Thesis advisor: María Estela Brisk / This study was conducted to understand student identities of five Japanese children (the second through sixth grade) and the processes of identity negotiation within their sojourning experiences between Japan and the United States. An increasing number of Japanese elementary students internationally sojourn in today's globalized societies, and consequently shape their identities in multiple school contexts. Previous research has suggested the reciprocal relations between linguistic minority learners' identities and their diverse school experiences, and reported a wide variation of bilinguals' self-perceptions. However, few studies have focused on elementary sojourners to holistically theorize the internal and external processes of their identity negotiation. In this interpretive multiple case study, children's own perspectives were inductively gathered by following the constructivist grounded theory guidelines. Data collection methods included child in-depth interviews enhanced with drawing activities, classroom observations, and teacher and parent interviews. The cross-case analysis was facilitated by interpretive focus group interview with Japanese former sojourners. The results indicated that the children across varied stages of sojourning integrated their consistent self-relevant attributes (ordinary student status and familiar personal traits) and their changing attributes (oral English proficiency) together as the fuel for pursuing their identity standard--their own interpretation of positive student identities--which fundamentally represented their social adaptive and socioemotional competences. Their experiences with Japanese language and culture, bilingual/bicultural competences, and international transitions, appeared potentially influential for their student identities. Through the multi-layered complex negotiation processes, they successfully verified, improved, balanced, and imagined their self-relevant attributes salient for their identity standard. By proposing a competence-based identity negotiation model, this study recommends all educators to support their sojourning students by attending to two types of school competences: (a) the Identity-Relevant Competence which contributes to identity standard and (b) the Identity-Negotiation Competence to practice the holistic processes of identity negotiation for sustaining the identity standard. The findings add a new theoretical scope to the evolving field of child identity research, and suggest further interdisciplinary explorations of sojourners' student identities. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_102031 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Koga, Nari |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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