that teachers may have rather persistent expectations of adolescents through which certain identity positions are made available or unavailable (Berg 2010 ; Rubin 2007 ; Vetter 2010 ; Wortham 2006 ). Berg ( 2010 ) for example found in her longitudinal ethnographic research on a foster child that this adolescent was repetitively approached by his teachers and social workers based on others’ reports and the previous experiences they had with him as an outsider and a difficult student. Yet, these teachers and social workers failed to notice the student’s changed behavior. Consequently, the range of available identity positions in relation to which the adolescent could develop his identity was limited. Together, these four studies indicate that static teacher expectations limit adolescents’ ways to position themselves, which may sometimes benefit (Vetter 2010 ) but other times harm adolescents’ engagement in school practices (Berg 2010 ; Rubin 2007 ; Wortham 2006 ). It should be noted, though, that none of these studies provide insights into how teacher expectations shape adolescents’ narrated self-understandings.

Five other studies in which a sociocultural perspective on identity development is employed (Aschbacher et al. 2010 ; Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Landers 2013 ; Olitsky et al. 2010 ) relied fully on student interviews or questionnaires regarding perceived teacher expectations. Consequently, in these studies, it cannot be examined whether perceived teacher expectations correspond to teachers’ actual expectations of their students. Yet, whether the perceived teacher expectations that are reported represent truth, imagination, or both, the studies do suggest that adolescents’ self-understandings are informed by their perceptions of their teachers’ expectations, as is indicated by an adolescent’s remark in Edwards-Groves and Murray’s study (Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 ), “And anyway I think I am dumb and stupid ‘coz I am not as good as the others, they [the teachers] think that too” (quote in Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 , p. 168).

Next, three more studies that are grounded in sociocultural perspectives on identity development (Bartlett 2007 ; Fields and Enyedy 2013 ; Heyd-Metzuyanim 2013 ) combined (participant) classroom observations with student and sometimes teacher interviews or focus groups. These studies provide additional and stronger evidence for the role teacher expectations may play in adolescents’ identity development. The study by Heyd-Metzuyanim ( 2013 ) showed how teacher expectations could inform adolescents’ identity development even when these expectations are communicated implicitly. Heyd-Metzuyanim ( 2013 ) described how she, as a teacher, implicitly and unintentionally expressed her low expectations of one of her students’ mathematical abilities through her continuous disengagement from this student’s mathematical thinking problems; Heyd-Metzuyanim no longer expected the student to make any additional progress in mathematics, and the identity position of becoming a better mathematician was no longer made available to the student. The observation and student interview data suggest that the student, in relation to how she was positioned by her teacher through the teacher’s expectations, changed the story of herself as a mathematics learner from someone who is willing and able to learn mathematics at the beginning of the school year to someone who could no longer grow as a mathematics student later on in the school year. The student’s mathematics identity appeared to be informed by the communicated teacher expectations and the student’s perceptions thereof.

Next, Bottrell’s ( 2007 ) study in which a sociological perspective is adopted was concerned with the social groups that teachers, according to students, implicitly create and the teacher expectations these groups are accompanied with. Bottrell reported, based on youth center observations and students’ interviews, stories of adolescents who shared that they experienced their teachers in formal education to distinguish, without formal differentiation, between more and less successful students. In case the adolescents thought they belonged, in the eyes of their teachers, to the latter group, they sometimes felt that their teachers did not have hopes for them at all, based on which they appeared to develop the idea that they were not worth bothering about. Again, though, this study does not provide insights into the extent to which the perceived teacher expectations correspond to teachers’ actual expectations of their students.

Then, two ethnographic studies in which no particular perspective on identity development is explicitly mentioned (Seaton 2007 ; Smith 2008 ) were not so much concerned with how (perceived) teacher expectations are reflected in adolescents’ self-understandings but with whether adolescents do or do not identify with the expectations that teachers explicitly express. In these two studies, teacher expectations appeared to be understood as making available fixed identity positions that adolescents may or may not endorse. For example, Smith ( 2008 ) studied a ninth-grade honors class at an American high school through classroom observations and student interviews and focus groups. Smith observed that teachers explicitly stressed that honors students were expected to work hard, to do more, and be more integer than other students. Yet, whereas Smith found that some students embraced this identity position, others commented, despite their being enrolled in the honors class, “I’m plenty smart, but I just don’t think I’m the type of person that the teachers think belongs in an honors class” (quote in Smith 2008 , p. 499). This finding indicates that teachers’ expectations have to be desirable and meaningful from students’ perspectives in order to become part of their identities.

Finally, what struck us in the analysis of the studies that focused on the role of teacher expectations in adolescents’ identity development was that various times it was argued (Steele 1997 ) and found, by ethnographic studies that differed in the perspectives on identity development they employed, that teachers (perceivably) have certain expectations of groups of adolescents that are distinguished by their ethnic background (Aschbacher et al. 2010 ; Bartlett 2007 ; Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Wortham 2006 ), perceived academic abilities (Landers 2013 ; Jethwani 2015 ), and/or gender (Jethwani 2015 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ). Although it was recognized in these studies that adolescents’ identity development is, at least to a certain extent, an individual process, scholars found inequalities in (perceived) teacher expectations across different groups of students. This indicates that individual adolescents who share a certain characteristic may be confronted with norms and identity positions in relation to which they can and cannot develop their identities that are different from the norms and identity positions of adolescents who do not share that characteristic. For example, Aschbacher et al. ( 2010 ) found that, in the student interviews and questionnaires they collected among a group of 33 diverse high school students, the adolescents spoke frankly about ethnic/racial biases they faced in science classes at school. Aschbacher et al. ( 2010 ) reported that various Asian-American students shared that they thought their science teachers and administrators were supportive and had high expectations of them, whereas several African-American and Latino students talked about how they felt their teachers had lower expectations of them than of others. Together with other studies (Bartlett 2007 ; Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 ; Jethwani 2015 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Landers 2013 ; Steele 1997 ; Wortham 2006 ), this suggests that inequalities may occur in (perceived) teacher expectations across different groups of students. Certain groups of students may experience to have different opportunities in relation to which they can develop their identities (as indicated by their engagement and/or self-understandings), which may either foster or hinder their identity development.

In our analysis of the literature, we identified 11 exclusively empirical studies regarding the role peer norms may unintentionally play in the development of adolescents’ identities. As is shown in Table 6 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), nine of these articles concern qualitative research, one presents a quantitative study, and one regards a mixed-methods study. Three studies in which sociocultural perspectives are adopted and that are based on various ethnographic research methods (Fields and Enyedy 2013 ; Ideland and Malmberg 2012 ; Volman and Ten Dam 2007 ) were concerned with and found that peers may deny each other access to certain identity positions through peer norms. An example is provided by Fields and Enyedy ( 2013 ) who studied a programming class in a middle school by means of observations, student interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups. Fields and Enyedy ( 2013 ) found that, even though the teacher of the programming class made the identity position of an attentive expert available to one of the students in this class, his peers refused to regard this student as such. This student’s classmates appeared to do so, because the student who was now trying to help out his classmates was better and longer known by them for his sarcasm, which they generally experienced as mean. The prevalent norm among the adolescent’s peers seemed to be that they could not start their relationship with this student from a clean slate, just because they found themselves in a new class. Fields and Enyedy ( 2013 ) analysis suggests that this made it difficult for the student to enact the identity position that he was offered by his teacher and that he tried to pursue. However, no insights are provided into whether and how this informed the student’s self-understanding. Four other ethnographic studies in which sociocultural perspectives are employed (Hall 2010 ; Hall et al. 2010 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Vetter et al. 2011 ) focused on how peers can make certain identity positions less appealing by stigmatizing these identity positions. These studies indicate that when adolescents actually do identify themselves with identity positions that are stigmatized by their peers, they may hide that they do in order to safeguard their reputation. For example, Hall ( 2010 ) found—based on observations as well as teacher questionnaires and interviews—that the teachers of a middle school offered their students three different reader identity positions: one of a poor reader (someone who is unable to understand most of what he or she reads, and who does not participate in class nor asks for help), one of becoming a good reader (a poor reader who engages in the practices of a good reader, for example by participating actively and by asking questions), and one of a good reader (someone who understands most of what he or she reads, who participates in class and who asks questions). However, students shared in their questionnaires and interviews that they felt it was not really possible to engage in class as someone who is becoming a good reader. Students mentioned to fear the social consequences of engaging in class as such, because classmates jointly reinforced the norm that it is embarrassing to have reading difficulties. Therefore, as some of the students reported, they would rather not get actively involved in class so they could hide their reading difficulties. This appeared to jeopardize these students’ opportunities to further develop their self-understandings as readers in a constructive way.

The finding that adolescents may feel restricted in taking up certain identity positions because they are stigmatized by peers is also supported by Charland’s ( 2010 ) ethnographic study—in which psychosocial perspective is adopted—as well as by two—respectively, ethnographic (Fletcher et al. 2009 ) and mixed-methods (Wilmot 2014 )—studies in which no particular perspective on identity development was explicitly mentioned. Interestingly, these three studies were concerned with the role of peer norms in adolescents’ identity development in the same way as some of the studies that are grounded in a sociocultural perspective, despite their different understandings of how identities develop. In addition to the other studies, though, Charland’s ( 2010 ) interview and focus group study indicates that adolescents’ exploration of, in this case, artist identities, may be hindered when peers reinforce the norm among themselves that visual arts is for “nerds” or “sissy’s” (Charland 2010 , p. 122).

Next, a quantitative study by Marcouyeux and Fleury-Bahi ( 2011 ), in which a social psychological perspective is employed, looked at the relation between a school’s perceived reputation and adolescents’ identities. To examine this, Marcouyeux and Fleury-Bahi ( 2011 ) asked 542 high school students in France, through surveys, about how they think adolescents from other schools would perceive the respondent’s school in terms of prestige and the quality of education. They also asked the respondents about their identification with school and learning. In this study, a positive relationship was found between the school’s image as perceivably perceived by peers and students’ identification with school and learning. This finding indicates that being a member of a group that is perceivably high in status according to peers may positively shape adolescents’ identities.

Organizing Explorative Learning Experiences: How Schools and Teachers May Intentionally Affect Adolescents’ Identity Development

In our analysis of the literature, we identified 37 articles that regarded educational processes through which schools and teachers may intentionally foster adolescents’ identity development. Most of the studies concerning the intentional fostering of adolescents’ identity development are conducted in after-school clubs, extracurricular classes provided at school, or at summer camps ( n = 21). Even though learning experiences are often not referred to as such in the literature, our analysis of the existing body of research caused us to distinguish between in-breadth, in-depth, and reflective explorative learning experiences that all, in their own way, support adolescents in exploring who they are and want to be.

In-Breadth Exploration

In our literature selection, we found ten articles regarding learning experiences that allow adolescents to get introduced to learning contents, learning activities, and identity positions they were thus far unfamiliar with. We refer to such experiences as in-breadth explorative learning experiences. As can be derived from Table 7 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), the articles that will be discussed in this section comprise three theoretical papers and seven ethnographic studies. All the articles concerning in-breadth explorative learning experiences argued (Brickhouse 2001 ; Squire 2006 ; Stokes and Wyn 2007 ) or demonstrated (Barrett and Baker 2012 ; Bruin and Ohna 2013 ; Carlone et al. 2015 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Jones and Deutsch 2013 ; Stapleton 2015 ; Van Sluys 2010 ), irrespective of their perspective on identity development (also see Table 2 ), that providing adolescents with such experiences may invite them to adopt new interests, to identify undiscovered talents, and to try out new identity positions. For example, Stapleton ( 2015 ), who adopts a sociocultural perspective, examined a 4-week summer program in which a group of 30 American adolescents was taken to a site that was deeply affected by climate change. The adolescents visited schools, social outreach organizations, local population members, attended lectures about climate change, and examined climate change’s impact on mangrove forests. The interviews with 13 of the participating adolescents indicated that being introduced to people and sites that are affected by climate change stimulated many to become more engaged with environmental issues. The learning experiences the summer program introduced these adolescents to also appeared to inform their self-understandings. As one participant mentioned, “[The summer camp] has changed my identity, it’s changed my daily outlook, what I buy, how much I buy when I go to stores, it’s changed my transportation, my daily living habits” (quote in Stapleton 2015 , p. 105). Hence, the summer program appeared to have introduced the adolescents to a new topic that intrigued them, while providing them with insights into how they themselves could tackle environmental issues.

This body of literature suggests that introducing adolescents to unfamiliar learning contents, learning activities, and identity positions through on-site and hands-on activities especially helps adolescents to imagine the identity implications thereof. Supposedly, on-site and hands-on activities introduce adolescents to learning contents, learning activities, and identity positions in authentic, real-life ways, which can help them decide to what extent they identify with these contents, activities, and positions.

Finally, one theoretical (Brickhouse 2001 ) and various empirical studies in this group of literature (Barrett and Baker 2012 ; Bruin and Ohna 2013 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Van Sluys 2010 ) that differ in the perspectives on identity development they adopt examined the role in-breadth explorative learning experiences may play in the identity development of adolescents with a higher risk of marginalization. Bruin and Ohna ( 2013 ), who do not explicitly mention a particular perspective on identity development, studied alternative educational courses involving increased workplace-practice for adolescents who could not flourish in Norwegian’s regular and more theoretically oriented education. In these alternative courses, the aim was to introduce students to the requirements and expectations that they will face in their future vocations. Based on interviews with eight students, Bruin and Ohna ( 2013 ) concluded that, whereas these students previously felt that school was not for them, the alternative courses allowed them “to discover and nourish hidden talents and interests and new sides of themselves and experiencing how feeling able builds self-confidence and supports learning” (quote in Bruin and Ohna 2013 , p. 1100). Their analysis, as well as the other articles, suggests that, by acquiring new skills through hands-on activities, these students were able to adjust their self-understandings in a positive way in relation to previously unavailable identity positions.

In-Depth Exploration

We identified a group of 16 articles regarding learning experiences that may support adolescents in further exploring and specifying their already present self-understandings. We refer to such experiences as in-depth explorative learning experiences. As is shown in Table 8 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), among these articles, two theoretical, three mixed-methods, and 11 ethnographic studies can be found. One theoretical (Luehmann 2009 ) and six ethnographic (Furman and Calabrese Barton 2006 ; Polman 2010 ; Polman and Hope 2014 ; Polman and Miller 2010 ; Rahm et al. 2014 ; Rudd 2012 ) studies that are grounded in sociocultural perspectives on identity development provide insights into how learning experiences that acknowledge that adolescents may already have a sense of who they are (for example a “history person”) could facilitate the exploration of contents, activities, and positions that are closely related to adolescents’ already present self-understandings (for example, the identity position of an art historian or of a history teacher). Five ethnographic articles—of which one employs a sociocultural perspective on identity development (Liu and Hannafin 2010 ), whereas the others do not explicitly mention a particular perspective on identity development (Adams et al. 2014 ; Jones and Deutsch 2013 ; Kendrick et al. 2013 ; Russ et al. 2015 )—additionally focused on whether in-depth explorations actually inform adolescents’ narrated self-understandings and found that they did. For example, Adams et al. ( 2014 ) examined a multi-year out-of-school STEM program for adolescents with a general interest in STEM. This program offered hands-on activities, scientist talks, visits to a museum’s behind the scenes research labs and collections, and field trips. The teachers selected research topics that span the collaborating museum’s areas of expertise and that were broad enough to give youth flexibility in the themes they wanted to explore. Focus group and interview data indicated that allowing adolescents to further specify their STEM interests fostered their STEM identity development. As one girl remarked:

The good thing about [the program is that] we took so many classes on so many subjects…. I got to learn so much about everything in science… I learned what I like and what I do not like. [I] got exposed to everything. (quote in Adams et al. 2014 , p. 18)

Hence, the learning experiences provided by this program appeared to enable adolescents to try out roles and activities that were closely related to their already present self-understandings so that they could explore what it actually entails to be a specific type of STEM person. Again, this study, together with the other sociocultural or related studies that concern in-depth explorative learning experiences, stresses the importance of hands-on and on-site learning experiences to support adolescents in making identity commitments.

The literature also indicates that—irrespective of the employed perspective on identity development and research methods—next to hands-on and on-site activities, role models may help adolescents in the in-depth exploration of their identities (Farland-Smith 2012 ; Hughes et al. 2013 ; Jones and Deutsch 2013 ; Whiting 2006 ). What is more, studies by Farland-Smith ( 2012 ) and Hughes et al. ( 2013 ) suggest that exposing marginalized adolescents to role models might help them to challenge stereotypes that would otherwise prevent them from further exploring certain identity positions. For example, Hughes et al. ( 2013 ), who combine perspectives on identity development, demonstrated—through survey, observation, and interview data—how meeting female role models in the male-dominated STEM field helped girls to develop a more detailed and knowledge-based (rather than prejudiced) picture of how they could become valuable members of a STEM community. Being introduced to female role models convinced various girls that there was enough space for them in the STEM field, which appeared to stimulate the further exploration of their STEM-related identities.

However, a mixed-methods study among 1138 American adolescents by Gilmartin et al. ( 2007 ) in which perspectives on identity are combined too suggests that adolescents only position people who are real experts in their eyes as role models. For example, in their study, it was found that the percentage of female science teachers at a school was not significantly related to adolescents’ science engagement and self-understandings. The interviews Gilmartin et al. ( 2007 ) performed indicated that female science teachers are not considered as expert role models by adolescents because of their perceived lack of “real-life science experience,” apart from teaching.

Reflective Exploration

We identified a group of 12 articles that concern learning experiences that help adolescents reflect upon their already present self-understandings. We refer to these experiences as reflective explorative learning experiences. As can be derived from Table 9 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), the articles that will be discussed in this section comprise five theoretical papers and seven ethnographic studies. One of the ethnographic studies in which a sociocultural perspective on identity development is employed, concerned an extracurricular reading club for Asian English Language Learners who attended an American high school (Choi 2009 ). This study indicates, based on student interviews and online student discussions, that stimulating self-reflection, in this case through reading and discussing a novel together with peers, may help adolescents to better understand their own thoughts and feelings and could therefore contribute to their identity development.

The Sinai et al. ( 2012 ) study, in which a psychosocial perspective was adopted, demonstrated—through classroom observations, student assignments, and student focus groups—that writing assignments may help adolescents to enter a dialogue with certain parts of themselves, such as a younger version of themselves. In some cases, this appeared to support adolescents in gaining insights into who they currently are and into who they want to become, as was reflected in their narrated self-understandings. Various theoretical articles that either do not explicitly mention a perspective on identity development (Hall 2007 ) or combine various perspectives on identity development (Harrell-Levy and Kerpelman 2010 ; Ligorio 2010 ) also argued that engaging adolescents in (internal) dialogues can help them to learn more about what their interests are, about what they value, and about what kind of persons they want to become.

Next, a theoretical study in which identity development is understood from a sociocultural perspective (Ten Dam et al. 2004 ), together with a theoretical study that does not explicitly adopt a particular perspective on identity (Rossiter 2007 ), argued that reflective explorative learning experiences are also important because they may foster adolescents’ understanding of how their identity development is influenced by their sociocultural context. The underlying idea is that this could help adolescents to consciously search for a balance in their identity development between societal norms on the one hand and adolescents’ individual dreams of who they want to be(come) on the other.

In addition, two ethnographic studies in which a sociocultural perspective on identity development is adopted (Rogers et al. 2007 ; Vianna and Stetsenko 2011 ), three ethnographic studies that do not explicitly adopt a particular perspective (Hall 2007 ; Hardee and Reyelt 2009 ; Muhammad 2012 ), and one theoretical study in which various perspectives on identity are combined (Henfield 2012 ), suggest that offering adolescents, and especially those who are at risk of marginalization, the opportunity to become aware of and critically assess societal inequalities may foster their identity development and make them more resilient. For example, Hardee and Reyelt ( 2009 ) examined how alternative arts-based education may support the identity development of adolescents in a juvenile arbitration program and of adolescents who are not succeeding in American public schools. In the arts-based workshops, adolescents were asked to question and challenge dominant ideologies by engaging in theater assignments, writing assignments, and collage-creating assignments. The analysis of the ethnographic data suggests that this helped the participants develop a stronger sense of who they are, what they stand for, and of what external barriers they might have to overcome in their further development. One student for example noted, “It helps to talk about this kind of stuff ’cause this isn’t stuff we talk about in school. I could talk about this all day. It makes me feel stronger inside, like I know me” (quote in Hardee and Reyelt 2009 , p. 33). This quote, as well as the studies mentioned above, indicates that learning about structural inequalities may help adolescents to better understand their position in society and to develop their identities while being aware of ascribed positions, in addition to chosen ones.

Conditions for Effective Explorative Learning Experiences

Next to articles on educational processes that may unintentionally or intentionally play a role in adolescents’ identity development, we identified 37 articles that focus on preconditions that are thought to be required when teachers intentionally want to support adolescents in exploring their identities.

Meaningful Learning Experiences

We found 20 articles concerning the role of meaningful learning experiences in supporting the development of adolescents’ identities. As is shown in Table 10 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), among these articles, eight theoretical, one quantitative, and 11 ethnographic studies can be found. Various of these articles argued (Brickhouse 2001 ; Cowie et al. 2011 ; Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Higgins 2015 ; Steele 1997 ; Subramaniam et al. 2012 ) or indicated (Basu et al. 2009 ; Black et al. 2010 ; Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Cobb et al. 2009 ; Freire et al. 2009 ; Hazari et al. 2010 ; Mittendorff et al. 2008 ; Mortimer et al. 2010 ; Polman and Miller 2010 ; Skerrett 2012 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ; Thompson 2014 ), irrespective of their theoretical perspective on identity development (also see Table 2 ) and employed research methods, that adolescents regard learning experiences as meaningful when they feel there is space for their own out-of-school knowledge and experiences in class and when they can relate what they learned in school to their out-of-school daily life. Additionally, in theoretical papers that employ sociocultural (Lemke 2001 ), combined (Whiting 2006 ), or no explicitly mentioned (Higgins 2015 ; Steele 1997 ) perspectives on identity development, it is argued that learning experiences are considered to be meaningful when adolescents recognize themselves in the learning material and content.

Together, the studies mentioned in this section suggest that meaningful learning experiences may make it easier for adolescents to link their already present self-understandings to the learning contents and activities in school and vice versa. This may help them to identify with the learning content and activities, which, in turn, would stimulate them to further explore whether they want to make certain identity commitments when it comes to those contents and activities.

Some of the studies that focus on meaningful learning experiences also explored how such experiences can be organized in school. Three ethnographic studies in which a sociocultural perspective is adopted (Basu et al. 2009 ; Skerrett 2012 ; Thompson 2014 ) and an ethnographic study in which various perspectives on identity development are combined (Cobb et al. 2009 ) found that adolescents, when they are able to voice which themes and learning interests appeal to them, and when teachers take this into account in selecting (or letting the students select) the topics and assignments, may be supported in relating their education to their personal lives. Furthermore, several articles departing from different perspectives on identity development suggest that entering a dialogue with adolescents and discussing the importance and implications of what they learned in school for their personal development may help adolescents to connect what is taught in school to their out-of-school daily lives (Black et al. 2010 ; Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Mittendorff et al. 2008 ).

Here, it should be noted that identity exploration, which is understood by scholars who adopt a psychosocial perspective on identity development as the questioning of already present identifications through triggering frictions and some discomfort that allow for the (re-)evaluation of childhood identifications (Erikson 1968 ; Kroger 2007 ; Marcia 1993 ; Sinai et al. 2012 ), does not necessarily exclude the possibility of relating adolescents’ personal lives to school and vice versa. Meaningful learning experiences do not have to concern experiences that perfectly suit adolescents. Rather, they are experiences that appeal to adolescents in such a way that they feel motivated to engage in identity exploration.

Supportive Classroom Climate

We identified a group of 18 articles that concern the role of a supportive classroom climate in fostering the development of adolescents’ identities. As can be derived from Table 11 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), the articles that will be discussed in this section comprise four theoretical papers, one quantitative study, and 13 ethnographic studies. Most articles, irrespective of their perspective on identity development and employed methods (also see Table 2 ), argued (Cummins et al. 2015 ; Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ) or found (Buxton 2005 ; Fields and Enyedy 2013 ; Hazari et al. 2015 ; Kendrick et al. 2013 ; Lam and Tam 2011 ; Olitsky 2007 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ; Van Ryzin 2014 ) that it is important to make adolescents feel respected and appreciated to warrant a supportive classroom climate. Also, some of these articles (Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ; Hazari et al. 2015 ; Olitsky 2007 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ), together with other theoretical (Harrell-Levy and Kerpelman 2010 ) and empirical (Archer et al. 2009 ; Carlone et al. 2015 ) studies (that vary too in the theoretical perspective on identity they adopt), focus on the importance of making adolescents feel secure enough to make “mistakes.” Additionally, various articles indicate that peers who approach each other open mindedly (Fields and Enyedy 2013 ), and recognize each other for who they are and want to be (Cummins et al. 2015 ; Harrell-Levy and Kerpelman 2010 ), are essential aspects of a supportive classroom climate too.

The factors listed above are suggested by the literature to stimulate adolescents’ identity development, because these factors are thought to make adolescents feel confident in trying out new roles (whether broadening or deepening adolescents’ self-understandings), in reflecting on their own thoughts and feelings, and in critically assessing societal inequalities. Discovering who you are and want to be is understood to require some courage, because it may involve risks and discomfort; it is accompanied by new experiences and change (Erikson 1968 ; Kroger 2007 ; Marcia 1993 ; Sinai et al. 2012 ). A supportive social climate may help adolescents to feel safe enough to take these risks and deal with such possible discomfort. In the group of literature that focuses on the role of a supportive classroom climate in supporting the development of adolescents’ identities, we found several suggestions to foster a supportive classroom climate. First, two theoretical (Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ; Lam and Tam 2011 ) and two ethnographic (Robb et al. 2007 ; Rudd 2012 ) articles that differ in the perspectives on identity development that they employ indicate that teacher compliments (Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ; Robb et al. 2007 ) and warm teacher-student relationships (Lam and Tam 2011 ; Rudd 2012 ) may contribute to a supportive classroom climate. Some of these articles argued (Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ) or demonstrated (Robb et al. 2007 ; Rudd 2012 ) that this is the case, because teacher compliments and personal teacher-student relationships make students feel recognized and valued.

Second, other articles (again differing in the perspective on identity development they employ) focus on how teachers can communicate to their students that they are allowed to make mistakes (Archer et al. 2009 ; Hazari et al. 2015 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ; Rudd 2012 ). For example, Hazari et al. ( 2015 ) found, in their ethnographic study on physics classes that is grounded in a sociocultural perspective, that when teachers share their own doubts and make mistakes every once in a while, this may help to reassure students, as comes to the fore in the following quote:

Well, like I do not know if he does it on purpose but sometimes he makes mistakes like in the problems and stuff and like the whole class laughs and then it makes us feel more comfortable because like he, our own teacher is making mistakes. (quote in Hazari et al. 2015 , p. 749)

Together with the ethnographic study by Tan and Calabrese Barton ( 2007 ) that is grounded in a sociocultural perspective too, the study by Hazari et al. ( 2015 ) indicates that adolescents, when they do not continuously feel the pressure to perform, may feel more supported to freely explore their identities. Additionally, the study by Rudd ( 2012 ), in which perspectives on identity development are combined, suggests that when teachers approach their students open mindedly—in the sense that they offer students second chances and chances to reposition themselves on a regular basis—students may feel less judged and restricted and may therefore feel more invited to explore their identity.

Finally, several ethnographic studies differing in their adopted theoretical perspectives on identity development demonstrated how mutual recognition among peers could be stimulated by engaging adolescents in learning activities that invite mutual encouragement (Carlone et al. 2015 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ) or by making adolescents aware of what they have in common (Hardee and Reyelt 2009 ; Jones and Deutsch 2013 ; Parker 2014 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ). For example, in an art program studied by Hardee and Reyelt ( 2009 ), adolescents were asked to create art pieces. Subsequently, the adolescents discussed their personal interpretations of the art that was made, which, based on observation and interview data, appeared to make them aware of the experiences and views they shared that seemed to foster adolescents’ bonding processes.

School, a place where adolescents spend a lot of time and are introduced to new ideas and activities, is an important context where adolescents’ identity development can be supported (e.g., 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 ). Yet, due to a scattered research field, it was difficult to establish how schools and teachers can foster adolescents’ identity development and what knowledge gaps should be addressed to further support schools and teachers in doing so. Therefore, the present literature review aimed to present an overview of what insights the existing literature provides into the role of school in adolescents’ identity development.

We found that three groups of literature could be distinguished in the existing literature. The first group concerns articles that focus on educational processes through which adolescents’ identity development may unintentionally (and often negatively) be informed by schools, teachers, and peers: selection practices and differentiation, teaching strategies, teacher expectations, and peer norms. The second group of articles regards educational processes through which schools and teachers can intentionally organize experiences that support adolescents’ identity development: namely, through in-breadth exploration, in-depth exploration, and reflective exploration. The third group of articles comprises studies on two preconditions that are required to intentionally support adolescents’ identity development in school: meaningful learning experiences and a supportive classroom climate.

What struck us is that a fair share of studies on educational processes that may unintentionally play a role in adolescents’ identity development were performed in formal educational settings, whereas most of the studies on how schools and teachers can intentionally organize experiences that support adolescents’ identity development were conducted in extracurricular and out-of-school settings. The absence of studies on explorative learning experiences in adolescents’ identity development in formal education suggests that explorative learning experiences are currently not well integrated in the formal curriculum. We think this is worrisome, as introducing students to new learning contents and activities is the main purpose of formal education. Furthermore, the literature on educational processes that may unintentionally play a role in adolescents’ identity development shows how schools and teachers may significantly impact adolescents’ identities in a negative way. Yet, neither in educational practice nor in educational research, enough attention is paid to how adolescents’ identities can be influenced in a constructive manner in formal education.

What Schools and Teachers Can Learn About Their Role in Adolescents’ Identity Development

One of the contributions of this review is that it invites schools and teachers to look at educational practices in new, critical ways: The review shows how educational processes that may be considered as unproblematic could unintentionally shape how adolescents’ come to understand themselves and provides suggestions for how learning experiences that support adolescents’ identity development can be integrated in the curriculum.

First, this review makes clear that educational processes that unintentionally play a role in adolescents’ identity development are ubiquitous. The literature identified the following educational processes through which messages are communicated to adolescents concerning who they should or can be: selection practices and differentiation , teaching strategies , teacher expectations , and peer norms . It is in relation to such messages that adolescents’ develop their identities; These messages can be internalized by adolescents. Moreover, the identified educational processes involve practices that tend to be considered as normal, unproblematic, and—in the cases of selection processes, differentiation, and certain teaching strategies—efficient, yet were found to often inform adolescent’s self-understandings in a negative way. Based on the literature, it can be recommended that becoming more aware of and reflect more upon the messages that these practices may communicate could help to prevent adolescents’ identity development from being influenced in a negative manner.

Second, this review showed that different types of explorative learning experiences can be organized to foster adolescents’ identity development: in-breadth , in-depth , and reflective explorative learning experiences . Adolescents can be stimulated to explore new identity positions through in-breadth exploration or be helped to explore and further specify already existing self-understandings through in-depth exploration. Alternatively, schools and teachers can foster adolescents’ understandings of their own thoughts and feelings through reflective explorative learning experiences. Schools can ask themselves how they can restructure the curriculum in such a way that it enables these different types of explorative learning experiences, and teachers can ask themselves how they can redesign their classes so that they become explorative learning experiences. No matter what the specific identity development purpose is, and while acknowledging that this may be difficult to arrange, the literature suggests that explorative learning experiences should be meaningful to adolescents and situated in supportive classroom climates in order to be successful.

We would like to stress, though, that the provision of explorative learning experiences in formal education to support adolescents’ identity development does not necessarily entail an extra task for teachers and schools. Introducing adolescents to new ideas, activities, and possibilities is what teachers and schools are supposed to do anyway. Providing explorative learning experiences is a way of fulfilling this task through a pedagogical approach that stimulates adolescents to connect what they are taught in school to who they are and want to be (Biesta 2014 ; Vianna and Stetsenko 2011 ).

Directions for Future Research

In our selection of literature, studies that are grounded in sociocultural, psychosocial, social psychological, and sociological perspectives on identity development can be found. Currently, the great majority of these studies looks at adolescents’ identity development from a sociocultural perspective and provides insights into how available norms, values, tools, and identity positions in schools may impact how adolescents come to understand themselves. Yet, studies grounded in a psychosocial, social psychological, or sociological perspective on identity development are less prevalent (also see Table 2 ).

In this review, it has become clear—by primarily grouping the selected studies based on the identified educational processes and preconditions, instead of based on the theoretical perspectives on identity that are adopted—that when scholars, who differ in their adopted theoretical perspectives on identity, would combine their strengths, this could make a large difference in moving this body of research forward.

So far, only the role of selection practices and differentiation, peer norms, and supportive classroom climates in adolescents’ identity development have been studied from different theoretical perspectives. For example, when it comes to the educational process of selection practices and differentiation, studies using a sociocultural perspective showed the impact ability grouping may have, through the different identity positions that are available to different ability groups, on adolescents’ engagement with school (as an indication of adolescents’ school- and learning-related identities). Yet, without studies that employed a social psychological perspective, we would not have known as much about the more negative behavioral and personality characteristics that are attributed to students from lower status educational tracks compared to students from higher status tracks. Next, psychosocial studies have found indications for differences in the process of identity development (in terms of exploration and commitment) between students in different academic tracks, although the direction of the differences remains still unclear. Hence, when studies examine the role of educational processes in adolescents’ identity development from different angles, this may provide us with invaluable and complementary insights (also see Lewis and Valle 2009 ). Yet, as the articles on the role of peer norms and supportive classroom climates show, studies that differ in the theoretical perspective on identity they are grounded in can also approach the role of certain educational processes in adolescents’ identity development in a similar way, consequently validating each other’s research findings. To illustrate, articles in which a sociocultural perspective is employed, as well as articles in which a psychosocial or no explicitly mentioned perspective on identity development is adopted, all suggest that peers may restrict each other’s access to certain identity positions by refusing to recognize each other in certain ways or by stigmatizing particular identity positions which makes these positions less appealing to publicly identify with.

For the majority of the educational processes that are identified in the existing literature, it still remains to be seen to what extent research grounded in different theoretical perspectives on identity development would complement and/or validate each other. However, the findings that are derived from articles on selection processes and differentiation, peer norms, and supportive classroom climates promise that research on the other identified educational processes, when studied from different angles, will add to the current research field. Furthermore, by bringing research concerning particular educational processes and preconditions together, based on different theoretical perspectives on identity, this literature review allows scholars to see how their research may complement research performed by scholars who employ other theoretical perspectives, and vice versa, while supporting them in identifying research gaps when it comes to particular educational processes or preconditions.

To date, studies that are grounded in psychosocial, social psychological, and sociological perspectives tend to be less occupied with whether and how educational processes and preconditions in day-to-day school-based experiences and interactions may impact adolescents’ identities than studies in which a sociocultural perspective is employed. This is a limitation of the existing body of research that points to a direction for future research and, moreover, that cannot be easily substituted by findings from other strands of research. Although psychologists do study the identity-related phenomena of self-concept (people’s perceptions of themselves; Marsh 1990 ) and possible selves (people’s positive and negative images of their selves in a future state; Oyserman et al. 2006 ) in education, these phenomena are generally studied in a quantitative manner to examine respectively their relation to adolescents’ academic achievements (e.g., Marsh 1990 ) and goal-related actions (e.g., Oyserman et al. 2006 ). These strands of research too tend to be less concerned with how daily interactions and experiences in school inform adolescents’ self-concepts or possible selves.

With regard to more circumscribed identity dimensions, the existing research was highly skewed towards studies on the development of adolescents’ STEM identities. Research on schools’ role in the development of, for example, adolescents’ history identities or geology identities is non-existent, and studies concerning the role of school in adolescents’ literacy identity are scarce. It remains to be studied whether these identity dimensions—as well as identity dimensions not covered in this review study, such as gender and ethnic identities—are subject to the same educational processes as the identity dimensions that are prevalent among the articles included in this review.

We would like to conclude our literature study by emphasizing that this review demonstrates, more than anything, that even though we know that schools and teachers in formal education may unintentionally impact adolescents’ identity development, there are only a few studies on how adolescents’ identity development can intentionally be supported in formal education (referred to as “identity education” by Schachter and Rich 2011 ). Moreover, the body of literature on learning experiences that can intentionally be organized to support adolescents’ identity development suggests that learning experiences outside of school may impact the identities of adolescents too. This is something to take into account in future research, as adolescents participate in learning experiences in various contexts (home, sports clubs, side jobs), and the communicated identity messages and explorative learning experiences of each of these contexts may interact. The bottom line is, though, that, currently, research (irrespective of its perspective on identity development) cannot sufficiently support schools and teachers in the intentional fostering of adolescents’ identity development in formal education: The strategies that are identified by the literature on extracurricular and out-of-school settings may not simply be transferable to formal school settings. Therefore, we argue that, to support adolescents’ identity development in our contemporary society, future research’s first priority should be to map to what extent identity exploration is encouraged in current formal curriculums and to provide insights into how adolescents’ identity development can successfully and intentionally be fostered in formal education.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Netherlands Initiative for Education Research [grant number 405-15-716]. Special thanks to Janneke Staaks (information specialist at the University of Amsterdam) for her assistance in the selection of the databases and the development of our search strategy. We would also like to thank Desiree Berendsen, Carla van Boxtel, Lenie van den Bulk, Hanoch Flum, Avi Kaplan, Thea van Lankveld, Sarah Leker, Piet Post, Ati Raban, Floor Rombout, Marloes Schrijvers and Wim Wardekker (a group consisting of researchers, teacher educators, teachers, and principals) for their helpful comments on our first draft.

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Introduction

Racial identity development models, how minority clients impact counseling process.

Racial identity development is a social and psychological process that an individual undergoes to form an identity related to a certain racial or ethnic group. When individuals encounter different racial or ethnic groups, they perform self-assessment and create an identity in response to knowledge, understanding, experiences, and actions (Thompson & Carter, 2013). Racial identity is a social construct, which individuals create, sustain, and transform, depending on the dynamics of social interactions, which occur among individuals from diverse racial, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds.

Sue and Sue (2016) argue that racial identity development has a considerable impact on the counseling process because it determines behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs of individuals. The implication is that therapists or counselors need to understand the racial identity of their clients so that they can provide unique and customized therapy based on their racial identity. Therefore, this essay describes racial identity development models associated with the minorities and elucidates their impact on the counseling process.

Black Identity Development Model

As members of the minority race, Blacks have a unique experience, which has made them have a similar pattern of racial identity. Sue and Sue (2016) describes Black identity development model as a five-stage process that Blacks undergo in forming their racial identity from negative view to positive view of themselves. Pre-encounter is the first stage where Blacks view themselves negatively but view Whites positively for they want assimilation.

When Blacks experience the reality of racism, they enter the second stage, which is the encounter stage. At this stage, Blacks realize that they cannot assimilate fully to the White race, and thus, they retract their assimilation process and start to identify with their Black race (Thompson & Carter, 2013). In the immersion-emersion stage, the third stage, Blacks begin to value their race for the sense of guilt and fear disappears whereas pride and esteem rejuvenate. At the fourth stage, internalization, Blacks resolve their racial identity because there is a conflict between the new and old identities.

The resolution of racial identities makes Blacks culturally competent for they become tolerant, flexible, and multicultural people (Capuzzi & Stauffer, 2016). In forming their racial identity, Blacks enter the fifth stage of internalization-commitment. At this stage, Blacks begin to advocate for social justice, civil rights, and social change. This model of identity development emanates from the experience of African Americans during the civil rights movement.

Asian American Development Model

Asian Americans are in the process of acculturation for they have a positive view of the White race. The model elucidates how acculturation, exposure, cultural competence, and social factors influence racial identity development among Asian Americans. At the first stage, family members or caretakers expose children aged 3 to 4 to their ethnicity, and thus, shape their ethnic awareness.

When children attain the age of schooling, they enter the second stage where they encounter prejudice and racism, which compel them to identify with Whites. After enduring discrimination and racism, children enter the third stage where they abandon identification with Whites and commence to wake up for they gain social and political consciousness brought about by civil rights movements (Thompson & Carter, 2013).

The fourth stage is the redirection stage where American Asians realize White racism and begin to connect with their culture and heritage. At the fifth stage, which in the incorporation stage, Asian Americans attain cultural competence for they can identify with their culture and respect other cultures.

Latino/Hispanic American Development Model

The basis of this development model is that it considers cultural factors, the marginalized status of Latinos, forced assimilation, pride in one’s culture, and freedom of choice. The process of racial identity development commences with the causal stage where there is the inability to identify with Latino culture due to negative views in the social environment (Capuzzi & Stauffer, 2016). Subsequently, Latinos enter the cognitive stage where negative views make them perceive themselves as poor and marginalized, and the assimilation becomes the only way of improving their lives and attaining success.

At the consequence stage, Sue and Sue (2016) describe it as a stage where Latinos do experience embarrassment, rejection, and stigma due to negative images of skin color, cultural norms, and accent among other attributes. At the stage of working-through, Latinos resolve their identity for they are unable to cope with double identities, and thus, they revert to their racial identity. At the fifth stage, there is a successful resolution of racial identity for Latinos attain complete acceptance of their ethnicity and race.

The analysis of racial identity models shows that the minority groups such as African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos have shared similar trends in the racial identity process. The minority clients require customization of the counseling process to suit their experiences, exposure, and perceptions of dominant cultures and races. According to Sue and Sue (2016), oppression is a key factor that determines and drives racial identity among the minority groups.

In this view, counselors need to understand their clients regarding the nature of oppressions they have undergone and customize therapy to minimize oppressive effects and enable clients to attain positive racial identity. Since clients undergo different stages of racial identity development based on the culture, the development models enable counselors to design a comprehensive and effective therapy that targets each stage and culture (Capuzzi & Stauffer, 2016). Furthermore, the model enables counselors to design and undertake multicultural counseling, which empowers clients to formulate their identity effectively. With the help of the model, counselors assess beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of clients and guide them accordingly to resolve conflicting identities.

The minority clients at the conformity stage require therapists whom they perceive to be effective and competent. A conformity client reacts negatively to a minority counselor and positively to a majority counselor (Sue & Sue, 2016). In this view, a minority counselor has a challenge of alleviating resistance and hostility from a conformity client from the same race and culture. In contrast, a majority counselor experiences a challenge of diagnosing and treating a conformity client because appeasement has a confounding effect (Thompson & Carter, 2013). Thus, for counselors to overcome conformity issues, they need to assess clients and determine the degree of conformity so that they can prevent the occurrence of undesirable outcomes such as resistance, negativism, hostility, and appeasement. From the perspective of therapy, conformity individuals require task-oriented approach in the resolution of their issues related to racial identity.

The examination and description of the racial identity development models show that the minority clients have a unique way of forming their identity. Majorly, the experience of oppression is the core attribute that determines the course of racial identity development. Racial identity development models of Blacks, Asian Americans, and Latinos follow the same trends because they have a similar experience of oppression.

Consequently, the minority clients have major implications on the counseling process. The impacts of the minority clients are that they require customization of counseling process to suit their experience, exposure, and perceptions. The minority clients also require counselors to understand their racial and cultural values so that they can design comprehensive multicultural process of counseling. Moreover, clients require therapists to categorize them into different stages such as conformity stage and provide appropriate treatment.

Capuzzi, D., & Stauffer, D. (2016). Counseling and psychotherapy: Theories and interventions . Alexandria, VA : American Counseling Association.

Sue, D., & Sue, D. (2016). Counseling the culturally diverse: Theory and practice (7 th ed.). Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons.

Thompson, C., & Carter, R. (2013). Racial identity theory: Applications to individual, group, and organizational interventions. New York, NY: Routledge.

Social and Cultural Diversity and Racism
Police ‘Shooter Bias’ Against African-Americans
Sue and Mary Case Study: Herzberg’s Theory
Conformity in "The Wars" by Timothy Findley
Tax Consequences Advice Sue of the Above Transactions
Race and Ethnicity Relations in the United States
White Privilege: History and Understanding
The Use of the White Racial Identity Model Developed by Janet Helms for Analyzing a Person’s Attitudes Towards Race and Ethnicity
Racism and Discrimination in Religion Context
LULAC: Efforts to Promote Racial Equality
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Article contents

Introduction

Erikson’s Psychosocial Orientation

Erikson’s Psychosocial Approach and Marcia’s Identity Status Model

Personality and Behavioral Correlates of the Identity Statuses

Self-Esteem

Locus of Control

Authoritarianism

Ego Development

Moral Reasoning

Additional Personality and Behavioral Variables

Relationships and the Identity Statuses

Identity Status Change from Adolescence Through Adulthood

Events Associated with Identity Status Change

Identity Development in Adulthood

What the Identity Statuses Mean

Conclusions

Further Reading

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Evolving Identities: The Concept of Self-Identity and Self-Perception

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Identity Development Process and Content:

Articles in this issue

Theoretical Essays and Innovations

Identity Content in Context

Integration of Multiple Identity Perspectives

Integration of Identity and Other Developmental Processes and Outcomes

APA Database Subscription Options

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Identity Development

Erikson’s Identity vs. Role Confusion

Marcia’s Identity Statuses

Supporting identity development

The Role of School in Adolescents’ Identity Development. A Literature Review

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Selection and Analysis of the Literature

Characteristics of the Literature

Theoretical Perspectives on Identity Development

Sociocultural Perspectives

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Directions for Future Research

Acknowledgements

Author information