Identity Scholarship in Educational Psychology: Toward a Complex Dynamic Systems Perspective

In this chapter, we describe our perspective on identity scholarship in the field of educational psychology. We begin with a short introduction to the centrality of identity and its development to the mission of education in the twenty-first century of preparing students, professionals, and citizens for adaptive life in a complex and changing world. We then review three perspectives on identity and their foci in educational psychological research: social cognitive and social psychological perspectives that foreground identity content, psychosocial perspectives that foreground identity structure and formation processes, and social cultural perspectives that foreground the role of culture in identity and its formation. We follow this by describing an emerging integrative perspective of identity as a complex dynamic system and its application in educational psychological scholarship. We conclude by noting several emergent areas of identity research in educational psychology, and we emphasize the potential for identity research to bridge educational psychological scholarship with educational practice and policy.