Development of Student Identity

In this paper, the authors illustrate how a diverse classroom can become the cite of the development of social work identity. The authors point out that social work principles of neutrality and objectivity may veil strategies of power that some learners adopt in order to facilitate the formation of a helping identity. Using a Foucaldian analysis of classroom interactions, the authors encourage students to understand that identity which is socially constructed is complex and multi-determined. The paper explores how strategies of power, social position, and essentialism in classroom interactions may lead learners to assume positions of privileged identity. The authors discuss strategies which enable the learners to develop identities based upon principles of social construction and intersubjectivity.