How college students develop social identity through academic and social experiences

Student Social Identity Development

How and Why Students Develop a Social Identity

What is meant by Student Development?

Author Nancy J. Evans notes that the phrase "Student Development" too often becomes simply a vague catchphrase that has little application to college students' lives and learning. Student Development embraces the psychosocial, cognitive-structural, and social identity of students in postsecondary settings (Evans, et al., 2009).

In the quest for self-direction, students universally seek a social identity as well as an education that can propel them into meaningful, successful careers.

Evans, N.J., Forney, D.S., Guido, F.M., Patton, L.D., and Renn, K.A. (2009). Student Development in College: Theory, Research, and Practice.

Introduction to Training Session

Clearly college and university students already have an identity when they enroll in classes, although their more mature individual identity in the social milieu will evolve with time. This training session embraces the question of how and why a student's social identity develops. It offers insights and values academic advisors need to understand and to put into use.

Thesis: Approaching scholarship while simultaneously achieving an identity with / in a specific social echelon is a crucial dual role for students transitioning into believable adults.

Learning is Social & Academic

Each individual has a unique past and each person's identity is based on the experiences and the environment that person was raised in throughout his or her formative years. But when the individual enters college, according to author Rex Heer, learning becomes more than an academic process; it in fact becomes a social process as well (Heer, 2008).

Heer references Henri Tajfel's theories on social categorization and social identity, which include the idea that social identity relates to a person's overall self-concept, and the concept of self is based on a person's interactions with group-specific identities (Heer).

Heer, R. (2008). Exploring the Congruence of Ethic Minority Millennial Students' Transition to College, Social Identity and Community, and Online Social Network Services. Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest.

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Creating Appropriate Identities

A student from a lower income socioeconomic community, for example, may wish to create a middle class identity by aligning himself with particular class-based activities in order to be able to achieve the targeted social psychological end result, Hanson asserts.

Hanson references the viewpoints of sociologist Erving Goffman (1967), who explained that the most personal possession of a student, his social identity -- which becomes the very vortex of his sense of security and contentment -- is only being loaned to him by the campus culture (Hanson). Moreover, Goffman points out, that specific social identity the student projects can easily be withdrawn unless his conduct and emphasis is deemed worthy.

Positioning for Personal Identity

Author Alissa Renee King posits that the process of creating a social identity involves having the ability to infuse one's self into several boundaries (King, 2008). That includes the need to be believable, because a student seeking identity with a specific group on campus needs to be taken as genuine, King explains.

There is pressure on him because he is positioned between his personal identity and the social identity of his preferred group.

King, A.R. (2008). Uncertainty and Evolution: Contributions to Identity Development for Female College Students who Identify as Multiracial/biracial-bisexual/pansexual. Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest.

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Forming Social Roles: Discussion

Students in college are often passionate about maintaining a kind of consistency between their person identity (what they view as their identity coming into an institution of higher learning) and their emerging social identity.

Moreover, the need for a student to achieve a social identity is (in most cases) on equal terms with a student's desire to succeed academically. First, of course a college degree helps the student climb the socioeconomic ladder in society. But importantly, the college and university experience offers the opportunity to become scholarly along with developing a key social identity. That social identity achieved during a student's college experience is very likely to be the social identity he will present to others throughout his adult life.