| Psychologists are increasingly suggesting that individual differences in academic identity may help to explain observed achievement gaps (e.g. Steele, 1997). Yet, research focused on examining the development of academic identity and the role of social cultural contexts is surprisingly scarce. Thus, the current research had two objectives: (1) to examine trajectories of academic identity development in a diverse sample of elementary school aged children and (2) to examine outcomes of academic identity. Specifically, borrowing from social identity theorists' view that centrality (i.e. importance of an identity to the self-concept) and meaning (i.e. personal understanding of the identity) are independent dimensions, this research explored how important school roles are to children's self-concepts and how they make meaning of such roles. This multidimensional definition was particular important as researchers often assume that having an academic identity is equivalent to caring about 'performing'. Results suggest that variation in academic identity centrality and meaning is present even during the early elementary school years. That is, for some children academic identity was quite important while for others it was not at all important. In addition, for some children academic identity was defined in terms of a 'performance' meaning. However, for other children it was defined in different ways (e.g. a 'family' meaning, a 'learning' meaning). Interestingly, in general Black, Dominican, and Chinese children had more central academic identities than did White and Russian children. However, Black and Dominican children were the least likely to describe their academic identities in terms of performance. Therefore, results highlight the importance of assessing academic identity in a multidimensional manner. Indeed, if a 'performance' definition of academic identity has been used, young Black and Dominican children would erroneously have been labeled as less identified than other children. Results also suggest that both centrality and meaning have implications for children's academic outcomes. For example, a central academic identity defined by performance was related to high levels of school anxiety, whereas a central academic identity defined by learning was not. |
