The Formation of the Subject in the Family-School Boundary During Adolescence

Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Cultural Psychology of Education book series (CPED, volume 1)

Abstract

Parental involvement is seen as a significant contextual factor in a student’s schooling experience. The objective of this chapter is to understand the mechanisms involved in the semiotic constitution of the educational self system in the academic trajectory of one teenager, emphasizing the dialogical dynamics established in the relationship with the parents in this process, and the positions (I-Positions) that emerged in the configuration of the self. This study is based on formulations of cultural developmental psychology with semiotic orientation, especially the concepts of semiotic mediation (Valsiner, Fundamentos da psicologia cultural: mundos da mente, mundos da vida. Artmed, Porto Alegre, 2012a; A Guided science: history of psychology in the mirror of its making. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 2012b), dialogical self, (Hermans et al., American Psychologist, 47(1), 1992) and educational self (Iannaccone et al., Interplays between dialogical learning and dialogical self. Information Age Publishing, Charlotte, 2013). We adopted a qualitative research perspective of an idiographic nature through a narrative interview technique. Among the three teenagers interviewed between ages 16 and 18, Bete was chosen as the subject of this chapter. The interviews were analyzed by: (1) dividing the school trajectory into periods marked by moments of rupture-transition; (2) selection of periods in which situations of dialogical interactions with parents regarding academic life occur; (3) selection of passages in the narrative of the participant that discoursed dialogic situations with parents and other socially significant actors; and (4) analysis of narrative excerpts from the concepts of cultural psychology. In the emergence of the educational self, Bete claimed autonomy to face the maternal voice that appears as an ambiguous signifier. The actors involved in this process—parents, teachers, peers, and significant others—contributed to the construction of positions that requested more autonomy in the dialogic space. Bete actively sought to define the boundaries between school and family in preparing her idea as a student, especially in adolescence. A third context (in this case, religion) created a contextual triad that fed the strength of certain semiotic mechanisms, by setting the educational self at the school-family boundary.

Keywords

Developmental cultural psychology Educational self Dialogical self Teens Educational psychology, Parental involvement 
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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Federal University of BahiaSalvadorBrazil

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