Identity serves as a key construct for comprehensively explaining learners’ attitudes, participation, and achievement, and has attracted sustained attention in mathematics education since the early 2000s. Recent scholarship emphasizes that identity ...
Identity serves as a key construct for comprehensively explaining learners’ attitudes, participation, and achievement, and has attracted sustained attention in mathematics education since the early 2000s. Recent scholarship emphasizes that identity should not be viewed as a fixed psychological attribute but rather as a discursive and dynamic construct emerging through social interaction (Sfard & Prusak, 2005; Gresalfi & Hand, 2019). In the Korean context, however, research has predominantly focused on affective achievement and attitudes, with limited attention to how identity is enacted within authentic classroom interactions.
Understanding how identity is expressed requires investigating the conditions under which particular identities become possible. Classroom structure—including task design, teacher discourse, student composition, and classroom norms—serves as a critical condition that enables or constrains identity formation. Nevertheless, much prior research has relied on interviews or self-reported data to describe identity as an outcome, thereby limiting insight into how interaction and structural features actively shape identity construction. Addressing this gap, the present study analyzes how learner identities are enacted in classroom interaction through the lens of authority structures and interprets the enabling conditions using Anderson’s (2007) four dimensions of identity: engagement, alignment, imagination, and nature.
Employing a qualitative case study design, this study examined episodes of mathematical interaction from a discussion-based middle school class. Data included students’ verbal utterances, non-verbal behaviors, and task-solving processes, focusing on three focal students. Drawing on Andersson and Wagner’s (2019) framework of authority structures—personal authority, discourse as authority, and personal latitude—the study identified emergent identities and analyzed the conditions that supported their formation through Anderson’s (2007) identity dimensions.
Findings revealed that even within a single lesson, students enacted distinct identities depending on the interactional context and the authority structures at play. Student s1 consistently demonstrated action-based leadership, forming a leader identity grounded in personal authority. Student s2 assumed discourse-centered leadership, constructing a representative identity within discourse as authority. In contrast, student s3 frequently positioned themselves as a resistor, displaying a rebel identity, particularly during moments of discourse shift, and later transitioning into an active rebel identity. These findings underscore the analytical power of authority structures in capturing nuances of identity beyond the binary of participation versus non-participation, highlighting subtler forms of leadership, silence, resistance, and marginalization.
The analysis further demonstrated that these identities were closely tied to the classroom structure. Discussion-based instruction, open-ended tasks, and the use of manipulatives fostered engagement and alignment dimensions of identity, enabling students to participate in discourse, justify reasoning, and reposition themselves within evolving authority dynamics. Notably, student s3, who initially embodied a negative identity in the nature dimension, transitioned into a participatory identity following teacher intervention, illustrating how classroom structures can provide opportunities for identity transformation.
By integrating the analytical lenses of authority structures and the four dimensions of identity, this study offers a nuanced account of how learner identities are enacted and constructed within mathematical interactions. Rather than merely cataloging levels of participation or attitudes, it illuminates how structural features of the classroom enable or constrain diverse identity expressions. The findings suggest that interaction-rich, discussion-oriented learning environments can foster multiple and negotiable identities, and that teacher discourse and task design function as pivotal moments for identity shifts. This highlights the importance of designing learning environments that deliberately support identity development and demonstrates the methodological value of a multilayered approach that integrates discourse, action, and context.