(Re)Formulating identities in the face of fluid modernity: An interactional ethnographic approach

In this article, we examine the ways in which identities within a classroom are not given, but are formulated in and through the developing discourses, practices and ways of structuring interactional spaces for collective and individual activity. Using an interactional ethnographic approach, we explore how potentials for developing local identities were related to the ways in which the teacher and students formulated who can do and/or say what, to and with whom, when, where, under what conditions, for what purposes, and with what outcomes and consequences. By examining these questions, we explored community, personal, and academic positions and positionings constructed by members, and how these positions/positionings created identity potentials for both the collective and individuals-within-the-collective. Two questions guided our exploration of the construction of identity potentials: How did the teacher initiate locally constructed processes and practices that shaped what counted as students, teacher, and other collective, institutional and academic identities on the first morning of school? What evidence exists on the first morning and in end of the year essays that students took up the discursive patterns and practices of the classroom as material resources in (re)formulating local identities? By examining these questions, we explored how a fifth grade bilingual teacher and the linguistically diverse members of her class, collectively and individually formulated and negotiated situated definitions of what one was supposed to know and learn as well as what it meant to be a student, a mathematician, and a community member among other local identities.