By Dr. Mandy Savitz-Romer, Nancy Pforzheimer Aronson Senior Lecturer in Human Development and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE)
Reading time: Five minutes
The National College Attainment Network (NCAN) is featuring Dr. Savitz-Romer's work in a series titled, "A Developmental Approach to College Access and Success," consisting of webinars, blog posts, and peer exchanges.
Supporting students’ postsecondary pathways begins with exposing them to the world of possibilities so that they can make informed choices about their futures. In the field of college and career readiness, we often refer to this as supporting a “college-going identity”
or a “future-oriented identity.”
This approach makes sense.
After all, if students can’t see a future version of themselves in which they are in college or a particular career, they are not likely take the necessary steps to achieve that goal. However, efforts to support a student’s college-going identity sometimes
miss the mark in terms of what we know about identity development.
Identity development is the process of exploring and understanding who you are as a unique individual. This process may be the most important and central developmental task of adolescence and young adulthood. Forming a coherent sense of self across multiple
dimensions of identity (e.g., race, gender, location, aspirations, likes, dislikes, hobbies) is essential for youth to make sense of who they are and what futures they want.
With a solid understanding of identity development, educators are better equipped to support students’ integrated future-oriented identity.
Promoting a college-going identity is especially important when youth engage in behaviors that seem inconsistent with college-going. Educators, advisors, or anyone who wants to support students’ college-going identity development, needs to help students
form a coherent, integrated identity that considers the many parts of what makes them unique.
What can we do to support integrated college-going identities?
Support an integrated identity
To support students in forming an integrated, future-oriented identity, educators should facilitate identity exploration activities to raise students’ consciousness about the parts of their identity and how that shapes their future planning. For some
students, this might mean exploring whether students have ideas about whether “people like me'' go to college. While these concerns are rarely voiced, it is crucial for educators to get comfortable discussing complex topics like race, social class,
ethnicity, ability, or spirituality with students as they make postsecondary choices.
Naming these identities can help students draw connections between their identities and different postsecondary opportunities. For example, a young person who possesses a strong racial or ethnic identity might be supported to consider how those dimensions
of their identity shape their own perception of their future hopes and dreams. It is also essential to help youth that may understand their identities as in conflict with college-going, such as some first-generation or rural students, to reach reconciliation.
For example, educators can frame college as a way for students to support their communities instead of the frequent practice of assuming that students want to distance themselves.
There are many different approaches to these activities:
Classroom lessons, writing prompts, and even debriefing after a college tour are all ideal settings to engage students in reflective conversation about their self-perception.
English teachers may utilize writing assignment to ask students to reflect on different dimensions of their identity.
School counselors might implement classroom lessons in which students create identity charts or activities that showcase the many affinity spaces college students join in college.
College counselors and advisors who come across students who have ruled out certain pathways might probe with students about how they came to those conclusions before taking at face value decisions that may or may not have been related to identity conflicts.
Support college-going beliefs
Ensuring that our support for students’ college-going identities is grounded in what we know about identity development also means focusing on the beliefs students hold about their skills and abilities to succeed in college. Educators can foster this
understanding by targeting two dimensions of students’ self-concept: their self-efficacy and their outcome expectations. These two types of beliefs reflect what students believe about their abilities to achieve their future goals.
Self efficacy describes one’s belief in their ability to complete a task in a given domain and their ability to persist through challenges. (See, e.g., Bandura, A. (1982). Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. American Psychologist, 37(2),
122–147. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.37.2.122)
Outcome expectations reflect individuals’ ideas about what outcomes are likely to occur given any particular action
Educators can foster a positive sense of self-efficacy in students by providing learning opportunities to experience mastery in new areas and helping them interpret those experiences and the feedback they receive. Vague compliments such as “You can do
anything you set your mind to” are not grounded in experience and are unlikely to be convincing. Rather, educators can encourage students to acknowledge their strengths, assess levels of challenge associated with new skills, and provide feedback about
their growth areas.
Another way that practitioners support college going beliefs is by remaining on the lookout for negative outcome expectations. For example, students might connect certain pathways with negative outcomes. For example, “If I go to college, some of my friends
will feel I abandoned them, or I’ll disappoint a family member who was counting on me.” These associations, while maybe accurate, are ripe for exploration. We might have alumni or other near-peer mentors share how their own negative outcomes expectations
have changed, if at all.
Where “if you believe it, you can achieve it” and “you can’t be what you can’t see” interact
Programs and practitioners too often make the mistake of putting too much focus on nuts and bolts college-going milestones. It’s a well-intended programmatic strategy but one that will be hampered by inefficiency absent students’ believing that these
milestones, and their eventual outcome, are right for them and aligned with their vision of who they are and want to be. Students who come into counselors offices and college access programs will be at various stages of identity formation;
it’s explore and understand where a student is on this journey and help them to further explore where and who they are and where and who they want to be. The college-going milestones help with the how they’ll to their destination
but they do not advance the who students will be on the way.
Email to a Friend