About Learner Identity Studies
Learners can be of any age and in any location – from three year olds in a nursery to our own staff undergoing changes in identity from school teacher to university academic. The core mission of CLIS is to understand learners better and our methodological focus is upon individual lives, which predisposes us to use qualitative methods, though not always. CLIS members are united by the belief that individual lives matter in what they can tell us about improving education. Beyond that we embrace a diversity of approaches and it is the insights of our members that make us what we are.
Learner Identity Studies
The core mission of CLIS is to understand learners better and our methodological focus is upon individual lives, which predisposes us to use qualitative methods, though not always. CLIS members are united by the belief that individual lives matter in what they can tell us about improving education. Beyond that we embrace a diversity of approaches and it is the insights of our members that make us what we are.
Professor Martin Ashley
For me the journey began with a statement I made on page one of my M Phil thesis back in the early 1980s. “I found it increasingly difficult to live with a regime which could only function on the basis of the repression of children’s individual needs, emotions and personalities.” Fundamentally, it hasn’t changed. It’s just got a lot more complicated!
Further thoughts [PDF] >>>
Paul Bartle
I see identity as multi-faceted, fluid, changing, maybe fragmented and even malleable. I see language as the principal influence on identity and the main means by which individuals express their identity.
I’m particularly interested in how workers in education – particularly teachers, trainee teachers and various groups of classroom support staff – relate their ‘professional’ identity and how this identity influences and is influenced by wider social, political and economic discourses. The interplay of the ‘personal’ and the ‘professional’ identity also fascinates me.
Dr Linda Dunne
In The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) Foucault wrote:‘Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order’. Educators are caught up in taken for granted discourses, knowledge(s) and practices developed in schools and through policy. How teaching and learning occurs, and how learners are positioned, addressed and spoken about, can both constitute and affect learner identities and subjectivities.
Fiona Hallet
"… Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle…" - Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)
Dr Lisa Murtagh
For me, learner identity is about a sense of ‘belonging’, as each one of us makes a distinct contribution to, for example, our families, friendships and schools - we gain from these relationships - they create our own unique identities which evolve throughout our life, shaped by our experiences.
Rob Foster
'When you look at me, look hard and look twice
Is that me, baby, or just a brilliant disguise?'
(Bruce Springsteen)
For me, we all have multiple identities, personal and professional, and that also goes for our identity as learners. Is there a 'real us', a core that influences everything we do as learners? Are we different in different contexts, appearing sometimes in a 'brilliant disguise'?
Jenny Fox Eades
'I see identity as the inner story we tell ourselves about ourselves. I am interested in how that
inner story is influenced by the stories we hear around us.'
