“I’m not a person that reads”: Identity Work, Adult Learners, and Educational (Dis)engagement

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. “I’m not a person that reads”: Identity Work, Adult Learners, and Educational (Dis)engagement
Scott McLean, Jaya Dixit, Canadian Journal of Education, 2019/01/10
This paper (27 page PDF) uses the frame of 'identity work' described by Snow and Anderson to interpret identity statements made by interviewees describing their experience with self-help books. Snow and Anderson identified four activities common to the practice of identity work including "verbal construction and assertion of personal identities." This activity has two modes, 'distancing' and 'embracement', and many of the responses to the survey were found to fit neatly into one of the other of these modes. More...