adolescence identity development essay

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Identity development in adolescence and adulthood.

Jane Kroger Jane Kroger Department of Psychology, University of Tromsoe
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.54
Published online: 27 February 2017

Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson was the first professional to describe and use the concept of ego identity in his writings on what constitutes healthy personality development for every individual over the course of the life span. Basic to Erikson’s view, as well as those of many later identity writers, is the understanding that identity enables one to move with purpose and direction in life, and with a sense of inner sameness and continuity over time and place. Erikson considered identity to be psychosocial in nature, formed by the intersection of individual biological and psychological capacities in combination with the opportunities and supports offered by one’s social context. Identity normally becomes a central issue of concern during adolescence, when decisions about future vocational, ideological, and relational issues need to be addressed; however, these key identity concerns often demand further reflection and revision during different phases of adult life as well. Identity, thus, is not something that one resolves once and for all at the end of adolescence, but rather identity may continue to evolve and change over the course of adult life too.

Following Erikson’s initial writings, subsequent theorists have laid different emphases on the role of the individual and the role of society in the identity formation process. One very popular elaboration of Erikson’s own writings on identity that retains a psychosocial focus is the identity status model of James Marcia. While Erikson had described one’s identity resolution as lying somewhere on a continuum between identity achievement and role confusion (and optimally located nearer the achievement end of the spectrum), Marcia defined four very different means by which one may approach identity-defining decisions: identity achievement (commitment following exploration), moratorium (exploration in process), foreclosure (commitment without exploration), and diffusion (no commitment with little or no exploration). These four approaches (or identity statuses) have, over many decades, been the focus of over 1,000 theoretical and research studies that have examined identity status antecedents, behavioral consequences, associated personality characteristics, patterns of interpersonal relations, and developmental forms of movement over time. A further field of study has focused on the implications for intervention that each identity status holds. Current research seeks both to refine the identity statuses and explore their dimensions further through narrative analysis.

identity status
identity formation
adolescence

Introduction

We know what we are, but not what we may be . Shakespeare, Hamlet

The question of what constitutes identity has been answered differently through different historical epochs and through different theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding identity’s form and functions. However, basic to all identity definitions is an attempt to understand the entity that, ideally, enables one to move with purpose and direction in life and with a sense of internal coherence and continuity over time and place. Despite the changing physique that aging inevitably brings and the changing environmental circumstances that one invariably encounters through life, a well-functioning identity enables one to experience feelings of personal meaning and well-being and to find satisfying and fulfilling engagements in one’s social context. The means by which one experiences a feeling of sameness in the midst of continual change is the focus of identity theory and research.

Historically, concerns with questions of identity are relatively recent. Baumeister and Muraven ( 1996 ) and Burkitt ( 2011 ) have noted how changes in Western society, specifically the degree to which society has dictated one’s adult roles, have varied enormously over time. Additional changes have occurred in the loosening of social guidelines, restrictions, and constraints, such that contemporary late adolescents experience almost unlimited freedom of choice in their assumption of adult roles and values. In Medieval times, adolescents and adults were prescribed an identity by society in a very direct manner. Social rank and the kinship networks into which one was born set one’s adult roles for life. In early modern times, wealth rather than kinship networks became the standard for self-definition. In the first half of the twentieth century , apprenticeship systems that prepared adolescents for one specific line of work were giving way to more liberal forms of education, thus preparing adolescents for a broad range of occupational pathways. A more liberal educational system, however, eventually required occupational choice in line with one’s own interests and capacities. In addition, many regions in the United States became more tolerant of diversity in attitudes and values, and gender roles became more fluid. Thus, by the middle of the twentieth century in the United States and many other Western nations, the burden of creating an adult identity was now falling largely on the shoulders of late adolescents themselves.

Into this twentieth century United States context came Erik Erikson, a German immigrant (escaping Hitler’s rise to power) and psychoanalyst, trained by Anna Freud. Erikson began his clinical work and writings on optimal personality development in the Boston area, focusing, in particular, on the concept of identity and identity crisis . As an immigrant, Erikson was acutely attuned to the role of the social context and its influence on individual personality development, and, as a psychoanalyst, he was also adept at understanding the roles of conscious as well as unconscious motivations, desires, and intentions, as well as biological drives on individual behavior.

Erikson ( 1963 ) first used the term “ego identity” to describe a central disturbance among some of his veteran patients returning from World War II with a diagnosis of “shell shock” (or currently, post-traumatic stress disorder), who seemed to be experiencing a loss of self-sameness and continuity in their lives:

What impressed me most was the loss in these men of a sense of identity. They knew who they were; they had a personal identity. But it was as if subjectively, their lives no longer hung together—and never would again. There was a central disturbance in what I then started to call ego identity. (Erikson, 1963 , p. 42)

Through identity’s absence in the lives of these young men, Erikson came to understand the tripartite nature of identity, that he believed to be comprised of biological, psychological, and social factors. It was often a particular moment in a soldier’s life history where soma, psyche, and society conspired to endanger identity foundations that necessitated clinical care. And, thus, it was through disruptions to individual identity that Erikson more clearly came to understand identity’s form and functions.

Erikson has often been referred to as “identity’s architect” (e.g., Friedman, 1999 ), and his initial writings on identity served as the springboard for many later theorists and researchers to examine further identity’s many dimensions. Erikson’s psychosocial approach will thus serve as the organizing framework for a review of research on identity development during adolescent and adult life.

Erikson’s Psychosocial Orientation

Erikson’s ( 1963 , 1968 ) understanding of identity views the phenomenon as a result of the mutual interaction of individual and context; while individual interests and capacities, wishes and desires draw individuals to particular contexts, those contexts, in turn, provide recognition (or not) of individual identity and are critical to its further development. Erikson stressed the important interactions among the biological, psychological, and social forces for optimal personality development. He suggested a series of eight psychosocial tasks over the course of the life span that follow an epigenetic principle, such that resolution to one task sets the foundation for all that follow. Identity vs. Role Confusion is the fifth psychosocial task that Erikson identified, becoming of primary importance during adolescence. Resolution to preceding tasks of Trust vs. Mistrust, Autonomy vs. Doubt and Shame, Initiative vs. Guilt, Industry vs. Inferiority are the foundations upon which one’s resolution to Identity vs. Role Confusion is based, according to Erikson; resolution to subsequent adult tasks of Intimacy vs. Role Confusion, Generativity vs. Stagnation, and Integrity vs. Despair all similarly depend upon resolution to the Identity vs. Role Confusion task of adolescence.

Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) postulated a number of key identity concepts that have served as foundations for much subsequent identity research. For Erikson, identity formation involves finding a meaningful identity direction on a continuum between identity attainment and role confusion . The process of identity formation requires identity exploration and commitment , the synthesis of childhood identifications into a new configuration, related to but different from, the sum of its parts. The identity formation process is extremely arduous for some, and the resolutions of a negative identity or identity foreclosure are two means by which the identity formation process can be bypassed. A negative identity involves identity choices based on roles and values that represent polar opposites of those espoused by one’s family and/or immediate community. Thus, the daughter of a Midwestern minister of religion runs away to become a prostitute in inner city Chicago. A foreclosed identity resolution also avoids the identity formation process by basing identity-defining choices on key identifications, mostly with parental values, without exploring potential alternatives.

Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) also proposed several further concepts for optimal identity development. A moratorium process, the active consideration and exploration of future possible identity-defining adult roles and values, was considered vital to optimal identity development. Erikson also became well known for his use of the term identity crisis , an acute period of questioning one’s own identity directions. And finally, Erikson stressed that while an initial resolution to the Identity vs. Role Confusion task often occurs during adolescence, identity is never resolved once and for all, but rather remains open to modifications and alterations throughout adult life. The strength of Erikson’s approach lies in its consideration of both individual and sociocultural factors and their mutual interaction in identity construction and development. Erikson’s model of identity development has wide applicability across cultural contexts and highlights the ongoing nature of identity development throughout adulthood. Weaknesses include his imprecise language, which at times makes operationalization of key concepts difficult, and his historically dated concepts regarding women’s identity development.

While other psychosocial models have evolved from Erikson’s original writings (e.g., Whitbourne’s [ 2002 ] identity processing theory, Berzonsky’s [ 2011 ] social cognitive identity styles, McAdams’s [ 2008 ] narrative approach), it is Erikson’s identity formation concepts, particularly those operationalized by Marcia ( 1966 ) (Marcia, Waterman, Matteson, Archer, & Orlofsky, 1993 ) that have generated an enormous volume of empirical research over past decades and will be the primary focus of subsequent sections of this article.

Erikson’s Psychosocial Approach and Marcia’s Identity Status Model

As a young Ph.D. student in clinical psychology, James Marcia was interested in Erikson’s writings but suspected that the process of identity formation during late adolescence to be somewhat more complicated than what Erikson ( 1963 ) had originally proposed. While Erikson had conceptualized an identity resolution as lying on a continuum between identity and role confusion, an entity that one had “more or less of,” Marcia proposed that there were four qualitatively different pathways by which late adolescents or young adults went about the process of forming an identity. Based on the presence or absence of exploration and commitment around several issues important to identity development during late adolescence, Marcia ( 1966 ; Marcia et al., 1993 ) developed a semi-structured Identity Status Interview to identify four identity pathways, or identity statuses, among late adolescent or young adult interviewees.

An individual in the identity achieved status had explored various identity-defining possibilities and had made commitments on his or her own terms, trying to match personal interests, talents, and values with those available in the environmental context. Equally committed to an identity direction was the foreclosed individual, who had formed an identity, but without undergoing an exploration process. This person’s identity had been acquired primarily through the process of identification—by assuming the identity choices of significant others without serious personal consideration of alternative possibilities. An individual in the moratorium identity status was very much in the process of identity exploration, seeking meaningful life directions but not yet making firm commitments and often experiencing considerable discomfort in the process. Someone in the diffusion identity status had similarly not made identity-defining commitments and was not attempting to do so.

Marcia et al.’s ( 1993 ) Identity Status Interview was designed to tap the areas (or domains) of occupation, political, religious, and sexual values that had been described by Erikson as key to the identity formation process. In Marcia’s view, however, the nature of the identity domain was not as critical to the assessment of identity status as was finding the identity-defining issues most salient to any given individual. Marcia suggested the use of clinical judgment in assigning a global identity status, the mode that seemed to best capture an adolescent’s identity formation process. It must be noted that Marcia and his colleagues (Marcia et al., 1993 ) have never attempted to capture all of the rich dimensions of identity outlined by Erikson through the Identity Status Interview; such a task would be unwieldy, if not impossible. Marcia does, however, build on Erikson’s concepts of identity exploration and comment to elaborate these identity dimensions in relation to those psychosocial roles and values identified by Erikson as key to the identity formation process of many late adolescents.

Subsequent to the original Identity Status Interview, several paper-and-pencil measures were developed to assess Marcia’s four identity statuses. One widely used measure has been the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (EOM-EIS II), devised and revised through several versions by Adams and his colleagues (Adams, Bennion, & Huh, 1989 ; Adams & Ethier, 1999 ). This questionnaire measure enables identity status assessments in four ideological (occupation, religion, politics, philosophy of life) and four interpersonal domains (friendships, dating, gender roles, recreation/leisure), as well as providing a global rating.

Different dimensions of identity exploration and commitment processes have also been identified through several recent and expanded identity status models (Luyckx, Goossens, Soenens, & Beyers, 2006 ; Crocetti, Rubini, & Meeus, 2008 ). Luyckx and his colleagues differentiated two types of exploration (exploration in breadth and exploration in depth) and two types of commitment (commitment making and identification with commitment). Exploration in breadth is that moratorium process identified by Marcia, while exploration in depth describes the process of considering a commitment already made and how well it expresses one’s own identity. Commitment making refers to deciding an identity-defining direction, while identification with commitment describes the process of integrating one’s commitments into an internal sense of identity. Later, Luyckx and his colleagues (Luyckx, Schwartz, Berzonsky, Soenens, Vansteenkiste, Smits, et al., 2008 ) also identified a process of ruminative exploration.

Meeus and his colleagues (e.g., Crocetti, Rubini, & Meeus, 2008 ) also identified three identity processes: commitment, exploration in depth, and reconsideration of commitments. Commitment here refers to the dimensions of commitment making and identification with commitment in the Luyckx, Goossens, Soenens, and Beyers ( 2006 ) model; exploration in depth corresponds to that dimension in the Luyckx model. Reconsideration of commitment refers to one’s willingness to replace current commitments with new ones. In this model, commitment and reconsideration reflect identity certainty and uncertainty, respectively, in the identity formation process.

Through cluster analysis, these two groups of researchers have extracted clusters that match all of Marcia’s original identity statuses. In addition, Luyckx and his colleagues (Luyckx, Goossens, Soenens, Beyers, & Vansteenkiste, 2005 ) identified two types of diffusion—troubled and carefree—while Meeus, van de Schoot, Keijsers, Schwartz, and Branje ( 2010 ) found two types of moratoriums—classical (where the individual exhibits anxiety and depression in the identity exploration process) and searching (where new commitments are considered without discarding present commitments). Work has now begun to explore the identity formation process during adolescence and young adulthood with these refined identity statuses, which hold interesting implications for understanding both adaptive and non-adaptive identity development.

Over the time since Marcia’s initial studies, the identity statuses have been examined in relation to personality and behavioral correlates, relationship styles, and developmental patterns of change over time. Most of the studies reviewed in subsequent sections address some aspect of identity development during adolescence or young adulthood; a later section will focus on identity development research during adulthood. It must be further noted that discussion of identity statuses here will be limited to general (or global) identity and its relationship to associated variables.

Personality and Behavioral Correlates of the Identity Statuses

Work utilizing Marcia’s original identity status model, as well as its more recent refinements, have focused on personality and behavioral variables associated with each identity status in order to help validate the model; such studies have produced some reasonably consistent results over time. In terms of personality variables associated with the identity statuses, Kroger and her colleagues (e.g., Martinussen & Kroger, 2013 ) have produced a series of findings utilizing techniques of meta-analysis. Meta-analysis is a “study of studies,” using statistical procedures to examine (sometimes contradictory) results from different individual studies addressing comparable themes over time. Results from such meta-analytic studies allow greater confidence in results than a narrative review of individual studies can provide. The personality variables of self-esteem, anxiety, locus of control, authoritarianism, moral reasoning, and ego development and their relations to identity status have attracted sufficient studies for meta-analyses to be undertaken and are described in the sections that follow. While a number of other personality variables have also been examined in identity status studies over the past decades, their numbers have been insufficient to enable meta-analytic studies.

An initial database for all studies included in the meta-analytic work described in the following sections was comprised of some 565 English-language studies (287 journal publications and 278 doctoral dissertations) identified from PsycInfo, ERIC, Sociological Abstracts, and Dissertation Abstracts International databases, using the following search terms: identity and Marcia, identity and Marcia’s, and ego identity. Cohen’s ( 1988 ) criteria were used to define small, medium, and large effect sizes. In some of the meta-analyses that follow, different methods were used to assess identity status (categorical ratings of identity status and scale measures of identity status). Separate meta-analyses had to be undertaken for studies utilizing each of these two types of identity status assessments for statistical reasons.

Self-Esteem

Ryeng, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013a ) undertook meta-analytic studies of the relationship between identity status and global self-esteem. A total of twelve studies with 1,124 participants provided the data for these studies. The achieved identity status was the only status to have a positive correlation with self-esteem ( r = .35), considered to be moderate in effect size. Mean correlations between self-esteem and the moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion statuses were all negative (−.23, −.23, and −.20, respectively) and considered small to moderate in effect size. All of these correlations were significantly different from zero, based on their confidence intervals. When identity status was assessed categorically, there was no difference in effect size between achievements and foreclosures on self-esteem measures. The effect size for the foreclosure-diffusion comparison ( g̅ = −0.19) was small to medium and also significant. Remaining comparisons evidenced small effect size differences in self-esteem scores. Findings here were mixed, as previous research had also produced mixed results on the question of whether foreclosure self-esteem scores would be lower than or similar to those of the identity achieved. Here, results show that only the achieved status (when the identity statuses were measured by continuous scales) produced a moderately positive correlation with self-esteem, while there was no difference in effect sizes between the achieved and foreclosed identity status when studies assessing identity status categorically were analyzed. Thus, the relationship between identity status and self-esteem may depend upon how identity status is measured.

Lillevoll, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013a ) examined the relationship between identity status and generalized anxiety through meta-analysis. Twelve studies involving 2,104 participants provided data for this investigation. Effect size differences in anxiety scores for moratoriums compared with foreclosures ( g̅ = 0.39) and for the foreclosure–diffusion comparison ( g̅ = −0.40) were small to moderate. Additionally the confidence intervals for both of these effect sizes did not contain zero, indicating a significant result. A significant moderate effect size ( g̅ = 0.46) was also found in the achievement–foreclosure comparison, but for men only. As predicted, foreclosures had lower anxiety scores compared with all other identity statuses except the achievement women. While it was predicted that those in the achievement identity status would have lower anxiety scores than those in moratorium and diffusion statuses, a small but significant effect size difference was found for the achievement–moratorium comparison only ( g̅ = −0.22). Thus, the moratoriums showed higher generalized anxiety scores than foreclosures, who, in turn, showed lower anxiety scores than the diffusions and male achievements. It appears that unexamined identity commitments undertaken by the foreclosures provided relief from the anxieties and uncertainties of uncommitted identity directions experienced by the moratoriums and diffusions.

Locus of Control

Lillevoll, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013b ) examined the relationship between identity status and locus of control. Some five studies with a total of 711 participants provided data for this study. A positive correlation between identity achievement and internal locus of control ( r = .26) and a negative correlation between identity achievement and external locus of control ( r = −.17) was found; these effect sizes are considered small to medium. The moratorium identity status was negatively correlated with internal locus of control ( r = −.17) and positively with an external locus of control ( r = .17), both considered small to medium effect sizes. The foreclosure status was negatively correlated the internal locus of control ( r = −.12) and positively with external locus of control ( r = .19), both considered small to medium effect sizes. The diffusions’ status was negatively correlated with internal locus of control ( r = −.15) and positively with external locus of control ( r = .23), both considered small to medium effect sizes. Apart from the moratorium findings, which were anticipated to reflect an internal locus of control, all other results were in expected directions. It appears that the ability to undertake identity explorations on one’s own terms by the identity achieved is associated with an internal locus of control. Moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion statuses are associated with an external locus of control.

Authoritarianism

The relationship between identity status and authoritarianism was investigated by Ryeng, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013b ) through meta-analysis. Some nine studies involving 861 participants provided data for this study. The mean difference between authoritarianism scores for the achievement—foreclosure comparison ( g̅ = −0.79) was large in terms of Cohen’s criteria and significant. The mean difference in authoritarianism scores for the moratorium–foreclosure comparison ( g̅ = −0.67) was medium and significant, while the mean difference in authoritarianism scores for the foreclosure and diffusion identity statuses was medium ( g̅ = 0.42) and significant. Other comparisons were relatively small and not significant. That the foreclosures scored higher on authoritarianism than all other identity statuses is consistent with expectations. Foreclosures often base their identity commitments on their identifications with significant others, rather than exploring identity options on their own terms; thus, the rigidity and intolerance of authoritarian attitudes seem to characterize the terms of their identity commitments, in contrast to the more flexible commitments of the identity achieved or moratoriums in the process of finding their own identity directions.

Ego Development

Jespersen, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013a ) examined studies utilizing Loevinger’s ( 1976 ) measure of ego development in relation to the identity statuses through meta-analysis. Eleven studies involving 943 participants provided data for this investigation. Odds ratios (OR) were used to examine frequency distributions of the categorical data. Results of correlational studies showed a moderate, positive relationship between ego development and identity status ( r = .35), which was significant. Results from categorical assessments of identity status also showed a strong relationship between identity status and ego development (mean OR = 3.02). This finding means that the odds of being in a postconformist level of ego development were three times greater for those high in identity statuses (achievement and moratorium) compared with those in the low identity statuses (foreclosure and diffusion). The study also found a moderate relationship between identity achievement and ego development (mean OR = 2.15), meaning that the odds of being in a postconformist level of ego development were over two times greater for those in the identity achievement status than remaining identity statuses. However, no relationship was found between the foreclosed/nonforeclosed identity statuses and the conformist/nonconformist levels of ego development, contrary to prediction (mean OR = 1.31). While results indicate a strong likelihood of being in a post-conformist level of ego development for the identity achieved and moratoriums, as one would predict, it is somewhat surprising that the foreclosure status was not associated with conventional levels of ego development. This lack of association requires further investigation.

Moral Reasoning

A meta-analysis of moral reasoning stages (using Kohlberg’s [ 1976 ] stages in relation to the identity statuses) was also undertaken by Jespersen, Kroger, and Martinussen ( 2013b ). Some ten studies involving 884 participants provided data appropriate for this study. Results showed a small positive mean correlation (.15) between identity status and moral reasoning development, which was significant. Results from categorical assessments of both measures indicated a strong relationship between high identity status (achievement and moratorium) and postconventional levels of moral reasoning (mean OR = 4.57). This result means that the odds of being in the postconventional level of moral reasoning are about four and a half times greater for the high identity status group (achievement and moratorium) than the low (foreclosure and diffusion) group. A strong relationship was also found between the achieved identity status and the postconventional level of moral reasoning (mean OR = 8.85), meaning that the odds of being in a postconventional level of moral reasoning were almost nine times greater for the identity achieved than for other identity statuses. However, no significant relationship appeared for the foreclosed/nonforeclosed identity statuses and the conventional/nonconventional levels of moral reasoning, contrary to prediction. While a meaningful relationship was found between postconventional stages of moral reasoning and the moratorium and achievement identity statuses, it is again surprising that no relationship appeared for the foreclosed identity status and conventional levels of moral reasoning. This finding warrants further investigation.

Additional Personality and Behavioral Variables

A number of additional personality and behavioral variables have been explored in relation to the identity statuses, but no further meta-analyses have yet been undertaken. With regard to the newer, more refined measures of identity status, some additional personality and behavioral associations have been noted. Luyckx et al. ( 2008 ) found ruminative exploration related to identity distress and low self-esteem, while exploration in breadth and depth were positively related to self-reflection. Furthermore, commitment-making (particularly identification with commitment) was associated with high self-esteem, high academic and social adjustment, as well as with low depressive symptoms. Crocetti et al. ( 2008 ) similarly found strong, positive associations between commitment and self-concept clarity, in addition to strong negative associations between in-depth exploration and reconsideration of commitment with self-reflection. Emotional stability was strongly associated with commitment and negatively with in-depth exploration.

Recent work has performed cluster analyses on the exploration and commitment variables, finding four clusters replicating Marcia’s four identity statuses (with the diffusion status including carefree and diffuse diffusions) and an undifferentiated status (Schwartz et al., 2011 ). In terms of psychosocial functioning, achievements were significantly higher than carefree diffusions on a measure of self-esteem; diffusions, in turn, were significantly lower than all other identity statuses on this variable. On a measure of internal locus of control, achievements and moratoriums were significantly higher and carefree diffusions significantly lower than all other identity statuses. On psychological well-being, identity achievements scored significantly higher and carefree diffusions significantly lower than all other identity status groups. For general anxiety, moratoriums and the two diffusion groups scored significantly higher than achievement and foreclosure groups, while the moratoriums scored significantly higher than foreclosures and the two diffusions groups on depression. These findings are generally in line with findings of earlier studies using Marcia’s original model.

Further behavioral studies in relation to the identity statuses have consistently found the identity diffusion status to be related to psychosocial problem behaviors. Delinquent behavior (e.g., Jessor, Turbin, Costa, Dong, Zhang, & Wang, 2003 ; Schwartz, Pantin, Prado, Sullivan, & Szapocznik, 2005 ), substance abuse (e.g., Jones & Hartmann, 1988 ; Laghi, Baiocco, Longiro, & Baumgartner, 2013 ), risky behaviors (e.g., unsafe sex, Hernandez & DiClemente, 1992 ), social, physical aggression, and rule-breaking (carefree diffusions, Schwartz et al., 2011 ), and procrastination (Shanahan & Pychyl, 2006 ) have all been linked with the identity diffusion status. By contrast, the identity achieved have demonstrated a low prevalence of all preceding problem behaviors, coupled with high levels of agency or self-direction and commitment making (e.g., Schwartz et al., 2011 ; Shanahan & Pychyl, 2006 ). Moratoriums have also scored relatively high on levels of social and physical aggression, although they have also scored high on a number of psychosocial measures of well-being (e.g., Schwartz et al., 2011 ).

Relationships and the Identity Statuses

While a number of relational issues have been explored in identity status research (e.g., parental attitudes toward childrearing, family styles of communication, and friendship styles), to date, meta-analyses have been undertaken to examine identity status only in relation to attachment patterns and intimacy or romantic relationships.

Bartholomew and Horowitz ( 1991 ) have proposed that one’s very unique attachment history and subsequent working models of attachment lead to one of four different adolescent/adult attachment styles, or patterns of relating to significant others; these attachment styles become activated particularly in times of stress. S ecurely attached individuals are at ease in becoming close to others and do not worry about being abandoned or having someone become too close to them. Furthermore, they are interdependent—comfortable depending on others and having others depend on them. Those using the avoidant attachment style find it difficult to trust and depend on others and are uncomfortable in becoming too emotionally close. The preoccupied (anxious/ambivalent) attachment group wants to be close to others but worries that others will not reciprocate and will abandon them, while the fearful attachment group wants to be emotionally close to others but are too frightened of being hurt to realize this desire.

These varied styles of attachment have been examined in relation to Marcia’s identity statuses among adolescents and young adults in a number of studies over the past decades, and recent meta-analytic work has explored patterns of findings across studies (Årseth, Kroger, Martinussen, & Marcia, 2009 ). From the large database of 565 identity status studies described earlier, some 14 had data suitable for meta-analysis (a full description of the database can be found in Martinussen & Kroger, 2013 ). A total of 2,329 participants were involved in this investigation. Weak to moderate correlations were found between identity status and attachment style when scale measures were used to assess each variable; the highest mean correlations were between the secure attachment style and identity achievement ( r = .21) as well as identity diffusion ( r = −.23). (Cohen, 1988 , regarded a correlation of .30 as moderate and .10 as weak.) The diffusion status was also weakly to moderately positively correlated with the fearful attachment style ( r = .19). Among categorical assessments of identity status and attachment style, results suggest there are real differences between the identity achieved and foreclosed as well as diffusion identity statuses, with the identity achieved far more likely to be securely attached than foreclosed or diffusion statuses. Data from these studies suggests that one’s relational experiences do have some links to one’s identity status.

According to Erikson’s ( 1963 , 1968 ) epigenetic principle, resolution to the task of Identity vs. Intimacy should set the foundation for resolution to the task of Intimacy vs. Isolation during late adolescence and young adulthood. In Erikson’s ( 1968 ) view, true intimacy involves mutuality and commitment, an acceptance of another with all of his or her strengths and weaknesses in an interdependent, sexual relationship. Erikson ( 1968 ) believed that genuine intimacy requires a sense of identity to be firmly in place, or the relationship becomes merely a tool to help resolve identity concerns for each partner. However, Erikson was unclear about the potential for gender differences in his theory, and a number of feminist writers (e.g., Gilligan, 1982 ) have stressed the importance of relationship issues for women to the identity formation process. Literature examining the relationship between identity and intimacy statuses for late adolescent and young adult men and women has often produced conflicting results.

Thus, a meta-analysis of the relationship between identity status and intimacy for men and women was undertaken by Årseth, Kroger, Martinussen, and Marcia ( 2009 ). Some 21 studies with a total of 1,983 participants were included in meta-analyses here. For studies utilizing scale measures of intimacy, results indicated a low to moderate effect size for men ( g̅ = .35) and women ( g̅ = .30) considered separately, as well as for the total group ( g̅ = .40). All results were significant and indicate that high identity status individuals (achievement and moratorium) scored higher on scale measures of intimacy than low identity status individuals (foreclosures and diffusions). For categorical assessments of identity and intimacy, the picture was somewhat more complex. Among men, the mean odds ratio of having both a high identity and high intimacy status was very high at 22.09, while for women the mean odds ratio was 2.61. In terms of percentages, some 69% of high identity status men were also high in intimacy, while only 23% of low identity status men were high in intimacy. Erikson’s epigenetic principle thus finds strong support among men. Among women, while 65% of high identity status women were also high in intimacy status, some 46% of low identity status women were also high in intimacy status. Thus, the low identity status women were almost equally distributed over high and low intimacy status groups. These results indicate Erikson’s epigenetic principle also was present for a large proportion of women sampled; however, the relationship was significantly stronger for men than women (p < .001), and reasons for this gender difference require further investigation.

Identity Status Change from Adolescence Through Adulthood

Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) had proposed that while making initial identity resolutions was a key developmental task of adolescence, identity remained malleable, open to further changes throughout adult life. Similarly, the identity status literature that has pointed to different patterns of movement during young, middle, and late adolescence clearly shows that identity will continue to meet challenges and, for some, the need for revision throughout adulthood. What are the most prevalent patterns of identity status change over the course of adolescent and adult life, and what are the key events primarily associated with these changes?

A number of studies addressing identity status changes over time have now been undertaken, and a series of meta-analytic investigations are perhaps the most effective means of summarizing common patterns of movement and stability in the identity status literature. Kroger, Martinussen, and Marcia ( 2010 ) investigated some 72 of 124 identity studies that contained developmental information from the larger database of 565 English-language identity status studies described earlier. Movement patterns were investigated in several ways.

When movements over approximately three years of late adolescence and young adulthood were examined longitudinally from data that assessed identity status in categorical terms, the mean proportion of adolescents making progressive identity status changes (D–F, D–M, D–A, F–M, F–A, and M–A) was .36, compared with .15 who made regressive changes (A–M, A–F, A–D, M–F, M–D, and F–D) and .49 who remained stable (A–A, M–M, F–F, D–D) over this time period. It is interesting that the mean proportion of those remaining stable in identity status was so high, especially during the time of late adolescence that Erikson ( 1968 ) has identified as central to the identity formation process. As anticipated, the highest mean proportions of progressive movements were from M–A (.46), F–A (.22), and F–M (.22). The highest mean proportions of those remaining stable were the committed identity achieved (.66) and the foreclosed (.53) statuses. The highest mean proportions of those making regressive movements were from A–F (.17) and M–F (.17).

For cross-sectional studies assessing identity status in categorical terms, the mean proportion of identity achievements increased steadily through the high school years, dropped upon university entry and increased to .34 by age 22 years. It was not until the 30–36 year age group that about half of the participants were rated identity achieved (.47). The mean proportion of moratoriums rose fairly steadily to age 19 years, which peaked at .42 and declined fairly steadily thereafter through the 30–36 year age span. The mean proportion of foreclosures dropped fairly steadily to a low at age 19 years of .12, but then showed and up and down movement throughout remaining ages to .17 in the 30–36 year age group. The mean proportion of diffusions declined fairly steadily from age 14–20 years of age (from .36 to .21), but by age 21 years, the diffusions rose again to .26 and showed up and down movement until the final 30–36 year age span (.14).

For cross-sectional studies using continuous measures of identity status, it was anticipated that achievement and moratorium scores would increase across age groups and foreclosure and diffusion scores would decrease over time. Studies here were based on data for early and mid-adolescents. The anticipated patterns were found, but all effect sizes were small. It may be that more pronounced identity status changes occur during and beyond late adolescence.

Additional studies of identity status change through middle and later adulthood years not included in meta-analyses have also generally found slow, progressive identity status movements over time. Fadjukoff, Pulkkinen, and Kokko ( 2016 ) analyzed identity status longitudinally in a Finnish sample of men and women drawn from the general population. Identity status was assessed at ages 27, 36, 42, and 50 years. Movement towards identity achievement was predominant on the overall measure of identity status, with women typically reaching identity achievement earlier than men. In a narrative analysis of identity pathways among women assessed from late adolescence through mid-life, Josselson ( 1996 ) found a diversity of identity pathways, with achievement and foreclosure pathways tending to be the most stable over time. Carlsson, Wängqvist, and Frisén ( 2015 ) have also examined identity status change and stability in a longitudinal study of young adults at ages 25 and 29 years in Sweden. Half of participants were coded in the same identity status at Times 1 and 2, while half who changed did so in a progressive direction. Additional identity processes of how people approach life-changing situations, the extent to which they continue to engage in meaning-making, and how they continue to develop their personal life directions were explored through narrative methods among foreclosed and achieved participants. Identity achievement was associated with continued identity development over time, while patterns for ongoing development among foreclosures were more mixed. McLean and Pasupathi ( 2012 ) have made a plea for the use of narrative methods that examine reconstructions of past events to supplement current understandings of the exploration and commitment processes involved on ongoing identity development throughout the life span. Additional identity processes may usefully be identified through such means.

Events Associated with Identity Status Change

An issue that researchers have been exploring over several decades is the question of what kinds of circumstances are associated with identity status change and, conversely, what circumstances are linked with identity status stability. Some hints have appeared in related literatures. For example, Helson and Roberts ( 1994 ) found that some optimal level of “accommodative challenge” or life stimulation is critical for adult ego development (referring to Loevinger’s, 1976 , model of ego development). Accommodative challenge is a circumstance or event that involves either a positive or negative disruption to one’s life. It may be that such life challenges are important to ongoing identity development over time as well.

Anthis and colleagues (Anthis, 2002 , 2011 ; Anthis & La Voie, 2006 ) have conducted several investigations into life events associated with identity exploration and commitment. In her “calamity theory of growth” model, Anthis ( 2002 ) has found stressful life events, such as divorce or job loss, to be associated with increased levels of identity exploration and decreases in identity commitments. She has also found increased levels of identity exploration to be associated with a “readiness for change” measure (Anthis & La Voie, 2006 ). Anthis suggests investigating how optimal levels of perceived conflict interact with other factors for different cohorts of people in exploring the role that life events may play in ongoing identity development during adulthood.

Additionally, Kunnen ( 2006 , 2010 ) asks if conflict may be the driver of identity change. In a study of freshman university students, she found that students who experienced a conflict in their career goals increased identity exploratory activity and also manifested a decrease in the strength of their present commitments. Furthermore, those experiencing conflict perceived more change in their commitments as compared to nonconflicted students. The types and levels of perceived identity conflict and the mechanisms by which conflict may stimulate or impair ongoing identity development are in need of further study. Lilgendahl’s ( 2015 ) narrative work reiterates the value of negative events and their potential for psychological growth during midlife, while events that are understood as positive are key to the formation of identity commitments during young adulthood.

Identity Development in Adulthood

Research into ongoing identity development during adulthood has taken several forms. Some researchers have attempted to understand the relationship between resolution to identity issues during late adolescence or young adulthood and the Eriksonian psychosocial tasks of adulthood: Intimacy vs. Isolation (young adulthood), Generativity vs. Stagnation (middle adulthood), and Integrity vs. Despair (late adulthood). Others have attempted to examine selected issues of identity during these specific adult life phases and whether or not identity cohesion and stability increase with age over the course of adulthood. The following brief overview presents some selected findings from these strands of identity research during various phases of adult life.

According to Erikson’s ( 1963 , 1968 ) epigenetic principle, resolutions to earlier psychosocial tasks will impact resolutions to all subsequent ones. Research to date has generally supported this proposal, with some caveats for the relationship between identity and intimacy, described in meta-analytic studies in a preceding section. The relationships among identity, generativity, and integrity have only recently become a focus of research attention, and they present important opportunities for future investigations. Beaumont and Pratt ( 2011 ) have examined links among Berzonsky’s ( 2011 ) identity styles, Intimacy vs. Isolation, and Generativity vs. Stagnation in samples of young and midlife adults. They found that the informational style (associated with identity achievement) was linked with both the capacity for intimacy and generativity, while the diffuse–avoidant style (associated with identity diffusion) was negatively linked with both intimacy and generativity. The normative identity style (associated with the foreclosure identity status) also positively predicted resolution to intimacy and generativity tasks of adulthood. Pulkkinen, Lyyra, Fadjukoff, and Kokko ( 2012 ) obtained longitudinal data from Finnish adults at ages 27, 36, 42, and 50 years on measures including parental identity, general identity, generativity, and integrity. Generativity scores (as well as scores for psychological and social well-being) were highest if parental identity was achieved by age 42. On a cross-sectional basis, Hearn, Saulnier, Strayer, Glenham, Koopman, and Marcia ( 2012 ) examined the relationship between identity status and a measure of integrity status. A significant relationship was found, with some 86% of integrated persons rated as identity achieved, while no despairing persons were. Those in the non-exploring integrity status (in which questions of personal life meanings were unexplored), the pseudo-integrated integrity status (in which the world was understood in terms of simplistic templates or clichéd meanings), and the despairing integrity status were most frequently in the foreclosed identity status. Hannah, Domino, Figueredo, and Hendrickson ( 1996 ) explored predictors of Integrity vs. Despair in a sample of later life adults, finding the most predictive and parsimonious variables to be trust, autonomy, identity, and intimacy, with no meaningful gender differences. Thus, Erikson’s epigenetic principle has found considerable support over time and illustrates the important role that identity resolution plays to the resolution of subsequent psychosocial tasks during adulthood.

While Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) had postulated the ongoing nature of identity development throughout adulthood, and Stephen, Fraser, and Marcia ( 1992 ) had first proposed the likelihood of ongoing moratorium–achievement–moratorium–achievement cycles in adult identity development, there have been relatively few efforts to examine the nature of change and continuity in identity development over the course of adulthood. While some early research has estimated the likelihood of a midlife identity crisis to be about 10% (e.g., Brim, 1992 ), recent work has pointed to ongoing times of identity crisis (or revision) during the later adult years as well (Robinson & Stell, 2015 ). Experiences of well-being have been examined in relation to adult psychosocial stage resolutions in the Rochester Adult Longitudinal Study (Sneed, Whitbourne, Schwartz, & Huang, 2011 ), where scores on both identity and intimacy measures in early and middle adulthood predicted midlife feelings of satisfaction and well-being. A sense of coherence and life satisfaction in later adult years has been fully mediated by resolution to Integrity vs. Despair (Dezutter, Wiesmann, Apers, & Luyckx, 2013 ). Much remains to be learned about ongoing identity development in the adulthood years, and the relation of identity to subsequent psychosocial tasks and additional personality variables.

What the Identity Statuses Mean

Through the decades since Marcia ( 1966 ) developed his identity status model, there has been considerable discussion in the literature about what the identity statuses actually mean and how best to assess them. Marcia ( 1980 ) considers identity to be a structure for organizing individual conscious and unconscious wishes, interests, skills, and talents within the framework of one’s biology and cultural context. His identity status model was intended to reflect the movement through Erikson’s ( 1963 , 1968 ) identity formation process, from an identity based on identifications (foreclosure status), through an exploration (moratorium) process, to a new configuration, based on but different from the sum of its identificatory elements (achievement).

In considering the question of what it is that actually changes in an identity status transition, Kroger ( 2003 ) has suggested that qualitatively different forms of ego organization underlie each of Marcia’s identity statuses. However, after an initial identity has formed, further use of the identity status model during adult life begs the question of what the identity statuses actually mean when applied to adults. While new identity-defining decisions may occur in adult life, is there an actual underlying structural change of identity? There may or may not be. There may actually be new or additional structures of ego organization that underlie the identity achievement status of adulthood, and future research could fruitfully explore this issue. Lile ( 2013 , 2015 ) considers structural identity boundaries for each of the identity statuses and offers some empirical support for a structural model of identity that underlies the identity statuses. Identity status research in adulthood should carefully consider the meaning that the identity statuses may hold when applied to a life phase beyond that for which they were originally developed.

Conclusions

Historically, the task of identity formation is a relatively recent phenomenon. Erikson ( 1963 , 1968 ) first used the identity concept in his clinical writings to describe that entity that seemed to be lacking in the lives of young men returning from combat in World War II. From Erikson’s early writings, several broad approaches to identity theory and research have emerged, laying differential emphasis on the psychosocial, phenomenological, and the contextual nature of identity. This article has reviewed some of the writings and research that have sprung from the identity status model of James Marcia ( 1966 , 1980 ). This review has documented meta-analytic work covering the associations of Marcia’s four identity statuses with various personality, relational, and behavioral variables, as well as documenting the most common patterns of identity status change and stability during adolescence and adulthood. The review has also documented the role that resolution to questions of identity plays in resolutions to ongoing psychosocial tasks of adulthood.

Further identity research could fruitfully explore both the meaning of the identity statuses in ongoing adult identity development as well as the processes and contents of identity changes during adult life. The role of regression in adolescent and adult identity development is poorly understand, occurring more frequently than can be predicted by chance alone (see Kroger et al., 2010 ). Understanding what kinds of regression there may be and whether or not specific types of regression are vital to ongoing adult identity development are important avenues for further identity research. And though identity concerns of adolescence have many parallels to identity issues of later adulthood, very little identity-related theory and research has been undertaken with older adults. (For example, individuals in both phases of the life span must adjust to important biological changes, deal with philosophical questions of life’s meanings, and readjustment to changing demands from social contexts.) It is hoped that this article will present a foundation upon which future psychosocial research into the process and contents of identity development from adolescence through adulthood can take place.

Annual Review of Developmental Psychology

Early Publication
Review in Advance

Review Article

Reframing adolescent identity: a global perspective for the digital age.

Selcuk R. Sirin 1 , Scott Z. Brauer 1 , and R. Canan Tugberk 1
View Affiliations Hide Affiliations Affiliations: Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA; email: [email protected] , [email protected] , [email protected]
Vol. 6 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-010923-101059
© Copyright © 2024 by the author(s). All rights reserved

This review provides a comprehensive evaluation of adolescent identity development research, critically examining the significant gap between the global distribution of adolescents and the focus of scholarly work. While over 85% of the world's youth live in the majority world—Africa, Asia, and Latin America—only 15% of developmental psychology studies explore these populations, revealing a critical gap in global perspectives on adolescent identity development. This review also emphasizes the lack of theoretical and empirical focus on the transformative role of digital technology in shaping identities. Through a systematic review of research, we provide both an empirical base and a conceptual framework to understand adolescent identity in an increasingly connected world. We also suggest several concrete steps for incorporating global perspectives and digital realities into developmental psychology research in general and identity development research in particular.

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Publication Date: 04 Sep 2024

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Adolescent identity development in context

Affiliation.

1 Department of Youth and Family, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Electronic address: [email protected].
PMID: 35008027
DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.11.006

One of the key developmental tasks in adolescence is to develop a coherent identity. Studies have increasingly begun to go beyond the study of mean level identity change and examine the underlying mechanisms of identity development at the intraindividual, microlevel, that is, at the level where development is taking place: within the person, in here and now experiences and relationships. Identity development during adolescence is characterized by both systematic maturation and substantial stability. Life events and transitions, as well as accumulating real-time experiences, might play a role in identity development. Optimal development of identity is embedded in high-quality family relationships and friendships in which constructive narrative processes take place.

Keywords: Adolescence; Identity; Microprocesses.; Within-person processes.

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Conflict of interest statement Nothing declared.

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6.3 Adolescence: Developing Independence and Identity

Learning objectives.

Summarize the physical and cognitive changes that occur for boys and girls during adolescence.
Explain how adolescents develop a sense of morality and of self-identity.

Adolescence is defined as the years between the onset of puberty and the beginning of adulthood. In the past, when people were likely to marry in their early 20s or younger, this period might have lasted only 10 years or less—starting roughly between ages 12 and 13 and ending by age 20, at which time the child got a job or went to work on the family farm, married, and started his or her own family. Today, children mature more slowly, move away from home at later ages, and maintain ties with their parents longer. For instance, children may go away to college but still receive financial support from parents, and they may come home on weekends or even to live for extended time periods. Thus the period between puberty and adulthood may well last into the late 20s, merging into adulthood itself. In fact, it is appropriate now to consider the period of adolescence and that of emerging adulthood ( the ages between 18 and the middle or late 20s ) together.

During adolescence, the child continues to grow physically, cognitively, and emotionally, changing from a child into an adult. The body grows rapidly in size and the sexual and reproductive organs become fully functional. At the same time, as adolescents develop more advanced patterns of reasoning and a stronger sense of self, they seek to forge their own identities, developing important attachments with people other than their parents. Particularly in Western societies, where the need to forge a new independence is critical (Baumeister & Tice, 1986; Twenge, 2006), this period can be stressful for many children, as it involves new emotions, the need to develop new social relationships, and an increasing sense of responsibility and independence.

Although adolescence can be a time of stress for many teenagers, most of them weather the trials and tribulations successfully. For example, the majority of adolescents experiment with alcohol sometime before high school graduation. Although many will have been drunk at least once, relatively few teenagers will develop long-lasting drinking problems or permit alcohol to adversely affect their school or personal relationships. Similarly, a great many teenagers break the law during adolescence, but very few young people develop criminal careers (Farrington, 1995). These facts do not, however, mean that using drugs or alcohol is a good idea. The use of recreational drugs can have substantial negative consequences, and the likelihood of these problems (including dependence, addiction, and even brain damage) is significantly greater for young adults who begin using drugs at an early age.

Physical Changes in Adolescence

Adolescence begins with the onset of puberty , a developmental period in which hormonal changes cause rapid physical alterations in the body, culminating in sexual maturity . Although the timing varies to some degree across cultures, the average age range for reaching puberty is between 9 and 14 years for girls and between 10 and 17 years for boys (Marshall & Tanner, 1986).

Puberty begins when the pituitary gland begins to stimulate the production of the male sex hormone testosterone in boys and the female sex hormones estrogen and progesterone in girls. The release of these sex hormones triggers the development of the primary sex characteristics , the sex organs concerned with reproduction ( Figure 6.9 “Sex Characteristics” ). These changes include the enlargement of the testicles and the penis in boys and the development of the ovaries, uterus, and vagina in girls. In addition, secondary sex characteristics ( features that distinguish the two sexes from each other but are not involved in reproduction ) are also developing, such as an enlarged Adam’s apple, a deeper voice, and pubic and underarm hair in boys and enlargement of the breasts, hips, and the appearance of pubic and underarm hair in girls ( Figure 6.9 “Sex Characteristics” ). The enlargement of breasts is usually the first sign of puberty in girls and, on average, occurs between ages 10 and 12 (Marshall & Tanner, 1986). Boys typically begin to grow facial hair between ages 14 and 16, and both boys and girls experience a rapid growth spurt during this stage. The growth spurt for girls usually occurs earlier than that for boys, with some boys continuing to grow into their 20s.

Figure 6.9 Sex Characteristics

Diagram of sex characteristics, man on left, woman on right

Puberty brings dramatic changes in the body, including the development of primary and secondary sex characteristics.

A major milestone in puberty for girls is menarche , the first menstrual period , typically experienced at around 12 or 13 years of age (Anderson, Dannal, & Must, 2003). The age of menarche varies substantially and is determined by genetics, as well as by diet and lifestyle, since a certain amount of body fat is needed to attain menarche. Girls who are very slim, who engage in strenuous athletic activities, or who are malnourished may begin to menstruate later. Even after menstruation begins, girls whose level of body fat drops below the critical level may stop having their periods. The sequence of events for puberty is more predictable than the age at which they occur. Some girls may begin to grow pubic hair at age 10 but not attain menarche until age 15. In boys, facial hair may not appear until 10 years after the initial onset of puberty.

The timing of puberty in both boys and girls can have significant psychological consequences. Boys who mature earlier attain some social advantages because they are taller and stronger and, therefore, often more popular (Lynne, Graber, Nichols, Brooks-Gunn, & Botvin, 2007). At the same time, however, early-maturing boys are at greater risk for delinquency and are more likely than their peers to engage in antisocial behaviors, including drug and alcohol use, truancy, and precocious sexual activity. Girls who mature early may find their maturity stressful, particularly if they experience teasing or sexual harassment (Mendle, Turkheimer, & Emery, 2007; Pescovitz & Walvoord, 2007). Early-maturing girls are also more likely to have emotional problems, a lower self-image, and higher rates of depression, anxiety, and disordered eating than their peers (Ge, Conger, & Elder, 1996).

Cognitive Development in Adolescence

Although the most rapid cognitive changes occur during childhood, the brain continues to develop throughout adolescence, and even into the 20s (Weinberger, Elvevåg, & Giedd, 2005). During adolescence, the brain continues to form new neural connections, but also casts off unused neurons and connections (Blakemore, 2008). As teenagers mature, the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for reasoning, planning, and problem solving, also continues to develop (Goldberg, 2001). And myelin, the fatty tissue that forms around axons and neurons and helps speed transmissions between different regions of the brain, also continues to grow (Rapoport et al., 1999).

Adolescents often seem to act impulsively, rather than thoughtfully, and this may be in part because the development of the prefrontal cortex is, in general, slower than the development of the emotional parts of the brain, including the limbic system (Blakemore, 2008). Furthermore, the hormonal surge that is associated with puberty, which primarily influences emotional responses, may create strong emotions and lead to impulsive behavior. It has been hypothesized that adolescents may engage in risky behavior, such as smoking, drug use, dangerous driving, and unprotected sex in part because they have not yet fully acquired the mental ability to curb impulsive behavior or to make entirely rational judgments (Steinberg, 2007).

The new cognitive abilities that are attained during adolescence may also give rise to new feelings of egocentrism, in which adolescents believe that they can do anything and that they know better than anyone else, including their parents (Elkind, 1978, p. 199). Teenagers are likely to be highly self-conscious, often creating an imaginary audience in which they feel that everyone is constantly watching them (Goossens, Beyers, Emmen, & van Aken, 2002). Because teens think so much about themselves, they mistakenly believe that others must be thinking about them, too (Rycek, Stuhr, McDermott, Benker, & Swartz, 1998). It is no wonder that everything a teen’s parents do suddenly feels embarrassing to them when they are in public.

Social Development in Adolescence

Some of the most important changes that occur during adolescence involve the further development of the self-concept and the development of new attachments. Whereas young children are most strongly attached to their parents, the important attachments of adolescents move increasingly away from parents and increasingly toward peers (Harris, 1998). As a result, parents’ influence diminishes at this stage.

According to Erikson ( Table 6.1 “Challenges of Development as Proposed by Erik Erikson” ), the main social task of the adolescent is the search for a unique identity—the ability to answer the question, “Who am I?” In the search for identity, the adolescent may experience role confusion in which he or she is balancing or choosing among identities, taking on negative or undesirable identities, or temporarily giving up looking for an identity altogether if things are not going well.

One approach to assessing identity development was proposed by James Marcia (1980). In his approach, adolescents are asked questions regarding their exploration of and commitment to issues related to occupation, politics, religion, and sexual behavior. The responses to the questions allow the researchers to classify the adolescent into one of four identity categories (see Table 6.4 “James Marcia’s Stages of Identity Development” ).

Table 6.4 James Marcia’s Stages of Identity Development

Identity-diffusion status	The individual does not have firm commitments regarding the issues in question and is not making progress toward them.
Foreclosure status	The individual has not engaged in any identity experimentation and has established an identity based on the choices or values of others.
Moratorium status	The individual is exploring various choices but has not yet made a clear commitment to any of them.
Identity-achievement status	The individual has attained a coherent and committed identity based on personal decisions.

Source: Adapted from Marcia, J. (1980). Identity in adolescence. Handbook of adolescent psychology, 5 , 145–160.

Figure 6.10

Collage of: girls on the dance team, girls dressed up for halloween, guys at a concert

Adolescents search for stable attachments through the development of social identities.

Russell Mondy – Mission vs. Balboa – CC BY-NC 2.0; Gage Skidmore – Teen Titans cosplay – CC BY-SA 2.0; Toni Protto – Mistura Freak – CC BY 2.0.

Studies assessing how teens pass through Marcia’s stages show that, although most teens eventually succeed in developing a stable identity, the path to it is not always easy and there are many routes that can be taken. Some teens may simply adopt the beliefs of their parents or the first role that is offered to them, perhaps at the expense of searching for other, more promising possibilities (foreclosure status). Other teens may spend years trying on different possible identities (moratorium status) before finally choosing one.

To help them work through the process of developing an identity, teenagers may well try out different identities in different social situations. They may maintain one identity at home and a different type of persona when they are with their peers. Eventually, most teenagers do integrate the different possibilities into a single self-concept and a comfortable sense of identity (identity-achievement status).

For teenagers, the peer group provides valuable information about the self-concept. For instance, in response to the question “What were you like as a teenager? (e.g., cool, nerdy, awkward?),” posed on the website Answerbag, one teenager replied in this way:

Responses like this one demonstrate the extent to which adolescents are developing their self-concepts and self-identities and how they rely on peers to help them do that. The writer here is trying out several (perhaps conflicting) identities, and the identities any teen experiments with are defined by the group the person chooses to be a part of. The friendship groups (cliques, crowds, or gangs) that are such an important part of the adolescent experience allow the young adult to try out different identities, and these groups provide a sense of belonging and acceptance (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). A big part of what the adolescent is learning is social identity , the part of the self-concept that is derived from one’s group memberships . Adolescents define their social identities according to how they are similar to and differ from others, finding meaning in the sports, religious, school, gender, and ethnic categories they belong to.

Developing Moral Reasoning: Kohlberg’s Theory

The independence that comes with adolescence requires independent thinking as well as the development of morality —standards of behavior that are generally agreed on within a culture to be right or proper. Just as Piaget believed that children’s cognitive development follows specific patterns, Lawrence Kohlberg (1984) argued that children learn their moral values through active thinking and reasoning, and that moral development follows a series of stages. To study moral development, Kohlberg posed moral dilemmas to children, teenagers, and adults, such as the following:

Video Clip: People Being Interviewed About Kohlberg’s Stages

As you can see in Table 6.5 “Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Reasoning” , Kohlberg concluded, on the basis of their responses to the moral questions, that, as children develop intellectually, they pass through three stages of moral thinking: the preconventional level , the conventional level , and the postconventional level .

Table 6.5 Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Reasoning

Age	Moral Stage	Description
Young children	Preconventional morality	Until about the age of 9, children, focus on self-interest. At this stage, punishment is avoided and rewards are sought. A person at this level will argue, “The man shouldn’t steal the drug, as he may get caught and go to jail.”
Older children, adolescents, most adults	Conventional morality	By early adolescence, the child begins to care about how situational outcomes impact others and wants to please and be accepted. At this developmental phase, people are able to value the good that can be derived from holding to social norms in the form of laws or less formalized rules. For example, a person at this level may say, “He should not steal the drug, as everyone will see him as a thief, and his wife, who needs the drug, wouldn’t want to be cured because of thievery,” or, “No matter what, he should obey the law because stealing is a crime.”
Many adults	Postconventional morality	At this stage, individuals employ abstract reasoning to justify behaviors. Moral behavior is based on self-chosen ethical principles that are generally comprehensive and universal, such as justice, dignity, and equality. Someone with self-chosen principles may say, “The man should steal the drug to cure his wife and then tell the authorities that he has done so. He may have to pay a penalty, but at least he has saved a human life.”

Although research has supported Kohlberg’s idea that moral reasoning changes from an early emphasis on punishment and social rules and regulations to an emphasis on more general ethical principles, as with Piaget’s approach, Kohlberg’s stage model is probably too simple. For one, children may use higher levels of reasoning for some types of problems, but revert to lower levels in situations where doing so is more consistent with their goals or beliefs (Rest, 1979). Second, it has been argued that the stage model is particularly appropriate for Western, rather than non-Western, samples in which allegiance to social norms (such as respect for authority) may be particularly important (Haidt, 2001). And there is frequently little correlation between how children score on the moral stages and how they behave in real life.

Perhaps the most important critique of Kohlberg’s theory is that it may describe the moral development of boys better than it describes that of girls. Carol Gilligan (1982) has argued that, because of differences in their socialization, males tend to value principles of justice and rights, whereas females value caring for and helping others. Although there is little evidence that boys and girls score differently on Kohlberg’s stages of moral development (Turiel, 1998), it is true that girls and women tend to focus more on issues of caring, helping, and connecting with others than do boys and men (Jaffee & Hyde, 2000).If you don’t believe this, ask yourself when you last got a thank-you note from a man.

Key Takeaways

Adolescence is the period of time between the onset of puberty and emerging adulthood.
Emerging adulthood is the period from age 18 years until the mid-20s in which young people begin to form bonds outside the family, attend college, and find work. Even so, they tend not to be fully independent and have not taken on all the responsibilities of adulthood. This stage is most prevalent in Western cultures.
Puberty is a developmental period in which hormonal changes cause rapid physical alterations in the body.
The cerebral cortex continues to develop during adolescence and early adulthood, enabling improved reasoning, judgment, impulse control, and long-term planning.
A defining aspect of adolescence is the development of a consistent and committed self-identity. The process of developing an identity can take time but most adolescents succeed in developing a stable identity.
Kohlberg’s theory proposes that moral reasoning is divided into the following stages: preconventional morality, conventional morality, and postconventional morality.
Kohlberg’s theory of morality has been expanded and challenged, particularly by Gilligan, who has focused on differences in morality between boys and girls.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

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The Role of School in Adolescents’ Identity Development. A Literature Review

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Published: 26 December 2018
Volume 31 , pages 35–63, ( 2019 )

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Monique Verhoeven ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9931-3968 1 ,
Astrid M. G. Poorthuis 2 &
Monique Volman 1

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Schools can play an important role in adolescents’ identity development. To date, research on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development is scattered across research fields that employ different theoretical perspectives on identity. The aim of this literature review was to integrate the findings on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development from different research fields and to provide schools and teachers with insights into how adolescents’ identity development can be supported. Using constant comparative analysis, 111 studies were analyzed. We included articles on personal and social identity and on school-related identity dimensions. Three groups of studies emerged. First, studies on how schools and teachers unintentionally impact adolescents’ identity showed that, at school, messages may unintentionally be communicated to adolescents concerning who they should or can be through differentiation and selection, teaching strategies, teacher expectations, and peer norms. Second, studies on how schools and teachers can intentionally support adolescents’ identity development showed that different types of explorative learning experiences can be organized to support adolescents’ identity development: experiences aimed at exploring new identity positions (in-breadth exploration), further specifying already existing self-understandings (in-depth exploration), and reflecting on self-understandings (reflective exploration). The third group suggests that explorative learning experiences must be meaningful and situated in a supportive classroom climate in order to foster adolescents’ identity development. Together, the existing studies suggest that schools and teachers are often unaware of the many different ways in which they may significantly impact adolescents’ identity development.

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Introduction

Identity development is an important task in adolescence. Adolescents are supposed to be concerned with developing educational and professional goals while shaping an image of who they are and want to be. Previous research indicates that a relatively clear and stable identity makes people more resilient, reflective, and autonomous in the pursuit of important life decisions, while promoting a sense of competence (e.g., Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Kroger et al. 2010 ). However, it has been argued that developing a clear and stable identity has become increasingly challenging due to processes of individualization, emancipation, and migration (e.g., Beck et al. 1994 ). School—a place where adolescents spend a lot of time—is an important context where adolescents’ identity development can be supported: Here, teachers can help adolescents to explore the identity implications of the new ideas, activities, or possibilities they are introduced to at school (e.g., Coll and Falsafi 2010 ; Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Kaplan and Flum 2009 ; Kaplan and Flum 2012 ; Rich and Schachter 2012 ; Schachter and Galili-Schachter 2012 ; Schachter and Rich 2011 ; Silseth and Arnseth 2011 ).

To date, the emerging body of literature on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development is scattered across different academic disciplines (e.g., Schachter and Rich 2011 ). Together, these studies cover a wide range of theoretical perspectives on identity development, without there being a common research base. Scholars use the same terminology—identity—while often relating to merely a small share of the studies performed on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development and while being seemingly unaware of work performed by scholars who adopt different theoretical perspectives and, consequently, research designs.

The scattered research field may cause research gaps and ways in which research from different theoretical perspectives can complement each other to be overlooked. Additionally, it remains difficult for scholars, schools, and teachers to determine what insights the literature on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development does and does not yet provide, and, therefore, how the development of adolescents’ identities can best be supported in school.

In this paper, we review the literature on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development to answer the following research question: “What insights does the existing literature provide us into the role of educational processes in adolescents’ personal, social, and school- and learning-related identity development?.” We found literature on the influence of school experiences on adolescents’ racial, cultural, ethnic, and gender identity too, and we acknowledge that education plays an important role in the development of these identity dimensions. However, the articles on the role of school in the development of these identity dimensions form an extensive research field that would require a separate literature review (see, e.g., a review study on the racial identity development of African-American adolescents by DeCuir-Gunby 2009 ). Therefore, we decided to delimit our research scope to general identity dimensions (i.e., personal and social identity) and more circumscribed identity dimensions that are education-related.

The aim of our literature review is threefold: to present an overview of what insights articles, in which different perspectives on identity development are employed, provide us into the role of school in adolescents’ identity development; to derive practical implications from the literature to help schools and teachers support adolescents’ identity development; and to identify research gaps while outlining future research directions to further examine the role of school in adolescents’ identity development.

Literature Search

To find relevant studies, we consulted five databases that cover the disciplines of psychology, education, and the social sciences: PsycINFO, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Web of Science, Sociological Abstracts, and Google Scholar. Two search strings were developed, of which the first regarded the population of adolescent students and consisted of the following keywords: secondary education , middle schools , middle school education , middle school students , junior high schools , junior high school students , high schools , high school students , and high school education . This search string was combined with a search string on identity development that consisted of the keywords identity formation , identity development , identity construction , identity work , and identity process . A more elaborate description of our search strategy can be found in Appendix A (Online Supplement). The search was performed on 22 October 2015 and focused on peer-reviewed articles in English that were published between 2005 and 2015. In total, the search resulted in 3599 unique articles.

Selection and Analysis of the Literature

The abstracts of all 3599 articles were read by the first author to establish which studies possibly met our inclusion criteria. An overview of our inclusion criteria is presented in Table 1 . First, only articles using the term identity were included in the review study. Hence, to delimit the scope of the review study, we did not select literature on identity-related concepts such as self-concept (Marsh 1990 ) or possible selves (Oyserman et al. 2006 ). Second, we included articles investigating adolescents’ personal and social identity development. When it comes to more circumscribed identity dimensions, we included articles on the development of adolescents’ school- and learning-related identity dimensions (e.g., mathematics identity, learner identity). Third, we only selected literature that focused on the influence of educational processes on adolescents’ identity development. Studies in which school was merely described as a setting in which adolescents spend their time were excluded from the selection. Fourth, in this stage of the process of literature selection, we did not include studies that were published more than 10 years before we performed our search. We chose to do so because of practical reasons, namely, the limits of the project budget and the time constraints that we were faced with. Finally, we included both empirical and theoretical studies, because we were not exclusively interested in empirical findings regarding the role of school in adolescents’ identity development but also in how these findings could be interpreted.

Based on our inclusion criteria, 176 articles were included in the review. Subsequently, the authors, in pairs, read the abstracts of these articles for two purposes: first, to get an initial overview of the studies in our selection; second, to develop a preliminary coding scheme to analyze the full texts of the articles. In this stage, while being concerned presenting an overview of what insights articles that are grounded in different perspectives on identity development provide us on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development, we generated codes for the explicitly mentioned theoretical perspectives on identity development. We also wanted to know what research methods and designs were used by scholars who adopt different theoretical perspectives on identity development. Therefore, we coded the abstracts, when possible, for methodological information (i.e., research design, sample, type of data collection). We wanted to be responsive to the various identity dimensions that the different studies focused on, which is why we coded for these (e.g., literacy identity, science identity) too. Finally, to disentangle what insights the existing literature provides into the role of school in adolescents’ identity development, the abstracts were coded for the educational processes that were explicitly addressed in the literature. We stayed very close to the text in coding the abstracts. For example, codes such as “Role of teacher: negative non-verbal approach of some students,” “Role of teacher: paid attention to low performing students,” and “Role of teacher: explicitly communicating positive expectations towards students” were assigned to the abstracts.

In this process, we discovered that the articles could be allocated to at least one of the following three categories: (1) studies that provide insights into the educational processes through which schools, teachers, and peers may unintentionally (and often negatively) shape adolescents’ identity development; (2) studies that provide insights into the educational processes through which schools and teachers may intentionally foster adolescents’ identity development; and (3) studies that provide insights into the preconditions to intentionally support adolescents’ identity development in school. Aiming to contribute to the integration of research findings across different research fields, we categorized the studies first by the type of educational process that they identified and second by the theoretical perspective they were grounded in.

Next, the first author read and summarized the full texts. After reading the first author’s reports on the literature, the full research team decided to exclude another 71 articles from the selection that, based on the full text, proved not to meet the inclusion criteria. To prevent ourselves from overlooking key publications in the research field under study that may have been published either before or after 2005, we performed citation tracking, as recommended by Greenhalgh and Peacock ( 2005 ). We kept a list of relevant articles that were referred to three times or more as concerning the role of school in adolescents’ identity development in the articles we had already selected, and we added them to the selection when they met our inclusion criteria ( n = 6), apart from the criterion concerning the publication date. As a consequence, our final selection of literature comprised 111 articles.

Once we had further narrowed down our selection of literature to 111 articles, the first author coded the full papers with the previously developed coding scheme. Constant comparative analysis was used (e.g., Glaser and Strauss 1967 ) to compare and group the various codes on the explicitly mentioned educational processes in order to distill overarching processes from the data. To provide an illustration, the earlier mentioned codes “Role of teacher: negative non-verbal approach of some students,” “Role of teacher: paid attention to low performing students,” and “Role of teacher: explicitly communicating positive expectations towards students” were combined in the overarching process “Teacher expectations.” In a similar way, we distinguished other unintentional educational processes (selection practices and differentiation, teaching strategies, and peer norms), intentional processes (in-breadth exploration, in-depth exploration, and reflective exploration), and preconditions (meaningful learning experiences and a supportive classroom climate). Whereas some articles focused on one of these educational processes, others concerned the role of various processes (also see Table 2 ). The second and third author critically monitored the entire coding process and, in case of doubt, additional research team discussions were held. In Table 3 through Table 11 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), we alphabetically ordered the studies for the various educational processes and preconditions that we found and present brief summaries of each of the articles.

Characteristics of the Literature

The 111 articles were found across a wide variety of scientific journals ( n = 80). In total, 19 of the 111 articles were theoretical in nature. Among the empirical research papers, six articles were quantitative in nature and another set of seven articles employed a mixed-methods design. Seventy-eight articles exclusively used qualitative research methods and generally presented small case studies. Of these qualitative studies, 60 reported longitudinal research. Different identity dimensions were studied in the literature, ranging from science identities and art identities to learner identities on a more general level and personal identity on an even more abstract level. Personal and social identities were investigated in respectively 21 and 11 articles. Of the more circumscribed school-related identity dimensions, studies on adolescents’ Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics identity (STEM; n = 35), learner identity ( n = 18), and student identity ( n = 14) were most prevalent. The studies were conducted in a variety of settings—e.g., out-of-school science programs, literacy classes, schools’ hallways—and among a variety of samples such as bilingual high school students, honors students in a science class, or girls attending a middle school in a rural area. The majority of studies ( n = 62) was based on data that were collected in the USA.

Theoretical Perspectives on Identity Development

Different theoretical perspectives on identity development can be found in the studies included in our literature review. Half of the articles in our literature selection understood identity from sociocultural perspectives ( n = 55). The remaining articles were based on psychosocial perspectives ( n = 8), social psychological perspectives ( n = 4), sociological perspectives ( n = 4), a combination thereof ( n = 14), or they did not explicitly mention a particular conceptualization of identity development ( n = 26). In this section of the present paper, each of the identified perspectives will be discussed based on publications that were referred to in our selection of literature as core theoretical publications that form the foundations of the various theoretical perspectives on identity development. In the next sections, the findings that we distilled from the literature on the various educational processes through which adolescents’ identity development may be influenced will be discussed in relation to the theoretical perspectives on identity development that are employed in the selected articles (also see Table 2 ). In doing so, articles in which perspectives on identity development are (often somewhat eclectically) combined and articles in which no particular theoretical perspective on identity development is mentioned will be discussed together with the studies from the perspective they most strongly appear to relate to in terms of research focus and employed research methods. More information on the combined perspectives can be found in Table 3 through Table 11 in Appendix B (Online Supplement).

Sociocultural Perspectives

Researchers who employ a sociocultural perspective generally understand identity as a multidimensional phenomenon rather than a single entity (e.g., Gee 2001 ; Holland et al. 1998 ; Holland and Lave 2001 ): People are thought to develop a range of self-understandings, for example as a science student (a science identity), a reader (literacy identity), or a music student (a musical identity). On a more general level, people are thought to integrate these self-understandings into a learner identity, a student identity (the person one is in school, not exclusively concerning who one is as a learner), and a social identity (one’s societal position in terms of superiority and inferiority). On an even more abstract level, people are thought to integrate these identity dimensions, together with self-understandings that are neither school- nor learning-related, in their personal identity. Scholars adopting sociocultural perspectives understand a person’s identity to develop through this person’s participation in various sociocultural contexts, such as home, school, and work (e.g., Holland et al. 1998 ; Holland and Lave 2001 ; Wenger 1998 ). These contexts are social in the sense that in every context, through interaction and negotiation, different identity positions—or social roles—are made available, such as those of the creative, ambitious, and/or cooperative person. These contexts are cultural in the sense that they are characterized by specific sets of tools, norms, and values that guide people’s actions, goals, and ideas about appropriate ways to reach those goals (e.g., Holland et al. 1998 ). Researchers who understand identity development from a sociocultural perspective are concerned with how identity positions, and the way these positions are evaluated (for example, girls may not be stimulated to identify with technology; Volman and Ten Dam 2007 ), inform adolescents’ identities. They are also interested in how the tools, norms, and values that are explicitly or implicitly communicated through educational activities and learning contents impact adolescents’ identities. Based on adolescents’ previous encounters with tools, norms, values, and identity positions, adolescents are thought to develop their self-understandings. Moreover, these self-understandings are understood to inform adolescents’ current decisions and future goals. In other words, adolescents’ self-understandings connect their past, present, and future (e.g., Holland et al. 1998 ; Wenger 1998 ). Some sociocultural scholars examine identities as narratives. The primary interest of these scholars is in the self-understandings people share, for example in interviews, and how these self-understandings are informed by people’s experiences with tools, norms, values, and identity positions in the school context (e.g., Solomon 2007 ). Other sociocultural researchers use classroom observations to observe both the actions and activities of teachers and peers (that reflect certain norms, values, and available identity positions, while providing insights into often used tools) and adolescents’ demonstrated engagement in school and school subjects, as an indication of their identities (e.g., Bartlett 2007 ). A third group of sociocultural scholars in our literature selection combines the former two strategies and studies identity development through the interplay between adolescents’ engagement in school and their shared self-understandings by employing various ethnographic research methods (e.g., Anderson 2007 ).

Psychosocial Perspectives

Psychosocial perspectives are often adopted by scholars whose main focus is on the internal, psychological processes of a person’s identity development (e.g., Negru-Subtirica et al. 2015 ; Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry 2008 ). In the studies in our literature selection that adopted psychosocial perspectives, two key stages in the identity development of adolescents are distinguished: exploration and commitment. The process of exploration concerns the inquiry into new possible interests as well as the trying out of new activities in order to learn what values one considers as important and what goals one deems worth pursuing. In the process of commitment, adolescents are thought to make durable life decisions, for example when it comes to their education, profession, and worldview (Erikson 1968 ; Marcia 1993 ). With regard to the role of school in adolescents’ identity development, some researchers who employ a psychosocial perspective are concerned with educational activities and strategies that either foster or hinder exploration and commitment processes. These studies stress the importance of opportunities to try out and reflect upon various activities (e.g., Charland 2010 ). Other studies in our literature selection that employ a psychosocial perspective focus on the effect of educational characteristics (such as education level) on the identity stage in which adolescents find themselves (e.g., Negru-Subtirica et al. 2015 ; Sica 2009 ; Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry 2008 ). Scholars who adopt a psychosocial perspective are generally concerned with the process of identity development, rather than with the content of specific identity dimensions. Consequently, large-scale, quantitative survey studies that examine the developmental stage of adolescents’ identity are more common in this research field than in the sociocultural one.

Social Psychological Perspectives

Scholars adopting a social psychological perspective understand a person’s identity to consist of a social and a personal part (Tajfel 1978 ; Tajfel and Turner 1986 ). Of these two parts, the former concerns one’s, “knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel 1978 , p. 63). The extent to which one identifies with the social groups one knows to be a member of and the extent to which one has strong emotions regarding these group memberships (in terms of these social groups being inferior, equal, or superior to other social groups) is what constructs the personal part of one’s identity at a given point in time (Tajfel 1978 ; Tajfel and Turner 1986 ).

When it comes to the role of school in adolescents’ identity development, some scholars employing a social psychological perspective are interested in the attributes adolescents themselves ascribe to other groups of adolescents that, for example, differ from them when it comes to the high school track they are in (e.g., a prevocational track, a pre-academic track; Jonsson and Beach 2013 ). Others are more concerned with adolescents’ perceptions of the attributes other people (e.g., society in general) assign to adolescents in different high school tracks (e.g., Knigge and Hannover 2011 ) or in schools with a low- or high-status reputation (Marcouyeux and Fleury-Bahi 2011 ). Generally, survey studies that may comprise both open and closed questions are performed by scholars who adopt a social psychological perspective (e.g., Knigge and Hannover 2011 ; Marcouyeux and Fleury-Bahi 2011 ).

Sociological Perspectives

Like scholars adopting a social psychological perspective, researchers who employ a sociological perspective are concerned with adolescents’ group membership, the evaluation thereof, and the extent to which adolescents identify with these groups. Additionally, though, scholars who ground their work in sociological perspectives are interested in how group membership serves to include some people, while excluding others as a means to acquire status. The primary focus of scholars employing sociological perspectives is on how people move in societal power structures, create groups, and try to use their own individual agency to represent themselves in ways that they desire (Côté 2002 ; Foucault 1980 ).

Some scholars who employ a sociological perspective examine how people in adolescents’ school contexts (e.g., peers and teachers) can help them to use their agency to position themselves in desired ways (e.g., Robb et al. 2007 ). Others focus on how educational policies or discourses create new membership groups of achievers and failures (e.g., Anagnostopoulos 2006 ). Because scholars who adopt a sociological perspective are concerned with how structures are reproduced and with how people (can) use their agency, they generally employ qualitative research methods ranging from classroom observations and student reports, to focus groups and interviews.

The Hidden Curriculum: How Schools and Teachers May Unintentionally Affect Adolescents’ Identity Development

In our analysis of the literature, we identified 52 articles that focused on educational processes through which schools and teachers may unintentionally (and often negatively) play a role in adolescents’ identity development. These studies presented in these articles are often performed in formal education settings ( n = 48) and concern educational processes that are part of what could be called the “hidden curriculum” (Jackson 1968 ): through these processes, messages can be implicitly communicated to adolescents about who they are, should, and can be.

Selection Practices and Differentiation

Twelve exclusively empirical studies in our literature selection addressed the role selection practices at the school level or differentiation processes at the classroom level may unintentionally play in the development of adolescents’ identities. As can be derived from Table 3 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), seven of these articles concern qualitative research, four quantitative research, and one mixed-methods research.

The ethnographic studies by Solomon ( 2007 ) and Yi ( 2013 ) that are grounded in a sociocultural perspective together with ethnographic studies by Hoffman ( 2012 ) and Barnett ( 2006 ) that respectively combine perspectives on identity development or do not explicitly mention one focus on the link between ability grouping and adolescents’ identities. These articles are concerned with adolescents’ sense of proficiency in and belonging to mathematics classes (Solomon 2007 ), English as a Second Language classes (ESL; Yi 2013 ), wind band classes (Hoffman 2012 ), and cheerleading and dancing teams (Barnett 2006 ). In these school-related contexts, the contents of, respectively, the mathematics, student, musical, and social, personal and school identities that adolescents develop were examined. Together, the studies indicate that adolescents who are allocated to a high status group—and hence to whom certain positively evaluated identity positions were available—understand themselves as having something to contribute to their class, whereas this is not the case for other adolescents. The studies also found that adolescents in high status groups seemed to be rather engaged in class (which was considered to be an indication of their domain-specific identities), whereas the opposite applied to adolescents who were denied access to high status groups. Next, three survey studies in which psychosocial perspectives are employed, focused on the degree of identity exploration that adolescents in various school tracks engage in (Negru-Subtirica et al. 2015 ; Sica 2009 ; Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry 2008 ). Two of these studies found that adolescents in prevocational tracks were less likely to explore what vocational goals they deem worth pursuing later on in life than adolescents in pre-academic tracks (Negru-Subtirica et al. 2015 ; Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry 2008 ). However, Sica ( 2009 ) found that the former group of adolescents did engage in identity exploration but often out of a fear for who they might become (out of a fear to sense emptiness, or to forget about their dreams), whereas the latter group of adolescents tend to engage in identity exploration based on a positive perception of their future (Sica 2009 ).

Negru-Subtirica et al. ( 2015 ) and Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry ( 2008 ) argued that their findings could possibly be explained by the negative image of the prevocational track, combined with these students’ limited career prospects and the associated stigma of poverty. Yet, a survey study by Pfeiffer et al. ( 2012 )—in which no particular perspective on identity development was mentioned—suggests that adolescents who are in shorter-lasting tracks (such as the prevocational one) are more likely to be further in the development of their identities, because they will leave school earlier and are therefore closer to the developmental deadline of choosing a career path than students in longer-lasting tracks (like the pre-academic track). Hence, evidence on the role of tracking in adolescents’ process of identity development remains inconclusive.

Articles in which a social psychological perspective is adopted, either examined the attributes adolescents themselves ascribed to students in prevocational and pre-academic high school tracks (Jonsson and Beach 2013 ), or the attributes others ascribe to these students according to adolescents’ own perceptions (Knigge and Hannover 2011 ). For example, Jonsson and Beach ( 2013 ) asked 224 students from the pre-academic track in Sweden to list ten descriptive attributes of a typical student in the pre-academic track and ten descriptive attributes of a typical student in the prevocational track. These adolescents described the former type of student as hard working , with good career prospects , compliant and mainstream , whereas they assigned the latter type of student the following labels: daring , challenging toward authority , rebellious , lazy , substance abusing , and with defective language. Similar patterns were found by Knigge and Hannover’s ( 2011 ) German mixed-methods study when adolescents were asked what people in general think about students in the prevocational and students in the pre-academic track.

Two ethnographic articles in which a sociological perspective is employed were concerned with differentiation at the classroom level and found that adolescents’ experiences with school success or failure—being promoted or demoted (Čeplak 2012 ) or taking an obligatory homework class (Anagnostopoulos 2006 )—created socially constructed yet real status groups of students. However, neither these studies nor the studies that are grounded in a social psychological perspective (Jonsson and Beach 2013 ; Knigge and Hannover 2011 ) provide insights into whether and how selection or differentiation processes are internalized by adolescents in their identities.

Teaching Strategies

We identified 16 studies regarding the role teaching strategies may unintentionally play in the development of adolescents’ identities. As is shown in Table 4 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), these articles comprise one theoretical paper and 15 ethnographic studies. The nine studies in which sociocultural perspectives on identity development are used are concerned with (1) how teaching strategies inform opportunities to engage in the classroom and with the subject matter as constrained by tools, norms, and values and (2) how teaching strategies make certain identity positions available in the classroom. An illustrative example is provided by Horn ( 2008 ). In her longitudinal ethnographic research, Horn compared the teaching strategies in mathematics classes of two different high schools. In one of the schools, students were provided with cumulative sets of short mathematical problems to work on individually. In the other school, students and teachers collaboratively developed activities that supported multiple-ability group work. At the first school, the teaching strategy unintentionally communicated that “Math is something that you only have to remember everything that you’ve ever learned before. And you get to a point somewhere along the line where your brain says, ‘My brain is full.’ And you can’t go on” (student quote in Horn 2008 , p. 220). Hence, the first school appeared to invite adolescents to understand themselves as “just not a mathematics person” as soon as the cumulative learning content got too advanced. However, based on classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers, Horn found that the other school’s teaching strategy stressed instead that everyone is able to improve their mathematics skills for as long as they want to. This school did so by providing students who have different abilities and talents with opportunities to collaboratively work on mathematical issues.

Some of the studies grounded in sociocultural perspectives (Clark et al. 2013 ; Evnitskaya and Morton 2011 ; Horn 2008 ), as well as some of the ethnographic (Smagorinsky et al. 2005 ) and theoretical (Wallace 2012 ) studies that do not explicitly mention a theoretical perspective on identity development, were merely concerned with available opportunities to engage and present identity positions in the classroom setting. Other sociocultural studies (Anderson 2007 ; Aschbacher et al. 2010 ; Calabrese Barton et al. 2013 ; Carlone 2004 ; Lambert 2015 ; Rubin 2007 ), together with ethnographic studies that are grounded in combined perspectives on identity development (Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Cobb et al. 2009 ; Cone et al. 2014 ), or do not mention a particular perspective on identity development (DeGennaro and Brown 2009 ; Hamilton 2002 ), focused in addition on how adolescents developed their identities in relation to these opportunities and positions: Various researchers examined how opportunities to engage shaped students’ demonstrated (Anderson 2007 ; Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Calabrese Barton et al. 2013 ; Rubin 2007 ) and narrated (Aschbacher et al. 2010 ; Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Carlone 2004 ; DeGennaro and Brown 2009 ; Lambert 2015 ; Rubin 2007 ) engagement in the classroom as an indication of their identities. Others focused on how teaching strategies shaped adolescents’ self-understandings as capable participants in classroom contexts (Anderson 2007 ; Calabrese Barton et al. 2013 ; Cobb et al. 2009 ; Cone et al. 2014 ; Hamilton 2002 ; Lambert 2015 ), or on adolescents’ envisioned future in a particular field (Calabrese Barton et al. 2013 ) as an indication of their identities. Irrespective of how the various identity dimensions were operationalized, the abovementioned studies found that teaching strategies did unintentionally inform adolescents’ identity development. This finding is also supported by Charland’s ( 2010 ) ethnographic study in which a psychosocial perspective on identity development is employed. Based on interviews with 58 African-American students in art classes, this study suggests that teaching strategies in art classes that do not leave space for self-expression may discourage students to understand themselves as artists, to engage in visual art, and to further explore their artist identities.

Teacher Expectations

In our literature selection, we found 17 articles concerning the role teacher expectations may (often) unintentionally play in the development of adolescents’ identities. As can be derived from Table 5 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), these articles comprise one theoretical paper and 16 ethnographic studies.

Four of the articles that adopt a sociocultural perspective on identity development demonstrated, based on classroom observations and teacher interviews, that teachers may have rather persistent expectations of adolescents through which certain identity positions are made available or unavailable (Berg 2010 ; Rubin 2007 ; Vetter 2010 ; Wortham 2006 ). Berg ( 2010 ) for example found in her longitudinal ethnographic research on a foster child that this adolescent was repetitively approached by his teachers and social workers based on others’ reports and the previous experiences they had with him as an outsider and a difficult student. Yet, these teachers and social workers failed to notice the student’s changed behavior. Consequently, the range of available identity positions in relation to which the adolescent could develop his identity was limited. Together, these four studies indicate that static teacher expectations limit adolescents’ ways to position themselves, which may sometimes benefit (Vetter 2010 ) but other times harm adolescents’ engagement in school practices (Berg 2010 ; Rubin 2007 ; Wortham 2006 ). It should be noted, though, that none of these studies provide insights into how teacher expectations shape adolescents’ narrated self-understandings.

Five other studies in which a sociocultural perspective on identity development is employed (Aschbacher et al. 2010 ; Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Landers 2013 ; Olitsky et al. 2010 ) relied fully on student interviews or questionnaires regarding perceived teacher expectations. Consequently, in these studies, it cannot be examined whether perceived teacher expectations correspond to teachers’ actual expectations of their students. Yet, whether the perceived teacher expectations that are reported represent truth, imagination, or both, the studies do suggest that adolescents’ self-understandings are informed by their perceptions of their teachers’ expectations, as is indicated by an adolescent’s remark in Edwards-Groves and Murray’s study (Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 ), “And anyway I think I am dumb and stupid ‘coz I am not as good as the others, they [the teachers] think that too” (quote in Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 , p. 168).

Next, three more studies that are grounded in sociocultural perspectives on identity development (Bartlett 2007 ; Fields and Enyedy 2013 ; Heyd-Metzuyanim 2013 ) combined (participant) classroom observations with student and sometimes teacher interviews or focus groups. These studies provide additional and stronger evidence for the role teacher expectations may play in adolescents’ identity development. The study by Heyd-Metzuyanim ( 2013 ) showed how teacher expectations could inform adolescents’ identity development even when these expectations are communicated implicitly. Heyd-Metzuyanim ( 2013 ) described how she, as a teacher, implicitly and unintentionally expressed her low expectations of one of her students’ mathematical abilities through her continuous disengagement from this student’s mathematical thinking problems; Heyd-Metzuyanim no longer expected the student to make any additional progress in mathematics, and the identity position of becoming a better mathematician was no longer made available to the student. The observation and student interview data suggest that the student, in relation to how she was positioned by her teacher through the teacher’s expectations, changed the story of herself as a mathematics learner from someone who is willing and able to learn mathematics at the beginning of the school year to someone who could no longer grow as a mathematics student later on in the school year. The student’s mathematics identity appeared to be informed by the communicated teacher expectations and the student’s perceptions thereof.

Next, Bottrell’s ( 2007 ) study in which a sociological perspective is adopted was concerned with the social groups that teachers, according to students, implicitly create and the teacher expectations these groups are accompanied with. Bottrell reported, based on youth center observations and students’ interviews, stories of adolescents who shared that they experienced their teachers in formal education to distinguish, without formal differentiation, between more and less successful students. In case the adolescents thought they belonged, in the eyes of their teachers, to the latter group, they sometimes felt that their teachers did not have hopes for them at all, based on which they appeared to develop the idea that they were not worth bothering about. Again, though, this study does not provide insights into the extent to which the perceived teacher expectations correspond to teachers’ actual expectations of their students.

Then, two ethnographic studies in which no particular perspective on identity development is explicitly mentioned (Seaton 2007 ; Smith 2008 ) were not so much concerned with how (perceived) teacher expectations are reflected in adolescents’ self-understandings but with whether adolescents do or do not identify with the expectations that teachers explicitly express. In these two studies, teacher expectations appeared to be understood as making available fixed identity positions that adolescents may or may not endorse. For example, Smith ( 2008 ) studied a ninth-grade honors class at an American high school through classroom observations and student interviews and focus groups. Smith observed that teachers explicitly stressed that honors students were expected to work hard, to do more, and be more integer than other students. Yet, whereas Smith found that some students embraced this identity position, others commented, despite their being enrolled in the honors class, “I’m plenty smart, but I just don’t think I’m the type of person that the teachers think belongs in an honors class” (quote in Smith 2008 , p. 499). This finding indicates that teachers’ expectations have to be desirable and meaningful from students’ perspectives in order to become part of their identities.

Finally, what struck us in the analysis of the studies that focused on the role of teacher expectations in adolescents’ identity development was that various times it was argued (Steele 1997 ) and found, by ethnographic studies that differed in the perspectives on identity development they employed, that teachers (perceivably) have certain expectations of groups of adolescents that are distinguished by their ethnic background (Aschbacher et al. 2010 ; Bartlett 2007 ; Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Wortham 2006 ), perceived academic abilities (Landers 2013 ; Jethwani 2015 ), and/or gender (Jethwani 2015 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ). Although it was recognized in these studies that adolescents’ identity development is, at least to a certain extent, an individual process, scholars found inequalities in (perceived) teacher expectations across different groups of students. This indicates that individual adolescents who share a certain characteristic may be confronted with norms and identity positions in relation to which they can and cannot develop their identities that are different from the norms and identity positions of adolescents who do not share that characteristic. For example, Aschbacher et al. ( 2010 ) found that, in the student interviews and questionnaires they collected among a group of 33 diverse high school students, the adolescents spoke frankly about ethnic/racial biases they faced in science classes at school. Aschbacher et al. ( 2010 ) reported that various Asian-American students shared that they thought their science teachers and administrators were supportive and had high expectations of them, whereas several African-American and Latino students talked about how they felt their teachers had lower expectations of them than of others. Together with other studies (Bartlett 2007 ; Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 ; Jethwani 2015 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Landers 2013 ; Steele 1997 ; Wortham 2006 ), this suggests that inequalities may occur in (perceived) teacher expectations across different groups of students. Certain groups of students may experience to have different opportunities in relation to which they can develop their identities (as indicated by their engagement and/or self-understandings), which may either foster or hinder their identity development.

In our analysis of the literature, we identified 11 exclusively empirical studies regarding the role peer norms may unintentionally play in the development of adolescents’ identities. As is shown in Table 6 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), nine of these articles concern qualitative research, one presents a quantitative study, and one regards a mixed-methods study. Three studies in which sociocultural perspectives are adopted and that are based on various ethnographic research methods (Fields and Enyedy 2013 ; Ideland and Malmberg 2012 ; Volman and Ten Dam 2007 ) were concerned with and found that peers may deny each other access to certain identity positions through peer norms. An example is provided by Fields and Enyedy ( 2013 ) who studied a programming class in a middle school by means of observations, student interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups. Fields and Enyedy ( 2013 ) found that, even though the teacher of the programming class made the identity position of an attentive expert available to one of the students in this class, his peers refused to regard this student as such. This student’s classmates appeared to do so, because the student who was now trying to help out his classmates was better and longer known by them for his sarcasm, which they generally experienced as mean. The prevalent norm among the adolescent’s peers seemed to be that they could not start their relationship with this student from a clean slate, just because they found themselves in a new class. Fields and Enyedy ( 2013 ) analysis suggests that this made it difficult for the student to enact the identity position that he was offered by his teacher and that he tried to pursue. However, no insights are provided into whether and how this informed the student’s self-understanding. Four other ethnographic studies in which sociocultural perspectives are employed (Hall 2010 ; Hall et al. 2010 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Vetter et al. 2011 ) focused on how peers can make certain identity positions less appealing by stigmatizing these identity positions. These studies indicate that when adolescents actually do identify themselves with identity positions that are stigmatized by their peers, they may hide that they do in order to safeguard their reputation. For example, Hall ( 2010 ) found—based on observations as well as teacher questionnaires and interviews—that the teachers of a middle school offered their students three different reader identity positions: one of a poor reader (someone who is unable to understand most of what he or she reads, and who does not participate in class nor asks for help), one of becoming a good reader (a poor reader who engages in the practices of a good reader, for example by participating actively and by asking questions), and one of a good reader (someone who understands most of what he or she reads, who participates in class and who asks questions). However, students shared in their questionnaires and interviews that they felt it was not really possible to engage in class as someone who is becoming a good reader. Students mentioned to fear the social consequences of engaging in class as such, because classmates jointly reinforced the norm that it is embarrassing to have reading difficulties. Therefore, as some of the students reported, they would rather not get actively involved in class so they could hide their reading difficulties. This appeared to jeopardize these students’ opportunities to further develop their self-understandings as readers in a constructive way.

The finding that adolescents may feel restricted in taking up certain identity positions because they are stigmatized by peers is also supported by Charland’s ( 2010 ) ethnographic study—in which psychosocial perspective is adopted—as well as by two—respectively, ethnographic (Fletcher et al. 2009 ) and mixed-methods (Wilmot 2014 )—studies in which no particular perspective on identity development was explicitly mentioned. Interestingly, these three studies were concerned with the role of peer norms in adolescents’ identity development in the same way as some of the studies that are grounded in a sociocultural perspective, despite their different understandings of how identities develop. In addition to the other studies, though, Charland’s ( 2010 ) interview and focus group study indicates that adolescents’ exploration of, in this case, artist identities, may be hindered when peers reinforce the norm among themselves that visual arts is for “nerds” or “sissy’s” (Charland 2010 , p. 122).

Next, a quantitative study by Marcouyeux and Fleury-Bahi ( 2011 ), in which a social psychological perspective is employed, looked at the relation between a school’s perceived reputation and adolescents’ identities. To examine this, Marcouyeux and Fleury-Bahi ( 2011 ) asked 542 high school students in France, through surveys, about how they think adolescents from other schools would perceive the respondent’s school in terms of prestige and the quality of education. They also asked the respondents about their identification with school and learning. In this study, a positive relationship was found between the school’s image as perceivably perceived by peers and students’ identification with school and learning. This finding indicates that being a member of a group that is perceivably high in status according to peers may positively shape adolescents’ identities.

Organizing Explorative Learning Experiences: How Schools and Teachers May Intentionally Affect Adolescents’ Identity Development

In our analysis of the literature, we identified 37 articles that regarded educational processes through which schools and teachers may intentionally foster adolescents’ identity development. Most of the studies concerning the intentional fostering of adolescents’ identity development are conducted in after-school clubs, extracurricular classes provided at school, or at summer camps ( n = 21). Even though learning experiences are often not referred to as such in the literature, our analysis of the existing body of research caused us to distinguish between in-breadth, in-depth, and reflective explorative learning experiences that all, in their own way, support adolescents in exploring who they are and want to be.

In-Breadth Exploration

In our literature selection, we found ten articles regarding learning experiences that allow adolescents to get introduced to learning contents, learning activities, and identity positions they were thus far unfamiliar with. We refer to such experiences as in-breadth explorative learning experiences. As can be derived from Table 7 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), the articles that will be discussed in this section comprise three theoretical papers and seven ethnographic studies. All the articles concerning in-breadth explorative learning experiences argued (Brickhouse 2001 ; Squire 2006 ; Stokes and Wyn 2007 ) or demonstrated (Barrett and Baker 2012 ; Bruin and Ohna 2013 ; Carlone et al. 2015 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Jones and Deutsch 2013 ; Stapleton 2015 ; Van Sluys 2010 ), irrespective of their perspective on identity development (also see Table 2 ), that providing adolescents with such experiences may invite them to adopt new interests, to identify undiscovered talents, and to try out new identity positions. For example, Stapleton ( 2015 ), who adopts a sociocultural perspective, examined a 4-week summer program in which a group of 30 American adolescents was taken to a site that was deeply affected by climate change. The adolescents visited schools, social outreach organizations, local population members, attended lectures about climate change, and examined climate change’s impact on mangrove forests. The interviews with 13 of the participating adolescents indicated that being introduced to people and sites that are affected by climate change stimulated many to become more engaged with environmental issues. The learning experiences the summer program introduced these adolescents to also appeared to inform their self-understandings. As one participant mentioned, “[The summer camp] has changed my identity, it’s changed my daily outlook, what I buy, how much I buy when I go to stores, it’s changed my transportation, my daily living habits” (quote in Stapleton 2015 , p. 105). Hence, the summer program appeared to have introduced the adolescents to a new topic that intrigued them, while providing them with insights into how they themselves could tackle environmental issues.

This body of literature suggests that introducing adolescents to unfamiliar learning contents, learning activities, and identity positions through on-site and hands-on activities especially helps adolescents to imagine the identity implications thereof. Supposedly, on-site and hands-on activities introduce adolescents to learning contents, learning activities, and identity positions in authentic, real-life ways, which can help them decide to what extent they identify with these contents, activities, and positions.

Finally, one theoretical (Brickhouse 2001 ) and various empirical studies in this group of literature (Barrett and Baker 2012 ; Bruin and Ohna 2013 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Van Sluys 2010 ) that differ in the perspectives on identity development they adopt examined the role in-breadth explorative learning experiences may play in the identity development of adolescents with a higher risk of marginalization. Bruin and Ohna ( 2013 ), who do not explicitly mention a particular perspective on identity development, studied alternative educational courses involving increased workplace-practice for adolescents who could not flourish in Norwegian’s regular and more theoretically oriented education. In these alternative courses, the aim was to introduce students to the requirements and expectations that they will face in their future vocations. Based on interviews with eight students, Bruin and Ohna ( 2013 ) concluded that, whereas these students previously felt that school was not for them, the alternative courses allowed them “to discover and nourish hidden talents and interests and new sides of themselves and experiencing how feeling able builds self-confidence and supports learning” (quote in Bruin and Ohna 2013 , p. 1100). Their analysis, as well as the other articles, suggests that, by acquiring new skills through hands-on activities, these students were able to adjust their self-understandings in a positive way in relation to previously unavailable identity positions.

In-Depth Exploration

We identified a group of 16 articles regarding learning experiences that may support adolescents in further exploring and specifying their already present self-understandings. We refer to such experiences as in-depth explorative learning experiences. As is shown in Table 8 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), among these articles, two theoretical, three mixed-methods, and 11 ethnographic studies can be found. One theoretical (Luehmann 2009 ) and six ethnographic (Furman and Calabrese Barton 2006 ; Polman 2010 ; Polman and Hope 2014 ; Polman and Miller 2010 ; Rahm et al. 2014 ; Rudd 2012 ) studies that are grounded in sociocultural perspectives on identity development provide insights into how learning experiences that acknowledge that adolescents may already have a sense of who they are (for example a “history person”) could facilitate the exploration of contents, activities, and positions that are closely related to adolescents’ already present self-understandings (for example, the identity position of an art historian or of a history teacher). Five ethnographic articles—of which one employs a sociocultural perspective on identity development (Liu and Hannafin 2010 ), whereas the others do not explicitly mention a particular perspective on identity development (Adams et al. 2014 ; Jones and Deutsch 2013 ; Kendrick et al. 2013 ; Russ et al. 2015 )—additionally focused on whether in-depth explorations actually inform adolescents’ narrated self-understandings and found that they did. For example, Adams et al. ( 2014 ) examined a multi-year out-of-school STEM program for adolescents with a general interest in STEM. This program offered hands-on activities, scientist talks, visits to a museum’s behind the scenes research labs and collections, and field trips. The teachers selected research topics that span the collaborating museum’s areas of expertise and that were broad enough to give youth flexibility in the themes they wanted to explore. Focus group and interview data indicated that allowing adolescents to further specify their STEM interests fostered their STEM identity development. As one girl remarked:

The good thing about [the program is that] we took so many classes on so many subjects…. I got to learn so much about everything in science… I learned what I like and what I do not like. [I] got exposed to everything. (quote in Adams et al. 2014 , p. 18)

Hence, the learning experiences provided by this program appeared to enable adolescents to try out roles and activities that were closely related to their already present self-understandings so that they could explore what it actually entails to be a specific type of STEM person. Again, this study, together with the other sociocultural or related studies that concern in-depth explorative learning experiences, stresses the importance of hands-on and on-site learning experiences to support adolescents in making identity commitments.

The literature also indicates that—irrespective of the employed perspective on identity development and research methods—next to hands-on and on-site activities, role models may help adolescents in the in-depth exploration of their identities (Farland-Smith 2012 ; Hughes et al. 2013 ; Jones and Deutsch 2013 ; Whiting 2006 ). What is more, studies by Farland-Smith ( 2012 ) and Hughes et al. ( 2013 ) suggest that exposing marginalized adolescents to role models might help them to challenge stereotypes that would otherwise prevent them from further exploring certain identity positions. For example, Hughes et al. ( 2013 ), who combine perspectives on identity development, demonstrated—through survey, observation, and interview data—how meeting female role models in the male-dominated STEM field helped girls to develop a more detailed and knowledge-based (rather than prejudiced) picture of how they could become valuable members of a STEM community. Being introduced to female role models convinced various girls that there was enough space for them in the STEM field, which appeared to stimulate the further exploration of their STEM-related identities.

However, a mixed-methods study among 1138 American adolescents by Gilmartin et al. ( 2007 ) in which perspectives on identity are combined too suggests that adolescents only position people who are real experts in their eyes as role models. For example, in their study, it was found that the percentage of female science teachers at a school was not significantly related to adolescents’ science engagement and self-understandings. The interviews Gilmartin et al. ( 2007 ) performed indicated that female science teachers are not considered as expert role models by adolescents because of their perceived lack of “real-life science experience,” apart from teaching.

Reflective Exploration

We identified a group of 12 articles that concern learning experiences that help adolescents reflect upon their already present self-understandings. We refer to these experiences as reflective explorative learning experiences. As can be derived from Table 9 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), the articles that will be discussed in this section comprise five theoretical papers and seven ethnographic studies. One of the ethnographic studies in which a sociocultural perspective on identity development is employed, concerned an extracurricular reading club for Asian English Language Learners who attended an American high school (Choi 2009 ). This study indicates, based on student interviews and online student discussions, that stimulating self-reflection, in this case through reading and discussing a novel together with peers, may help adolescents to better understand their own thoughts and feelings and could therefore contribute to their identity development.

The Sinai et al. ( 2012 ) study, in which a psychosocial perspective was adopted, demonstrated—through classroom observations, student assignments, and student focus groups—that writing assignments may help adolescents to enter a dialogue with certain parts of themselves, such as a younger version of themselves. In some cases, this appeared to support adolescents in gaining insights into who they currently are and into who they want to become, as was reflected in their narrated self-understandings. Various theoretical articles that either do not explicitly mention a perspective on identity development (Hall 2007 ) or combine various perspectives on identity development (Harrell-Levy and Kerpelman 2010 ; Ligorio 2010 ) also argued that engaging adolescents in (internal) dialogues can help them to learn more about what their interests are, about what they value, and about what kind of persons they want to become.

Next, a theoretical study in which identity development is understood from a sociocultural perspective (Ten Dam et al. 2004 ), together with a theoretical study that does not explicitly adopt a particular perspective on identity (Rossiter 2007 ), argued that reflective explorative learning experiences are also important because they may foster adolescents’ understanding of how their identity development is influenced by their sociocultural context. The underlying idea is that this could help adolescents to consciously search for a balance in their identity development between societal norms on the one hand and adolescents’ individual dreams of who they want to be(come) on the other.

In addition, two ethnographic studies in which a sociocultural perspective on identity development is adopted (Rogers et al. 2007 ; Vianna and Stetsenko 2011 ), three ethnographic studies that do not explicitly adopt a particular perspective (Hall 2007 ; Hardee and Reyelt 2009 ; Muhammad 2012 ), and one theoretical study in which various perspectives on identity are combined (Henfield 2012 ), suggest that offering adolescents, and especially those who are at risk of marginalization, the opportunity to become aware of and critically assess societal inequalities may foster their identity development and make them more resilient. For example, Hardee and Reyelt ( 2009 ) examined how alternative arts-based education may support the identity development of adolescents in a juvenile arbitration program and of adolescents who are not succeeding in American public schools. In the arts-based workshops, adolescents were asked to question and challenge dominant ideologies by engaging in theater assignments, writing assignments, and collage-creating assignments. The analysis of the ethnographic data suggests that this helped the participants develop a stronger sense of who they are, what they stand for, and of what external barriers they might have to overcome in their further development. One student for example noted, “It helps to talk about this kind of stuff ’cause this isn’t stuff we talk about in school. I could talk about this all day. It makes me feel stronger inside, like I know me” (quote in Hardee and Reyelt 2009 , p. 33). This quote, as well as the studies mentioned above, indicates that learning about structural inequalities may help adolescents to better understand their position in society and to develop their identities while being aware of ascribed positions, in addition to chosen ones.

Conditions for Effective Explorative Learning Experiences

Next to articles on educational processes that may unintentionally or intentionally play a role in adolescents’ identity development, we identified 37 articles that focus on preconditions that are thought to be required when teachers intentionally want to support adolescents in exploring their identities.

Meaningful Learning Experiences

We found 20 articles concerning the role of meaningful learning experiences in supporting the development of adolescents’ identities. As is shown in Table 10 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), among these articles, eight theoretical, one quantitative, and 11 ethnographic studies can be found. Various of these articles argued (Brickhouse 2001 ; Cowie et al. 2011 ; Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Higgins 2015 ; Steele 1997 ; Subramaniam et al. 2012 ) or indicated (Basu et al. 2009 ; Black et al. 2010 ; Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Cobb et al. 2009 ; Freire et al. 2009 ; Hazari et al. 2010 ; Mittendorff et al. 2008 ; Mortimer et al. 2010 ; Polman and Miller 2010 ; Skerrett 2012 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ; Thompson 2014 ), irrespective of their theoretical perspective on identity development (also see Table 2 ) and employed research methods, that adolescents regard learning experiences as meaningful when they feel there is space for their own out-of-school knowledge and experiences in class and when they can relate what they learned in school to their out-of-school daily life. Additionally, in theoretical papers that employ sociocultural (Lemke 2001 ), combined (Whiting 2006 ), or no explicitly mentioned (Higgins 2015 ; Steele 1997 ) perspectives on identity development, it is argued that learning experiences are considered to be meaningful when adolescents recognize themselves in the learning material and content.

Together, the studies mentioned in this section suggest that meaningful learning experiences may make it easier for adolescents to link their already present self-understandings to the learning contents and activities in school and vice versa. This may help them to identify with the learning content and activities, which, in turn, would stimulate them to further explore whether they want to make certain identity commitments when it comes to those contents and activities.

Some of the studies that focus on meaningful learning experiences also explored how such experiences can be organized in school. Three ethnographic studies in which a sociocultural perspective is adopted (Basu et al. 2009 ; Skerrett 2012 ; Thompson 2014 ) and an ethnographic study in which various perspectives on identity development are combined (Cobb et al. 2009 ) found that adolescents, when they are able to voice which themes and learning interests appeal to them, and when teachers take this into account in selecting (or letting the students select) the topics and assignments, may be supported in relating their education to their personal lives. Furthermore, several articles departing from different perspectives on identity development suggest that entering a dialogue with adolescents and discussing the importance and implications of what they learned in school for their personal development may help adolescents to connect what is taught in school to their out-of-school daily lives (Black et al. 2010 ; Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Mittendorff et al. 2008 ).

Here, it should be noted that identity exploration, which is understood by scholars who adopt a psychosocial perspective on identity development as the questioning of already present identifications through triggering frictions and some discomfort that allow for the (re-)evaluation of childhood identifications (Erikson 1968 ; Kroger 2007 ; Marcia 1993 ; Sinai et al. 2012 ), does not necessarily exclude the possibility of relating adolescents’ personal lives to school and vice versa. Meaningful learning experiences do not have to concern experiences that perfectly suit adolescents. Rather, they are experiences that appeal to adolescents in such a way that they feel motivated to engage in identity exploration.

Supportive Classroom Climate

We identified a group of 18 articles that concern the role of a supportive classroom climate in fostering the development of adolescents’ identities. As can be derived from Table 11 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), the articles that will be discussed in this section comprise four theoretical papers, one quantitative study, and 13 ethnographic studies. Most articles, irrespective of their perspective on identity development and employed methods (also see Table 2 ), argued (Cummins et al. 2015 ; Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ) or found (Buxton 2005 ; Fields and Enyedy 2013 ; Hazari et al. 2015 ; Kendrick et al. 2013 ; Lam and Tam 2011 ; Olitsky 2007 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ; Van Ryzin 2014 ) that it is important to make adolescents feel respected and appreciated to warrant a supportive classroom climate. Also, some of these articles (Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ; Hazari et al. 2015 ; Olitsky 2007 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ), together with other theoretical (Harrell-Levy and Kerpelman 2010 ) and empirical (Archer et al. 2009 ; Carlone et al. 2015 ) studies (that vary too in the theoretical perspective on identity they adopt), focus on the importance of making adolescents feel secure enough to make “mistakes.” Additionally, various articles indicate that peers who approach each other open mindedly (Fields and Enyedy 2013 ), and recognize each other for who they are and want to be (Cummins et al. 2015 ; Harrell-Levy and Kerpelman 2010 ), are essential aspects of a supportive classroom climate too.

The factors listed above are suggested by the literature to stimulate adolescents’ identity development, because these factors are thought to make adolescents feel confident in trying out new roles (whether broadening or deepening adolescents’ self-understandings), in reflecting on their own thoughts and feelings, and in critically assessing societal inequalities. Discovering who you are and want to be is understood to require some courage, because it may involve risks and discomfort; it is accompanied by new experiences and change (Erikson 1968 ; Kroger 2007 ; Marcia 1993 ; Sinai et al. 2012 ). A supportive social climate may help adolescents to feel safe enough to take these risks and deal with such possible discomfort. In the group of literature that focuses on the role of a supportive classroom climate in supporting the development of adolescents’ identities, we found several suggestions to foster a supportive classroom climate. First, two theoretical (Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ; Lam and Tam 2011 ) and two ethnographic (Robb et al. 2007 ; Rudd 2012 ) articles that differ in the perspectives on identity development that they employ indicate that teacher compliments (Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ; Robb et al. 2007 ) and warm teacher-student relationships (Lam and Tam 2011 ; Rudd 2012 ) may contribute to a supportive classroom climate. Some of these articles argued (Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ) or demonstrated (Robb et al. 2007 ; Rudd 2012 ) that this is the case, because teacher compliments and personal teacher-student relationships make students feel recognized and valued.

Second, other articles (again differing in the perspective on identity development they employ) focus on how teachers can communicate to their students that they are allowed to make mistakes (Archer et al. 2009 ; Hazari et al. 2015 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ; Rudd 2012 ). For example, Hazari et al. ( 2015 ) found, in their ethnographic study on physics classes that is grounded in a sociocultural perspective, that when teachers share their own doubts and make mistakes every once in a while, this may help to reassure students, as comes to the fore in the following quote:

Well, like I do not know if he does it on purpose but sometimes he makes mistakes like in the problems and stuff and like the whole class laughs and then it makes us feel more comfortable because like he, our own teacher is making mistakes. (quote in Hazari et al. 2015 , p. 749)

Together with the ethnographic study by Tan and Calabrese Barton ( 2007 ) that is grounded in a sociocultural perspective too, the study by Hazari et al. ( 2015 ) indicates that adolescents, when they do not continuously feel the pressure to perform, may feel more supported to freely explore their identities. Additionally, the study by Rudd ( 2012 ), in which perspectives on identity development are combined, suggests that when teachers approach their students open mindedly—in the sense that they offer students second chances and chances to reposition themselves on a regular basis—students may feel less judged and restricted and may therefore feel more invited to explore their identity.

Finally, several ethnographic studies differing in their adopted theoretical perspectives on identity development demonstrated how mutual recognition among peers could be stimulated by engaging adolescents in learning activities that invite mutual encouragement (Carlone et al. 2015 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ) or by making adolescents aware of what they have in common (Hardee and Reyelt 2009 ; Jones and Deutsch 2013 ; Parker 2014 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ). For example, in an art program studied by Hardee and Reyelt ( 2009 ), adolescents were asked to create art pieces. Subsequently, the adolescents discussed their personal interpretations of the art that was made, which, based on observation and interview data, appeared to make them aware of the experiences and views they shared that seemed to foster adolescents’ bonding processes.

School, a place where adolescents spend a lot of time and are introduced to new ideas and activities, is an important context where adolescents’ identity development can be supported (e.g., Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Kaplan and Flum 2009 ; Kaplan and Flum 2012 ; Rich and Schachter 2012 ; Schachter and Galili-Schachter 2012 ; Schachter and Rich 2011 ; Silseth and Arnseth 2011 ). Yet, due to a scattered research field, it was difficult to establish how schools and teachers can foster adolescents’ identity development and what knowledge gaps should be addressed to further support schools and teachers in doing so. Therefore, the present literature review aimed to present an overview of what insights the existing literature provides into the role of school in adolescents’ identity development.

We found that three groups of literature could be distinguished in the existing literature. The first group concerns articles that focus on educational processes through which adolescents’ identity development may unintentionally (and often negatively) be informed by schools, teachers, and peers: selection practices and differentiation, teaching strategies, teacher expectations, and peer norms. The second group of articles regards educational processes through which schools and teachers can intentionally organize experiences that support adolescents’ identity development: namely, through in-breadth exploration, in-depth exploration, and reflective exploration. The third group of articles comprises studies on two preconditions that are required to intentionally support adolescents’ identity development in school: meaningful learning experiences and a supportive classroom climate.

What struck us is that a fair share of studies on educational processes that may unintentionally play a role in adolescents’ identity development were performed in formal educational settings, whereas most of the studies on how schools and teachers can intentionally organize experiences that support adolescents’ identity development were conducted in extracurricular and out-of-school settings. The absence of studies on explorative learning experiences in adolescents’ identity development in formal education suggests that explorative learning experiences are currently not well integrated in the formal curriculum. We think this is worrisome, as introducing students to new learning contents and activities is the main purpose of formal education. Furthermore, the literature on educational processes that may unintentionally play a role in adolescents’ identity development shows how schools and teachers may significantly impact adolescents’ identities in a negative way. Yet, neither in educational practice nor in educational research, enough attention is paid to how adolescents’ identities can be influenced in a constructive manner in formal education.

What Schools and Teachers Can Learn About Their Role in Adolescents’ Identity Development

One of the contributions of this review is that it invites schools and teachers to look at educational practices in new, critical ways: The review shows how educational processes that may be considered as unproblematic could unintentionally shape how adolescents’ come to understand themselves and provides suggestions for how learning experiences that support adolescents’ identity development can be integrated in the curriculum.

First, this review makes clear that educational processes that unintentionally play a role in adolescents’ identity development are ubiquitous. The literature identified the following educational processes through which messages are communicated to adolescents concerning who they should or can be: selection practices and differentiation , teaching strategies , teacher expectations , and peer norms . It is in relation to such messages that adolescents’ develop their identities; These messages can be internalized by adolescents. Moreover, the identified educational processes involve practices that tend to be considered as normal, unproblematic, and—in the cases of selection processes, differentiation, and certain teaching strategies—efficient, yet were found to often inform adolescent’s self-understandings in a negative way. Based on the literature, it can be recommended that becoming more aware of and reflect more upon the messages that these practices may communicate could help to prevent adolescents’ identity development from being influenced in a negative manner.

Second, this review showed that different types of explorative learning experiences can be organized to foster adolescents’ identity development: in-breadth , in-depth , and reflective explorative learning experiences . Adolescents can be stimulated to explore new identity positions through in-breadth exploration or be helped to explore and further specify already existing self-understandings through in-depth exploration. Alternatively, schools and teachers can foster adolescents’ understandings of their own thoughts and feelings through reflective explorative learning experiences. Schools can ask themselves how they can restructure the curriculum in such a way that it enables these different types of explorative learning experiences, and teachers can ask themselves how they can redesign their classes so that they become explorative learning experiences. No matter what the specific identity development purpose is, and while acknowledging that this may be difficult to arrange, the literature suggests that explorative learning experiences should be meaningful to adolescents and situated in supportive classroom climates in order to be successful.

We would like to stress, though, that the provision of explorative learning experiences in formal education to support adolescents’ identity development does not necessarily entail an extra task for teachers and schools. Introducing adolescents to new ideas, activities, and possibilities is what teachers and schools are supposed to do anyway. Providing explorative learning experiences is a way of fulfilling this task through a pedagogical approach that stimulates adolescents to connect what they are taught in school to who they are and want to be (Biesta 2014 ; Vianna and Stetsenko 2011 ).

Directions for Future Research

In our selection of literature, studies that are grounded in sociocultural, psychosocial, social psychological, and sociological perspectives on identity development can be found. Currently, the great majority of these studies looks at adolescents’ identity development from a sociocultural perspective and provides insights into how available norms, values, tools, and identity positions in schools may impact how adolescents come to understand themselves. Yet, studies grounded in a psychosocial, social psychological, or sociological perspective on identity development are less prevalent (also see Table 2 ).

In this review, it has become clear—by primarily grouping the selected studies based on the identified educational processes and preconditions, instead of based on the theoretical perspectives on identity that are adopted—that when scholars, who differ in their adopted theoretical perspectives on identity, would combine their strengths, this could make a large difference in moving this body of research forward.

So far, only the role of selection practices and differentiation, peer norms, and supportive classroom climates in adolescents’ identity development have been studied from different theoretical perspectives. For example, when it comes to the educational process of selection practices and differentiation, studies using a sociocultural perspective showed the impact ability grouping may have, through the different identity positions that are available to different ability groups, on adolescents’ engagement with school (as an indication of adolescents’ school- and learning-related identities). Yet, without studies that employed a social psychological perspective, we would not have known as much about the more negative behavioral and personality characteristics that are attributed to students from lower status educational tracks compared to students from higher status tracks. Next, psychosocial studies have found indications for differences in the process of identity development (in terms of exploration and commitment) between students in different academic tracks, although the direction of the differences remains still unclear. Hence, when studies examine the role of educational processes in adolescents’ identity development from different angles, this may provide us with invaluable and complementary insights (also see Lewis and Valle 2009 ). Yet, as the articles on the role of peer norms and supportive classroom climates show, studies that differ in the theoretical perspective on identity they are grounded in can also approach the role of certain educational processes in adolescents’ identity development in a similar way, consequently validating each other’s research findings. To illustrate, articles in which a sociocultural perspective is employed, as well as articles in which a psychosocial or no explicitly mentioned perspective on identity development is adopted, all suggest that peers may restrict each other’s access to certain identity positions by refusing to recognize each other in certain ways or by stigmatizing particular identity positions which makes these positions less appealing to publicly identify with.

For the majority of the educational processes that are identified in the existing literature, it still remains to be seen to what extent research grounded in different theoretical perspectives on identity development would complement and/or validate each other. However, the findings that are derived from articles on selection processes and differentiation, peer norms, and supportive classroom climates promise that research on the other identified educational processes, when studied from different angles, will add to the current research field. Furthermore, by bringing research concerning particular educational processes and preconditions together, based on different theoretical perspectives on identity, this literature review allows scholars to see how their research may complement research performed by scholars who employ other theoretical perspectives, and vice versa, while supporting them in identifying research gaps when it comes to particular educational processes or preconditions.

To date, studies that are grounded in psychosocial, social psychological, and sociological perspectives tend to be less occupied with whether and how educational processes and preconditions in day-to-day school-based experiences and interactions may impact adolescents’ identities than studies in which a sociocultural perspective is employed. This is a limitation of the existing body of research that points to a direction for future research and, moreover, that cannot be easily substituted by findings from other strands of research. Although psychologists do study the identity-related phenomena of self-concept (people’s perceptions of themselves; Marsh 1990 ) and possible selves (people’s positive and negative images of their selves in a future state; Oyserman et al. 2006 ) in education, these phenomena are generally studied in a quantitative manner to examine respectively their relation to adolescents’ academic achievements (e.g., Marsh 1990 ) and goal-related actions (e.g., Oyserman et al. 2006 ). These strands of research too tend to be less concerned with how daily interactions and experiences in school inform adolescents’ self-concepts or possible selves.

With regard to more circumscribed identity dimensions, the existing research was highly skewed towards studies on the development of adolescents’ STEM identities. Research on schools’ role in the development of, for example, adolescents’ history identities or geology identities is non-existent, and studies concerning the role of school in adolescents’ literacy identity are scarce. It remains to be studied whether these identity dimensions—as well as identity dimensions not covered in this review study, such as gender and ethnic identities—are subject to the same educational processes as the identity dimensions that are prevalent among the articles included in this review.

We would like to conclude our literature study by emphasizing that this review demonstrates, more than anything, that even though we know that schools and teachers in formal education may unintentionally impact adolescents’ identity development, there are only a few studies on how adolescents’ identity development can intentionally be supported in formal education (referred to as “identity education” by Schachter and Rich 2011 ). Moreover, the body of literature on learning experiences that can intentionally be organized to support adolescents’ identity development suggests that learning experiences outside of school may impact the identities of adolescents too. This is something to take into account in future research, as adolescents participate in learning experiences in various contexts (home, sports clubs, side jobs), and the communicated identity messages and explorative learning experiences of each of these contexts may interact. The bottom line is, though, that, currently, research (irrespective of its perspective on identity development) cannot sufficiently support schools and teachers in the intentional fostering of adolescents’ identity development in formal education: The strategies that are identified by the literature on extracurricular and out-of-school settings may not simply be transferable to formal school settings. Therefore, we argue that, to support adolescents’ identity development in our contemporary society, future research’s first priority should be to map to what extent identity exploration is encouraged in current formal curriculums and to provide insights into how adolescents’ identity development can successfully and intentionally be fostered in formal education.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Netherlands Initiative for Education Research [grant number 405-15-716]. Special thanks to Janneke Staaks (information specialist at the University of Amsterdam) for her assistance in the selection of the databases and the development of our search strategy. We would also like to thank Desiree Berendsen, Carla van Boxtel, Lenie van den Bulk, Hanoch Flum, Avi Kaplan, Thea van Lankveld, Sarah Leker, Piet Post, Ati Raban, Floor Rombout, Marloes Schrijvers and Wim Wardekker (a group consisting of researchers, teacher educators, teachers, and principals) for their helpful comments on our first draft.

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Verhoeven, M., Poorthuis, A.M.G. & Volman, M. The Role of School in Adolescents’ Identity Development. A Literature Review. Educ Psychol Rev 31 , 35–63 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-018-9457-3

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Identity Development

Identity development theory.

A well-developed identity is comprised of goals, values, and beliefs to which a person is committed. It is the awareness of the consistency in self over time, the recognition of this consistency by others (Erikson, 1980). The process of identity development is both an individual and social phenomenon (Adams & Marshall, 1996). Much of this process is assumed during adolescence when cognitive development allows for an individual to construct a ‘theory of self’ (Elkind, 1998) based on exposure to role models and identity options (Erikson, 1980). Erikson (1968) believed this period of development to be an ‘identity crisis,’ a crucial turning point in which an individual must develop in one way or another, ushering the adolescent toward growth and differentiation. Identity is formed through a process of exploring options or choices and committing to an option based upon the outcome of their exploration. Failure to establish a well-developed sense of identity can result in identity confusion. Those experiencing identity confusion do not have a clear sense of who they are or their role in society.

Identity development is vital to a person’s understanding of self and participation in their social systems. Adams and Marshall (1996) established that identity formation provides five functions: a structure and order to self-knowledge; a sense of consistency and coherence to beliefs, goals, and self-knowledge; a sense of continuity for one’s history and future; goals and direction; a sense of personal control of their choices and outcomes.

Erikson’s Identity vs. Role Confusion

According to psychosocial theory, we experience eight stages of development over our lifespan (Table 8.1), from infancy through late adulthood. At each stage, there is a conflict, or task, that we need to resolve. Successful completion of each developmental task results in a sense of competence and a healthy personality. Failure to master these tasks leads to feelings of inadequacy.

Figure 8.3.1 . Erik Erikson

Table 8.3.1. Erikson’s psychosocial Stages of Development


1	0–1	Trust vs. mistrust	Trust (or mistrust) that basic needs, such as nourishment and affection, will be met
2	1–3	Autonomy vs. shame/doubt	Develop a sense of independence in many tasks
3	3–6	Initiative vs. guilt	Take the initiative on some activities—may develop guilt when unsuccessful or boundaries overstepped
4	7–11	Industry vs. inferiority	Develop self-confidence in abilities when competent or sense of inferiority when not
5	12–18	Identity vs. confusion	Experiment with and develop identity and roles
6	19–29	Intimacy vs. isolation	Establish intimacy and relationships with others
7	30–64	Generativity vs. stagnation	Contribute to society and be part of a family
8	65–	Integrity vs. despair	Assess and make sense of life and meaning of contributions

Video 8.3.1. Erikson’s Psychosocial Development explains all stages of this theory.

Erik Erikson believed that the primary psychosocial task of adolescence was establishing an identity. Erikson referred to life’s fifth psychosocial task as one of identity versus role confusion when adolescents must work through the complexities of finding one’s own identity. This stage includes questions regarding their appearance, vocational choices and career aspirations, education, relationships, sexuality, political and social views, personality, and interests. Erikson saw this as a period of confusion and experimentation regarding identity and one’s life path. During adolescence, we experience psychological moratorium , where teens put on hold commitment to an identity while exploring the options .

Individual identity development is influenced by how they resolved all of the previous childhood psychosocial crises, and this adolescent stage is a bridge between the past and the future, childhood, and adulthood. Thus, in Erikson’s view, an adolescent’s central questions are, “Who am I?” and “Who do I want to be?” Identity formation was highlighted as the primary indicator of successful development during adolescence (in contrast to role confusion, which would be an indicator of not successfully meeting the task of adolescence). This crisis is resolved positively with identity achievement and the gain of fidelity (ability to be faithful) as a new virtue when adolescents have reconsidered the goals and values of their parents and culture. Some adolescents adopt the values and roles that their parents expect for them. Other teens develop identities that are in opposition to their parents but align with a peer group. This change is common as peer relationships become a central focus in adolescents’ lives.

The culmination of this exploration is a more coherent view of oneself. Those who are unsuccessful at resolving this stage may withdraw further into social isolation or become lost in the crowd. However, more recent research suggests that few leave this age period with identity achievement and that most identity formation occurs during young adulthood (Côtè, 2006).

Marcia’s Identity Statuses

Expanding on Erikson’s theory, Marcia (1966) described identity formation during adolescence as involving both exploration and commitment with respect to ideologies and occupations (e.g., religion, politics, career, relationships, gender roles). Identity development begins when individuals identify with role models who provide them with options to explore for whom they can become. As identity development progresses, adolescents are expected to make choices and commit to options within the confines of their social contexts. In some cases, options are not provided or are limited, and the individual will fail to commit or will commit without the opportunity to explore various options (Marcia, 1980).

Identity confusion/diffusion occurs when adolescents neither explore nor commit to any identities. Foreclosure occurs when an individual commits to an identity without exploring options. A moratorium is a state in which adolescents are actively exploring options but have not yet made commitments. As mentioned earlier, individuals who have explored different options, discovered their purpose, and have made identity commitments are in a state of identity achievement.

Figure 8.3.2. Marcia’s identity statuses. Adapted from Discovering the Lifespan, by R. S. Feldman, 2009.

The least mature status, and one common in many children, is identity diffusion. Identity diffusion is a status that characterizes those who have neither explored the options nor made a commitment to an identity . Marcia (1980) proposed that when individuals enter the identity formation process, they have little awareness or experience with identity exploration or the expectation to commit to an identity. This period of identity diffusion is typical of children and young adolescents, but adolescents are expected to move out of this stage as they are exposed to role models and experiences that present them with identity possibilities. Those who persist in this identity may drift aimlessly with little connection to those around them or have little sense of purpose in life. Characteristics associated with prolonged diffusion include low self-esteem, easily influenced by peers, lack of meaningful friendships, little commitment, or fortitude in activities or relationships, self-absorbed, and self-indulgent.

Those in identity foreclosure have committed to an identity without having explored the options . Often, younger adolescence will enter a phase of foreclosure where they may, at least preliminarily, commit to an identity without an investment in the exploration process. This commitment is often a response to anxiety about uncertainty or change during adolescence or pressure from parents, social groups, or cultural expectations. It is expected that most adolescents will progress beyond the foreclosure phase as they can think independently, and we multiple identity options. However, sometimes foreclosure will persist into late adolescence or even adulthood.

In some cases, parents may make these decisions for their children and do not grant the teen the opportunity to make choices. In other instances, teens may strongly identify with parents and others in their life and wish to follow in their footsteps. Characteristics associated with prolonged foreclosure well-behaved and obedient children with a high need for approval, authoritarian parenting style, low levels of tolerance or acceptance of change, high levels of conformity, and conventional thinking.

During high school and college years, teens and young adults move from identity diffusion and foreclosure toward moratorium and achievement. The most significant gains in the development of identity are in college, as college students are exposed to a greater variety of career choices, lifestyles, and beliefs. This experience is likely to spur on questions regarding identity. A great deal of the identity work we do in adolescence and young adulthood is about values and goals, as we strive to articulate a personal vision or dream for what we hope to accomplish in the future (McAdams, 2013).

Identity moratorium is a status that describes those who are actively exploring in an attempt to establish an identity but have yet to have made any commitment . This time can be an anxious and emotionally tense period as the adolescent experiments with different roles and explores various beliefs. Nothing is guaranteed, and there are many questions, but few answers. This moratorium phase is the precursor to identity achievement. During the moratorium period, it is normal for adolescents to be rebellious and uncooperative, avoid dealing with problems, procrastinate, experience low self-esteem, feel anxious, and uncertain about decisions.

Identity achievement refers to those who, after exploration, have committed . Identity achievement is a long process and is not often realized by the end of adolescence. Individuals that do reach identity achievement feel self-acceptance, stable self-definition, and are committed to their identity.

While Marcia’s statuses help us understand the process of developing identity, there are several criticisms of this theory. First, identity status may not be global; different aspects of your identity may be in different statuses. An individual may be in multiple identity statuses at the same time for different aspects of identity. For example, one could be in the foreclosure status for their religious identity, but in moratorium for career identity, and achievement for gender identity.

Further, identity statuses do no always develop in the sequence described above, although it is the most common progression. Not all people will reach identity achievement in all aspects of their identity, and not all may remain in identity achievement. There may be a third aspect of identity development, beyond exploration and commitment, and that is the reconsideration of commitment. This addition would create a fifth status, searching moratorium . This status is a re-exploring after a commitment has been made (Meesus et al., 2012). It is not usual that commitments to aspects of our identity may change as we gain experiences, and more options become available to explore. This searching moratorium may continue well into adulthood.

Video 8.3.2. Macia’s Stages of Adolescent Identity Development summarizes the various identity statuses and how an individual may move through them.

Supporting identity development

As the process of identity development can be a confusing and challenging period, how can adults support adolescents through this process? First, affirm that the anxiety, doubts, and confusion are reasonable and that most teens do not complete identity achievement before graduating high school. Exposing adolescents to various role models can help them imagine different roles or options for their future selves. Role models can come from within the family, schools, or community. Adults should talk with adolescents about their values, goals, and identities to help build awareness. They may be interested to know how others made decisions while developing their own identities. Finally, support the commitments that adolescents have made. Identity commitments can help someone feel grounded and less confused while they engage in identity exploration.

Identity Development Theory. Authored by : Nicole Arduini-Van Hoose. Provided by : Hudson Valley Community College. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/adolescent/chapter/identity-development-theory/ . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Identity Formation. Authored by : Tera Jones. Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-lifespandevelopment/chapter/identity-formation/ . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Psychology. Provided by : OpenStax. Located at : . License : CC BY: Attribution
Erikson's Psychosocial Development . Authored by : Shreena Desai. Provided by : Khan Academy. Located at : https://youtu.be/SIoKwUcmivk . License : All Rights Reserved
Macia's Stages of Adolescent Identity Development. Authored by : Tiffany Dickie. Located at : https://youtu.be/a8HIY_bqrVo . License : All Rights Reserved

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Identity Development Process Essay

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Introduction

Literature review, interview questions used in the study, interview results, synthesis of the results.

The process of identity development among individuals is rooted at infant stage, and develops significantly until it clearly emerges out at adolescence stage. It has been revealed that, the major goal of many adolescents is to achieve a specific identity in order to avoid any form of confusion in their future lives.

According to Kroger (2007), physical, cognitive and social transformations among adolescents form a strong basis for the development of their future identity in their later adulthood.

Particularly, the emergence abstract reasoning among teenagers facilitates their ultimate development of specific identities in order to make them to be focused in realizing self actualization.

More so, the physical and social environment in which an individual grows up in has been revealed quite significant in identity development among adolescents. In this study, an in-depth learning on the key contexts for identity development among adolescents will be facilitated.

To facilitate this study interviews with a boy and a girl aged 14 and 15 years respectively have been conducted. As observed in these adolescents, their anticipated future careers are largely embedded on their parental core values and practices.

Since the interviewees are in their high school educational level, their focus in developing their future careers seems clearly developed, as depicted by their subsequent specialized study patterns.

It was observed that, these interviewees had set their educational achievement goals based on the core values upheld by their close relationships including families and their peers (Clarke, 2005).

On choosing these interviewees, I considered adolescence stage as the focal point of identity development, since individuals at this stage are at verge of developing abstract reasoning skills.

More so, the adolescence stage marks the transition stage between adulthood and childhood, where individuals tend to develop key values and behaviors to identify themselves with.

By choosing a 14 year old boy and a 15 year old girl, their response will be fundamental in developing the relationship between identity development and the underlying environmental influences among individuals.

Since these interviewees at the stage of personal development where they are capable of reasoning deductively and inductively, their career development seems much embedded on their key values in their lives.

Considering that this study focuses on the relationship between identity development and environmental influences, an interview with the two adolescents seems more accurate in developing an accurate framework of ideas on how both social and physical environment impacts on individuals’ identity (Ferrer-Wreder et al, 2002).

According to Taveira & Moreno (2003), the process of identity development is a complex framework of experiences originating from adulthood to become well defined at adolescence stage.

As it has been revealed, adolescents’ main focus is to align their goals to the societal norms and values, in order to enhance coherence in their personal development. Being a multi-dimensional aspect of personality, identity involves sexuality, occupation, religion and ethical values, which an individual pursues to achieve in his/her life.

On this basis, identity is an innate and personalized ambitions among individuals to realize self-actualization. Since the social and physical environments are very influential in the development of behaviors, self actualization corresponds to social values and norms among individuals.

It is important to note that, identity development is largely determined by creativity among individuals. Creativity is a personal skill that cannot be ignored at any cost, as it determines core identity values among the people (Clarke, 2005). For a society to develop, it requires creativity by its members.

Since the society is composed of persons, each individual’s personal identities have been largely dependent on the core values and norms upheld in the society. It is hence significant for any society and individuals to think of share and play with new ideas.

This enhances the well being of the mind of the individuals and often results in material benefit which improves their lives. On this basis, the development of identity among adolescents is one of the major achievements that adolescents acquire as they pursue success in their endeavors.

As noted by Ferrer-Wreder et al (2002), the ability of adolescents to think and reason abstractively facilitates the development of their core competencies in their areas of interest, which is largely influenced by the environment they grow in.

With regard to Taveira & Moreno (2003), hypothetical development of identity among individuals is based on two main steps. The first step involves adolescents breaking away from their childhood beliefs in search of new alternatives in specific areas considered as important in their areas.

The second step involves personal commitment through identifying various opportunities capable of enhancing the realization of the desired goals.

As noted by Kroger (2007), adolescents’ ambitions to achieve their desired goals and objectives may be foreclosed, a situation which may arise when such individuals get committed to achieve self actualization without proper exploration of the possible alternatives.

As a result, frustrations are subsequently experienced among such individuals, since their ambitions will be out of scope of their potential. It is important to note that, parental ideas and values are accepted automatically among individuals as they organize their strategies to identify themselves with various aspects of societal values.

According to Ferrer-Wreder et al (2002), adolescents start developing an in-depth analysis of their parents’ influences through beliefs and ideas, a process referred as moratorium. At adolescence stage, individuals become active explorers of the available alternatives in their lives.

This is reflected by their tendency to start engaging in new beliefs and practices as they tryout various social opportunities. On the process of alternatives exploration, by-identity achievement is usually achieved, since at this stage individuals will be able to think and reason abstractively.

Despite that such adolescents explore various aspects of their identities; some of them may fail to achieve any significant identity development as a result of their multi-dimensional perspectives.

As a result, diffusion of values among such individuals becomes a key aspect of identity development; as such individuals tend to encompass the core values upheld in their social environment.

As held by Clarke (2005), active parental, educational and community involvement is quite important as a nurturing factor for the development of identity among adolescents. Since identity achievement is largely associated with self esteem, individuals are compelled to reason critically on their verge to choose alternatives for their identity.

It is also important to note that, the physical changes among individuals at puberty level facilitate their development in reasoning capacity in terms of moral values.

With respect to Taveira & Moreno (2003), the development of abstract thought among adolescents enhances their capacity to explore various religious matters as they seek to establish the best spiritual beliefs to associate themselves with.

According to Head (1997), about 60% of adolescents, their identification with a particular religion is a fundamental achievement in their lives. Considering the impact of social relationships among individuals, their tendency to associate themselves with religion belonging to their treasured social identities has been prevalent.

Though many adolescents have been revealed to associate themselves with childhood beliefs, the process of exploration in achieving identities in religious beliefs remains a significant for them.

As revealed by Boan & Piquette-Tomei (2009), the failure of parents to create conducive environment for children in terms of creativity inhibit the child’s potential. When the parents are not creative themselves, it usually becomes hard for the children to develop creativity, since they tend to consider their parents as the ultimate mentors for their life.

Considering that the family is the first social group that individuals interact with, much of the families’ core values and behaviors are acquired by these children. This forms a basis for individuals’ development of identity with their families or relatives.

As noted by Taveira & Moreno (2003), a family environment that inhibits the creativity of children has a diverse impact on the development of skills even beyond creativity.

For instance, parents who are extremely strict to their children may make them develop hostile behaviors, since such children will tend to identify themselves with the behavior of their parents.

Though many children have their goals and objectives that they wish to fulfill in their future lives, it is not until adolescence life that their identity becomes clearly developed. As reported by Ferrer-Wreder et al (2002), many adolescents usually pursue career goals and objectives which align with their career identities.

For instance, a young girl who is fond of science related subjects may have strong desires to identify herself with careers that are related to science like astronomy, teaching career and medical practitioners among others. According to Kroger (2007), there are three main stages of career development among teenagers.

The first phase is ‘crystallization’, which is associated with tentative choosing of specific aspects related to their treasured identities. At this stage, the young adolescents may engage in pursuing a variety of career options which facilitates the identification of their core competencies in the chosen areas.

In this stage, Boan & Piquette-Tomei (2009) considers the ability of teens to choose specific subjects which they are more interested in and wish to base their future careers on them.

The second stage of career development is ‘specification’, which is associated with specific choosing or subject areas with respect to their desired careers (Taveira & Moreno, 2003).

At this stage, individuals tend to choose specified study areas in which they are most interested in, so that they can identify themselves with them in their future career life. Since this phase happens at later stage of adolescence, it forms a strong base for incorporation of the personal interests in their life careers.

On completing all the training courses relevant to the identified careers, individuals enter into the field to practice their gained skills, a phase called ‘implementation’. Implementation is the last stage which involves actual engagement of individuals in their long-desired careers or jobs with regard to personal values and desires.

At this stage, the various aspects of the chosen career become part of them and subsequently start identifying themselves with such careers.

As revealed by Clarke (2005), identity development at adolescence stage acts as one of the fundamental aspects of adulthood development among individuals. During their adolescence stage, individuals tend to use their own understanding to build foundations for constructing their future identities.

More specifically, adolescents tend to develop lifespan creations which links their identity development and the ‘adult-self’.

It is quite important to note that, ‘lifespan construct’ is an integral of past, present and future experiences and cultural practices to facilitate personal identification, which includes scenario and social aspects of identity development.

The scenario aspects include individuals’ expectations of what they will become or do in their future dates. On the other hand, the social aspect links all previous events and the future aspirations to come up with more defined identity.

Generally, identity development is a lifelong journey integrated with a variety of experiences and cultures among individuals. Though the process of identity development is similar, the overall outcome of such individuals is ultimately different since different individuals have diverse preferences and desires.

Though adolescence stage forms a basis for the development of identity among individuals, various stages have been reveled to offer opportunities for reevaluation of the desired goals and objectives.

As noted by Ferrer-Wreder et al (2002), identity development is a multi-dimensional process that offers individuals with specific and focal concentration on particular aspects of culture of experiences for perfections, resulting into self actualization.

Question 1: What do you aspire to be in your future life?
Question 2: What subjects do you find the most interesting in your studies?
Question 3: What is the motivation behind your intense interest in these subjects?
Question 4: Does you parents follow up your learning studies at home?
Question 5: What are your views on your parents’ engagement in your learning? Are they significant in your career development?
Question 6: What are some of the challenges that you often face in your self actualization?
Question 7: Are teachers and peers significant in your career ambitions?
Question 8: Why do you think so?
Question 9: Among the three groups, that is parents, teachers and peers, which one do you think has influenced your thinking and reasoning patterns most?
Question 10: What are the reasons for your perception?

According to the 15 year-old girl, her future-life aspirations is to become an aviation engineer. As it was revealed, the girl’s most interesting studies are science-based, in which the most treasured subjects were physics and mathematics.

Being an adolescent, the girl’s ability to reason and think abstractively seems to have been developing effectively and efficiently. One of the main motivating agents for the girl’s aspirations in becoming an aviation engineer is largely based on her father’s encouragements to pursue aviation technology.

More so, the girl revealed how she finds it easy to understand the concepts in mathematics and physics, making her develop innate interest towards the careers related to these study areas (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

On the other hand, the 14 year-old boy revealed how he is much interested in becoming a lawyer in his future life. According to the boy, political science and constitutional affairs are the most treasured areas of specialization.

At this age of development, the boy showed a lot of interest in understanding legal matters associated with social interactions in the society. Particularly, abstract reasoning various legal proceeding associated with social interactions in this boy seemed to have developed well.

As revealed by this interviewee’s interest and motivation towards legal matters was attributed by his brother who was one of the prospective lawyers in the state. In addition, the boy revealed how his deceased father used to encourage him to follow the foot-prints of his brother.

As a result, the boy’s interest in identifying himself with lawyer career has largely been part of his aspirations and ambitions (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

As revealed by the 15 year-old girl, her parents were actively involved in her studies since her father was occasionally having a talk with her about her studies and future career.

Due to her high concern of her parents towards her education, the girl seemed quite motivated in her studies, which inherently reflected her identity development towards scientific innovations.

According to the fifteen-year old girl, her parental involvement in her studies have largely impacted her in her concentration in science subjects in order to fulfill her fathers desire oh her becoming an aviation engineer.

Particularly, the involvement of this girl’s parents in her studies has played a very significant role in determining her decision to pursue in aviation engineering for her career (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

On the other hand, the 14 year-old boy revealed how his parents have been playing significant role in the decisions he take about her studies. Though her father is deceased, this interviewee revealed how the father used to encourage him to pursue engineering career in his future life.

As a result, the boy’s interest in legal studies and political science has largely been triggered by his father’s encouragements to pursue the lawyer career. More so, the boy revealed how her mother never ceases to check over his books to see how he performs.

It is this direct parental concern over his education that has facilitated the development of high interests in legal studies in this boy.

Precisely, the impact of parental encouragements in the boy’s preferences and wishes in studies that have enhanced his deep interests in identifying himself with career in the judicial matters in his future life (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

As revealed by the 15 year-old girl, one of the main challenges that she was encountering in her self actualization is that, some of her peer group members used to discourage her a lot on her decisions to pursue on science subjects.

Since mathematics and physics are perceived as quite challenging subjects for females, the girl has greatly been finding it a bit challenging to cope with her peers’ discouragements. However, the girl revealed how her ambitions are strongly embedded on her parents’ powerful influences on her career development.

On this basis, the challenges the girl was facing in her ambitions to attain self actualization through succeeding in aviation studies have largely been countered by her parents’ strong influences on her academic life (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

Further, the 14 year-old revealed that, one of the main challenges he has been facing in his ambitions to realize self actualization is discouragements from his tutor. As the boy reported, his tutor never recommended anything positive on her performance, which makes him afraid of his competence in comprehending legal issues.

Particularly, the lack of positive remarks from his tutor has always been a challenging issue in this boy’s efforts to acquire self actualization through his success in pursuing political science and judicial studies and subsequently become a lawyer.

However, the boy has been able to counter this challenge by reflecting on his outstanding performance in subjects related to judicial matters. More so, the encouragements from his brother have been quite influential in his ambitions to develop successful identity with career in judicial matters (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

In addition, the two respondents revealed how peers and teachers have been of great influence in their desired career development. According to the 14 year-old boy, his teacher has negatively been influencing his ambitions to become a lawyer.

By being non-encouraging and absolutely not recommending any potential ability in the boy, the teacher has been acting as a strong barrier for the boy’s career development.

On the other hand, the 15 year-old girl revealed how her physics teacher has been encouraging her to pursue science related careers in her future studies, since she had the capacity to succeed in the subject area.

However, most of the girl’s peers have been quite discouraging in her ambitions to pursue science-related career. On the other hand, the 14 year-old boy revealed how his peer group members have not been of any influence on his career development (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

Among parents, teachers, and peer group members, the 14 year-old boy revealed how parental influences are the most remarkable in his preferences to become a lawyer.

Since his teacher has not been of any motivation in his ambitions in academic life, the boy revealed how his decision to pursue judicial studies for his career has largely been attributed to his parents’ encouragements.

Similarly, the 15 year-old girl reported how her parental efforts in her future career are more recommendable than her teachers’. In addition, the girl revealed how her peers are the least influential in her ambitions to identify herself with aviation technology in her career life (Personal Communication, May 7, 2011).

As revealed by Kail & Cavanaugh (2001), young people tend to choose their future careers with regard to special values associated with the chosen career. More precisely motivation is one of the most significant aspects facilitating the development of career among young individuals at their adolescence stage.

As noted by Germeijs & Verschueren (2006), orientation on career choice is one of the most important aspects or career development among adolescents.

With respect to the interviewee’s motivation in their specific career preferences, parental encouragements and other motivating factors have been found quite important in the adolescents’ positive attitude towards the subjects they consider as helping them build their careers on.

By having active parents’ in their education, the participants’ attitude towards the preferred careers can be attributed to external forces, rather than their own efforts.

Quite importantly, protocol is one of the most facilitators of career identity development among adolescents. With the perception of their parents influences as the most reliable and useful for their careers, the interviewees in this study can be described to be lacking the exposure to explore careers on their own.

Since self exploration is one of the major identity developments among adolescents as they advance to adulthood, there is likelihood of these two interviewees to change their careers after they get exposed to high levels of exploration.

Meanwhile, there are chances of their attachment to their career dreams in cases where they fail to get exposed much to a wider range of diverse knowledge which may sway their careers (Clarke, 2005).

According to Ferrer-Wreder et al (2002), successful development of career identity requires skills needed for exploring and comparing various alternatives at their disposal. In this case, individuals who fail to be exposed to situations of self exploration to compare various alternatives emerge out as having instabilities in their future careers.

Though the development of career identity is largely controlled by the social environment among adolescents, their exposure to wider range of learning and exploration skills is quite significant.

Considering the case between the two interviewees in this study, their lack of exposure to acquire self-exploration skills may result into their careers being faced by various problems.

This is on the basis that, such individuals will come to explore other alternatives at their later career life, which may adversely affect their efficiency in such careers.

As noted by Head (1997), junior adolescents tend to identify themselves with careers which entice their most treasured people like relatives and teachers. As a result of future exploration of various alternatives, such individuals may uphold these careers or change them according to the influences they get on the course of their exploration.

As reported by Kroger (2007), the tendency of adolescents to explore the world through abstract reasoning is one of the major exploration aspects as they decide the specific careers they would like to associate themselves with.

Though at later stages adolescents are much influenced by their empirical experience with the world, much of their preferences is large embedded on their family and social-life orientations.

As it has been observed in the thirteen-year old boy, his family perceptions of judicial studies careers as the best can be attributed to his decision to pursue law in his future career.

Similarly, the fifteen-year old girl seems to be much influenced by his father to consider aviation engineering as her future career. On this basis, the impact of parental involvement in the development of career identity among adolescents remains quite remarkable among many teenagers.

As held by Taveira & Moreno (2003) adolescents at their senior stage of becoming adults become active explorers of the available alternatives in their lives, especially for their careers.

This is reflected by their tendency to start engaging in new beliefs and practices as they try out various social opportunities and alternatives at their disposal. Though most of their practices are largely controlled by their social orientations in life, many of them tend to be swayed away by new influences.

As a result, their tendency to change their previously established career-dreams may be adversely affected, resulting into them choosing new careers. Since the interviewees in this study are still in their early development stages of their adolescence, crystallization seems to dominate most of their career identity attributes.

As they advance to their late adolescence stage, much of influences from the real world experiences are expected to facilitate their career choices, as they engage in ‘specialization’.

Particularly, Boan & Piquette-Tomei (2009) considers free will of expression among adolescents as they try to associate themselves with the societal norms and values in their efforts to acquire self actualization.

As noted by Clarke (2005), the understanding of adolescent development is a key aspect of consideration when creating career planning models for teenagers. In this case, parental and teachers’ involvement plays very important roles in facilitating the development of the most effective careers capable of meeting the needs of the adolescents in their future life.

Since at the stage of adolescence individuals’ cognitive ability is high, their ability to think on their careers and their various aspects of social becomes clearly elaborated through abstract reasoning.

In this regard, the tendency of the interviewees’ parents to encourage them to get engrossed in specific careers makes sense in the way parents usually have overall understanding of their children and usually want the best for them.

Through various encouragements they get from their parents, there is high likelihood of the interviewees used in this study to strongly remain embedded in their anticipated careers.

Since career formation is essentially enhanced through continued interests, relevant tasks and discussions should be maintained among the adolescents. As Kail & Cavanaugh (2001) argues, adolescents should be engaged in more practical learning and activities which relate to their anticipated careers in order to enhance advancement of career skills as they venture to specialization.

This practice is quite important in the sense that, advanced exploration and perfection is easily achieved through practice, promoting employability among the adolescents.

As observed in this study, the ability of teachers and parents of the 15 year-old girl to encourage her and subsequently help her realize her potential in science-related subjects seems quite appropriate to enhance self exploration of the anticipated career of aviation engineering.

Since career forms one of the most fundamental aspects of self actualization, Germeijs & Verschueren (2006) reveals how career identity is significant among adolescents. As Ferrer-Wreder et al (2002) holds, many adults tend to identify themselves with their occupations, an indication of how careers are impactful among the people.

On this basis, nurturing of career identity among adolescents seems a very useful strategy, since such individuals will be able to employ the knowledge they acquire in their early life to innovate in their careers.

Particularly, when individuals realize their potential and abilities in their early life, chances of remarkable success in their future endeavors are high.

This is on the basis that, repeated usage of knowledge related to their preferred careers and subsequently engage in empirical experiences of such careers establishes strong bases for successful career development in them.

On this basis, the tendency of the two interviewees in this study to be engaged in career choosing at their early life will enhance success in their future endeavors, since they will sequentially gain exposure and experience in the filed related to their careers.

As it has been revealed, career identity development is one of fundamental aspects of personal development among adolescents, as it culminates to self actualization. With respect to the interviewed teenagers in this study, it has clearly bee exposed on how significant and influential parental and teachers impacts are on career development among the studied teenagers.

Though they are at their early age of development, their close engagement with their family members seems to be one of the core factors facilitating their specific career identity development.

Though science-related are considered as highly challenging to females, the 15 year-old girl interviewed is brought out as identifying herself with engineering career as a result of influence from her parents and teachers.

As it has been noted, cognitive development among teenagers facilitates their ability to identify themselves with various careers. In this regard, culture and social relationships in which such individuals interact with influence their career development largely.

Basically many adolescents are brought out as having the capacity to develop specific attitudes towards a particular career, in which they prefer to identify themselves with in their adulthood.

In this regard, explorations and experiences are quite significant among such adolescents, since they facilitate skills and knowledge perfection in their areas of specialization in their future careers.

Boan, S. & Piquette-Tomei, N. (2009). Adolescent Development and Career Planning in Schools. Web.

Clarke, E. (2005). Identity Development – Aspects of Identity . Web.

Ferrer-Wreder, L. et al. (2002). Promoting Identity Development in Marginalized Youth. Journal of Adolescent Research, 17: 168-187.

Germeijs, V. & Verschueren, K. (2006). High School Students’ Career Decision-Making Process: a Longitudinal Study of one Choice. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 68: 189-204.

Head, J. (1997). Working With adolescents: Constructing Identity. London: Falmer Press.

Kail, R. & Cavanaugh, J. (2001). Human Development: A Lifespan View , 2nd edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishers.

Kroger, J. (2007). Identity Development: Adolescence through Adult-hood. New York: Sage Publications, Inc.

Taveira, D., & Moreno, M. (2003). Guidance theory and practice: The status of career Exploration. British Journal of Guidance and Counseling , 31(2): 189-208.

Identity, Language, and Culture
Subjectivity and Aspects of Contemporary Identity
Higher Education for Academic and Career Actualization
Self Actualization and Self Realization
Adolescence and Emotion Relations
Why We Are Responsible For Being Born
African Identity: Domingo Alvarez
American Immigrants and Identity Crisis
Importance and Challenges of Hyphenated Identity
Language and Political Theory in Construction of Japanese Identity
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Research on Adolescence in the Twenty-First Century

Robert crosnoe.

1 Department of Sociology and Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712

Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson

2 Department of Sociology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4020

Recent methodological advances have allowed empirical research on adolescence to do better justice to theoretical models. Organized by a life course framework, this review covers the state of contemporary research on adolescents' physical, psychological, interpersonal, and institutional pathways; how these pathways connect within primary ecological contexts; and how they relate to broader patterns of societal stratification and historical change. Looking forward, it also emphasizes three future challenges/opportunities, including efforts to illuminate biosocial processes, link adolescence to other life stages, and account for the influence of major social changes (e.g., the new media).

Introduction

First coined by Hall (1904) only a century ago, adolescence was “created” by the convergence of multiple trends, including labor and schooling laws, that extended dependency beyond childhood and delayed entry into adult roles ( Modell & Goodman 1990 ). Adolescence as a period of dependency and preparation for adulthood has since been reinforced through more recent social changes, including economic restructuring and changing cultural norms about parenting ( Goldin & Katz 2008 , Settersten et al. 2005 ). Research on adolescence has also changed dramatically. This review discusses recent developments in this literature, being cognizant of their historical underpinnings while focusing on the future. Given our background in the life course tradition, as well as the inherent importance of transitions, trajectories, and context to understanding this life stage, we use a life course framework to organize our review. Owing to space constraints, we focus primarily on American adolescents.

In his 1989 review, Dornbusch wrote that research on adolescence was turning from psychologists studying “individual adolescents carrying out their developmental tasks” (p. 233) to contextual approaches emphasizing transactions between adolescents and their environments. This trend has since intensified, reflecting refinements of theoretical models, including human ecology ( Bronfenbrenner & Morris 1998 ) and the life course paradigm ( Elder 1998 ). A central imagery of the latter, our focus here, is of lives as a tapestry of three threads—developmental trajectories (physical and psychological growth), social pathways (sequences of institutional roles and activities), and social convoys (continuity and change in interpersonal relations)—situated in settings of daily life, larger structures of society, and the broader sweep of history.

Unfortunately, studying this dynamic, multilayered model of adolescence has taxed methodological and data resources ( Elder & Giele 2009 ). Recently, however, data sets on children have aged into adolescence (e.g., Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth), and data sets on adolescents have aged into adulthood (e.g., National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, or Add Health). Data sets are also integrating biological, behavioral, and setting data. At the same time, significant advances in longitudinal and multilevel modeling have allowed researchers to capture individual and population trajectories and to identify person-context effects ( Bollen & Curran 2006 , Bryk et al. 2002 ). Of note is that qualitative and mixed methods research projects are also increasingly emphasizing context, longitudinal change, and the multiple strands of adolescent development ( Giordano et al. 2006 ).

In other words, sociologists are making progress on a more holistic understanding of adolescents in society. In reviewing this progress, we focus on each of the three main strands of the adolescent life course before turning to the ways in which their interweaving is embedded in ecological contexts and both reflects and contributes to population-level inequalities.

Three Threads in the Life Course Tapestry

Exhaustively reviewing recent research on the three main strands of the life course is impossible. As just one example, the United States has a high teen pregnancy rate that contributes to the overall rate of nonmarital fertility, and early parenthood relates to past and future socioeconomic disadvantages in complex ways ( Mollborn 2007 ). As a result, this topic could fill an entire review article, and in fact has ( Furstenberg 2003 ). Also regrettably left out are issues such as disordered eating and bullying. Consequently, this review should be viewed as an effort to put forward a limited set of illustrative examples of new ways to think about old issues.

Developmental Trajectories

Adolescence is a period of rapid change. This change is dramatically crystallized in the flood of hormonal activity and rapid physiological development that constitutes puberty ( Susman et al. 2003 ). Great psychological and emotional change also occurs during adolescence. In the years following puberty, adolescents are faced with the task of establishing their own identity separate from their parents, which may be stressful ( Kroger 2007 ). At the same time, rates of risky behavior (e.g., substance use, delinquency, sexual activity) also rise markedly, especially among boys ( Bachman et al. 2002 ). A hallmark of adolescence is that maturation can occur at different velocities in different domains of development, so that youth may look or feel like adults in some ways but not in others.

Beginning with puberty, a great deal of attention has been focused on pubertal timing, following earlier work outside the United States ( Stättin & Magnusson 1990 ). Primarily among girls, going through puberty earlier than the norm is associated with a host of adjustment problems, including risky sex and delinquency. Sociologists have elucidated many mechanisms underlying these patterns, which are not entirely hormonal or biological in nature. One concerns premature self- and other-perceptions of early maturers, especially girls, as adults. In other words, they are adult-like physically and, as a result, may engage in actions or put themselves in situations that are ahead of their emotional or cognitive capacities ( Cavanagh 2004 , Haynie 2003 ). Another mechanism is increased distress related to growing size in the context of strict norms about female body weight ( Ge et al. 2001 ). These socioemotional difficulties in early adolescence can then disrupt academic functioning ( Cavanagh et al. 2007 ). Pubertal timing, therefore, represents an intersection of biological, emotional, social, and institutional processes.

Turning to mental health, adolescence marks the emergence of gender differences in depression—with girls higher than boys—that persist for decades ( Hankin et al. 2007 ). Efforts to explain this trend have focused primarily on social psychological phenomena, including gender differences in self-concept, management of daily stressors, experiences of puberty, and the rigidity and enforcement of societal standards of appearance and behavior ( Martin 1996 , Rosenfield et al. 2000 ). A particularly insightful sociological approach to adolescent depression, regardless of gender, concerns how it is interpreted by others. For example, depression can be strongly stigmatized in social groups when it is perceived as mental illness as opposed to a health problem, leading depressed youth to be isolated from others just when they need more support ( Martin et al. 2007 ). Indeed, social responses to adolescent distress influence whether it can have long-term effects on other areas of life, including education ( McLeod & Fettes 2007 ). Thus, socialized perspectives on depression and other psychological constructs reveal insight into the complex dance between self and other that characterizes adolescence.

Identity development is another psychological process that has been studied from a variety of angles. The consensus is that it is a highly social process, with young people slowly integrating the different pieces of themselves that they come to understand through social interactions into a cohesive sense of who they are and where they fit in the world ( Kroger 2007 ). In the past two decades, considerable research has centered on the development of group-based identities. For example, racial identity taps into the significance and meaning attached to race within individuals' overall senses of self. According to work by Sellers and associates (1998) on African American youth, racial identity has four dimensions: ( a ) salience (how much race is part of one's self-concept), ( b ) centrality (whether one defines him or herself through race), ( c ) regard (the degree of positive or negative feelings about one's race), and ( d ) ideology (beliefs about how someone of a certain race should act). Across minority groups, these dimensions tend to increase as adolescence unfolds and are strongly related to mental health ( Mandara et al. 2009 , Umaña-Taylor et al. 2009 ). For the most part, the benefits of racial identity are strongest when minority adolescents have reached the achieved stage of identity development, meaning that they have committed to a particular identity after exploring what it means and what alternative identities might be possible ( Seaton et al. 2006 ). Similar research has been done on sexual identity, tracing the gradual process by which adolescents come to see themselves as homosexual and the role that this process plays in healthy development ( Russell & Sigler-Andrews 2003 ).

As for risky behavior, understanding why adolescents become more reckless even as they develop critical thinking skills has long been a major activity of adolescence researchers. One explanation is that adolescence is a time of heightened sensitivity to social influences and greater propensity toward emotional stimulation. These developmental changes have traditionally been viewed as by-products of identity development, but recent neurological research is shedding new light on this phenomenon ( Dahl & Spear 2004 ). Specifically, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies suggest that increased risky behavior during adolescence reflects different rates of growth in the brain's socioemotional and cognitive control systems. After puberty, dopamine receptors increase rapidly in regions that control sensation-seeking, which encourages behaviors that bring some emotional or sensory reward ( Steinberg 2008 ). Peer approval is one such reward, and ample evidence indicates that engaging in some level of dangerous behavior can elicit peer esteem and popularity ( Allen et al. 2005 , Kreager & Staff 2009 ). Importantly, structural changes of equivalent magnitude do not occur in the prefrontal cortex, which controls cognition, until adolescents approach young adulthood. That enhanced self-regulation skills tend to come after the increased propensity toward sensation-seeking helps to explain the increase in risky behavior that characterizes the years between the end of childhood and the start of adulthood ( Dahl & Spear 2004 , Steinberg 2008 ). Clearly, other factors are also at work, including changing cultural norms about permissible behavior and increasing opportunities for engaging in certain behaviors, but neurological development is certainly a piece of the puzzle.

As is evident even from this very selective discussion, adolescent development crosses many different psychological, physiological, cognitive, and behavioral domains. As a result, understanding one domain often requires consideration of others.

Social Pathways

Beyond the family, two key institutions structure the social pathways of adolescence. Beginning with schools, sociologists have traditionally studied the organization of high schools via academic tracks (e.g., vocational, college preparatory). As formal tracking has been largely dismantled ( Lucas 2001 ), new organizational schemas have been identified, including patterns of course-taking, critical courses (e.g., advanced math), and course trajectories ( Gamoran & Hannigan 2000 , McFarland 2006 , Riegle-Crumb 2006 ). Math is a clear example, as it is highly structured and strongly predicts educational and occupational attainment ( Adelman 2006 , Frank et al. 2008 , Riegle-Crumb 2006 ). Case studies have yielded new insights on the implications of curricular structure. McFarland (2006) , for example, examined student flow across math courses in two high schools, one characterized by five math trajectories with fewer lower-ability courses over time, and the other with a branching tree structure in which students move from a single trunk into four eventual trajectories of increasing differentiation. In each structure, specific courses represent critical junctions between trajectories and in math persistence altogether.

Thus, students' school pathways are far more complex than the traditional view of tracking suggests. Studying these pathways also reveals new insights into gender differences in education. Girls have been surpassing boys in most academic domains in secondary and postsecondary education for some time, especially among African Americans. Research on coursework trajectories suggests that girls have now also closed the gap with boys in math and science in terms of the course credits they accrue in high school. However, despite their advantage in college enrollment and graduation ( Buchman & DiPrete 2006 ), they remain underrepresented in these curricula in college ( Riegle-Crumb 2006 ).

Studies in the past decade have also emphasized the changing role of higher education in adolescents' lives. Expectations to earn four-year and graduate degrees have risen dramatically, faster than actual attainment ( Jacob & Wilder 2010 , Reynolds et al. 2006 ). In line with a “college for all” norm ( Rosenbaum 2001 ), expectations to complete college have become less tied to social class and previous achievement ( Goyette 2008 , Reynolds et al. 2006 , Schneider & Stevenson 1999 ). More than 80% of high school seniors in 2008 reported that they would probably or definitely earn a four-year college degree ( Bachman et al. 2009 ). Some of the least educationally ambitious students may have dropped out of school before senior year and, therefore, would be absent from such statistics, but educational expectations are actually even higher when measured at eighth or tenth grade instead ( Goyette 2008 , Jacob & Wilder 2010 ). The rise in expectations to earn a college degree has been even steeper among girls, who now expect BAs at higher rates than boys, with little difference within gender between blacks and whites ( Jacob & Wilder 2010 ).

Commonly cited explanations for rising educational expectations include ( a ) an increase in the earnings payoff to college (versus high school) graduation; ( b ) expanding higher education options, including online degrees and community colleges; and ( c ) trends in the educational attainment of parents ( Berg 2007 , Goldin & Katz 2008 , Goyette 2008 , Schneider & Stevenson 1999 ). Regarding the latter, the relative risk aversion thesis suggests that adolescents strive for at least as much education as their parents have. As parents' average education levels rise across cohorts, therefore, so do adolescents' educational expectations ( Breen & Goldthorpe 1997 ).

Paid work is another institution shaping adolescence, with nearly all high school students employed during the school year at some point while in high school ( Apel et al. 2007 , Mortimer 2003 , National Research Council 1998 ). Building on foundational studies from the 1980s and 1990s, recent research has elucidated the mix of risks and benefits of paid work for adolescents. Although adolescent work often starts earlier, most studies focus on high school, when employment is more likely to occur in the formal sector and for longer hours. Moreover, school-year employment continues to garner the most attention, despite higher rates of summer employment ( Mortimer 2003 , Perreira et al. 2007 ). These foci reflect concerns about potentially competing demands of school and employment, key institutions that structure the social pathways of adolescence. The question is whether (or under what conditions) employment facilitates educational attainment and builds human capital useful later in the labor market or whether employment, especially working 20 h or more per week, can distract from academic pursuits and foster various problem behaviors, including delinquency and substance use ( Lee & Staff 2007 , McMorris & Uggen 2000 , Mortimer 2003 , Paternoster et al. 2003 ).

In the past two decades, a major activity has been in understanding the variable meaning and consequence of paid work in adolescence. For example, the outcomes linked to work hours depend on the goal of working, including saving for college and supporting the self or family ( Marsh 1991 , Newman 1996 ). Recent evidence indicates that work can promote educational attainment among those with low academic promise ( Staff & Mortimer 2007 ) and among poor and/or minority students ( Entwisle et al. 2005 ). For example, teenagers in Newman's (1999) ethnography of fast food workers often rejected the delinquency of peers in choosing to work, and their jobs brought them coworkers and supervisors that supported and rewarded their educational pursuits. Along these same lines, Lee & Staff (2007) compared adolescents who work intensively and those who do not do so but who share similar preexisting background characteristics. They found no effect on dropout among adolescents with backgrounds indicative of a high propensity to work intensively. These students tended to be from socioeconomically disadvantaged families and have weaker school performance. Additional studies indicate that the association between intensive employment and substance use is largely limited to whites ( Johnson 2004 ) and that intensive employment can actually help curb substance use and delinquency for adolescents with earlier histories of these problem behaviors ( Apel et al. 2007 ).

More effort also has been devoted to promoting causal inference in research on adolescent employment. Both spuriousness and bidirectionality are concerns in studies of work hour effects on adolescent behavior. Longitudinal studies adjusting for known covariates, including lagged measures of the outcome, often indicate that that preexisting differences account for many observed effects ( Schoenhals et al. 1998 , Warren et al. 2000 ). Links to substance use and some academic outcomes, however, persist ( McMorris & Uggen 2000 , Mortimer & Johnson 1998 , Paternoster et al. 2003 , Schoenhals et al. 1998 ). Other techniques, such as fixed and random effects models and propensity score matching, have revealed no evidence of work hour effects on adolescent behavior or effects only on adolescents with low or moderate propensities to work ( Lee & Staff 2007 , Paternoster et al. 2003 ), but they have been applied to a limited set of behavioral dimensions to date.

Thus, research is moving toward a clearer picture of how developmental, educational, human capital, and behavioral outcomes are linked to employment in adolescence. The same can be said of studies on other social pathways of adolescents (e.g., academic pathways).

Social Convoys

Adolescence is a time of both quantitative and qualitative change in the matrix of social relationships. In particular, the push and pull between parents and peers has been a dominant theme of research on adolescence for years.

Over time, the normative break with parents in adolescence has been reconceptualized as a renegotiation of parent and child roles, not disengagement. In other words, adolescents may spend less time with, and seek more autonomy from, parents, but they typically do so in the context of stable strong connections and parental influence ( Larson et al. 1996 ). Similar trends extend to other family relationships (e.g., with siblings and grandparents), which may loosen more in terms of shared time than in emotional bonds ( Crouter et al. 2004 , King et al. 2003 ).

The idea of parent-adolescent renegotiation has led to new ways of thinking about oft-studied issues. One of the best examples concerns parental monitoring. The general consensus has long been that adolescents engage in fewer problem behaviors when their parents keep close track of what they do and with whom they associate, in part because monitoring constrains opportunities to engage in such behaviors and in part because it helps to develop adolescent self-control ( Browning et al. 2005 , Hay 2006 ). Yet, Stättin & Kerr (2000) have argued that the most common indicator of parental monitoring—parental knowledge about adolescents' activities and peers—may be an effect of adolescent behavior more than a cause. In other words, well-behaved adolescents share their lives with their parents, creating the appearance of monitoring being behaviorally protective. More likely, this link is reciprocal—monitoring promoting prosocial behavior that, in turn, increases parent-adolescent relationship quality, adolescents' openness to parental monitoring, and adolescents' willingness to self-disclose to parents ( Fletcher et al. 2004 , Yau et al. 2009 ). This debate has driven home the need to think of adolescents' developmental trajectories and social convoys as intertwined over time.

Along these same lines, adolescents are increasingly viewed as eliciting parenting, not just being shaped by it. For example, changes in U.S. antipoverty policy that emphasize the role of fathers have brought attention to nonresident fathers ( Furstenberg 2007 ). Although the assumption is that having involved fathers is good for adolescents, this link partially reflects the tendency for nonresident fathers to be more involved in the lives of well-adjusted adolescents ( Hawkins et al. 2007 ). As another example, the normative increase in parent-child conflict during adolescence is less pronounced for second- or later-born children, as parents learn what to expect from their first-born children ( Shanahan et al. 2007 ). Another line of research that views both sides of the parent-adolescent relationship concerns the degree to which the characteristics and behaviors of parents and adolescents are aligned. Consider that religious mismatches within the family (e.g., religious mother and nonreligious adolescent, or vice versa) appear to engender adolescent problem behavior ( Pearce & Haynie 2004 ). Approaching parent-adolescent relationships as evolving, two-sided, and mutually influential, therefore, is crucial.

Of course, peers continue to be a primary focus of research on adolescence. Much of this research concerns how friends influence each other and how adolescents select into different kinds of friendships, but more attention is now being paid to the larger peer groupings in which these friendships are embedded. For example, boys are at greater risk for emotional distress when they are members of networks that are large and cohesive, but girls are at greater risk in networks that are large and noncohesive. This gendered pattern reflects differences in the interpersonal styles of girls and boys ( Falci & McNeely 2009 ). As another example, friendships tend to have greater influence on adolescent delinquency when they are embedded in dense networks ( Haynie 2001 ). Many social and institutional settings, such as schools and neighborhoods, can also be thought of as peer contexts, in that they organize the friendship market and serve as a center of youth culture ( Harding 2009 ). Peer relations and dynamics within such contexts may be better characterized by qualitative groupings of youth (e.g., crowds) as opposed to quantitatively measurable collectives (e.g., networks). Indeed, many meaningful peer groups are fluid but matter because they provide common identity and serve as the practical universe of potential friends ( Akerlof & Kranton 2002 , Brown & Klute 2003 ). Barber and associates (2001) , for example, used the archetypal characters from the movie The Breakfast Club (e.g., the jock, the rebel, the princess) as a way of organizing data collection on such peer crowds. Importantly, interpersonal processes that occur within larger bands of peers seem to do as much, if not more, to predict the positive and negative mental health and educational outcomes of adolescents than intimate friendships, especially in the long term.

Historically, scholars studied another key peer relation—romantic relationships—in terms of major developmental tasks (e.g., preparation for adult relationships), leading to a focus on their benefits ( Shulman & Collins 1998 ). Later, risks took the spotlight, including links of girls' dating with depression, stress, and abuse, and more attention was paid to the consequences of stricter norms about appropriate dating (and sexual) behavior for girls ( Hagan & Foster 2001 , Joyner & Udry 2000 , Kreager & Staff 2009 ). Increasingly, however, scholars have recognized that adolescent romance may be developmentally positive or negative depending on the characteristics of the partners, the quality of the relationship, and the context in which it occurs. For example, romantic relationships may foster early sexual activity but also reduce the psychological strain of sex and increase contraceptive use. They may be especially important as buffers against the potential harm of weak bonds with parents or as a stand-ins for close friends ( Giordano et al. 2006 , Manlove et al. 2007 , McCarthy & Casey 2008 ). Importantly, although boys were long thought to be less oriented to and affected by romance, emerging evidence suggests that boys may have equally strong ties to their partners as girls and be more influenced by them. Along with their lower confidence in their romantic skills, these qualities might leave boys vulnerable emotionally to the vicissitudes of adolescent romance ( Giordano et al. 2006 ).

An emerging task is to add a wider variety of extrafamilial and other familial relationships to this traditional focus on parents and peers. Taking such a holistic view of overlapping relationships as they evolve is the best way to capture the concept of social convoys.

The Social Embeddedness of Adolescence

As alluded to throughout the prior discussion, the three main strands of the life course play out—and come together—within social contexts, ranging from small primary and secondary groups (e.g., families) to larger societal institutions (e.g., schools) to macro-level social structures, such as stratification systems based on gender, race, and class. Here, we highlight some recent explorations of this social embeddedness of adolescence.

The Ecological Contexts of Adolescence

Because adolescents have limited mobility, neighborhoods can powerfully structure their lives physically and socially. As a result, studies of neighborhood effects have proliferated in recent years, aided by neighborhood data in specific locales (e.g., Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, L.A. Family and Neighborhood Survey), on the national level (e.g., Add Health), and through demonstration projects moving low-income families to new communities (e.g., the Moving to Opportunity, or MTO, experiment), as well as by qualitative studies of neighborhoods and communities. Most of these studies focus on neighborhood disadvantage and adolescent risk-taking ( Bellair & Roscigno 2000 , Browning et al. 2005 , Dance 2002 , Harding 2003 , Kling et al. 2007 ).

Motivating much of this research is Wilson's (1996) perspective on spatially concentrated disadvantage, which is thought to disrupt networks of social capital that socialize and supervise youth and to hinder the effectiveness of local institutions (e.g., schools, churches) and informal networks in providing social control. Contemporary scholars have sought to identify the mechanisms involved in these processes. For example, Browning and associates (2005) reported that adolescents in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty experienced sexual onset earlier than others but that higher neighborhood collective efficacy delayed sexual onset, at least among adolescents experiencing lower levels of parental monitoring. These findings suggest conditional effects between neighborhood conditions and family functioning, appearing to contradict prior studies downplaying the possibility of multiplicative contextual influences ( Cook et al. 2002 ). Importantly, studies such as another by Browning and associates (2008) raise the issue of rates of risky sex in turn affecting the concentration of STD risk in neighborhoods, with individuals shaping context. Such micro-to-macro examples are rare but need more attention.

As in all examinations of contextual effects, causality has been a concern in neighborhood research. Browning and associates (2005) have argued that findings varying by level of neighborhood exposure suggest true effects. In line with this argument, Harding (2003) reported that neighborhood poverty effects on adolescents persisted when propensity score matching was employed. He also noted that controlling for individual-level factors may obscure real neighborhood effects if they are affected by neighborhood features themselves, a point echoed by Chuang and associates (2005) in arguing that parents may adjust their parenting based on neighborhood conditions. Indeed, instead of isolating neighborhood effects by controlling individual, economic, and family factors, Bellair & Roscigno (2000) have advocated for viewing labor market opportunities as preceding neighborhood disadvantage, family income, and adolescent attachments, all of which affect adolescent behavior. In other words, instead of controlling for family income, family structure, and adolescents' attachments to family, school, and peers to evaluate the link between local labor market conditions and delinquency, they map the effects of local labor market conditions on delinquency through its effects on family income and structure and adolescents' attachments.

With an experimental design, MTO revealed compelling findings about the implications of switching from low-income to middle-income neighborhoods for adolescents. Interestingly, the benefits of such moves were limited to girls, including improvements in mental health and decreases in delinquency. The qualitative components of the experiment suggested several mechanisms underlying these gendered effects, including girls' greater freedom from sexual fears, boys' (especially minority boys') greater difficulty integrating into new peer networks, and boys' continued strong ties to peers from their former communities ( Clampet-Lundquist et al. 2006 , Kling et al. 2007 ). Outside MTO, other qualitative studies of minority youth have detailed the gendered dilemma of youth adaptation to neighborhood disadvantage, especially crime. Girls must live up to feminized social expectations of them while trying to survive often violent conditions, and boys must develop fearsome personae that protect them on the streets but may disadvantage them in other contexts ( Dance 2002 , Jones 2010 ).

Another major ecological setting of adolescence is the school, where young people spend a large proportion of their waking hours. Scholars continue to decipher the effects of the organizational structure of schools (e.g., size, sector, and racial and socioeconomic composition) on student outcomes (see Arum 2000 for a recent review). Yet, the past decade has witnessed considerably more interest in the normative and social climate of schools, as captured by the rates of behaviors and social characteristics in the student body as a whole. These aggregated aspects of the student body tap into the value systems and opportunity structures to which adolescents are exposed on a daily basis, socializing them as well as affecting their ability to act on or against their own proclivities ( Crosnoe 2011 ). For example, adolescents attending schools in which a high proportion of their fellow students come from single-parent homes transition to first sex earlier than others, as this feature of the student body indicates reduced parental supervision of adolescents and their peers and also speaks to normative understandings of sexual relationships and families among students ( Harris et al. 2002 ). As another example, the average body size of students in a school sets the standard of comparison for adolescents' self-evaluations, affecting whether their own body size has implications for their socioemotional functioning ( Crosnoe 2011 ). As a final example, behavioral patterns in the student body as a whole can constrain or strengthen close friends' similarities on substance use ( Cleveland & Wiebe 2003 ). The peer culture of the school, therefore, provides opportunities that condition selection and socialization processes. Importantly, schools do not just expose students to a student body, they also organize peer subsets within the student body through activity and curricular offerings. Consider that the aforementioned Breakfast Club groups ( Barber et al. 2001 ) often arise from extracurricular activities. Moreover, Frank and associates (2008) used school transcripts to identify adolescents sharing the same social and academic space in school, peer groups that were significantly related to student outcomes.

As for the connection between neighborhoods and schools, ethnographic work has been especially insightful. For example, several studies have illuminated the unique challenges faced by working class and low-income African American youth, especially boys, as they simultaneously navigate their neighborhoods and their schools with very different sets of racialized expectations for youth. For such boys, the tough and seemingly defiant posture that they develop among peers in their neighborhoods is often misconstrued and viewed negatively by the middle-class personnel in their schools, leading to academic marginalization and fueling pernicious ideas about the oppositional culture of minority youth ( Dance 2002 , Carter 2006 ).

The point of this neighborhood and school research is that ecological settings create social networks and contexts in which the powerful peer and family processes of adolescence operate. Thus, going beyond structural dimensions of such settings to capture social processes is important.

Adolescence and Social Stratification

The adolescent population is quite diverse in terms of race/ethnicity, social class, and other markers of social location. Especially among sociologists, such diversity has motivated a great deal of research concerning the ways that adolescents' experiences are both a product of and contributor to major systems of social stratification ( Morgan 2005 ).

In part because adolescence is a relatively healthy period in the life course, major health disparities are less common and consistent during this stage compared with others ( Crockett & Peterson 1993 ). Indeed, adolescents from historically disadvantaged minority groups often are similar to or lower than whites in rates of many risky health behaviors, such as drinking ( Harris et al. 2006 ). Yet, the recent rise in obesity has also been problematic from a long-term health perspective, particularly for African American and Latino/a youth ( Ogden et al. 2010 ). Thus, adolescence may play a positive and negative role in race/ethnic disparities across the life course.

On a structural level, school segregation continues to be an issue of great interest ( Rothstein 2004 ). Studies of school composition suggest that racial desegregation has academic benefits for both white and non-white students by exposing them to different ways of thinking and by leading to greater equity in school resources. Yet, students may also feel lowered senses of belonging and perceive more discrimination in diverse schools ( Goldsmith 2004 , Johnson et al. 2001 , Rumberger & Palardy 2005 ). Progress in school desegregation has also often come with increased within-school segregation ( Mickelson 2001 ). Recently, Parents Involved , in which the Supreme Court curtailed use of race in school assignment, has shifted attention from race to socioeconomic status. Efforts to socioeconomically desegregate schools, however, also demonstrate a mixture of benefits and risks, with research suggesting that academic gains might be accompanied by psychosocial problems and that socioeconomically integrating schools would not alter levels of racial segregation ( Crosnoe 2009 , Reardon et al. 2006 ).

On an interpersonal level, Ogbu's (1997) oppositional culture thesis—which, among other things, argues that African American and Latino/a peers de-emphasize achievement and equate it with acting white—has continued to generate debate. Quantitative examinations have provided little evidence of this phenomenon ( Ainsworth-Darnell & Downey 1998 , Harris 2006 ). Mixed methods examinations have suggested that it does occur occasionally but with some important caveats: ( a ) It is rooted in schools' long-term misunderstanding of minority group culture, and ( b ) it is not racialized but instead happens in youth culture more generally, in ways that are manifested differently by race and class ( Carter 2006 , Tyson et al. 2005 ). In total, research on oppositional culture has probably done less to unpack race/ethnic achievement gaps than it has to illuminate the nexus of youth culture and schooling.

For the most part, research on socioeconomic disparities has continued to focus on socioeconomic disadvantage (e.g., poverty), especially after the contentious public debate about welfare reform ( Gennetian et al. 2008 ). Much of this research suggests that poverty is clearly detrimental to adolescents but perhaps less so than it is for children ( Duncan et al. 1998 ). At the same time, the past decade has also witnessed significant advances in our understanding of socioeconomic advantage. Lareau's (2004) work has been enormously influential. This research has demonstrated that middle-class parents tend to follow an approach to parenting, concerted cultivation, that prioritizes providing children cognitively and socially stimulating activities at home and in formal organizations that develop skills, enhance their senses of entitlement, and teach them how to work institutional systems. Such parenting is so well aligned with the American educational system that it gives their children a competitive edge in school. Initially, Lareau focused on elementary school, but her basic insights have been replicated in studies of adolescence ( Crosnoe & Huston 2007 , Kim & Schneider 2005 ). Moreover, Lareau's recent follow-up of her sample in young adulthood revealed that parenting-related socioeconomic advantages persisted into adolescence and beyond.

Turning to immigration, traditional assimilation perspectives posited improved outcomes for the descendants of immigrants compared with immigrants themselves. Yet, newer research suggests that the foreign- and U.S.-born children of immigrants outperform third-plus-generation youth, despite higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage among immigrants. Evidence of this immigrant paradox is more consistent among adolescents than children ( Glick & Hohmann-Marriott 2007 , Kao 1999 , Portes & Rumbaut 2001 , Suarez-Orozco et al. 2009 ). This age difference could reflect adolescents' greater time to adapt to American schools and culture. It could also reflect biases in high school data sets, as immigrants from many regions are more likely to drop out of or bypass school ( Oropesa & Landale 2009 ). Perhaps more importantly, evidence of the immigrant paradox varies widely according to national origin, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. For example, adolescents whose parents emigrated from Asia best illustrate the immigrant paradox, at least in the academic realm. Asia is a region in which migration is positively selective on education and income, but, beyond socioeconomic status, Asian immigrant parents tend to have high standards of academic success, go to great lengths to secure educational opportunities for adolescents, and are highly planful (especially financially) about education ( Kao 2004 , Zhou 2009 ). This diversity in immigrant outcomes has supported theoretical reconceptualizations, such as segmented assimilation ( Portes & Zhou 1993 ), contending that the outcomes of assimilation depend on the context in which it occurs.

Of course, the adolescent population is stratified by factors beyond race and family background that also shape trajectories into adulthood. Two examples are obesity and homosexuality. Because of the stigma of obesity in American culture, obese youth are at heightened risk for psychosocial difficulties, which appear to disrupt their educational trajectories ( Crosnoe 2011 ). Similarly, same-sex-attracted youth often face strong social sanctions during high school that can filter into multiple domains, including academic progress ( Pearson et al. 2007 , Russell & Joyner 2001 ). In both cases, adolescents' characteristics position them on a social hierarchy to create short-term problems with long-term consequences. These stratifying processes are similar to gender, race, class, and immigration in that their significance in adolescence may create and reinforce unequal life chances.

New Directions for Research on Adolescence

Attempts by sociologists and other scholars over the past two decades to answer many of the tough questions about adolescence have raised additional questions. Having looked back, therefore, we now look forward. Given the space allowed, we have decided to focus on three specific future directions that touch on particularly provocative and timely debates and discussions in the field.

Biosocial Processes

In recent years, the integration of biomarkers with psychological and social data has helped empirical activity catch up with developmental theory. The sociological value of this activity is not in establishing genetic effects on adolescent behavior but instead in understanding the interplay of genes and environment at work in adolescent behavior ( Guo et al. 2008 ).

Understanding latent genetic influences has been aided by the creation of sibling samples, which allow assessments of sibling similarity in behavioral or other outcomes across sibling pairs of different degrees of genetic relatedness. Analyses of data from one such sample, the Nonshared Environment in Adolescent Development project, have elucidated the ways in which genetic traits select adolescents into different relationships and elicit different kinds of parenting. They have also demonstrated how the experiences that siblings have outside the home differentiate them on developmental outcomes, despite their genetic relatedness ( Reiss et al. 2000 ). Research on Add Health's diverse sibling pairs subsample has been particularly insightful about variability in shared environment and observed heritability of behaviors across social settings ( Boardman et al. 2008 ). For example, adolescent aggression is genetically influenced in both socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged communities, but the effects of shared environments (e.g., social influences experienced by both siblings) are significantly stronger in disadvantaged communities ( Cleveland 2003 ).

Turning to specific genetic influences, the collection of genetic data in behavioral studies has encouraged deeper exploration of gene-environment interactions. For example, Caspi and associates (2003) , drawing on biological and psychosocial data from New Zealand, reported that stressful life events had a larger impact on depression among youth with short alleles of the 5-HTT promoter polymorphism, which reduces efficiency of serotonin reuptake in the brain. Research by Guo and associates (2008) with the genetic data in Add Health demonstrated that the significance for delinquency of DRD2 alleles, which reduce efficiencies in the dopaminergetic system, is weaker in families with well-organized routines. Such studies push for a transactional view of biology, development, and environment.

Particularly important are genetically informed studies comparing adolescence with other life stages. For example, Dick and associates (2006) , working with genetic and psychosocial data from the United States, reported that the presence of a gene-regulating neurotransmitters, GABRA2, was associated with conduct disorder in adolescence and then with alcohol use in young adulthood. Thus, a genetic predisposition toward risky behavior is manifested differently across stages. A sociological interpretation is that entry into new settings across the transition from adolescence to adulthood might account for such changes.

As for other biomarkers, cortisol is a central hormone in stress response. Because cortisol levels tend to decline over the day, flatter diurnal patterns may signal health risks through the overactivation of physiological stress response ( Susman 2006 ). Efforts to integrate saliva samples and time diaries have revealed that minority youth report higher levels of chronic stress and demonstrate flatter cortisol patterns across the day than whites. Thus, identifying biological mechanisms underlying links between environmental stress and adolescent health may shed light on the role of adolescence in health disparities ( DeSantis et al. 2007 ). Similarly, immunological processes provide a window into environmental effects on youth. For example, McDade (2001) has combined samples of Epstein-Barr virus antibodies with lifestyle data. This work indicates that the stress that adolescents feel from modernization in developing countries is manifested in reduced immune functioning. Like neuroscience, this biomarker research is more common outside sociology, but it touches on core sociological questions, such as the effects of social integration on life chances, thereby representing a growth area for sociologists.

The nature versus nurture debate, therefore, seems to be dying. Indeed, research on adolescence is turning to the synergistic interplay between nature and nurture. Sociologists interested in adolescence have a significant role to play in uncovering the complexities of this interplay moving forward.

Linking Life Stages

Adolescence is better understood when it is viewed within the full life course, and we are now well poised to theorize and empirically evaluate linkages between adolescence and other life stages ( Johnson et al. 2011 ). As noted in the opening section of this review, advances in longitudinal sampling and modeling have facilitated asking and answering questions that involve processes unfolding over time and across contexts. At least in some domains (e.g., education, work), scholars of adolescence are accustomed to thinking about how adolescent experiences affect adult life. Both looking back to childhood and looking forward to adulthood, however, will enable us to elucidate the role of adolescence in the life course.

For example, initial curricular placements and academic achievement in high school are recognized as important to concurrent and future well-being. Yet, the past decade has also witnessed greater emphasis on understanding proximate and distal factors involved in producing varying levels of high school achievement. By following Baltimore schoolchildren from first grade into early adulthood, Alexander and associates (2007) were able to capture the full educational career and, in the process, identify critical periods. Socioeconomic disparities in academic progress at the start of high school were traced back to corresponding disparities in place at the start of first grade and to summer learning differences by socioeconomic status during the elementary school years. These ninth grade differences were then linked to curricular track, high school completion, and college attendance. Their interpretation emphasized how foundational the skills are that are learned in the early years of schooling and the ways in which the in-school and out-of-school settings and experiences that stratify early learning can have lasting, even accumulating, consequences for the life course. Exclusive focus on the adolescent years, and particularly the high school years, misses these processes set in motion much earlier and likely obscures the best points of intervention ( Heckman 2006 ).

As another example, pubertal timing may be a conduit in the connection between disadvantage in childhood and adulthood. Consider that family adversity is among the myriad biological and environmental factors accelerating pubertal timing ( Belsky et al. 2007 ). Cavanagh and associates (2007) have reported that early pubertal timing during middle school is linked to lower grades and the likelihood of course failure at the start of high school, and that as a result, high school completion and the grades of those who graduate are also affected. By stepping back to view longer-term processes, we see additional mechanisms through which family disadvantage impacts children's success in adolescence and adulthood, operating via biological and social processes, as well as their complex interactions.

Finally, charting individual trajectories over time provides important context for understanding what is observed in adolescence. The influential differentiation between life course persistence and adolescence desistance in criminal behavior is one example ( Moffitt 1993 ). Another concerns adolescent substance use, which is embedded within a variety of long-term trajectories that have distinct meaning and consequence. Following cohorts of adolescents in the Monitoring the Future Surveys into adulthood, Schulenberg and associates (2005) linked different patterns of substance use to the pathways through which adolescents transition into adulthood. Levels of substance use in adolescence anticipated the configuration of role transitions young people experienced in the years immediately following, but were also shaped by them. Young people who worked and did not attend school during these years binge drank more frequently during high school. Those who moved away from home for college were less frequent binge drinkers in high school but quickly caught up. These patterns suggest the varied settings and conditions that different adult statuses bring but also the potential for psychosocial preparation for these statuses during adolescence.

The life course paradigm emphasizes that development is lifelong and that no life stage can be understood in isolation. These examples highlight the advances that can be made if we rise to the challenge posed in this life course principle.

Social Change

Of course, linkages among life stages are also shaped by broader changes in the structure of society. Economic restructuring, for example, is dramatically affecting education and employment in young adulthood and beyond, and we need to better understand what this means for adolescents. Changes in the relative size of the manufacturing and service sectors have occurred in such a way as to reduce the availability of jobs with benefits, increase the income premium of higher education, and create greater fluidity between jobs ( Goldin & Katz 2008 ). Furthermore, Fullerton & Wallace (2007) characterized a set of interrelated changes occurring since the 1970s, including declining unionization, downsizing, growing use of contingent labor, and organizational restructuring as a “flexible turn in U.S. labor relations (p. 201),” which has eroded workers' perceptions of job security. Such changes are increasing the importance of adolescents' educational experiences in the status attainment process, thereby magnifying the significance of all of the factors discussed in this review that matter to these experiences.

In this context, the process of becoming adult has clearly changed, with scholars suggesting that adolescence has been extended to older ages or even that a new life stage should be recognized ( Settersten et al. 2005 ). Demands for and returns to education have risen, and relatedly, the period of dependency and semi-autonomy has lengthened. We know young people are staying in school longer, more often combining employment with higher education, and marrying later ( Bernhardt et al. 2001 , Fitzpatrick & Turner 2007 , U.S. Census Bureau 2006 ). Although race/ethnic and socioeconomic variability in these patterns has long been recognized ( Settersten et al. 2005 ), we are only just beginning to address a number of other important questions related to these broad social changes, including what they mean for the achievement of social and financial autonomy and relationships with others, including parents, and what we need to equip adolescents with in order for them to successfully navigate the transition to adulthood.

Two major collaborative efforts have laid an important foundation for understanding the implications of these social changes for adolescence. The first is the MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy ( Settersten et al. 2005 ). It has reported, among other things, that parents, especially those with more resources, increasingly support their children through the transition to adulthood financially and otherwise. About one-third of 18–34 year olds in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics received cash support from their parents, at an average of just over $3,400 per year ( Schoeni & Ross 2005 ). This and other forms of ongoing material assistance (e.g., support of higher education pursuits, allowing children to remain in the home, assistance in establishing independent households, providing childcare) may be yet another way in which parents' level of education and income can affect the status attainment of their children. The second effort is the Society for Research on Adolescence's Study Group on Adolescence in the Twenty-First Century ( Larson et al. 2002 ). One of its reports has argued that changes in family size, structure, and relationships; increased participation in school and after-school activities; and the advent of the Internet have created new opportunities for adolescents to develop more flexible social skills and capacities to move between diverse social worlds. It also notes, however, that those from families in poverty and those in elite families are more deprived when it comes to the social experience that builds these skills.

Another major social change concerns the transformation of social interaction though new media and technologies. The Pew Internet and American Life Project has reported that, in 2009, 75% of 12–17 year olds had cell phones and 93% went online ( Lenhart et al. 2010 ). The report also indicated that 76% of families with adolescents now had broadband access at home. Adolescents also go online via cell phones and portable gaming devices, in addition to computers at home. These technologies offer new opportunities for leisure, shopping, and staying in touch with others, as well as broader access to information and support. Roughly one-third of adolescents in the Pew study who went online used the Internet to gather information on health, dieting, or physical fitness, and 17% looked online for information about sensitive health topics, such as those related to drug use, mental health, and sex ( Lenhart et al. 2010 ).

Importantly, the Internet can also be thought of as a new kind of peer context. A recent study of 800 American youth revealed that, for most youth, new media technologies are used primarily to maintain and extend friendship networks ( Ito et al. 2010 ). Moreover, the Internet provides opportunities for socially isolated youth to connect with others in meaningful ways while also enabling the peer cultures of high school—including negative dimensions, such as bullying and gossiping—to follow young people home ( Crosnoe 2011 , Raskauskas & Stoltz 2007 ). Thus, new media represent a potential context of resource and risk related to peers.

Other potential risks ranging from driving accidents related to texting or talking on cell phones to exposure to questionable online content or social interactions (e.g., pornography, gambling, sexual solicitation) have concerned parents, educators, and lawmakers. Debates continue over whether risks can also accrue from the potentially sensitive or identifying information, including pictures and videos, adolescents post online about themselves and one another, or whether this is a healthy part of adolescents' self-expression and identity exploration. Nearly three-quarters of online youth use a social networking Web site such as Facebook or MySpace ( Lenhart et al. 2010 ). A recent content analysis of teenagers' MySpace pages indicated that 40% of adolescent users restricted access to their pages to identified friends. Yet, 10% of adolescent users who did not restrict access posted their full name, and many more listed their hometowns and the name of their schools, which could be used to identify them ( Hinduja & Patchin 2008 ).

Relevant empirical evidence about these concerns, however, is rare, and the topic is notably absent from the top sociological publishing outlets. Yet, sociologists have much to contribute, as adolescents' use of new media raises important questions about social networks, personal relationships, and identity development. What are the implications of cell phone use or online communication for parental monitoring and peer interactions? Do electronic interactions replace or complement face-to-face interactions? Do online venues provide a safe or dangerous place for identity work? As an example highlighting the potential work to be done, Blais and associates (2008) reported that Internet activity was related to changes in the quality of best friendships and romantic relationships over the course of a year among Canadian adolescents. Specifically, use of instant messaging, which occurs with known others, enhanced these relationships, but visits to chat rooms, which primarily involve communicating with strangers, were associated with worsening relationship quality over time. As these findings suggest, we will need to be specific about the types of media being used when we attempt to understand their implications for today's adolescents.

As is evident from this review, the rich sociological tradition of research on adolescence has continued into the new century. Still, the sociology of adolescence may be at something of a crossroads. The mapping of the human genome and the increasing sophistication of brain imaging are reshaping the scientific agenda in ways that, at first glance, do not tap into the traditional strengths of sociologists. At the same time, the renewed interest in childhood as a critical period—generated by findings that early interventions bring greater long-term returns to investments than those targeting adolescence ( Heckman 2006 )—has shifted attention to earlier stages. Another way of looking at these developments, however, is that they are opportunities. Indeed, sociologists are well-positioned to demonstrate how biological processes cannot be understood absent a firm sociological understanding of the environment in which they play out over time, explain how the long reach of childhood is channeled through adolescence, and identify ways in which adolescence produces turning points and deflections in the life course.

Summary Points

Research on adolescence has moved in a sociological direction by emphasizing the role of context in shaping adolescents' lives and the link between adolescent development and societal inequality, fueled in part by recent advances in data collection and methodology.
Early childhood experiences are very important to long-term health, educational, and behavioral trajectories, but adolescent experiences play key roles in this process by magnifying or deflecting children's trajectories.
Many of the major developmental trajectories of adolescence, including those related to puberty, risky behavior, academic achievement, health, and identity development, reflect a complex interplay of biology, personal agency, and environment.
Adolescents' navigation of institutional systems, such as school and work, have become increasingly complex and interrelated, with high school coursework more consequential to long-term outcomes in the globalized economy and paid work during adolescence becoming more common and potentially either risky or beneficial for educational attainment depending on motivation, background, and academic competence.
Adolescents tend to spend less time with parents and other relatives and seek more autonomy while becoming more immersed in expanding peer networks, including romantic networks, but they typically do so while maintaining strong emotional ties to their families.
Although much of the research on school and neighborhood effects on adolescent behavior has focused on the structural features of these contexts, more attention is being paid to the ways in which they organize peer groups that differ widely in terms of norms, values, and behavioral opportunities, as well as the ways families affect and respond within them.
Gender, race, social class, and immigration stratify adolescents' lives, with poor and/or minority youth particularly vulnerable in the educational system, through a variety of structural inequalities and interpersonal processes, but immigrant youth often demonstrate a high level of resilience in the face of similar risks.

Acknowledgments

Support for R.C. came from a faculty scholar award from the William T. Grant Foundation, as well as a center grant to the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R24 HD042849; PI: Mark Hayward). The authors thank Anna Thornton for her help with this review.

Disclosure Statement : The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

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COMMENTS

The Development of Self and Identity in Adolescence
We first review adolescents' development of self and identity, linking the behavioral and neural levels. We then outline the general value-based decision-making approach and describe the predictions of this model in the context of adolescent development.
Identity Development in Adolescence and Adulthood
Identity normally becomes a central issue of concern during adolescence, when decisions about future vocational, ideological, and relational issues need to be addressed; however, these key identity concerns often demand further reflection and revision during different phases of adult life as well.
Dynamics of Identity Development in Adolescence: A Decade in Review
The current review addresses progress in the field of identity research between the years 2010 and 2020. Synthesizing research on the development of identity, we show that identity development during adolescence and early adulthood is characterized by both systematic maturation and substantial stability.
Links of Adolescents Identity Development and Relationship with Peers
The links between adolescents' identity development and their relationship with peers are not completely clear. The possible intermediate factors that could determine the relationship between adolescent identity development and their relationships with peers are discussed. Further empirical researches is needed in this area.
Dynamics of Identity Development in Adolescence: A Decade in Review
One of the key developmental tasks in adolescence is to develop a coherent identity. The current review addresses progress in the field of identity research between the years 2010 and 2020. Synthesizing research on the development of identity, we show ...
Reframing Adolescent Identity: A Global Perspective for the Digital Age
This review provides a comprehensive evaluation of adolescent identity development research, critically examining the significant gap between the global distribution of adolescents and the focus of scholarly work. While over 85% of the world's youth live in the majority world—Africa, Asia, and Latin America—only 15% of developmental psychology studies explore these populations ...
Adolescent identity development in context
Microprocesses. Developing a coherent sense of identity is a key developmental task in adolescence and young adulthood [1]. Adolescents begin to explore their identity and increasingly develop a subjective feeling of self-sameness and continuity over contexts and time. The last couple of years, the focus has shifted from understanding mean ...
PDF Using Literature to Support Adolescent Identity Development: A Critical
Adolescent literature has the power to positively impact and support the identity development of all adolescents, regardless of ability, gender, race, cultural, or linguistic background. Yet, we contend that this is only possible through the intentional, purposeful, and cognizant selection of texts that accurately and respectfully portray characters with whom students can relate and connect ...
Dynamics of Identity Development in Adolescence: A Decade in ...
One of the key developmental tasks in adolescence is to develop a coherent identity. The current review addresses progress in the field of identity research between the years 2010 and 2020. Synthesizing research on the development of identity, we show that identity development during adolescence and …
Identity Development in Adolescence: Implications for Youth ...
The Importance of Adolescent Identity Development Adolescence is a developmental period that bridges childhood and early adulthood. During this age period, young people experience intense biological changes, advancements in their cognitive and perspective-taking capabilities, and shifts in their interpersonal relationships. Physical changes such as the onset of puberty and rapid changes in ...
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One of the key developmental tasks in adolescence is to develop a coherent identity. The current review addresses progress in the field of identity research between the years 2010 and 2020. Synthesizing research on the development of identity, we show that identity development during adolescence and early adulthood is characterized by both systematic maturation and substantial stability. This ...
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Article contents

Introduction

Erikson’s Psychosocial Orientation

Erikson’s Psychosocial Approach and Marcia’s Identity Status Model

Personality and Behavioral Correlates of the Identity Statuses

Self-Esteem

Locus of Control

Authoritarianism

Ego Development

Moral Reasoning

Additional Personality and Behavioral Variables

Relationships and the Identity Statuses

Identity Status Change from Adolescence Through Adulthood

Events Associated with Identity Status Change

Identity Development in Adulthood

What the Identity Statuses Mean

Conclusions

Further Reading

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Adolescent identity development in context

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Key Takeaways

Exercises and Critical Thinking

The Role of School in Adolescents’ Identity Development. A Literature Review

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Introduction

Literature Search

Selection and Analysis of the Literature

Characteristics of the Literature

Theoretical Perspectives on Identity Development

Sociocultural Perspectives

Psychosocial Perspectives

Social Psychological Perspectives

Sociological Perspectives

The Hidden Curriculum: How Schools and Teachers May Unintentionally Affect Adolescents’ Identity Development

Selection Practices and Differentiation

Teaching Strategies

Teacher Expectations

Organizing Explorative Learning Experiences: How Schools and Teachers May Intentionally Affect Adolescents’ Identity Development

In-Breadth Exploration

In-Depth Exploration

Reflective Exploration

Conditions for Effective Explorative Learning Experiences

Meaningful Learning Experiences

Supportive Classroom Climate

What Schools and Teachers Can Learn About Their Role in Adolescents’ Identity Development

Directions for Future Research

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Identity Development

Erikson’s Identity vs. Role Confusion

Marcia’s Identity Statuses

Supporting identity development

My Adolescent Experience and Development: A Reflection

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