From Good Student to Outcast: The Emergence of a Classroom Identity

Abstract

The process of social identification draws on heterogeneous resources from several levels of explanation. This article illustrates how, by describing the identity development of one student across an academic year in a ninth‐grade classroom. Analyses of transcribed classroom conversations show teachers and students drawing on multiple resources as this student goes from being identified as one of many good students to being identified as a disruptive outcast. This case provides a counterexample to simple theories of identity development that do not recognize the multiple, heterogeneous resources involved in social identification.