personality development essay for school students

Essay on Personality Development

Students are often asked to write an essay on Personality Development in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Personality Development

Introduction.

Personality Development refers to enhancing one’s traits for a holistic growth. It’s about improving communication, leadership skills, and maintaining a positive attitude.

Importance of Personality Development

A strong personality helps in better interaction and boosts confidence. It helps us to face challenges and achieve success.

Factors Influencing Personality Development

Various factors like environment, education, and relationships shape our personality. These elements help us grow and evolve as individuals.

Personality Development is a continuous process. It helps us to be better versions of ourselves, making us more adaptable and successful in life.

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250 Words Essay on Personality Development

Personality development is a comprehensive term that encapsulates the improvement of an individual’s traits and attributes, which contribute to their overall character and image. It is an ongoing process that involves the growth and maturation of one’s personality, leading to self-awareness and personal enhancement.

Significance of Personality Development

Personality development is crucial as it enables individuals to enhance their interpersonal skills, which are vital in today’s highly competitive world. It aids in the development of traits such as confidence, optimism, and resilience, which are key to overcoming life’s challenges. Furthermore, it promotes effective communication skills, leadership qualities, and emotional intelligence, which are integral to personal and professional success.

Several factors influence personality development. The environment, including family, school, and community, plays a significant role in shaping one’s personality. The experiences, both positive and negative, that an individual encounters throughout their life also contribute to their personality development. Genetic factors, although not entirely controllable, also play a part in defining an individual’s temperament and behavior.

In conclusion, personality development is a lifelong process that involves the continuous growth and enhancement of an individual’s character and attributes. It is a critical aspect of human development that can significantly influence one’s personal, academic, and professional success. Therefore, it is essential for individuals to focus on their personality development and strive for continuous self-improvement.

500 Words Essay on Personality Development

Personality development is an enduring process of cultivating behaviors, attitudes, and communication patterns that make an individual distinctive. It involves both the improvement of personal traits and the development of a holistic persona that plays a crucial role in achieving success in life.

The Essence of Personality Development

Personality development is not confined to the improvement of a single aspect of an individual; instead, it is about improving an amalgamation of factors that would include the ability to communicate effectively, confidence building, and the overall personality. It can be considered as a tool that helps in enhancing one’s self-esteem and confidence, thereby making an individual more presentable and acceptable in the social context.

Several factors contribute to personality development, including genetic predisposition, upbringing, education, environment, and experiences. Genetic factors contribute to the fundamental aspects of personality, such as temperament. Upbringing and education, on the other hand, shape our values, beliefs, and attitudes.

Environment and experiences play a significant role in shaping our personality. The environment we are exposed to, the people we interact with, and the experiences we have all contribute to the development of our personality. Positive experiences contribute to a confident, well-adjusted personality, while negative experiences may lead to a lack of confidence and low self-esteem.

Role of Personality Development in Success

Personality development plays a vital role in our success, both personally and professionally. A well-developed personality is a key to success as it enhances our ability to communicate effectively, improves our confidence, and helps us in building relationships. It allows us to present ourselves effectively in various situations, thereby opening up opportunities for growth and success.

The Process of Personality Development

Personality development is a continuous process that starts from the time we are born and continues throughout our life. It involves a constant interaction between our innate characteristics and the environment. This process can be influenced by consciously deciding to improve ourselves by learning new skills, adopting healthy habits, and developing positive attitudes.

In conclusion, personality development is an essential aspect of our lives that influences our success and happiness. It is a continuous process that requires conscious effort and commitment. By understanding the factors that influence our personality and taking steps to develop our personality, we can enhance our potential, improve our relationships, and achieve success in life.

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Importance of personality development for students.

Have you ever wondered what truly sets your child up for success in life? Sure, good grades and academic achievements are crucial, but there’s something equally—if not more—important: personality development.

When we talk about “personality,” we’re not just referring to a set of traits or behaviours; we’re talking about the very essence of who we are—the way we think, feel, and act. In recent years, there’s been a growing recognition worldwide of the pivotal role personality development plays in a student’s journey. Why? Because a well-rounded personality doesn’t just shape how we approach life; it also paves the way for brighter futures, enhancing our chances of success in the professional arena.

Today’s educational landscape is evolving, with a renewed emphasis on nurturing students’ personalities alongside academic achievements. But here’s the catch: while we all agree on the significance of personality development, the real challenge lies in knowing how to foster these skills effectively.

So, let’s roll up our sleeves and demystify the importance of personality development in children that our educators follow at The Blue Bells School.

Confidence Boost: We all know confidence is key! When your child feels good about themselves, they’re more likely to take on challenges, speak up in class, and pursue their dreams without hesitation.

We observed that personality development workshops and activities can work wonders in boosting your child’s self-esteem and belief in themselves

Effective Communication:

In a world that’s increasingly interconnected, strong communication skills are non-negotiable. Whether it’s expressing ideas, negotiating with peers, or presenting in front of an audience, the ability to communicate effectively can open doors to endless opportunities. Personality development helps your child become a stellar communicator, both verbally and non-verbally.

Emotional Intelligence:

Life isn’t just about acing exams; it’s also about handling emotions, relationships, and setbacks. By understanding and managing their own emotions and empathising with others, your child can build healthier relationships, resolve conflicts constructively, and thrive in various social settings. Personality development nurtures this vital aspect of your child’s growth.

Adaptability and Resilience:

Let’s face it: life throws curveballs. From unexpected challenges to major transitions, your child needs to be resilient and adaptable. Personality development equips them with the tools to bounce back from setbacks, embrace change, and thrive in diverse environments. It’s all about building that mental toughness and flexibility!

Leadership Potential:

Whether your child aspires to lead a team, start their own business, or simply be a positive influence among their peers, leadership skills are invaluable. Through personality development activities like teamwork, problem-solving, and decision-making, your child can unleash their leadership potential and inspire others along the way.

Now, you might be thinking, “Okay, this all sounds great, but how do we actually foster personality development?” We’ve got you covered:

• Lead by Example: Children learn by example, so be a role model for positive traits like empathy, resilience, and effective communication. Show them what it means to embrace challenges with a growth mindset and treat others with kindness and respect.
• Provide Constructive Feedback: Offer praise and constructive feedback to help your child understand their strengths and areas for growth. Encourage them to set goals and celebrate their progress along the way.
• Expose Them to Diverse Experiences: Exposure to different cultures, perspectives, and environments can broaden your child’s horizons and foster adaptability and open-mindedness.

In a nutshell, personality development isn’t just another buzzword—it’s the secret sauce that empowers your child to thrive in school, relationships, and beyond.

Picture your child walking into a room full of strangers. How they carry themselves, communicate, and handle situations speaks volumes about their personality. That’s where personality development kicks in.

  At The Blue Bells School we believe it’s not just about being outgoing or confident; it’s about honing a set of skills and traits that help your child navigate life’s ups and downs with grace and resilience.

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Essay on Personality Development | Role of Education in Personality Development

• Essay on Personality Development

Education is an important factor in the personality development of individuals. The school, after the home, is one of the social structures every child will pass through and one of its purposes is to build the character of that child. We shall be looking at some of the roles it plays in this process.

What is personality development?

Personality development is the process of expanding your personality. This may include doing activities that you don’t normally do, but find enjoyable and fulfilling like playing a new sport or trying new hobbies. It also includes developing skills that you already have but are not using to their full potential such as playing an instrument or speaking another language. Developing your personality can also mean discovering who you are in order to better understand yourself and grow into the person that’s right for you.

Character Development

As I stated earlier, the school plays a great role in the overall personality development of an individual.

From childhood, the child is exposed to this social setting and spends most of his day there. The influence that education, which is the major service the schools offer, has on the child cannot be overlooked.

After the home front, the school is responsible for the upbringing of children and their overall character development. Therefore, there should be a deliberate effort to ensure that the character of the child is molded properly during this time. Education is not just about teaching theory to children, but a school environment is a place where a good foundation is laid for children to help in the future.

In school, virtues such as honesty, fairness, kindness, and respect are taught. The teachers and educationists have a tremendous influence on students and they are seen as role models so it is necessary that set good examples always.

You must understand that children learn very well by observation so care must be taken to how teachers behave before their students. In school, there are a lot of planned actions and activities that are carried out in the classroom to help students develop a good character which will help them in life.

I shall go through some of these as I go on. There are some important things that should be put in place to help students build their character.

There are several methods of building character in students and when the character is inbuilt in the student, positive behavior is almost automatic. There are several schools of thought that have provided different pillars that help build character.

Here, I have listed a combination of these pillars to help in the personality development of our young ones. They are:

1.1 – TRUSTWORTHINESS

They should be taught the importance of being trustworthy which basically is to learn how to keep their words. Students would learn the need to be honest and sincere; the need to be a person of integrity and why they should be reliable.

1.2 – RESPECT

They should be taught the need to show respect to others by being courteous, acting with dignity, giving autonomy, tolerating opposing views, and accepting criticism.

1.3 – RESPONSIBILITY

They should be taught the need to be responsible for all their actions and daily living.

1.4 – FAIRNESS

This is a character trait of being fair to all and in all situations. They should be taught the importance of this.

1.5 – CARING

The students should be shown why this character trait is essential and how it tells well of them.

1.6 – CITIZENSHIP

This enables students to learn the importance of contributing to the good of society.

1.7 – TEAMWORK

This character trait would help students learn how to work with others in a team. It helps teach them how to tolerate others and their viewpoints.

1.8 – EXCELLENCE

The student should learn how important it is to excel in whatever they do and that excellence has its rewards.

1.9 – COMPASSION

Student should learn to have compassion for and be empathetic to the needs and challenges of others. To teach the students these character traits, you can spread them out and emphasize one of them each month. The students can be encouraged to research on each trait and can be assigned creative writing projects on them.

Set the rules

In the classroom, the teacher should set the necessary rules that will guide the behavior of the student.

Be clear of what is acceptable and unacceptable. It is also advisable to discuss them with the students. To make this work, make sure that you set an example for them so that it would be easier for them to follow.

You should be kind, neat, and punctual in class. You should also show respect to others and finish your work within schedule. By doing so, they will realize that they themselves do not have an excuse to fail or disregard rules.

To achieve maximum results, the teacher will need to explain to the student the character traits which each rule is meant to build. The teacher can also allow the students to make suggestions on possible rules that would be of benefit to the class.

They should always exhibit positive behavior so as to become role models for the students. It would also be good if a reward system can be put in place to reward good behavior.

Point them towards positive role models

Another way by which individuals can build their personality properly is to have good examples of heroes and role models in various fields of study.

Students would easily want to measure up to the character of someone they admire. The teacher should talk about such people that the students can learn from.

They can also be asked to describe, assess, and match the personality traits and behaviors of those people. The teacher can also talk about the behavior and lifestyle of current world leaders and celebrities and as the student to assess if their words match their actions.

Build a culture of respect

Teachers should teach students the need for them to develop self-respect and understand the importance of showing others respect. They can be shown with examples of the benefits of treating others with respect.

Teach them to talk positively

The students can be encouraged to learn how to talk right. Positive talk produces good results both now and in the future. Show them how their words affect their future.

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The Psychology of Personality Development

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Steven Gans, MD is board-certified in psychiatry and is an active supervisor, teacher, and mentor at Massachusetts General Hospital.

• Key Theories
• Development Tips

Personality development refers to the process of developing, enhancing, and changing one's personality over time. Such development occurs naturally over the course of life, but it can also be modified through intentional efforts.

When we meet new people, it is often their personality that grabs our attention. According to the American Psychological Association, personality refers to the enduring behaviors, traits, emotional patterns, and abilities that make up a person's response to the events of their life.

“Personality is a blend of behavioral and thought patterns that are relatively stable over time, characterizing an individual's traits and attitudes," says Ludovica Colella , a CBT therapist and author of "The Feel Good Journal."

Understanding how personality develops can provide insight into who someone is and their background while also increasing our understanding of what's behind our personality traits and characteristics.

At a Glance

Personality development involves all of the factors that influence how our personalities form and change over time. This can include our genetic background and the environment where we are raised. While personality tends to be pretty stable, it can change over time, especially as people get older.

This article discusses how personality is defined, different theories on how personality forms, and what you can do if you are interested in changing certain aspects of your own personality.

What Is Personality Development?

Personality development refers to the process by which the organized thought and behavior patterns that make up a person's unique personality emerge over time. Many factors influence personality, including genetics and environment , how we were parented , and societal variables.

While personality is relatively stable, Colella notes that it isn't entirely fixed. "People can undergo changes in their attitudes, behaviors, and thought patterns in response to new experiences or personal growth,” she explains.

Perhaps most importantly, the ongoing interaction of all these influences continues to shape personality. Personality involves both inborn traits and the development of cognitive and behavioral patterns that influence how we think and act.

Temperament is a key part of personality that is determined by inherited traits. Character is an aspect of personality influenced by experience and social learning that continues to grow and change throughout life.

Personality development has been a major topic of interest for some of the most prominent thinkers in psychology. Since the inception of psychology as a separate science, researchers have proposed a variety of ideas to explain how and why personality develops.

Theories of Personality Development

Our personalities make us unique, but how does personality develop? What factors play the most important role in the formation of personality? Can personality change?

To answer these questions, many prominent thinkers have developed theories to describe the various steps and stages that occur during the development of personality. The following theories focus on several aspects of personality formation—including those that involve cognitive, social, and moral development.

Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development

In his well-known stage theory of psychosexual development , Sigmund Freud suggested that personality develops in stages that are related to specific erogenous zones. These stages are:

• Stage 1 : Oral stage (birth to 1 year)
• Stage 2 : Anal stage (1 to 3 years)
• Stage 3 : Phallic stage (3 to 6 years)
• Stage 4 : Latent period (age 6 to puberty)
• Stage 5 : Genital stage (puberty to death)

Freud also believed that failure to complete these stages would lead to personality problems in adulthood.

In addition to being one of the best-known thinkers in personality development, Sigmund Freud remains one of the most controversial. While he made significant contributions to the field of psychology, some of his more disputed and unproven theories, such as his theory of psychosexual development, have been rejected by modern scientists.

Freud's Structural Model of Personality

Freud not only theorized about how personality developed over the course of childhood, but he also developed a framework for how overall personality is structured.

According to Freud, the basic driving force of personality and behavior is known as the libido . This libidinal energy fuels the three components that make up personality: the id, the ego, and the superego.

• The id is the aspect of personality present at birth. It is the most primal part of the personality and drives people to fulfill their most basic needs and urges.
• The ego is the aspect of personality charged with controlling the urges of the id and forcing it to behave in realistic ways.
• The superego is the final aspect of personality to develop and contains all of the ideals, morals, and values imbued by our parents and culture.

According to Freud, these three elements of personality work together to create complex human behaviors. The superego attempts to make the ego behave according to these ideals. The ego must then moderate between the primal needs of the id, the idealistic standards of the superego, and reality.

Freud's concept of the id, ego, and superego has gained prominence in popular culture, despite a lack of support and considerable skepticism from many researchers.

While Freudian theory is less relevant today than it once was, it can be helpful to learn more about these theories in order to better understand the history of research on personality development.

Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development

Erik Erikson’s eight-stage theory of human development is another well-known theory in psychology. While it builds on Freud’s stages of psychosexual development, Erikson chose to focus on how social relationships impact personality development.

The theory also extends beyond childhood to look at development across the entire lifespan.

Erikson's eight stages are:

• Stage 1 : Trust versus mistrust (birth to 1 year)
• Stage 2 : Autonomy versus shame and doubt (1 to 2 years)
• Stage 3 : Initiative versus guilt (3 to 5 years)
• Stage 4 : Industry versus inferiority (6 to 11 years)
• Stage 5 : Identity versus role confusion (12 to 18 years)
• Stage 6 : Intimacy versus isolation (19 to 40 years)
• Stage 7 : Generativity versus stagnation (41 to 64 years)
• Stage 8 : Integrity versus despair (65 years to death)

At each stage, people face a crisis in which a task must be mastered. Those who successfully complete that stage emerge with a sense of mastery and well-being.

However, Erikson believed that those who do not resolve the crisis at a particular stage may struggle with those skills for the remainder of their lives.

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget’s  theory of cognitive development  remains one of the most frequently cited in psychology.

While many aspects of Piaget's theory have not stood the test of time, the central idea remains important today: Children think differently than adults .

According to Piaget, children progress through a series of four stages that are marked by distinctive changes in how they think. And how children think about themselves, others, and the world around them plays an essential role in personality development. 

Piaget's four stages are:

• Stage 1 : Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years)
• Stage 2 : Preoperational stage (2 to 7 years)
• Stage 3 : Concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years)
• Stage 4 : Formal operational stage (12 years and up)

Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development

Lawrence Kohlberg developed a theory of personality development that focused on the growth of moral thought. Building on a two-stage process proposed by Piaget, Kohlberg expanded the theory to include six different stages:

• Stage 1 : Obedience and punishment
• Stage 2 : Individualism and exchange
• Stage 3 : Developing good interpersonal relationships
• Stage 4 : Maintaining social order
• Stage 5 : Social contract and individual rights
• Stage 6 : Universal principles

These stages are separated by levels. Level one is the pre-conventional level, it includes stages one and two, and takes place from birth to 9 years. Level two is the conventional level, it includes stages three and four, and takes place from age 10 to adolescence. Level three is the post-conventional level, it includes stages five and six, and takes place in adulthood.

Although this theory includes six stages, Kohlberg felt that it was rare for people to progress beyond stage four, stressing that these moral development stages are not correlated with the maturation process.

Kohlberg's theory of moral development has been criticized for several different reasons. One primary criticism is that it does not accommodate different genders and cultures equally. Yet, the theory remains important in our understanding of how personality develops.

Why Personality Theories Matter

While these theories suggest different numbers and types of stages, and different ages for progressing from one stage to the next, they have all influenced what we know today about personality development.

5 Basic Personality Traits

The goal of personality development theories is to explain how we each develop our own unique characteristics and traits. While the list of options could be almost endless, most of these personality traits fall into five basic categories :

• Openness : Level of creativeness and responsiveness to change
• Conscientiousness : Level of organization and attention to detail
• Extraversion : Level of socialness and emotional expressiveness
• Agreeableness : Level of interest in others and cooperativeness
• Neuroticism : Level of emotional stability and moodiness

The "Big 5" is one of the most recognized models of personality and also the most widely used, though some suggest that it isn't comprehensive enough to cover the huge variety of personality traits that one can grow and develop.

Personality Development Tips

Theorists such as Freud believed that personality was largely set in stone fairly early in life. However, we now recognize that personality can change over time.

Research suggests that a person's broad traits are quite stable, but changes do happen, particularly as people age.

On a global level, people spend a lot of money on personal development, with this market bringing in more than $38 billion annually (and expected to grow). If you're interested in making positive changes to your personality, these tips can help:

Identify Your Current Traits

Colella notes that self-awareness and reflection are an essential part of personal growth. She suggests that you can start by learning more about your traits, strengths, and weaknesses.

Reflect on your behaviors and how they impact your life and relationships. This self-awareness lays the foundation for personal growth.

You won't know where to place your efforts if you don't identify the personality traits you need to work on. A personality test can provide an assessment of your current traits. Pick one or two traits to work on that you feel would help you grow as a person and focus on them. You can try our fast and free personality test as a good starting point:

Identify Your Values

Colella also suggests that it is important to identify your core values. You can do this by thinking about the values that are the most important to you. After you do this, you can prioritize your goals and better reflect on how your behaviors and actions align with your goals and values.

Set a Daily Personal Development Goal

Commit to doing at least one thing every day to help develop your personality. This doesn't have to be a big action either. Even baby steps will move you in the right direction.

Keep a Positive Mindset

It is also important to work on forging a growth mindset , Colella explains. This allows you to recognize that personality is not set it stone and can instead evolve over time. "Embrace challenges, learn from failures, and see setbacks as opportunities for growth," Colella says.

Changing yourself can be difficult, especially if you're working on a part of your personality you've had for a long time. Staying positive along the way helps you pay more attention to the pros versus the cons. It also makes the journey more enjoyable for you and everyone around you.

Be Confident

When you have something about yourself that you'd like to change, it can be easy to let your perceived imperfection reduce your confidence. Yet, you can be confident and continue to develop your personality in meaningful ways at the same time, giving you the best of both worlds while pursuing personality development.

Stepping outside your comfort zone can be challenging, Colella notes, but slowly expanding your horizons can lead to gradual growth. "Expanding your comfort zone involves taking small, manageable steps, gradually pushing your limits at a pace that feels comfortable for you," she explains.

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Orenstein GA, Lewis L.  Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development . In: StatPearls  [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing.

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Baldwin J. Kohlberg's stages of moral development and criticisms . J Eur Acad Res. 2016;6(1):26-35.

DeTienne KB, Ellertson CF, Ingerson MC, Dudley WR. Moral development in business ethics: An examination and critique . J Bus Ethics . 2021;170:429-448. doi:10.1007/s10551-019-04351-0

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Grand View Research. Personal development market size, share & trade analysis report by instrument (books, e-platforms, personal coaching/training, workshops), by focus area, by region, and segment forecasts, 2020 - 2027 .

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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Personality and Developmental Characteristics of Primary School Students ’ Personality Types

Associated data.

The datasets for this manuscript are not publicly available because the topic is not finished. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to corresponding author.

The aim of the current study was to investigate the personality characteristics and developmental characteristics of primary school students’ personality types in a cross-sectional sample of 10,366 Chinese children. The Personality Inventory for Primary School Student was used to evaluate primary school students’ personality. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to classify primary school students’ personality types. One-way ANOVA was used to explore the personality characteristics of personality types, and Chi-square tests were used to investigate grade and gender differences of primary school students’ personality types. Results showed that the primary school students could be divided into three personality types: the resilient, the overcontrolled, and the undercontrolled. Resilients had the highest scores, and undercontrollers had the lowest scores on all of five personality dimensions (intelligence, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability). The overcontrollers’ scores on personality were between the other two types, with lower emotional stability. As the grade level increased, the proportion of undercontrolled students in primary schools generally showed an upward trend and reached the maximum in grade 5. The proportion of resilient students in primary schools generally showed a downward trend. The proportion of resilient students was highest in grade 2 and lowest in grade 5. Girls were significantly more likely than boys to be resilient personality types, while boys were significantly more likely than girls to be undercontrolled personality types. The overcontrolled personality type did not show significant gender differences. Because of the undesirable internalizing problems related to overcontrollers and the externalizing problems related to undercontrollers, our results have implications for Chinese schools, families, and society in general.

Introduction

Personality has significant impacts on many aspects of people’s everyday lives, such as interpersonal relationships, health, academic performance, and subjective wellbeing ( Neyer et al., 2014 ; Briki, 2018 ; Gray and Pinchot, 2018 ; Stajkovic et al., 2018 ). The primary school stage is an important developmental period for accumulating knowledge and learning to understand society. It is also an important stage for children’s personality development ( Soto and Tackett, 2015 ). Previous research has shown that personality development in primary school can effectively predict crime in adulthood ( Kachaeva et al., 2017 ). In studies of personality development, two main strategies a variable-centered and a person-centered approach are being distinguished ( Donnellan and Robins, 2010 ).

Variable-centered approaches are primarily reflected in studies on personality dimensions or traits, such as the dimensions of the five-factor model (FFM) of personality, the most widely employed model ( Bergman and Magnusson, 1997 ; John et al., 2008 ). The FFM yields five personality dimensions: agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness. Personality is the psychological properties with culture attribute ( Li and Zhang, 2006 ; Zhang, 2011 ). Based on Chinese culture and the characteristics of children’s personalities, Yang (2014) used teachers’ free description and vocabulary to collect and code personality trait adjectives for primary school students in China. They decided that the personality construction of Chinese primary school students was composed of five dimensions: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and intelligence. Intelligence refers to the characteristics of individual self-awareness, intelligence, and talents, reflecting whether primary school students have their own independent ideas, high learning ability, and positive motivation in learning activities. Teachers’ assessment of intelligence was reflected in three aspects (intelligent, curiosity/creativity, and independent/enterprising). Western countries named the traits related to intelligence as openness. In addition to emphasizing the speed of brain reaction, it also emphasized appreciation of personal emotion, imagination, and the pursuit of a better life, beliefs, and values ( Carver and Scheier, 1996 ). In China, this dimension mainly reflects the speed of children’s brain reaction. This dimension also includes children’s independence and enterprising spirit ( Zhang, 2011 ). The dimension named as intelligence is more in line with Chinese educational philosophy. Cultural differences lead to differences in the connotations of personality traits involving intelligence.

Person-centered approaches study “types” identifying clusters of individuals with similar personality patterns ( Van Leeuwen et al., 2004 ). Person-centered approaches are concerned with how different dimensions are organized within the individual, which subsequently defines different types of person ( Herzberg and Roth, 2006 ). The typological approach emphasizes persons ( Hart et al., 2003 ). Personality types are intended specifically to represent the organization among traits that occurs within individuals ( Grumm and Collani, 2009 ). According to the results of several studies, the five personality traits in FFM can be combined with each other to form three personality types, resilient, undercontrolled, and overcontrolled ( Robins et al., 1996 ; Asendorpf and Van Aken, 1999 ; Asendorpf et al., 2001 ; Yang and Ma, 2014 ; Rosenström and Jokela, 2017 ). These three personality types have been repeatedly verified across different languages and cultures, different personality models, and different ages ( Donnellan and Robins, 2010 ; Chapman and Goldberg, 2011 ; Meeus et al., 2011 ; Alessandri et al., 2014 ; Leikas and Salmela-Aro, 2014 ; Specht et al., 2014 ; Yang and Ma, 2014 ). Previous research described the three personality types in terms of the FFM of personality description. Resilients were characterized by relatively high levels of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, emotional stability, and agreeableness. Overcontrollers were characterized by low emotional stability, with moderate levels of the other four dimensions. Undercontrollers were characterized by relatively low levels of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, emotional stability, and agreeableness ( Grumm and Collani, 2009 ; Zentner and Shiner, 2012 ; Yang and Ma, 2014 ; Chen, 2019 ; Zou et al., 2019 ). The resilient personality type is well adapted to society, verbally expressive, energetic, independent, self-confident, and able to adjust to situational demands using self-control. The overcontrolled personality type is socially maladaptive, emotionally brittle, interpersonally sensitive, tense, and inhibited prone to excessively restraining impulses. The undercontrolled personality type is socially maladaptive, impulsive, self-centered, manipulative, confrontational, disagreeable, and lacking in self-control ( Block and Block, 1980 ; Robins et al., 1996 ; Donnellan and Robins, 2010 ).

The identification of groups of persons is frequently done through cluster analysis (e.g., Magnusson and Bergman, 1990 ) or Q factor analysis (e.g., York and John, 1992 ). The goal of these analytic techniques is to maximize similarity among members of a group while minimizing resemblance of members of one group to members of all the others. These approaches have methodological limitations ( Klimstra et al., 2010 ). The number of types determined by these analytic techniques has the subjective judgment and theoretical orientation of the investigators. Moreover, the number of groups that is specified has implications for statistical analysis: If many groups are specified, then there may be few participants in each group, which makes parametric data analysis difficult. On the other hand, the formation of only a few groups may mean that participants have only limited resemblance to other participants in the same group, and consequently, viewing this group as representing a type of person can be misleading. There are no easy resolutions of this problem, which has led to calls for the development of new analytic techniques for person-centered research ( Singer and Ryff, 2001 ). LPA is an empirically driven method that defines taxonomies or classes of people based on common characteristics ( Lanza et al., 2003 ). LPA uses all observations of the continuous dependent variable to define these classes via maximum likelihood estimation ( Little and Rubin, 1987 ). Some studies point out that LPA is better than traditional Q factor analysis and cluster analysis ( Reinke et al., 2008 ). It not only eliminates the measurement errors in the construct, but also provides the researcher with more objective indices of fit to make up for the deficiencies of Q factor analysis and cluster analysis ( Bauer and Curran, 2004 ). Meeus et al. (2011) used LPA to divide adolescents into three personality types: the resilient, the overcontrolled, and the undercontrolled. This study found that as the age increased, the number of overcontrollers and undercontrollers decreased, whereas the number of resilients increased. Undercontrollers, in particular, were found to peak in early to middle adolescence. Asendorpf and van Aken (1999) classified the personality types of children from 4 to 10 years old, and found that more girls were rated as the resilient type than boys, and less girls were rated as the undercontrolled type than boys. However, in the context of Chinese culture, there are few studies on the personality characteristics and developmental characteristics of primary school students’ personality types.

Asendorpf and van Aken (1999) found that childhood personality types are good predictors of later development. Adjustment problems differ by personality type, which indicates the utility of conceptualizing students’ personalities in terms of types for both research and clinical practice ( Shiner and Caspi, 2003 ). Overcontrolled children may be especially at risk of developing internalizing problems (e.g., symptoms of depression and anxiety) due to their inhibited nature, whereas undercontrollers’ impulsivity may leave them vulnerable to the development of externalizing problems (e.g., aggression and attention problems; Yu et al., 2015 ; Achenbach et al., 2016 ; Bohane et al., 2017 ). Robins et al. (1996) found that undercontrollers had lower IQ scores, lower academic achievement at school, worse conduct, and more serious delinquency than overcontrollers and resilients. Focusing on personality types allows us to discern predictable patterns of risks to healthy development, helping teachers and parents educate children and intervene when necessary. Teachers and parents are more likely to prevent child maladaptive development based on developmental characteristics. Our research lays the foundation for psychologists to conduct future intervention research.

The current study aimed to investigate the personality characteristics of Chinese primary school students’ personality types and their developmental characteristics by grade and gender. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that (1) the primary school students would be divided into three personality types: the resilient, the overcontrolled, and the undercontrolled; (2) compared to the other two types, undercontrollers’ scores would be lower and resilients’ would be higher on all five personality dimensions (intelligence, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability), with the overcontrollers’ scores in between, with lower emotional stability; and (3) there would be significant grade and gender differences in primary school students’ personality types.

Materials and Methods

Participants and procedures.

We selected 21 primary schools in North China to issue the questionnaire. The questionnaire was used to evaluate primary school students by teachers. There were several classes for each grade and two teachers in each class. We took a multi-informant approach to reduce reporter bias in measurement of personality. Each student was assessed by two teachers; 636 teachers rated 10,366 primary school students (5,441 male and 4,925 female). There were 2,209 first graders, with an average age of 6.92 years old, 2,066 second graders, average age 8.06 years old, 2,218 third graders, average age 9.41 years old, 1,886 fourth graders, average age 10.03 years old, and 2,087 fifth graders, average age 11.24 years old. Written informed consent had been obtained from the parents’ guardians of all participants. All participants volunteered to join the experiments, and informed consents signed by their legal guardians.

Personality Inventory for Primary School Student

Teachers rated their students’ personality on the Personality Inventory for Primary School Student ( Zhang, 2011 ). The personality was measured using Zhang’s Chinese FFM, which was developed based on the original FFM. This personality inventory includes five dimensions, namely, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and intelligence. This inventory includes 62 items. All items were rated on a five-point Likert scale from 1 (very inaccurate) to 5 (very accurate). Emotional stability is an inverted dimension. Items rated as 1 point are converted into 5 points, and items rated as 2 points are converted into 4 points. For example, when criticized by the teacher, the student will immediately become angry or frustrated. This item is a reverse scoring. After reverse scoring, the total score of each personality dimension is calculated. The higher the score, the higher the development level of the personality dimension. This questionnaire has good reliability and validity in the Chinese cultural context ( Zhang, 2011 ). In order to investigate the degree of consistency of the teacher’s evaluations, we had two teachers in each class fill out the personality rating scale on all primary school students in the class at the same time. The rater reliability and the Cronbach’s alphas of scale are presented in Table 1 . The consistency of the two raters’ evaluations of primary school students indicated that the evaluation results were objective and credible.

The rater reliability and the Cronbach’s alphas of the scale.

Data Analysis

The SPSS 20.0 was used to conduct descriptive statistics and analysis of variance. Specifically, One-way ANOVA was used to explore the personality characteristics of personality types, and Chi-square tests were used to investigate the grade and gender differences of primary school students’ personality types. The Mplus 7.4 was used to conduct LPA. All data were treated with a statistical significance level of p < 0.05. LPA was executed to analyze primary school students’ personality types ( Muthén and Muthén, 2000 ). We chose the optimal model relying on the following criteria: Akaïke Information Criterion (AIC), Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), Sample-Size Adjusted Bayesian Information Criterion (aBIC), Likelihood Ratio Tests (LMR), Bootstrap Likelihood Ratio Test (BLRT), and Entropy ( Nylund et al., 2007 ). Smaller values of AIC, BIC, and aBIC indicate better models ( Schwarz, 1978 ). The range of entropy is between 0.00 and 1.00. Higher values of entropy indicate higher the classification accuracy ( Hix-Small et al., 2004 ). For the LMR and BLRT, a value of p smaller than 0.05 suggests that the k class model is better than the k-1 class model ( Asparouhov and Muthén, 2012 ). If some types in a k class model already appear in a k-1 class model, the k-1 class model will be selected according to the principle of model simplicity ( Muthén and Muthén, 2000 ). In order to make the model more universal, Fisher and Robie (2019) pointed out that the large sample size should be randomly divided into two small samples, and LPA should be done separately. The SPSS 20.0 was used to randomly split a large sample size into two small subsamples. One subsample was used for exploratory LPA. Another subsample was used for cross-validation.

Personality Characteristics of Primary School Students’ Personality Types

A total of 10,366 participants were randomly divided into two samples. Sample 1 ( n 1 = 5,183) and sample 2 ( n 2 = 5,183) were used for LPA, respectively. The results showed that the potential category classifications of the two samples were similar (see Table 2 ). AIC, BIC, and adjusted BIC of the three-class model and four-class model were smaller than other models, the entropy values were all above 0.8, and the value of p for LMR and BLRT was both significant, which indicates that these two models fit well and the correct rate of personality type classification is higher than other models. Wang and Bi (2018) pointed out that the final model should be determined in conjunction with the actual meaning of classification. In the four-class model, the characteristics of the two types in the middle overlap and should be regarded as one type. In other words, the personality characteristics of these two types were very similar (see Figure 1 ). According to the principle of model simplicity, the three-class model should be the optimal model. In addition, the four-class model did not meet the condition that each type accounts for at least 5% of the total sample ( Nagin, 2005 ). The three-class model has clearer and more concise outlines, and the indicators also meet the criteria for suitability of LPA. LPA diagrams of the two samples are presented in Figures 2 , ​ ,3. 3 . The results showed that the three-class model was the best model. It is reasonable to divide the personality of primary school students into three classes. This result is consistent with the number of types classified by Ma (2016) .

Latent profile analysis fitting index of personality dimension of primary school students ( n = 10,366).

Potential profile of the four-class model ( n 1 = 5,183).

Potential profile of the three-class model ( n 1 = 5183).

Potential profile of the three-class model ( n 2 = 5,183).

One-way ANOVA and multiple comparisons were used to describe the characteristics of each personality type (see Table 3 ). The third personality type had the highest scores on all five dimensions (intelligence, conscientiousness, extraversion, emotional stability, and agreeableness). According to Robins et al. (1996) , we identified this type as the resilient personality type. The score of the second type on personality was between the other two types, with lower emotional stability. According to Zentner and Shiner (2012) , we identified this type as the overcontrolled personality type. The first personality type had the lowest scores on all five dimensions. According to Ma (2016) , we identified this type as the undercontrolled personality type.

Descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, and post-hoc tests on personality types in five dimensions.

<, significantly lower; =, no significant difference; and >, significantly higher .

** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05.

Developmental Characteristics of Primary School Students’ Personality Types

In order to investigate the grade and gender differences in primary school students’ personality types, we first confirmed that the personality types were related to gender and grade (see Table 4 ). Results showed that personality types were indeed related to both grade ( χ 2 (8) = 217.016 ** , Φ = 0.102) and gender ( χ 2 (2) = 141.368 ** , Φ = 0.117). Since the interaction effects between grade and gender had no significant influence on personality type, we only examined the relationship between gender and personality type, and the relationship between grade and personality type. The second step was to examine the developmental characteristics of primary school students’ personality types in different grades. The population proportions presented in Figure 4 show the grade-related developmental trajectory of primary school students’ personality types. Chi-square tests were used to examine grade differences. Finally, a Chi-square test was conducted to examine gender differences.

The number and ratio of each type of personality in each grade and gender.

Developmental trends of primary school students’ personality types.

Results showed that among the undercontrolled primary school students, there were significant differences between different grades ( χ 2 (4) = 99.413 ** , Φ = 0.098). The proportion of students in grade 1 was significantly lower than grade 2 ( χ 2 (1) = 22.091 ** , Φ = 0.072), grade 3 ( χ 2 (1) = 17.888 ** , Φ = 0.064), grade 4 ( χ 2 (1) = 34.738 ** , Φ = 0.092), and grade 5 ( χ 2 (1) = 96.101 ** , Φ = 0.150). There was no significant difference in the proportion between grade 2 and grade 3 ( χ 2 (1) = 0.241, Φ = 0.008). There was no significant difference in the proportion between grade 2 and grade 4 ( χ 2 (1) = 1.629, Φ = 0.020). The proportion of students in grade 2 was significantly lower than that in grade 5 ( χ 2 (1) = 25.400 ** , Φ = 0.078). The proportion of students in grade 3 was significantly lower than grade 4 ( χ 2 (1) = 3.113 △ , Φ = 0.028) and grade 5 ( χ 2 (1) = 30.953 ** , Φ = 0.086). The proportion of students in grade 4 was significantly lower than grade 5 ( χ 2 (1) = 13.290 ** , Φ = 0.058). This result showed that as the grade level increased, the proportion of undercontrolled students in primary schools generally showed an upward trend. Specifically, this type showed an upward trend from grade 1 to grade 2, a flat trend from grade 2 to grade 3, and an upward trend from grade 3 to grade 5. The proportion of boys in the undercontrolled primary school students was significantly higher than that of the girls ( χ 2 (1) = 108.128 ** , Φ = 0.102). Our results revealed a significant gender difference in the undercontrolled primary school students.

Among the overcontrolled primary school students, there were significant differences between different grades ( χ 2 (4) = 82.138 ** , Φ = 0.089). The proportion of students in grade 1 was significantly higher than grade 2 ( χ 2 (1) = 38.600 ** , Φ = 0.095), grade 4 ( χ 2 (1) = 8.321 * , Φ = 0.045), and grade 5 ( χ 2 (1) = 4.860 * , Φ = 0.034). The proportion of students in grade 1 was significantly lower than grade 3 ( χ 2 (1) = 5.960 * , Φ = 0.037). The proportion of students in grade 2 was significantly lower than grade 3 ( χ 2 (1) = 72.867 ** , Φ = 0.132), grade 4 ( χ 2 (1) = 9.870 * , Φ = 0.050), and grade 5 ( χ 2 (1) = 15.746 ** , Φ = 0.062). The proportion of students in grade 3 was significantly higher than grade 4 ( χ 2 (1) = 27.003 ** , Φ = 0.082) and grade 5 ( χ 2 (1) = 21.032 ** , Φ = 0.071). There was no significant difference in the proportion between grade 4 and grade 5 ( χ 2 (1) = 0.533, Φ = 0.012). This result showed that the proportion of overcontrolled students was highest in grade 3 and lowest in grade 2. There was no significant difference in the proportion of boys and girls ( χ 2 (1) = 0.907, Φ = 0.010).

Among the resilient primary school students, there were significant differences between different grades ( χ 2 (4) = 138.021 ** , Φ = 0.115). The proportion of students in grade 1 was significantly lower than grade 2 ( χ 2 (1) = 4.975 * , Φ = 0.034). The proportion of students in grade 1 was significantly higher than grade 3 ( χ 2 (1) = 46.181 ** , Φ = 0.103), grade 4 ( χ 2 (1) = 5.947 * , Φ = 0.038), and grade 5 ( χ 2 (1) = 55.306 ** , Φ = 0.114). The proportion of students in grade 2 was significantly higher than grade 3 ( χ 2 (1) = 78.852 ** , Φ = 0.137), grade 4 ( χ 2 (1) = 20.578 ** , Φ = 0.072), and grade 5 ( χ 2 (1) = 90.245 ** , Φ = 0.147). The proportion of students in grade 3 was significantly lower than grade 4 ( χ 2 (1) = 17.140 ** , Φ = 0.065). There was no significant difference in the proportion between grade 3 and grade 5 ( χ 2 (1) = 0.452, Φ = 0.010). The proportion of students in grade 4 was significantly higher than grade 5 ( χ 2 (1) = 22.820 ** , Φ = 0.076). This result showed that as the grade level increased, the proportion of resilient students in primary schools generally showed a downward trend. The proportion of resilient students was highest in grade 2 and lowest in grade 5. The result showed that the proportion of resilient primary school boys was significantly lower than that of the girls ( χ 2 (1) = 87.235 ** , Φ = 0.092). There was a significant gender difference in resilient primary school students.

Classification and Personality Characteristics of Students’ Personality Types

We divided the primary school students into three personality types using LPA. The types, resilient, overcontrolled, and undercontrolled, were consistent with previous research results ( Donnellan and Robins, 2010 ; Meeus et al., 2011 ; Rosenström and Jokela, 2017 ). We used five personality dimensions as outcome variables and type as grouping variable to do a one-way analysis of variance; resilients had the highest scores, undercontrollers had the lowest scores on all of the five personality dimensions, and overcontrollers’ scores were between the other two types, with lower emotional stability, consistent with previous research results ( Zentner and Shiner, 2012 ; Chen, 2019 ; Zou et al., 2019 ). The overcontrolled type represented the majority of the total sample. This finding was similar to the results of research by Ma (2016) , who also found that the overcontrolled group accounted for the majority in China. This may reflect the limitations of Chinese social norms ( Xie et al., 2016 ). Chang et al. (2011) considered students in China to be rule-abiding in their behavior patterns and encouraged to be compliant by Chinese teachers, which reflects the high requirements and expectations of self-control for students in China’s primary education system on the whole. This would explain why most Chinese students would fall in the overcontrolled group. The overcontrolled children were described by teachers as prosocial, well-liked by children and adults, and obedient and not as aggressive, self-assertive, and competitive. Resilients scored high on all five dimensions. The resilient children were described by self-confidence, independence, verbal fluency, and an ability to concentrate on tasks ( Robins et al., 1996 ). Chinese teachers do not have a positive attitude toward all these characteristics. Compared with independent thinkers, teachers actually prefer overcontrolled students. Therefore, the teacher’s assessment of students may have observer bias. In our study, we took a multi-informant approach to reduce reporter bias in measurement of personality. Undercontrollers scored low on all five dimensions. The undercontrolled children were described by impulsivity, disobedience, stubbornness, and physical activity ( Robins et al., 1996 ). Some of these characteristics might be considered advantages in the United States (e.g., being stubborn, physically active, uninhibited, and disobedient).

Developmental Characteristics of Students’ Personality Types

We found that as the grade level increased, the proportion of undercontrolled students in primary schools generally showed an upward trend. Specifically, this type showed an upward trend from grade 1 to grade 2, a flat trend from grade 2 to grade 3, and an upward trend from grade 3 to grade 5. The proportion of resilient students in primary schools generally showed a downward trend. The proportion of resilient students was highest in grade 2 and lowest in grade 5. In the whole primary school stage, overcontrolled students always made up the majority. Individual physical and mental development and the learning atmosphere change as children progress through the grades, and those changes are reflected in the gradual decrease in the scores of certain personality dimensions ( Galambos and Costigan, 2003 ). This is especially true for the non-adaptive undercontrolled primary school students. At the beginning of formal nine-year compulsory education, primary school students are in a transition period; they have not yet adapted to the changes in the learning environment, so their extraversion, openness, and emotional stability are on a downward trend ( Soto et al., 2011 ; Van den Akker et al., 2014 ). The results of our study imply that middle-grade pupils have basically adapted to school, and most of their personality dimensions reflect a period of steady development ( Yang et al., 2016 ). Therefore, the proportion of undercontrolled primary school students is relatively stable in the third and fourth grades. The proportion of undercontrolled primary school students increases rapidly after fourth grade, however. Entering the upper grades, primary school students not only face increased learning pressure, restrained creativity, reduced activity time, and decreased activity levels, but also physical and psychological changes. These changes are reflected in the declining trend of agreeableness, intelligence, extraversion, and conscientiousness ( Van den Akker et al., 2010 , 2014 ; Soto et al., 2011 ). This leads to an increase in the proportion of undercontrolled students and a decrease in the proportion of resilient students. At this age, resilient students are more likely to become undercontrolled or overcontrolled ( Chen, 2019 ).

The proportion of girls with the resilient personality type was significantly higher than that of boys; conversely, the proportion of boys with the undercontrolled personality type was significantly higher than that of girls. The overcontrolled personality type did not show significant gender differences. The gender difference in primary school students’ personality types is consistent with the results of previous studies ( Asendorpf and Van Aken, 1999 ). Gender differences in personality are either due to physical differences or due to gender socialization in childhood ( Van den Akker et al., 2014 ). Chinese social culture gives different behaviors and attitudes suitable for boys and girls. In the process of Chinese gender role socialization, girls are expected to show the gentleness, dignity, and virtue of a “lady” who adapts to the environment and exhibits self-control. Boys are expected to be “brave” and “fearless” and are encouraged to show impulsiveness, seek stimulus, and otherwise exhibit poor inhibition. Physiologically, girls secrete fewer male hormones than boys and then adopt more mature self-regulation methods when coping with stressful events. They usually show less impulsive and aggressive behaviors. Therefore, boys who cannot effectively restrain impulses and adapt to the environment are more inclined to become undercontrolled primary school students.

Primary school students could be divided into three personality types: the resilient, the overcontrolled, and the undercontrolled. Resilients had the highest scores, and undercontrollers had the lowest scores on all of five personality dimensions. The overcontrollers’ scores on personality were between the other two types, with lower emotional stability. As the grade level increased, the proportion of undercontrolled students in primary schools generally showed an upward trend and reached the maximum in grade 5. The proportion of resilient students in primary schools generally showed a downward trend. The proportion of resilient students was highest in grade 2 and lowest in grade 5. The proportion of girls with the resilient personality type was significantly higher than that of boys; conversely, the proportion of boys with the undercontrolled personality type was significantly higher than that of girls. The overcontrolled personality type did not show significant gender differences.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Jilin University Ethics Committee. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian.

Author Contributions

YY designed the experiment, prepared the materials, and performed the experiment. YY and YZ analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Funding. This study was sponsored and funded by the Humanities and Social Science Foundation of China, State Education Ministry (Grant No. 20YJC190029).

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The Role of School in Adolescents’ Identity Development. A Literature Review

• REVIEW ARTICLE
• Open access
• Published: 26 December 2018
• Volume 31 , pages 35–63, ( 2019 )

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• Monique Verhoeven   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9931-3968 1 ,
• Astrid M. G. Poorthuis 2 &
• Monique Volman 1  

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Schools can play an important role in adolescents’ identity development. To date, research on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development is scattered across research fields that employ different theoretical perspectives on identity. The aim of this literature review was to integrate the findings on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development from different research fields and to provide schools and teachers with insights into how adolescents’ identity development can be supported. Using constant comparative analysis, 111 studies were analyzed. We included articles on personal and social identity and on school-related identity dimensions. Three groups of studies emerged. First, studies on how schools and teachers unintentionally impact adolescents’ identity showed that, at school, messages may unintentionally be communicated to adolescents concerning who they should or can be through differentiation and selection, teaching strategies, teacher expectations, and peer norms. Second, studies on how schools and teachers can intentionally support adolescents’ identity development showed that different types of explorative learning experiences can be organized to support adolescents’ identity development: experiences aimed at exploring new identity positions (in-breadth exploration), further specifying already existing self-understandings (in-depth exploration), and reflecting on self-understandings (reflective exploration). The third group suggests that explorative learning experiences must be meaningful and situated in a supportive classroom climate in order to foster adolescents’ identity development. Together, the existing studies suggest that schools and teachers are often unaware of the many different ways in which they may significantly impact adolescents’ identity development.

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Introduction

Identity development is an important task in adolescence. Adolescents are supposed to be concerned with developing educational and professional goals while shaping an image of who they are and want to be. Previous research indicates that a relatively clear and stable identity makes people more resilient, reflective, and autonomous in the pursuit of important life decisions, while promoting a sense of competence (e.g., Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Kroger et al. 2010 ). However, it has been argued that developing a clear and stable identity has become increasingly challenging due to processes of individualization, emancipation, and migration (e.g., Beck et al. 1994 ). School—a place where adolescents spend a lot of time—is an important context where adolescents’ identity development can be supported: Here, teachers can help adolescents to explore the identity implications of the new ideas, activities, or possibilities they are introduced to at school (e.g., Coll and Falsafi 2010 ; Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Kaplan and Flum 2009 ; Kaplan and Flum 2012 ; Rich and Schachter 2012 ; Schachter and Galili-Schachter 2012 ; Schachter and Rich 2011 ; Silseth and Arnseth 2011 ).

To date, the emerging body of literature on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development is scattered across different academic disciplines (e.g., Schachter and Rich 2011 ). Together, these studies cover a wide range of theoretical perspectives on identity development, without there being a common research base. Scholars use the same terminology—identity—while often relating to merely a small share of the studies performed on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development and while being seemingly unaware of work performed by scholars who adopt different theoretical perspectives and, consequently, research designs.

The scattered research field may cause research gaps and ways in which research from different theoretical perspectives can complement each other to be overlooked. Additionally, it remains difficult for scholars, schools, and teachers to determine what insights the literature on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development does and does not yet provide, and, therefore, how the development of adolescents’ identities can best be supported in school.

In this paper, we review the literature on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development to answer the following research question: “What insights does the existing literature provide us into the role of educational processes in adolescents’ personal, social, and school- and learning-related identity development?.” We found literature on the influence of school experiences on adolescents’ racial, cultural, ethnic, and gender identity too, and we acknowledge that education plays an important role in the development of these identity dimensions. However, the articles on the role of school in the development of these identity dimensions form an extensive research field that would require a separate literature review (see, e.g., a review study on the racial identity development of African-American adolescents by DeCuir-Gunby 2009 ). Therefore, we decided to delimit our research scope to general identity dimensions (i.e., personal and social identity) and more circumscribed identity dimensions that are education-related.

The aim of our literature review is threefold: to present an overview of what insights articles, in which different perspectives on identity development are employed, provide us into the role of school in adolescents’ identity development; to derive practical implications from the literature to help schools and teachers support adolescents’ identity development; and to identify research gaps while outlining future research directions to further examine the role of school in adolescents’ identity development.

Literature Search

To find relevant studies, we consulted five databases that cover the disciplines of psychology, education, and the social sciences: PsycINFO, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Web of Science, Sociological Abstracts, and Google Scholar. Two search strings were developed, of which the first regarded the population of adolescent students and consisted of the following keywords: secondary education , middle schools , middle school education , middle school students , junior high schools , junior high school students , high schools , high school students , and high school education . This search string was combined with a search string on identity development that consisted of the keywords identity formation , identity development , identity construction , identity work , and identity process . A more elaborate description of our search strategy can be found in Appendix A (Online Supplement). The search was performed on 22 October 2015 and focused on peer-reviewed articles in English that were published between 2005 and 2015. In total, the search resulted in 3599 unique articles.

Selection and Analysis of the Literature

The abstracts of all 3599 articles were read by the first author to establish which studies possibly met our inclusion criteria. An overview of our inclusion criteria is presented in Table 1 . First, only articles using the term identity were included in the review study. Hence, to delimit the scope of the review study, we did not select literature on identity-related concepts such as self-concept (Marsh 1990 ) or possible selves (Oyserman et al. 2006 ). Second, we included articles investigating adolescents’ personal and social identity development. When it comes to more circumscribed identity dimensions, we included articles on the development of adolescents’ school- and learning-related identity dimensions (e.g., mathematics identity, learner identity). Third, we only selected literature that focused on the influence of educational processes on adolescents’ identity development. Studies in which school was merely described as a setting in which adolescents spend their time were excluded from the selection. Fourth, in this stage of the process of literature selection, we did not include studies that were published more than 10 years before we performed our search. We chose to do so because of practical reasons, namely, the limits of the project budget and the time constraints that we were faced with. Finally, we included both empirical and theoretical studies, because we were not exclusively interested in empirical findings regarding the role of school in adolescents’ identity development but also in how these findings could be interpreted.

Based on our inclusion criteria, 176 articles were included in the review. Subsequently, the authors, in pairs, read the abstracts of these articles for two purposes: first, to get an initial overview of the studies in our selection; second, to develop a preliminary coding scheme to analyze the full texts of the articles. In this stage, while being concerned presenting an overview of what insights articles that are grounded in different perspectives on identity development provide us on the role of school in adolescents’ identity development, we generated codes for the explicitly mentioned theoretical perspectives on identity development. We also wanted to know what research methods and designs were used by scholars who adopt different theoretical perspectives on identity development. Therefore, we coded the abstracts, when possible, for methodological information (i.e., research design, sample, type of data collection). We wanted to be responsive to the various identity dimensions that the different studies focused on, which is why we coded for these (e.g., literacy identity, science identity) too. Finally, to disentangle what insights the existing literature provides into the role of school in adolescents’ identity development, the abstracts were coded for the educational processes that were explicitly addressed in the literature. We stayed very close to the text in coding the abstracts. For example, codes such as “Role of teacher: negative non-verbal approach of some students,” “Role of teacher: paid attention to low performing students,” and “Role of teacher: explicitly communicating positive expectations towards students” were assigned to the abstracts.

In this process, we discovered that the articles could be allocated to at least one of the following three categories: (1) studies that provide insights into the educational processes through which schools, teachers, and peers may unintentionally (and often negatively) shape adolescents’ identity development; (2) studies that provide insights into the educational processes through which schools and teachers may intentionally foster adolescents’ identity development; and (3) studies that provide insights into the preconditions to intentionally support adolescents’ identity development in school. Aiming to contribute to the integration of research findings across different research fields, we categorized the studies first by the type of educational process that they identified and second by the theoretical perspective they were grounded in.

Next, the first author read and summarized the full texts. After reading the first author’s reports on the literature, the full research team decided to exclude another 71 articles from the selection that, based on the full text, proved not to meet the inclusion criteria. To prevent ourselves from overlooking key publications in the research field under study that may have been published either before or after 2005, we performed citation tracking, as recommended by Greenhalgh and Peacock ( 2005 ). We kept a list of relevant articles that were referred to three times or more as concerning the role of school in adolescents’ identity development in the articles we had already selected, and we added them to the selection when they met our inclusion criteria ( n  = 6), apart from the criterion concerning the publication date. As a consequence, our final selection of literature comprised 111 articles.

Once we had further narrowed down our selection of literature to 111 articles, the first author coded the full papers with the previously developed coding scheme. Constant comparative analysis was used (e.g., Glaser and Strauss 1967 ) to compare and group the various codes on the explicitly mentioned educational processes in order to distill overarching processes from the data. To provide an illustration, the earlier mentioned codes “Role of teacher: negative non-verbal approach of some students,” “Role of teacher: paid attention to low performing students,” and “Role of teacher: explicitly communicating positive expectations towards students” were combined in the overarching process “Teacher expectations.” In a similar way, we distinguished other unintentional educational processes (selection practices and differentiation, teaching strategies, and peer norms), intentional processes (in-breadth exploration, in-depth exploration, and reflective exploration), and preconditions (meaningful learning experiences and a supportive classroom climate). Whereas some articles focused on one of these educational processes, others concerned the role of various processes (also see Table 2 ). The second and third author critically monitored the entire coding process and, in case of doubt, additional research team discussions were held. In Table 3 through Table 11 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), we alphabetically ordered the studies for the various educational processes and preconditions that we found and present brief summaries of each of the articles.

Characteristics of the Literature

The 111 articles were found across a wide variety of scientific journals ( n  = 80). In total, 19 of the 111 articles were theoretical in nature. Among the empirical research papers, six articles were quantitative in nature and another set of seven articles employed a mixed-methods design. Seventy-eight articles exclusively used qualitative research methods and generally presented small case studies. Of these qualitative studies, 60 reported longitudinal research. Different identity dimensions were studied in the literature, ranging from science identities and art identities to learner identities on a more general level and personal identity on an even more abstract level. Personal and social identities were investigated in respectively 21 and 11 articles. Of the more circumscribed school-related identity dimensions, studies on adolescents’ Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics identity (STEM; n  = 35), learner identity ( n  = 18), and student identity ( n  = 14) were most prevalent. The studies were conducted in a variety of settings—e.g., out-of-school science programs, literacy classes, schools’ hallways—and among a variety of samples such as bilingual high school students, honors students in a science class, or girls attending a middle school in a rural area. The majority of studies ( n  = 62) was based on data that were collected in the USA.

Theoretical Perspectives on Identity Development

Different theoretical perspectives on identity development can be found in the studies included in our literature review. Half of the articles in our literature selection understood identity from sociocultural perspectives ( n  = 55). The remaining articles were based on psychosocial perspectives ( n  = 8), social psychological perspectives ( n  = 4), sociological perspectives ( n  = 4), a combination thereof ( n  = 14), or they did not explicitly mention a particular conceptualization of identity development ( n  = 26). In this section of the present paper, each of the identified perspectives will be discussed based on publications that were referred to in our selection of literature as core theoretical publications that form the foundations of the various theoretical perspectives on identity development. In the next sections, the findings that we distilled from the literature on the various educational processes through which adolescents’ identity development may be influenced will be discussed in relation to the theoretical perspectives on identity development that are employed in the selected articles (also see Table 2 ). In doing so, articles in which perspectives on identity development are (often somewhat eclectically) combined and articles in which no particular theoretical perspective on identity development is mentioned will be discussed together with the studies from the perspective they most strongly appear to relate to in terms of research focus and employed research methods. More information on the combined perspectives can be found in Table 3 through Table 11 in Appendix B (Online Supplement).

Sociocultural Perspectives

Researchers who employ a sociocultural perspective generally understand identity as a multidimensional phenomenon rather than a single entity (e.g., Gee 2001 ; Holland et al. 1998 ; Holland and Lave 2001 ): People are thought to develop a range of self-understandings, for example as a science student (a science identity), a reader (literacy identity), or a music student (a musical identity). On a more general level, people are thought to integrate these self-understandings into a learner identity, a student identity (the person one is in school, not exclusively concerning who one is as a learner), and a social identity (one’s societal position in terms of superiority and inferiority). On an even more abstract level, people are thought to integrate these identity dimensions, together with self-understandings that are neither school- nor learning-related, in their personal identity. Scholars adopting sociocultural perspectives understand a person’s identity to develop through this person’s participation in various sociocultural contexts, such as home, school, and work (e.g., Holland et al. 1998 ; Holland and Lave 2001 ; Wenger 1998 ). These contexts are social in the sense that in every context, through interaction and negotiation, different identity positions—or social roles—are made available, such as those of the creative, ambitious, and/or cooperative person. These contexts are cultural in the sense that they are characterized by specific sets of tools, norms, and values that guide people’s actions, goals, and ideas about appropriate ways to reach those goals (e.g., Holland et al. 1998 ). Researchers who understand identity development from a sociocultural perspective are concerned with how identity positions, and the way these positions are evaluated (for example, girls may not be stimulated to identify with technology; Volman and Ten Dam 2007 ), inform adolescents’ identities. They are also interested in how the tools, norms, and values that are explicitly or implicitly communicated through educational activities and learning contents impact adolescents’ identities. Based on adolescents’ previous encounters with tools, norms, values, and identity positions, adolescents are thought to develop their self-understandings. Moreover, these self-understandings are understood to inform adolescents’ current decisions and future goals. In other words, adolescents’ self-understandings connect their past, present, and future (e.g., Holland et al. 1998 ; Wenger 1998 ). Some sociocultural scholars examine identities as narratives. The primary interest of these scholars is in the self-understandings people share, for example in interviews, and how these self-understandings are informed by people’s experiences with tools, norms, values, and identity positions in the school context (e.g., Solomon 2007 ). Other sociocultural researchers use classroom observations to observe both the actions and activities of teachers and peers (that reflect certain norms, values, and available identity positions, while providing insights into often used tools) and adolescents’ demonstrated engagement in school and school subjects, as an indication of their identities (e.g., Bartlett 2007 ). A third group of sociocultural scholars in our literature selection combines the former two strategies and studies identity development through the interplay between adolescents’ engagement in school and their shared self-understandings by employing various ethnographic research methods (e.g., Anderson 2007 ).

Psychosocial Perspectives

Psychosocial perspectives are often adopted by scholars whose main focus is on the internal, psychological processes of a person’s identity development (e.g., Negru-Subtirica et al. 2015 ; Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry 2008 ). In the studies in our literature selection that adopted psychosocial perspectives, two key stages in the identity development of adolescents are distinguished: exploration and commitment. The process of exploration concerns the inquiry into new possible interests as well as the trying out of new activities in order to learn what values one considers as important and what goals one deems worth pursuing. In the process of commitment, adolescents are thought to make durable life decisions, for example when it comes to their education, profession, and worldview (Erikson 1968 ; Marcia 1993 ). With regard to the role of school in adolescents’ identity development, some researchers who employ a psychosocial perspective are concerned with educational activities and strategies that either foster or hinder exploration and commitment processes. These studies stress the importance of opportunities to try out and reflect upon various activities (e.g., Charland 2010 ). Other studies in our literature selection that employ a psychosocial perspective focus on the effect of educational characteristics (such as education level) on the identity stage in which adolescents find themselves (e.g., Negru-Subtirica et al. 2015 ; Sica 2009 ; Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry 2008 ). Scholars who adopt a psychosocial perspective are generally concerned with the process of identity development, rather than with the content of specific identity dimensions. Consequently, large-scale, quantitative survey studies that examine the developmental stage of adolescents’ identity are more common in this research field than in the sociocultural one.

Social Psychological Perspectives

Scholars adopting a social psychological perspective understand a person’s identity to consist of a social and a personal part (Tajfel 1978 ; Tajfel and Turner 1986 ). Of these two parts, the former concerns one’s, “knowledge of his membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel 1978 , p. 63). The extent to which one identifies with the social groups one knows to be a member of and the extent to which one has strong emotions regarding these group memberships (in terms of these social groups being inferior, equal, or superior to other social groups) is what constructs the personal part of one’s identity at a given point in time (Tajfel 1978 ; Tajfel and Turner 1986 ).

When it comes to the role of school in adolescents’ identity development, some scholars employing a social psychological perspective are interested in the attributes adolescents themselves ascribe to other groups of adolescents that, for example, differ from them when it comes to the high school track they are in (e.g., a prevocational track, a pre-academic track; Jonsson and Beach 2013 ). Others are more concerned with adolescents’ perceptions of the attributes other people (e.g., society in general) assign to adolescents in different high school tracks (e.g., Knigge and Hannover 2011 ) or in schools with a low- or high-status reputation (Marcouyeux and Fleury-Bahi 2011 ). Generally, survey studies that may comprise both open and closed questions are performed by scholars who adopt a social psychological perspective (e.g., Knigge and Hannover 2011 ; Marcouyeux and Fleury-Bahi 2011 ).

Sociological Perspectives

Like scholars adopting a social psychological perspective, researchers who employ a sociological perspective are concerned with adolescents’ group membership, the evaluation thereof, and the extent to which adolescents identify with these groups. Additionally, though, scholars who ground their work in sociological perspectives are interested in how group membership serves to include some people, while excluding others as a means to acquire status. The primary focus of scholars employing sociological perspectives is on how people move in societal power structures, create groups, and try to use their own individual agency to represent themselves in ways that they desire (Côté 2002 ; Foucault 1980 ).

Some scholars who employ a sociological perspective examine how people in adolescents’ school contexts (e.g., peers and teachers) can help them to use their agency to position themselves in desired ways (e.g., Robb et al. 2007 ). Others focus on how educational policies or discourses create new membership groups of achievers and failures (e.g., Anagnostopoulos 2006 ). Because scholars who adopt a sociological perspective are concerned with how structures are reproduced and with how people (can) use their agency, they generally employ qualitative research methods ranging from classroom observations and student reports, to focus groups and interviews.

The Hidden Curriculum: How Schools and Teachers May Unintentionally Affect Adolescents’ Identity Development

In our analysis of the literature, we identified 52 articles that focused on educational processes through which schools and teachers may unintentionally (and often negatively) play a role in adolescents’ identity development. These studies presented in these articles are often performed in formal education settings ( n  = 48) and concern educational processes that are part of what could be called the “hidden curriculum” (Jackson 1968 ): through these processes, messages can be implicitly communicated to adolescents about who they are, should, and can be.

Selection Practices and Differentiation

Twelve exclusively empirical studies in our literature selection addressed the role selection practices at the school level or differentiation processes at the classroom level may unintentionally play in the development of adolescents’ identities. As can be derived from Table 3 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), seven of these articles concern qualitative research, four quantitative research, and one mixed-methods research.

The ethnographic studies by Solomon ( 2007 ) and Yi ( 2013 ) that are grounded in a sociocultural perspective together with ethnographic studies by Hoffman ( 2012 ) and Barnett ( 2006 ) that respectively combine perspectives on identity development or do not explicitly mention one focus on the link between ability grouping and adolescents’ identities. These articles are concerned with adolescents’ sense of proficiency in and belonging to mathematics classes (Solomon 2007 ), English as a Second Language classes (ESL; Yi 2013 ), wind band classes (Hoffman 2012 ), and cheerleading and dancing teams (Barnett 2006 ). In these school-related contexts, the contents of, respectively, the mathematics, student, musical, and social, personal and school identities that adolescents develop were examined. Together, the studies indicate that adolescents who are allocated to a high status group—and hence to whom certain positively evaluated identity positions were available—understand themselves as having something to contribute to their class, whereas this is not the case for other adolescents. The studies also found that adolescents in high status groups seemed to be rather engaged in class (which was considered to be an indication of their domain-specific identities), whereas the opposite applied to adolescents who were denied access to high status groups. Next, three survey studies in which psychosocial perspectives are employed, focused on the degree of identity exploration that adolescents in various school tracks engage in (Negru-Subtirica et al. 2015 ; Sica 2009 ; Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry 2008 ). Two of these studies found that adolescents in prevocational tracks were less likely to explore what vocational goals they deem worth pursuing later on in life than adolescents in pre-academic tracks (Negru-Subtirica et al. 2015 ; Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry 2008 ). However, Sica ( 2009 ) found that the former group of adolescents did engage in identity exploration but often out of a fear for who they might become (out of a fear to sense emptiness, or to forget about their dreams), whereas the latter group of adolescents tend to engage in identity exploration based on a positive perception of their future (Sica 2009 ).

Negru-Subtirica et al. ( 2015 ) and Solomontos-Kountouri and Hurry ( 2008 ) argued that their findings could possibly be explained by the negative image of the prevocational track, combined with these students’ limited career prospects and the associated stigma of poverty. Yet, a survey study by Pfeiffer et al. ( 2012 )—in which no particular perspective on identity development was mentioned—suggests that adolescents who are in shorter-lasting tracks (such as the prevocational one) are more likely to be further in the development of their identities, because they will leave school earlier and are therefore closer to the developmental deadline of choosing a career path than students in longer-lasting tracks (like the pre-academic track). Hence, evidence on the role of tracking in adolescents’ process of identity development remains inconclusive.

Articles in which a social psychological perspective is adopted, either examined the attributes adolescents themselves ascribed to students in prevocational and pre-academic high school tracks (Jonsson and Beach 2013 ), or the attributes others ascribe to these students according to adolescents’ own perceptions (Knigge and Hannover 2011 ). For example, Jonsson and Beach ( 2013 ) asked 224 students from the pre-academic track in Sweden to list ten descriptive attributes of a typical student in the pre-academic track and ten descriptive attributes of a typical student in the prevocational track. These adolescents described the former type of student as hard working , with good career prospects , compliant and mainstream , whereas they assigned the latter type of student the following labels: daring , challenging toward authority , rebellious , lazy , substance abusing , and with defective language. Similar patterns were found by Knigge and Hannover’s ( 2011 ) German mixed-methods study when adolescents were asked what people in general think about students in the prevocational and students in the pre-academic track.

Two ethnographic articles in which a sociological perspective is employed were concerned with differentiation at the classroom level and found that adolescents’ experiences with school success or failure—being promoted or demoted (Čeplak 2012 ) or taking an obligatory homework class (Anagnostopoulos 2006 )—created socially constructed yet real status groups of students. However, neither these studies nor the studies that are grounded in a social psychological perspective (Jonsson and Beach 2013 ; Knigge and Hannover 2011 ) provide insights into whether and how selection or differentiation processes are internalized by adolescents in their identities.

Teaching Strategies

We identified 16 studies regarding the role teaching strategies may unintentionally play in the development of adolescents’ identities. As is shown in Table 4 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), these articles comprise one theoretical paper and 15 ethnographic studies. The nine studies in which sociocultural perspectives on identity development are used are concerned with (1) how teaching strategies inform opportunities to engage in the classroom and with the subject matter as constrained by tools, norms, and values and (2) how teaching strategies make certain identity positions available in the classroom. An illustrative example is provided by Horn ( 2008 ). In her longitudinal ethnographic research, Horn compared the teaching strategies in mathematics classes of two different high schools. In one of the schools, students were provided with cumulative sets of short mathematical problems to work on individually. In the other school, students and teachers collaboratively developed activities that supported multiple-ability group work. At the first school, the teaching strategy unintentionally communicated that “Math is something that you only have to remember everything that you’ve ever learned before. And you get to a point somewhere along the line where your brain says, ‘My brain is full.’ And you can’t go on” (student quote in Horn 2008 , p. 220). Hence, the first school appeared to invite adolescents to understand themselves as “just not a mathematics person” as soon as the cumulative learning content got too advanced. However, based on classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers, Horn found that the other school’s teaching strategy stressed instead that everyone is able to improve their mathematics skills for as long as they want to. This school did so by providing students who have different abilities and talents with opportunities to collaboratively work on mathematical issues.

Some of the studies grounded in sociocultural perspectives (Clark et al. 2013 ; Evnitskaya and Morton 2011 ; Horn 2008 ), as well as some of the ethnographic (Smagorinsky et al. 2005 ) and theoretical (Wallace 2012 ) studies that do not explicitly mention a theoretical perspective on identity development, were merely concerned with available opportunities to engage and present identity positions in the classroom setting. Other sociocultural studies (Anderson 2007 ; Aschbacher et al. 2010 ; Calabrese Barton et al. 2013 ; Carlone 2004 ; Lambert 2015 ; Rubin 2007 ), together with ethnographic studies that are grounded in combined perspectives on identity development (Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Cobb et al. 2009 ; Cone et al. 2014 ), or do not mention a particular perspective on identity development (DeGennaro and Brown 2009 ; Hamilton 2002 ), focused in addition on how adolescents developed their identities in relation to these opportunities and positions: Various researchers examined how opportunities to engage shaped students’ demonstrated (Anderson 2007 ; Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Calabrese Barton et al. 2013 ; Rubin 2007 ) and narrated (Aschbacher et al. 2010 ; Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Carlone 2004 ; DeGennaro and Brown 2009 ; Lambert 2015 ; Rubin 2007 ) engagement in the classroom as an indication of their identities. Others focused on how teaching strategies shaped adolescents’ self-understandings as capable participants in classroom contexts (Anderson 2007 ; Calabrese Barton et al. 2013 ; Cobb et al. 2009 ; Cone et al. 2014 ; Hamilton 2002 ; Lambert 2015 ), or on adolescents’ envisioned future in a particular field (Calabrese Barton et al. 2013 ) as an indication of their identities. Irrespective of how the various identity dimensions were operationalized, the abovementioned studies found that teaching strategies did unintentionally inform adolescents’ identity development. This finding is also supported by Charland’s ( 2010 ) ethnographic study in which a psychosocial perspective on identity development is employed. Based on interviews with 58 African-American students in art classes, this study suggests that teaching strategies in art classes that do not leave space for self-expression may discourage students to understand themselves as artists, to engage in visual art, and to further explore their artist identities.

Teacher Expectations

In our literature selection, we found 17 articles concerning the role teacher expectations may (often) unintentionally play in the development of adolescents’ identities. As can be derived from Table 5 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), these articles comprise one theoretical paper and 16 ethnographic studies.

Four of the articles that adopt a sociocultural perspective on identity development demonstrated, based on classroom observations and teacher interviews, that teachers may have rather persistent expectations of adolescents through which certain identity positions are made available or unavailable (Berg 2010 ; Rubin 2007 ; Vetter 2010 ; Wortham 2006 ). Berg ( 2010 ) for example found in her longitudinal ethnographic research on a foster child that this adolescent was repetitively approached by his teachers and social workers based on others’ reports and the previous experiences they had with him as an outsider and a difficult student. Yet, these teachers and social workers failed to notice the student’s changed behavior. Consequently, the range of available identity positions in relation to which the adolescent could develop his identity was limited. Together, these four studies indicate that static teacher expectations limit adolescents’ ways to position themselves, which may sometimes benefit (Vetter 2010 ) but other times harm adolescents’ engagement in school practices (Berg 2010 ; Rubin 2007 ; Wortham 2006 ). It should be noted, though, that none of these studies provide insights into how teacher expectations shape adolescents’ narrated self-understandings.

Five other studies in which a sociocultural perspective on identity development is employed (Aschbacher et al. 2010 ; Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Landers 2013 ; Olitsky et al. 2010 ) relied fully on student interviews or questionnaires regarding perceived teacher expectations. Consequently, in these studies, it cannot be examined whether perceived teacher expectations correspond to teachers’ actual expectations of their students. Yet, whether the perceived teacher expectations that are reported represent truth, imagination, or both, the studies do suggest that adolescents’ self-understandings are informed by their perceptions of their teachers’ expectations, as is indicated by an adolescent’s remark in Edwards-Groves and Murray’s study (Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 ), “And anyway I think I am dumb and stupid ‘coz I am not as good as the others, they [the teachers] think that too” (quote in Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 , p. 168).

Next, three more studies that are grounded in sociocultural perspectives on identity development (Bartlett 2007 ; Fields and Enyedy 2013 ; Heyd-Metzuyanim 2013 ) combined (participant) classroom observations with student and sometimes teacher interviews or focus groups. These studies provide additional and stronger evidence for the role teacher expectations may play in adolescents’ identity development. The study by Heyd-Metzuyanim ( 2013 ) showed how teacher expectations could inform adolescents’ identity development even when these expectations are communicated implicitly. Heyd-Metzuyanim ( 2013 ) described how she, as a teacher, implicitly and unintentionally expressed her low expectations of one of her students’ mathematical abilities through her continuous disengagement from this student’s mathematical thinking problems; Heyd-Metzuyanim no longer expected the student to make any additional progress in mathematics, and the identity position of becoming a better mathematician was no longer made available to the student. The observation and student interview data suggest that the student, in relation to how she was positioned by her teacher through the teacher’s expectations, changed the story of herself as a mathematics learner from someone who is willing and able to learn mathematics at the beginning of the school year to someone who could no longer grow as a mathematics student later on in the school year. The student’s mathematics identity appeared to be informed by the communicated teacher expectations and the student’s perceptions thereof.

Next, Bottrell’s ( 2007 ) study in which a sociological perspective is adopted was concerned with the social groups that teachers, according to students, implicitly create and the teacher expectations these groups are accompanied with. Bottrell reported, based on youth center observations and students’ interviews, stories of adolescents who shared that they experienced their teachers in formal education to distinguish, without formal differentiation, between more and less successful students. In case the adolescents thought they belonged, in the eyes of their teachers, to the latter group, they sometimes felt that their teachers did not have hopes for them at all, based on which they appeared to develop the idea that they were not worth bothering about. Again, though, this study does not provide insights into the extent to which the perceived teacher expectations correspond to teachers’ actual expectations of their students.

Then, two ethnographic studies in which no particular perspective on identity development is explicitly mentioned (Seaton 2007 ; Smith 2008 ) were not so much concerned with how (perceived) teacher expectations are reflected in adolescents’ self-understandings but with whether adolescents do or do not identify with the expectations that teachers explicitly express. In these two studies, teacher expectations appeared to be understood as making available fixed identity positions that adolescents may or may not endorse. For example, Smith ( 2008 ) studied a ninth-grade honors class at an American high school through classroom observations and student interviews and focus groups. Smith observed that teachers explicitly stressed that honors students were expected to work hard, to do more, and be more integer than other students. Yet, whereas Smith found that some students embraced this identity position, others commented, despite their being enrolled in the honors class, “I’m plenty smart, but I just don’t think I’m the type of person that the teachers think belongs in an honors class” (quote in Smith 2008 , p. 499). This finding indicates that teachers’ expectations have to be desirable and meaningful from students’ perspectives in order to become part of their identities.

Finally, what struck us in the analysis of the studies that focused on the role of teacher expectations in adolescents’ identity development was that various times it was argued (Steele 1997 ) and found, by ethnographic studies that differed in the perspectives on identity development they employed, that teachers (perceivably) have certain expectations of groups of adolescents that are distinguished by their ethnic background (Aschbacher et al. 2010 ; Bartlett 2007 ; Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Wortham 2006 ), perceived academic abilities (Landers 2013 ; Jethwani 2015 ), and/or gender (Jethwani 2015 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ). Although it was recognized in these studies that adolescents’ identity development is, at least to a certain extent, an individual process, scholars found inequalities in (perceived) teacher expectations across different groups of students. This indicates that individual adolescents who share a certain characteristic may be confronted with norms and identity positions in relation to which they can and cannot develop their identities that are different from the norms and identity positions of adolescents who do not share that characteristic. For example, Aschbacher et al. ( 2010 ) found that, in the student interviews and questionnaires they collected among a group of 33 diverse high school students, the adolescents spoke frankly about ethnic/racial biases they faced in science classes at school. Aschbacher et al. ( 2010 ) reported that various Asian-American students shared that they thought their science teachers and administrators were supportive and had high expectations of them, whereas several African-American and Latino students talked about how they felt their teachers had lower expectations of them than of others. Together with other studies (Bartlett 2007 ; Edwards-Groves and Murray 2008 ; Jethwani 2015 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Landers 2013 ; Steele 1997 ; Wortham 2006 ), this suggests that inequalities may occur in (perceived) teacher expectations across different groups of students. Certain groups of students may experience to have different opportunities in relation to which they can develop their identities (as indicated by their engagement and/or self-understandings), which may either foster or hinder their identity development.

In our analysis of the literature, we identified 11 exclusively empirical studies regarding the role peer norms may unintentionally play in the development of adolescents’ identities. As is shown in Table 6 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), nine of these articles concern qualitative research, one presents a quantitative study, and one regards a mixed-methods study. Three studies in which sociocultural perspectives are adopted and that are based on various ethnographic research methods (Fields and Enyedy 2013 ; Ideland and Malmberg 2012 ; Volman and Ten Dam 2007 ) were concerned with and found that peers may deny each other access to certain identity positions through peer norms. An example is provided by Fields and Enyedy ( 2013 ) who studied a programming class in a middle school by means of observations, student interviews, questionnaires, and focus groups. Fields and Enyedy ( 2013 ) found that, even though the teacher of the programming class made the identity position of an attentive expert available to one of the students in this class, his peers refused to regard this student as such. This student’s classmates appeared to do so, because the student who was now trying to help out his classmates was better and longer known by them for his sarcasm, which they generally experienced as mean. The prevalent norm among the adolescent’s peers seemed to be that they could not start their relationship with this student from a clean slate, just because they found themselves in a new class. Fields and Enyedy ( 2013 ) analysis suggests that this made it difficult for the student to enact the identity position that he was offered by his teacher and that he tried to pursue. However, no insights are provided into whether and how this informed the student’s self-understanding. Four other ethnographic studies in which sociocultural perspectives are employed (Hall 2010 ; Hall et al. 2010 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Vetter et al. 2011 ) focused on how peers can make certain identity positions less appealing by stigmatizing these identity positions. These studies indicate that when adolescents actually do identify themselves with identity positions that are stigmatized by their peers, they may hide that they do in order to safeguard their reputation. For example, Hall ( 2010 ) found—based on observations as well as teacher questionnaires and interviews—that the teachers of a middle school offered their students three different reader identity positions: one of a poor reader (someone who is unable to understand most of what he or she reads, and who does not participate in class nor asks for help), one of becoming a good reader (a poor reader who engages in the practices of a good reader, for example by participating actively and by asking questions), and one of a good reader (someone who understands most of what he or she reads, who participates in class and who asks questions). However, students shared in their questionnaires and interviews that they felt it was not really possible to engage in class as someone who is becoming a good reader. Students mentioned to fear the social consequences of engaging in class as such, because classmates jointly reinforced the norm that it is embarrassing to have reading difficulties. Therefore, as some of the students reported, they would rather not get actively involved in class so they could hide their reading difficulties. This appeared to jeopardize these students’ opportunities to further develop their self-understandings as readers in a constructive way.

The finding that adolescents may feel restricted in taking up certain identity positions because they are stigmatized by peers is also supported by Charland’s ( 2010 ) ethnographic study—in which psychosocial perspective is adopted—as well as by two—respectively, ethnographic (Fletcher et al. 2009 ) and mixed-methods (Wilmot 2014 )—studies in which no particular perspective on identity development was explicitly mentioned. Interestingly, these three studies were concerned with the role of peer norms in adolescents’ identity development in the same way as some of the studies that are grounded in a sociocultural perspective, despite their different understandings of how identities develop. In addition to the other studies, though, Charland’s ( 2010 ) interview and focus group study indicates that adolescents’ exploration of, in this case, artist identities, may be hindered when peers reinforce the norm among themselves that visual arts is for “nerds” or “sissy’s” (Charland 2010 , p. 122).

Next, a quantitative study by Marcouyeux and Fleury-Bahi ( 2011 ), in which a social psychological perspective is employed, looked at the relation between a school’s perceived reputation and adolescents’ identities. To examine this, Marcouyeux and Fleury-Bahi ( 2011 ) asked 542 high school students in France, through surveys, about how they think adolescents from other schools would perceive the respondent’s school in terms of prestige and the quality of education. They also asked the respondents about their identification with school and learning. In this study, a positive relationship was found between the school’s image as perceivably perceived by peers and students’ identification with school and learning. This finding indicates that being a member of a group that is perceivably high in status according to peers may positively shape adolescents’ identities.

Organizing Explorative Learning Experiences: How Schools and Teachers May Intentionally Affect Adolescents’ Identity Development

In our analysis of the literature, we identified 37 articles that regarded educational processes through which schools and teachers may intentionally foster adolescents’ identity development. Most of the studies concerning the intentional fostering of adolescents’ identity development are conducted in after-school clubs, extracurricular classes provided at school, or at summer camps ( n  = 21). Even though learning experiences are often not referred to as such in the literature, our analysis of the existing body of research caused us to distinguish between in-breadth, in-depth, and reflective explorative learning experiences that all, in their own way, support adolescents in exploring who they are and want to be.

In-Breadth Exploration

In our literature selection, we found ten articles regarding learning experiences that allow adolescents to get introduced to learning contents, learning activities, and identity positions they were thus far unfamiliar with. We refer to such experiences as in-breadth explorative learning experiences. As can be derived from Table 7 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), the articles that will be discussed in this section comprise three theoretical papers and seven ethnographic studies. All the articles concerning in-breadth explorative learning experiences argued (Brickhouse 2001 ; Squire 2006 ; Stokes and Wyn 2007 ) or demonstrated (Barrett and Baker 2012 ; Bruin and Ohna 2013 ; Carlone et al. 2015 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Jones and Deutsch 2013 ; Stapleton 2015 ; Van Sluys 2010 ), irrespective of their perspective on identity development (also see Table 2 ), that providing adolescents with such experiences may invite them to adopt new interests, to identify undiscovered talents, and to try out new identity positions. For example, Stapleton ( 2015 ), who adopts a sociocultural perspective, examined a 4-week summer program in which a group of 30 American adolescents was taken to a site that was deeply affected by climate change. The adolescents visited schools, social outreach organizations, local population members, attended lectures about climate change, and examined climate change’s impact on mangrove forests. The interviews with 13 of the participating adolescents indicated that being introduced to people and sites that are affected by climate change stimulated many to become more engaged with environmental issues. The learning experiences the summer program introduced these adolescents to also appeared to inform their self-understandings. As one participant mentioned, “[The summer camp] has changed my identity, it’s changed my daily outlook, what I buy, how much I buy when I go to stores, it’s changed my transportation, my daily living habits” (quote in Stapleton 2015 , p. 105). Hence, the summer program appeared to have introduced the adolescents to a new topic that intrigued them, while providing them with insights into how they themselves could tackle environmental issues.

This body of literature suggests that introducing adolescents to unfamiliar learning contents, learning activities, and identity positions through on-site and hands-on activities especially helps adolescents to imagine the identity implications thereof. Supposedly, on-site and hands-on activities introduce adolescents to learning contents, learning activities, and identity positions in authentic, real-life ways, which can help them decide to what extent they identify with these contents, activities, and positions.

Finally, one theoretical (Brickhouse 2001 ) and various empirical studies in this group of literature (Barrett and Baker 2012 ; Bruin and Ohna 2013 ; Johnson et al. 2011 ; Van Sluys 2010 ) that differ in the perspectives on identity development they adopt examined the role in-breadth explorative learning experiences may play in the identity development of adolescents with a higher risk of marginalization. Bruin and Ohna ( 2013 ), who do not explicitly mention a particular perspective on identity development, studied alternative educational courses involving increased workplace-practice for adolescents who could not flourish in Norwegian’s regular and more theoretically oriented education. In these alternative courses, the aim was to introduce students to the requirements and expectations that they will face in their future vocations. Based on interviews with eight students, Bruin and Ohna ( 2013 ) concluded that, whereas these students previously felt that school was not for them, the alternative courses allowed them “to discover and nourish hidden talents and interests and new sides of themselves and experiencing how feeling able builds self-confidence and supports learning” (quote in Bruin and Ohna 2013 , p. 1100). Their analysis, as well as the other articles, suggests that, by acquiring new skills through hands-on activities, these students were able to adjust their self-understandings in a positive way in relation to previously unavailable identity positions.

In-Depth Exploration

We identified a group of 16 articles regarding learning experiences that may support adolescents in further exploring and specifying their already present self-understandings. We refer to such experiences as in-depth explorative learning experiences. As is shown in Table 8 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), among these articles, two theoretical, three mixed-methods, and 11 ethnographic studies can be found. One theoretical (Luehmann 2009 ) and six ethnographic (Furman and Calabrese Barton 2006 ; Polman 2010 ; Polman and Hope 2014 ; Polman and Miller 2010 ; Rahm et al. 2014 ; Rudd 2012 ) studies that are grounded in sociocultural perspectives on identity development provide insights into how learning experiences that acknowledge that adolescents may already have a sense of who they are (for example a “history person”) could facilitate the exploration of contents, activities, and positions that are closely related to adolescents’ already present self-understandings (for example, the identity position of an art historian or of a history teacher). Five ethnographic articles—of which one employs a sociocultural perspective on identity development (Liu and Hannafin 2010 ), whereas the others do not explicitly mention a particular perspective on identity development (Adams et al. 2014 ; Jones and Deutsch 2013 ; Kendrick et al. 2013 ; Russ et al. 2015 )—additionally focused on whether in-depth explorations actually inform adolescents’ narrated self-understandings and found that they did. For example, Adams et al. ( 2014 ) examined a multi-year out-of-school STEM program for adolescents with a general interest in STEM. This program offered hands-on activities, scientist talks, visits to a museum’s behind the scenes research labs and collections, and field trips. The teachers selected research topics that span the collaborating museum’s areas of expertise and that were broad enough to give youth flexibility in the themes they wanted to explore. Focus group and interview data indicated that allowing adolescents to further specify their STEM interests fostered their STEM identity development. As one girl remarked:

The good thing about [the program is that] we took so many classes on so many subjects…. I got to learn so much about everything in science… I learned what I like and what I do not like. [I] got exposed to everything. (quote in Adams et al. 2014 , p. 18)

Hence, the learning experiences provided by this program appeared to enable adolescents to try out roles and activities that were closely related to their already present self-understandings so that they could explore what it actually entails to be a specific type of STEM person. Again, this study, together with the other sociocultural or related studies that concern in-depth explorative learning experiences, stresses the importance of hands-on and on-site learning experiences to support adolescents in making identity commitments.

The literature also indicates that—irrespective of the employed perspective on identity development and research methods—next to hands-on and on-site activities, role models may help adolescents in the in-depth exploration of their identities (Farland-Smith 2012 ; Hughes et al. 2013 ; Jones and Deutsch 2013 ; Whiting 2006 ). What is more, studies by Farland-Smith ( 2012 ) and Hughes et al. ( 2013 ) suggest that exposing marginalized adolescents to role models might help them to challenge stereotypes that would otherwise prevent them from further exploring certain identity positions. For example, Hughes et al. ( 2013 ), who combine perspectives on identity development, demonstrated—through survey, observation, and interview data—how meeting female role models in the male-dominated STEM field helped girls to develop a more detailed and knowledge-based (rather than prejudiced) picture of how they could become valuable members of a STEM community. Being introduced to female role models convinced various girls that there was enough space for them in the STEM field, which appeared to stimulate the further exploration of their STEM-related identities.

However, a mixed-methods study among 1138 American adolescents by Gilmartin et al. ( 2007 ) in which perspectives on identity are combined too suggests that adolescents only position people who are real experts in their eyes as role models. For example, in their study, it was found that the percentage of female science teachers at a school was not significantly related to adolescents’ science engagement and self-understandings. The interviews Gilmartin et al. ( 2007 ) performed indicated that female science teachers are not considered as expert role models by adolescents because of their perceived lack of “real-life science experience,” apart from teaching.

Reflective Exploration

We identified a group of 12 articles that concern learning experiences that help adolescents reflect upon their already present self-understandings. We refer to these experiences as reflective explorative learning experiences. As can be derived from Table 9 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), the articles that will be discussed in this section comprise five theoretical papers and seven ethnographic studies. One of the ethnographic studies in which a sociocultural perspective on identity development is employed, concerned an extracurricular reading club for Asian English Language Learners who attended an American high school (Choi 2009 ). This study indicates, based on student interviews and online student discussions, that stimulating self-reflection, in this case through reading and discussing a novel together with peers, may help adolescents to better understand their own thoughts and feelings and could therefore contribute to their identity development.

The Sinai et al. ( 2012 ) study, in which a psychosocial perspective was adopted, demonstrated—through classroom observations, student assignments, and student focus groups—that writing assignments may help adolescents to enter a dialogue with certain parts of themselves, such as a younger version of themselves. In some cases, this appeared to support adolescents in gaining insights into who they currently are and into who they want to become, as was reflected in their narrated self-understandings. Various theoretical articles that either do not explicitly mention a perspective on identity development (Hall 2007 ) or combine various perspectives on identity development (Harrell-Levy and Kerpelman 2010 ; Ligorio 2010 ) also argued that engaging adolescents in (internal) dialogues can help them to learn more about what their interests are, about what they value, and about what kind of persons they want to become.

Next, a theoretical study in which identity development is understood from a sociocultural perspective (Ten Dam et al. 2004 ), together with a theoretical study that does not explicitly adopt a particular perspective on identity (Rossiter 2007 ), argued that reflective explorative learning experiences are also important because they may foster adolescents’ understanding of how their identity development is influenced by their sociocultural context. The underlying idea is that this could help adolescents to consciously search for a balance in their identity development between societal norms on the one hand and adolescents’ individual dreams of who they want to be(come) on the other.

In addition, two ethnographic studies in which a sociocultural perspective on identity development is adopted (Rogers et al. 2007 ; Vianna and Stetsenko 2011 ), three ethnographic studies that do not explicitly adopt a particular perspective (Hall 2007 ; Hardee and Reyelt 2009 ; Muhammad 2012 ), and one theoretical study in which various perspectives on identity are combined (Henfield 2012 ), suggest that offering adolescents, and especially those who are at risk of marginalization, the opportunity to become aware of and critically assess societal inequalities may foster their identity development and make them more resilient. For example, Hardee and Reyelt ( 2009 ) examined how alternative arts-based education may support the identity development of adolescents in a juvenile arbitration program and of adolescents who are not succeeding in American public schools. In the arts-based workshops, adolescents were asked to question and challenge dominant ideologies by engaging in theater assignments, writing assignments, and collage-creating assignments. The analysis of the ethnographic data suggests that this helped the participants develop a stronger sense of who they are, what they stand for, and of what external barriers they might have to overcome in their further development. One student for example noted, “It helps to talk about this kind of stuff ’cause this isn’t stuff we talk about in school. I could talk about this all day. It makes me feel stronger inside, like I know me” (quote in Hardee and Reyelt 2009 , p. 33). This quote, as well as the studies mentioned above, indicates that learning about structural inequalities may help adolescents to better understand their position in society and to develop their identities while being aware of ascribed positions, in addition to chosen ones.

Conditions for Effective Explorative Learning Experiences

Next to articles on educational processes that may unintentionally or intentionally play a role in adolescents’ identity development, we identified 37 articles that focus on preconditions that are thought to be required when teachers intentionally want to support adolescents in exploring their identities.

Meaningful Learning Experiences

We found 20 articles concerning the role of meaningful learning experiences in supporting the development of adolescents’ identities. As is shown in Table 10 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), among these articles, eight theoretical, one quantitative, and 11 ethnographic studies can be found. Various of these articles argued (Brickhouse 2001 ; Cowie et al. 2011 ; Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Higgins 2015 ; Steele 1997 ; Subramaniam et al. 2012 ) or indicated (Basu et al. 2009 ; Black et al. 2010 ; Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Cobb et al. 2009 ; Freire et al. 2009 ; Hazari et al. 2010 ; Mittendorff et al. 2008 ; Mortimer et al. 2010 ; Polman and Miller 2010 ; Skerrett 2012 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ; Thompson 2014 ), irrespective of their theoretical perspective on identity development (also see Table 2 ) and employed research methods, that adolescents regard learning experiences as meaningful when they feel there is space for their own out-of-school knowledge and experiences in class and when they can relate what they learned in school to their out-of-school daily life. Additionally, in theoretical papers that employ sociocultural (Lemke 2001 ), combined (Whiting 2006 ), or no explicitly mentioned (Higgins 2015 ; Steele 1997 ) perspectives on identity development, it is argued that learning experiences are considered to be meaningful when adolescents recognize themselves in the learning material and content.

Together, the studies mentioned in this section suggest that meaningful learning experiences may make it easier for adolescents to link their already present self-understandings to the learning contents and activities in school and vice versa. This may help them to identify with the learning content and activities, which, in turn, would stimulate them to further explore whether they want to make certain identity commitments when it comes to those contents and activities.

Some of the studies that focus on meaningful learning experiences also explored how such experiences can be organized in school. Three ethnographic studies in which a sociocultural perspective is adopted (Basu et al. 2009 ; Skerrett 2012 ; Thompson 2014 ) and an ethnographic study in which various perspectives on identity development are combined (Cobb et al. 2009 ) found that adolescents, when they are able to voice which themes and learning interests appeal to them, and when teachers take this into account in selecting (or letting the students select) the topics and assignments, may be supported in relating their education to their personal lives. Furthermore, several articles departing from different perspectives on identity development suggest that entering a dialogue with adolescents and discussing the importance and implications of what they learned in school for their personal development may help adolescents to connect what is taught in school to their out-of-school daily lives (Black et al. 2010 ; Brickhouse et al. 2000 ; Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Mittendorff et al. 2008 ).

Here, it should be noted that identity exploration, which is understood by scholars who adopt a psychosocial perspective on identity development as the questioning of already present identifications through triggering frictions and some discomfort that allow for the (re-)evaluation of childhood identifications (Erikson 1968 ; Kroger 2007 ; Marcia 1993 ; Sinai et al. 2012 ), does not necessarily exclude the possibility of relating adolescents’ personal lives to school and vice versa. Meaningful learning experiences do not have to concern experiences that perfectly suit adolescents. Rather, they are experiences that appeal to adolescents in such a way that they feel motivated to engage in identity exploration.

Supportive Classroom Climate

We identified a group of 18 articles that concern the role of a supportive classroom climate in fostering the development of adolescents’ identities. As can be derived from Table 11 in Appendix B (Online Supplement), the articles that will be discussed in this section comprise four theoretical papers, one quantitative study, and 13 ethnographic studies. Most articles, irrespective of their perspective on identity development and employed methods (also see Table 2 ), argued (Cummins et al. 2015 ; Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ) or found (Buxton 2005 ; Fields and Enyedy 2013 ; Hazari et al. 2015 ; Kendrick et al. 2013 ; Lam and Tam 2011 ; Olitsky 2007 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ; Van Ryzin 2014 ) that it is important to make adolescents feel respected and appreciated to warrant a supportive classroom climate. Also, some of these articles (Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ; Hazari et al. 2015 ; Olitsky 2007 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ), together with other theoretical (Harrell-Levy and Kerpelman 2010 ) and empirical (Archer et al. 2009 ; Carlone et al. 2015 ) studies (that vary too in the theoretical perspective on identity they adopt), focus on the importance of making adolescents feel secure enough to make “mistakes.” Additionally, various articles indicate that peers who approach each other open mindedly (Fields and Enyedy 2013 ), and recognize each other for who they are and want to be (Cummins et al. 2015 ; Harrell-Levy and Kerpelman 2010 ), are essential aspects of a supportive classroom climate too.

The factors listed above are suggested by the literature to stimulate adolescents’ identity development, because these factors are thought to make adolescents feel confident in trying out new roles (whether broadening or deepening adolescents’ self-understandings), in reflecting on their own thoughts and feelings, and in critically assessing societal inequalities. Discovering who you are and want to be is understood to require some courage, because it may involve risks and discomfort; it is accompanied by new experiences and change (Erikson 1968 ; Kroger 2007 ; Marcia 1993 ; Sinai et al. 2012 ). A supportive social climate may help adolescents to feel safe enough to take these risks and deal with such possible discomfort. In the group of literature that focuses on the role of a supportive classroom climate in supporting the development of adolescents’ identities, we found several suggestions to foster a supportive classroom climate. First, two theoretical (Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ; Lam and Tam 2011 ) and two ethnographic (Robb et al. 2007 ; Rudd 2012 ) articles that differ in the perspectives on identity development that they employ indicate that teacher compliments (Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ; Robb et al. 2007 ) and warm teacher-student relationships (Lam and Tam 2011 ; Rudd 2012 ) may contribute to a supportive classroom climate. Some of these articles argued (Hamman and Hendricks 2005 ) or demonstrated (Robb et al. 2007 ; Rudd 2012 ) that this is the case, because teacher compliments and personal teacher-student relationships make students feel recognized and valued.

Second, other articles (again differing in the perspective on identity development they employ) focus on how teachers can communicate to their students that they are allowed to make mistakes (Archer et al. 2009 ; Hazari et al. 2015 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ; Rudd 2012 ). For example, Hazari et al. ( 2015 ) found, in their ethnographic study on physics classes that is grounded in a sociocultural perspective, that when teachers share their own doubts and make mistakes every once in a while, this may help to reassure students, as comes to the fore in the following quote:

Well, like I do not know if he does it on purpose but sometimes he makes mistakes like in the problems and stuff and like the whole class laughs and then it makes us feel more comfortable because like he, our own teacher is making mistakes. (quote in Hazari et al. 2015 , p. 749)

Together with the ethnographic study by Tan and Calabrese Barton ( 2007 ) that is grounded in a sociocultural perspective too, the study by Hazari et al. ( 2015 ) indicates that adolescents, when they do not continuously feel the pressure to perform, may feel more supported to freely explore their identities. Additionally, the study by Rudd ( 2012 ), in which perspectives on identity development are combined, suggests that when teachers approach their students open mindedly—in the sense that they offer students second chances and chances to reposition themselves on a regular basis—students may feel less judged and restricted and may therefore feel more invited to explore their identity.

Finally, several ethnographic studies differing in their adopted theoretical perspectives on identity development demonstrated how mutual recognition among peers could be stimulated by engaging adolescents in learning activities that invite mutual encouragement (Carlone et al. 2015 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ) or by making adolescents aware of what they have in common (Hardee and Reyelt 2009 ; Jones and Deutsch 2013 ; Parker 2014 ; Tan and Calabrese Barton 2007 ). For example, in an art program studied by Hardee and Reyelt ( 2009 ), adolescents were asked to create art pieces. Subsequently, the adolescents discussed their personal interpretations of the art that was made, which, based on observation and interview data, appeared to make them aware of the experiences and views they shared that seemed to foster adolescents’ bonding processes.

School, a place where adolescents spend a lot of time and are introduced to new ideas and activities, is an important context where adolescents’ identity development can be supported (e.g., Flum and Kaplan 2006 ; Kaplan and Flum 2009 ; Kaplan and Flum 2012 ; Rich and Schachter 2012 ; Schachter and Galili-Schachter 2012 ; Schachter and Rich 2011 ; Silseth and Arnseth 2011 ). Yet, due to a scattered research field, it was difficult to establish how schools and teachers can foster adolescents’ identity development and what knowledge gaps should be addressed to further support schools and teachers in doing so. Therefore, the present literature review aimed to present an overview of what insights the existing literature provides into the role of school in adolescents’ identity development.

We found that three groups of literature could be distinguished in the existing literature. The first group concerns articles that focus on educational processes through which adolescents’ identity development may unintentionally (and often negatively) be informed by schools, teachers, and peers: selection practices and differentiation, teaching strategies, teacher expectations, and peer norms. The second group of articles regards educational processes through which schools and teachers can intentionally organize experiences that support adolescents’ identity development: namely, through in-breadth exploration, in-depth exploration, and reflective exploration. The third group of articles comprises studies on two preconditions that are required to intentionally support adolescents’ identity development in school: meaningful learning experiences and a supportive classroom climate.

What struck us is that a fair share of studies on educational processes that may unintentionally play a role in adolescents’ identity development were performed in formal educational settings, whereas most of the studies on how schools and teachers can intentionally organize experiences that support adolescents’ identity development were conducted in extracurricular and out-of-school settings. The absence of studies on explorative learning experiences in adolescents’ identity development in formal education suggests that explorative learning experiences are currently not well integrated in the formal curriculum. We think this is worrisome, as introducing students to new learning contents and activities is the main purpose of formal education. Furthermore, the literature on educational processes that may unintentionally play a role in adolescents’ identity development shows how schools and teachers may significantly impact adolescents’ identities in a negative way. Yet, neither in educational practice nor in educational research, enough attention is paid to how adolescents’ identities can be influenced in a constructive manner in formal education.

What Schools and Teachers Can Learn About Their Role in Adolescents’ Identity Development

One of the contributions of this review is that it invites schools and teachers to look at educational practices in new, critical ways: The review shows how educational processes that may be considered as unproblematic could unintentionally shape how adolescents’ come to understand themselves and provides suggestions for how learning experiences that support adolescents’ identity development can be integrated in the curriculum.

First, this review makes clear that educational processes that unintentionally play a role in adolescents’ identity development are ubiquitous. The literature identified the following educational processes through which messages are communicated to adolescents concerning who they should or can be: selection practices and differentiation , teaching strategies , teacher expectations , and peer norms . It is in relation to such messages that adolescents’ develop their identities; These messages can be internalized by adolescents. Moreover, the identified educational processes involve practices that tend to be considered as normal, unproblematic, and—in the cases of selection processes, differentiation, and certain teaching strategies—efficient, yet were found to often inform adolescent’s self-understandings in a negative way. Based on the literature, it can be recommended that becoming more aware of and reflect more upon the messages that these practices may communicate could help to prevent adolescents’ identity development from being influenced in a negative manner.

Second, this review showed that different types of explorative learning experiences can be organized to foster adolescents’ identity development: in-breadth , in-depth , and reflective explorative learning experiences . Adolescents can be stimulated to explore new identity positions through in-breadth exploration or be helped to explore and further specify already existing self-understandings through in-depth exploration. Alternatively, schools and teachers can foster adolescents’ understandings of their own thoughts and feelings through reflective explorative learning experiences. Schools can ask themselves how they can restructure the curriculum in such a way that it enables these different types of explorative learning experiences, and teachers can ask themselves how they can redesign their classes so that they become explorative learning experiences. No matter what the specific identity development purpose is, and while acknowledging that this may be difficult to arrange, the literature suggests that explorative learning experiences should be meaningful to adolescents and situated in supportive classroom climates in order to be successful.

We would like to stress, though, that the provision of explorative learning experiences in formal education to support adolescents’ identity development does not necessarily entail an extra task for teachers and schools. Introducing adolescents to new ideas, activities, and possibilities is what teachers and schools are supposed to do anyway. Providing explorative learning experiences is a way of fulfilling this task through a pedagogical approach that stimulates adolescents to connect what they are taught in school to who they are and want to be (Biesta 2014 ; Vianna and Stetsenko 2011 ).

Directions for Future Research

In our selection of literature, studies that are grounded in sociocultural, psychosocial, social psychological, and sociological perspectives on identity development can be found. Currently, the great majority of these studies looks at adolescents’ identity development from a sociocultural perspective and provides insights into how available norms, values, tools, and identity positions in schools may impact how adolescents come to understand themselves. Yet, studies grounded in a psychosocial, social psychological, or sociological perspective on identity development are less prevalent (also see Table 2 ).

In this review, it has become clear—by primarily grouping the selected studies based on the identified educational processes and preconditions, instead of based on the theoretical perspectives on identity that are adopted—that when scholars, who differ in their adopted theoretical perspectives on identity, would combine their strengths, this could make a large difference in moving this body of research forward.

So far, only the role of selection practices and differentiation, peer norms, and supportive classroom climates in adolescents’ identity development have been studied from different theoretical perspectives. For example, when it comes to the educational process of selection practices and differentiation, studies using a sociocultural perspective showed the impact ability grouping may have, through the different identity positions that are available to different ability groups, on adolescents’ engagement with school (as an indication of adolescents’ school- and learning-related identities). Yet, without studies that employed a social psychological perspective, we would not have known as much about the more negative behavioral and personality characteristics that are attributed to students from lower status educational tracks compared to students from higher status tracks. Next, psychosocial studies have found indications for differences in the process of identity development (in terms of exploration and commitment) between students in different academic tracks, although the direction of the differences remains still unclear. Hence, when studies examine the role of educational processes in adolescents’ identity development from different angles, this may provide us with invaluable and complementary insights (also see Lewis and Valle 2009 ). Yet, as the articles on the role of peer norms and supportive classroom climates show, studies that differ in the theoretical perspective on identity they are grounded in can also approach the role of certain educational processes in adolescents’ identity development in a similar way, consequently validating each other’s research findings. To illustrate, articles in which a sociocultural perspective is employed, as well as articles in which a psychosocial or no explicitly mentioned perspective on identity development is adopted, all suggest that peers may restrict each other’s access to certain identity positions by refusing to recognize each other in certain ways or by stigmatizing particular identity positions which makes these positions less appealing to publicly identify with.

For the majority of the educational processes that are identified in the existing literature, it still remains to be seen to what extent research grounded in different theoretical perspectives on identity development would complement and/or validate each other. However, the findings that are derived from articles on selection processes and differentiation, peer norms, and supportive classroom climates promise that research on the other identified educational processes, when studied from different angles, will add to the current research field. Furthermore, by bringing research concerning particular educational processes and preconditions together, based on different theoretical perspectives on identity, this literature review allows scholars to see how their research may complement research performed by scholars who employ other theoretical perspectives, and vice versa, while supporting them in identifying research gaps when it comes to particular educational processes or preconditions.

To date, studies that are grounded in psychosocial, social psychological, and sociological perspectives tend to be less occupied with whether and how educational processes and preconditions in day-to-day school-based experiences and interactions may impact adolescents’ identities than studies in which a sociocultural perspective is employed. This is a limitation of the existing body of research that points to a direction for future research and, moreover, that cannot be easily substituted by findings from other strands of research. Although psychologists do study the identity-related phenomena of self-concept (people’s perceptions of themselves; Marsh 1990 ) and possible selves (people’s positive and negative images of their selves in a future state; Oyserman et al. 2006 ) in education, these phenomena are generally studied in a quantitative manner to examine respectively their relation to adolescents’ academic achievements (e.g., Marsh 1990 ) and goal-related actions (e.g., Oyserman et al. 2006 ). These strands of research too tend to be less concerned with how daily interactions and experiences in school inform adolescents’ self-concepts or possible selves.

With regard to more circumscribed identity dimensions, the existing research was highly skewed towards studies on the development of adolescents’ STEM identities. Research on schools’ role in the development of, for example, adolescents’ history identities or geology identities is non-existent, and studies concerning the role of school in adolescents’ literacy identity are scarce. It remains to be studied whether these identity dimensions—as well as identity dimensions not covered in this review study, such as gender and ethnic identities—are subject to the same educational processes as the identity dimensions that are prevalent among the articles included in this review.

We would like to conclude our literature study by emphasizing that this review demonstrates, more than anything, that even though we know that schools and teachers in formal education may unintentionally impact adolescents’ identity development, there are only a few studies on how adolescents’ identity development can intentionally be supported in formal education (referred to as “identity education” by Schachter and Rich 2011 ). Moreover, the body of literature on learning experiences that can intentionally be organized to support adolescents’ identity development suggests that learning experiences outside of school may impact the identities of adolescents too. This is something to take into account in future research, as adolescents participate in learning experiences in various contexts (home, sports clubs, side jobs), and the communicated identity messages and explorative learning experiences of each of these contexts may interact. The bottom line is, though, that, currently, research (irrespective of its perspective on identity development) cannot sufficiently support schools and teachers in the intentional fostering of adolescents’ identity development in formal education: The strategies that are identified by the literature on extracurricular and out-of-school settings may not simply be transferable to formal school settings. Therefore, we argue that, to support adolescents’ identity development in our contemporary society, future research’s first priority should be to map to what extent identity exploration is encouraged in current formal curriculums and to provide insights into how adolescents’ identity development can successfully and intentionally be fostered in formal education.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Netherlands Initiative for Education Research [grant number 405-15-716]. Special thanks to Janneke Staaks (information specialist at the University of Amsterdam) for her assistance in the selection of the databases and the development of our search strategy. We would also like to thank Desiree Berendsen, Carla van Boxtel, Lenie van den Bulk, Hanoch Flum, Avi Kaplan, Thea van Lankveld, Sarah Leker, Piet Post, Ati Raban, Floor Rombout, Marloes Schrijvers and Wim Wardekker (a group consisting of researchers, teacher educators, teachers, and principals) for their helpful comments on our first draft.

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Verhoeven, M., Poorthuis, A.M.G. & Volman, M. The Role of School in Adolescents’ Identity Development. A Literature Review. Educ Psychol Rev 31 , 35–63 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-018-9457-3

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How to Masterfully Describe Your Personality in an Essay: A Step-by-Step Guide 2023

Introduction

Step 1: self-reflection and introspection, step 2: identifying core values and beliefs, step 3: gathering evidence and examples.

• Step 4: Show, don't tell

Step 5: Structuring your essay effectively

Step 6: balancing self-awareness and humility, step 7: seeking feedback and editing.

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Identifying your core values and beliefs is another essential step in effectively describing your personality. By exploring your fundamental principles and ideals, you gain insight into the motivations behind your actions and the driving force behind your decisions . These values serve as the undercurrent that weaves together the fabric of your personality, giving coherence and purpose to your thoughts and behaviors. Understanding how your personality traits align with your core values enables you to articulate a more comprehensive and authentic depiction of yourself.

To breathe life into your personality description, it is crucial to gather evidence and examples that showcase your traits in action. Recall specific instances where your personality has manifested itself, and examine the behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that were present. By drawing on these concrete examples, you provide tangible proof of your personality claims, allowing the reader to envision your character in vivid detail.

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In describing your personality, it is essential to strike a delicate balance between self-awareness and humility. While it is important to acknowledge your strengths and accomplishments, it is equally crucial to avoid sounding arrogant. Honesty about your weaknesse s and areas for growth demonstrates humility and a willingness to learn from experiences, fostering personal growth and development.

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Before diving into writing, take the time to deeply understand your own personality traits and characteristics. Reflect on your strengths and weaknesses , considering how they have influenced your actions and interactions with others. Additionally, contemplate significant life experiences that have shaped your personality, providing valuable insights into who you are today.

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Crafting a well-structured essay is crucial for conveying your personality in a coherent and engaging manner. Begin with an attention-grabbing introduction that captivates the reader’s interest. Organize your essay around key personality traits or themes, ensuring a logical progression of ideas. Maintain a smooth flow between paragraphs, enhancing the overall readability of your essay.

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Psychology Discussion

Essay on personality development.

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After reading this essay you will learn about Personality Development:- 1. Definition of Personality Development 2. Characteristics of Personality Development 3. Three Cases 4. Freudian Analysis 5. Swami Vivekananda’s Concept.

• Swami Vivekananda’s Concept of Personality Development

Essay # 1. Definition of Personality Development:

Personality is concerned with the psychological pattern of an individual— the thoughts, emotions and feelings—that are unique to a person. In fact, the totality of character, attributes and traits of a person are responsible for molding his personality.

These inherent personality traits and the different soft skills interact with each other and make a person what he or she is. It helps bring out a number of intrinsic qualities of a person, which are a must in any responsible position.

In simple words, personality is a set of qualities that make a person distinct from another. The word ‘personality’ originates from the Latin word ‘persona’, which means a mask. In the theatre of the ancient Latin-speaking world, the mask was just a conventional device to represent or typify a particular character.

It is the sum of the characteristics that constitute the mental and physical being of a person including appearance, manners, habits, taste and even moral character. The personality of a person is how he presents himself to the world; it is how others see him.

It has been aptly said:

Reputation is what people think you are.

Personality is what you seem to be.

Character is what you really are.

When we do something again and again, we form a habit. Ultimately these habits form a particular behaviour. If they recur frequently, they become a part of our psyche. They are reflected in all our activities—what we say, what we do, how we behave in certain circumstances and even in how we think. They become the core of our personality.

Personality analysis is thus a methodology for categorizing the character and behaviour of a person. Personality is made up of some characteristic pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviour that make one person different from others.

Each of these individual attributes has its own individual characteristics, as indicated in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 Personality Attributes and their Characteristics:

According to a theory expostulated by Carl Jung (1875-1961), a contemporary of Freud, all personal characteristics are a by-product of two fundamental attitude types: introversion and extroversion. Extroverts are optimistic, outgoing and confident, while introverts are averse to going out and facing the world outside.

Besides introversion and extroversion, different temperaments of indi­viduals play an important role in determining their personality. Long ago, Greek physician Hippocrates put forward the theory that the temperament of a person is dependent on certain fluids (which he calls ‘humor’) present in the human body.

Disproportionate mixtures and increase of any of the humors causes a change in the human temperament.

According to this categorization, human temperaments have been classified into four categories:

Sanguine temperament — caused by excess of blood

Melancholic temperament — caused by excess of spleen

Phlegmatic temperament — caused by excess of phlegm

Choleric temperament — caused by excess of bile

Individual attributes of these temperaments are given in Table 1.2.

Table 1.2 Attributes and temperaments:

This ancient theory of Hippocrates has undergone many modifications but the main principle still holds good. However, these individual attributes are not the only factors that mould the personality: heredity and environment also play a major part in influencing one’s personality. Here are a few comprehensive case studies illustrating the points discussed.

Through the following three case studies, it will become clear that personality is a multi-dimensional issue with the following key characteristics:

1. One’s personality sends out a signal that others read.

2. Consciously different personalities can be powerful.

3. There is no ‘one right personality’ ; it differs by role.

Essay # 2. Characteristics of Personality Development:

Case i: one’s personality sends out a signal that others read :.

Nelson Mandela had a towering personality. The world respects him, and knows many aspects of his personality. Yet, as you read through the different anecdotes of this great leader, what strikes you as a refreshing revelation is that Mandela very effectively ‘worked on’ his personality. He was conscious that his personality reflected the confidence he exuded in others, and his demeanor was a signal to his people.

As stated in a TIME magazine article (2008), during a presidential election campaign. Nelson Mandela’s propeller plane developed a snag a few minutes before landing. Mandela, however, continued to be calm, reading a newspaper. The plane had an emergency landing and Mandela came out safe.

Later Mandela said, ‘Man, I was terrified up there!.. Of course I was afraid!… But as a leader, you cannot let people know. You must put up a front.’ Richard Stengel wrote in this TIME magazine article about Mandela as he reflected on this episode:

‘And that’s precisely what he learned to do: pretend and, through the act of appearing fearless, inspire others. It was a pantomime Mandela perfected on Robben island, where there was much to fear.

Prisoners who were with him said watching Mandela walk across the courtyard, upright and proud, was enough to keep them going for days. He knew that he was a model for others, and that gave him the strength to triumph over his own fear.’

Similarly, while Mandela was always bitter about his long imprisonment, he always put up a positive demeanour about it.

India’s cricket captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni too sends a cool and composed signal to his team at all times. Even in the most stressful situations, he appears completely in control and unruffled.

Yet, internally he churns his thoughts at all times, with a deft combination of planning his moves and being outright street-smart. He is aware that his unflustered exterior is a signal that keeps his team composed and focused, without losing their nerve in crunch situations.

Personality, unlike what many people believe, is not in-born and static. It can be consciously developed and changed. With conscious effort, one can project the desired personality.

For example, in preparation for an interview session, or in one’s professional career, a person may have to work on his personality. Every role comes with certain personality expectations.

By consciously working on the desired traits over time and projecting the desired ones, one can make a very tangible change to his original self to meet the expectations.

One’s personality is a signal that others read at all times. This includes every gesture and every articulation of the person. This signal is read by the interviewer or by superiors in a professional world. In turn, opinion gets formed and selection choices are made based on such impressions.

In one’s career, it is therefore important to recognize at all times that there is a direct correlation between the personality signal one sends out and one’s career growth. Those who do not align these expectations may get stunted in their careers.

Case II: Same Person: Consciously Different Personalities can be Powerful :

Mandela’s powerful personality always reached his people. Waving hands with a smiling face and wearing bright coloured print shirts showed him as a fulfilled patriarch of modem Africa. His tight fists during his run for the Presidency showed his determined resolve.

Wearing fatigues and sporting a beard while he was the leader of the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) underground wing showed his aggression (TIME 2008). Thus, it is possible, and even desirable, to not have the same personality under all conditions. Consciously working on, and demonstrating different personalities under different conditions can be very powerful.

In a corporate-setting, appearance and body language matter. One’s attire, demeanour and style reflect one’s personality. Hence, it is important to consciously work on one’s appearance so that it creates the desired impression during an interview or subsequently in one’s career.

Case III: There isn’t One Right Personality; It Differs by Role :

In an interview for a global team leader position, an experienced candidate, Seema, was pitted against a well-qualified and outspoken John. Seema had worked in several companies, and led small teams. John, on the other hand, was a brilliant researcher and had primarily worked in individual contributor roles.

During the interview for the team leader position, the interviewer presented a case where the work to be done is split across two teams—one in India, the other in the US. The team in India looked at their counterpart in the US as a threat, and vice versa. Each team wanted to get a bigger share of the pie and own more of the quality work than the other.

When John was asked how he would handle the leadership of the India team, he said he would outmaneuver the US team by demonstrating clear innovation excellence and superiority of his team over its counterpart.

He confidently articulated the many methods he would use to showcase to his management how the work he did will clearly be of higher value and impact. This would ensure increased ownership of the work by the India team, and hence a larger share of the pie.

Seema, however took a completely different view. She said she would first call for a joint face-to-face interaction session between the US and the India teams. The intent would be to break any mental barriers and misgivings between the teams and the respective leaders.

She said it is critical that the teams on both sides of the globe think of themselves as one team—since they both represented the same company, working to win against the competition. Subsequent to that session, the teams will work cohesively, supporting each other at all times, to win more customer business.

This way, she explained, the total work pie can be grown, benefiting both the teams. It would give both the India team and the US team more responsibilities.

The interview team liked John’s aggression and confidence, but felt that these personality traits, while valuable in many cases, were not appropriate for this role. The current role required a strong ethic of teamwork and global collaboration.

John’s focus would lead to more internal strife and competition. He would dissipate more energy on winning internal battles. Seema’s strategy was to build a strong global team and to focus her energy externally to win against competitors.

Essay # 3. Personality Development from the Three Cases:

The three case studies clearly bring out an important learning:

Personality is our identity, as perceived by others. A particular personality can be groomed.

This is well-stated in a video on personality development by Economic Times (2009), which states:

‘Personality development is a continuous process and the evolution of an individual’s personality is linked to his personal and professional growth. It is often multi-faceted, and individuals display different personalities at different places and in different phases of their life.’

‘The need to develop your personality in line with people, place, time etc., underlines the importance of personality development. The process of personality development requires a set of skills that need to be learned and at times unlearned.’

The three case studies bring out the following:

There is no one right or wrong personality. It varies by the role and situation at hand. An aggressive personality that is critical to achieve success in some situations may be counterproductive in another situation. Similarly, an introverted personality may be better-suited for some roles than an extroverted personality.

It is also important to be conscious that one’s personality constantly emits a signal for others to read. Thus, it is important for one to have a deep realization of the role one intends to pursue and its expectations—and work on grooming the desired personality traits.

Essay # 4. Freudian Analysis of Personality Development:

According to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), personality consists of three structures (Fig. 1.1):

3. Superego

Of these three, the id is absolutely unconscious; it has nothing to do with reality. It acts per the pleasure principle that demands immediate gratification irrespective of the environment. However, such instant satisfaction of the needs is not always realistic or socially acceptable.

Examples of id would be the instinct to grab a beautiful piece of artistry from a museum to satisfy our own craving. Another example could be to want to hit a person in public as a reaction to an abuse.

Next is the ego, which is actively concerned with the reality principle. It intends to realistically meet the demands of the id in accordance with the outside word. Freud considered the ego to be very sensitive and prompt to react to anything it considers unsavory in the outside world that it confronts.

However, having a strong ego has the positive advantage of reacting positively to criticisms and problems. It urges one to proceed forward with determination to achieve the desired goal.

For example, the ego would make the person realize that there is armed security in the museum and there is no way to grab the piece of artistry from the museum. The ego, in the other example, would also tell the person that there is no way to smack the other person who is much stronger physically than him.

Finally, the superego, according to Freud, is the moral branch of personality, which goes beyond being the realistic. It reflects the values arid judgment, including the ones developed during one’s childhood upbringing that forces the demands of the id to be met not only realistically but morally.

Freud believed that one’s personality is based on the dynamic interactions amongst these three components. The super ego would reflect, and realize that the consequence of grabbing the piece of artistry from the museum or smacking a person in public would not only be construed as a criminal offence, but will be morally improper.

The person may instead choose to look at other options to procure at low cost a replica of the same piece of art. Similarly, instead of hitting, stating a counter-point that communicates strong displeasure may be more appropriate. It is interesting to note that all-round development of the personality is also the main theme of the philosophy of Swami Vivekananda.

Essay # 5. Swami Vivekananda’s Concept of Personality Development:

According to the Vedantic concept advocated by Swami Vivekananda, all-round harmonious development of personality is possible if proper attention is given to the five dimensions that are involved in forming and developing the human personality.

Good leadership qualities are the outcome of different types of personality traits.

Psychologists have categorized personality types as follows, based on the Enneagram, which dates back at least two thousand five hundred years.

1. Perfectionists

3. Achievers

4. Romantics

5. Observers

6. Questioners

7. Enthusiasts or adventurers

8. Bosses or asserters

9. Mediators or peacemakers

It is critical to note that an individual’s personality should not be made to force-fit into one of these categories. Inherent in individuals is a mix of personalities, which shows itself in different circumstances and contrasting environments.

In one’s career too, one needs to demonstrate a combination of these personalities that best suits the situation. Each of these personality attributes also bring out different classes of leadership. Working with leaders that exhibit these characteristics at different stages of one’s career can be a great learning opportunity for professionals.

The different personality types can be described as follows:

a. Perfectionists:

Leaders who are perfectionists set a very high bar of expectation for themselves.

They are principled leaders with the following personality traits:

1. Strive for excellence in everything they do—however large or small :

Perfection in content and look-and-feel are both important to them. These leaders are very dedicated, and have an extremely intense work ethic. As a natural consequence, such leaders often expect the same from their people. Their motto for their team is to do every aspect of the job in a way that cannot be improved upon.

2. Foundation built on a strong focus of quality :

To such leaders, a flaw in execution is an absolute no-no. Hence, to ensure flawless execution, they develop and pursue systematic processes with intense rigor. These processes include multiple checks-and-balances at each step to ensure that errors surface in the early stages and get rectified.

3. Lofty standards :

Another characteristic of such leaders is setting lofty standards. They benchmark themselves with the highest global standards, and strive for themselves and their teams to achieve the same. They have internal metrics to constantly compare themselves and their teams against the benchmark. Their high standards make them respected by their people for the quality of what they produce.

However, perfectionist leaders could potentially get slowed down by the weight of their own expectations. It is not uncommon to see programmes led by such leaders getting delayed over and over again. This happens due to the perfectionists’ constant desire to improve, without making a judgment call on the right time to stop, and move on to the next programme.

Individuals wanting to pursue a career in a design can learn from perfectionists. Companies which look at design as their core competency value the skills of perfectionists.

b. Helpers:

These leaders seek out opportunities to assist others. They are often good coaches and sounding boards for their people. Their personality is built on sincere skills to listen to, and to understand the needs of others. These leaders thrive on building and nurturing relationships.

Three key attributes of these leaders that are based on strong interpersonal skills are:

1. Smiling demeanor:

They have a pleasant personality, are optimistic, and have a cheerful attitude not only about work, but also about life.

2. Generously appreciative:

To get the best out of their teams and peers, they are always generously appreciative of the work they do. They do not lose an opportunity to encourage their people and give a pat on their back to increase their team’s enthusiasm to encourage further contributions. They show that they care.

3. Empathy:

This implies understanding the position of someone from one’s own position. In other words, these leaders put themselves in the other’s shoes and try to understand how they would feel if they were in the same position.

Helpers, however, often get trapped in their over-zealousness to please and support many people. Their weakness is their inability to say ‘no’ . They cannot turn down requests from others. Thus, they bring unto themselves huge mental stress as more and more people get to depend on them.

Strong leaders who exhibit this personality trait find a way to overcome this handicap, by coming up with a scalable model with others sharing the load of supporting the people who are dependent on them. Individuals looking for roles in human Resources or coaches/mentors in organizations can build the ‘helper’ personality.

c. Achievers:

These are leaders who excel in a single-minded pursuit of their goals. What characterizes these leaders is their focus and relentless pursuit of moving ahead while removing obstacles that come their way.

These leaders have the following personality traits:

1. Goal setting:

These leaders set aggressive, but realistic goals. They begin with a clear vision of what they set out to do for their work groups and for themselves. They break it up into near-term milestones for the teams—and ensure that the team remains focused on them at all times.

2. Execution:

Achievers are highly execution-oriented and this is their biggest strength. They overcome barriers that come their way. They plan well, monitor risks at all times, and provide for contingencies. They are also known for building a culture of efficiency in their organization.

Lack of efficiency and competence in their teams that slows execution frustrates them. Speed means a lot to achievers—and they do everything to inculcate these traits amongst their team members. Learning from achievers can give a jump-start to a young professional’s career.

By observing such leaders, one can understand the art and science of goal-setting and instill in themselves the spirit of maniacal execution. People with highly ambitious career goals develop the personality traits of achievers and learn from those who practice it effectively.

d. Romantics:

Romantics are idealistic leaders. They crave for Utopia—in terms of where they want to see themselves, and their groups and organization. They set goals that may not be realistic—but ones that ‘looks and feels glamorous’. They are expressive and often excel in artistic pursuits as part of, or in addition to their chosen profession.

Some personality traits of romantics are:

1. Set lofty vision that may not be grounded in reality:

These leaders lack realism. They dream and set goals that are impossible to meet—but create a (short-lived) feel-good ambience.

2. Lack focus and are poor in taking decisions:

Romantics are unable to focus on a goal and take hard decisions that are needed to move forward in pursuit of the vision.

3. Kind and people-friendly:

They are kind-hearted, humorous, love to interact with people, can spend long hours discussing how things should be (and are not today).

e. Observers:

These leaders have a strong sixth sense. They are highly intuitive in gauging situations.

1. Intuitive:

Observers are highly perceptive. They have a keen power to process the events around them, do a causal analysis, and come to their own conclusion. They are more curious than others, and often get deeply entangled in analyzing seemingly minor events around them for a long time.

2. Critical:

The observations made by these leaders lead to critical and sharp conclusions, sometimes bordering on pessimism.

Observers are loners. In fact, they appreciate being left alone and be given the time to analyse situations in depth.

Observers like to be respected for their well thought through views and in-depth analysis. They do not take to criticism very lightly and tend to get argumentative if doubted.

In one’s career, having some aspect of the traits of the observer can help an individual be perceptive of the situation around them, and take the right career decisions.

f. Questioners:

These are leaders who keep an organization honest and move in the right direction without getting into complacency.

Key attributes of questioners are:

1. Analytical skills:

Questioners possess the gifted ability to think on their feet. They have a sharp analytical bent of mind which helps them in finding flaws in arguments and in the rationale.

2. Lateral thinking:

These leaders possess the skills for lateral thinking. When most others in a team are naturally drifting towards a conclusion, questioners bring in fresh perspective and lateral thinking.

3. Articulate:

These leaders communicate crisply and forcefully. They are usually respected for their views. Having questioners in a team can be an asset to ensure an organization does not drift in the wrong direction. They may come across sometimes as negative or ones who slow down the standard process, but they may be ignored at the organization’s peril.

These leaders allow one to think through the non-obvious and thereby avoid risky pitfalls. They also ensure that teams do not get into the trap of group-think in the wrong direction.

g. Enthusiasts or Adventurers:

Enthusiasts lend an air of optimism around them.

They have the following attributes:

1. Variety:

They thrive on variety. Enthusiasts tend to move from one role to another, and even change professions completely over the course of their career.

2. Story teller:

Enthusiasts love to dream a future, and tend to get their teams-excited about it. These dreams may not be grounded in reality, but that does not bother the enthusiasts. They tell stories to their teams about how the world will be in their desired future state.

3. Spontaneous:

They are spontaneous, have high energy and eternally optimistic. Often they have an infectious personality that rallies people around them. Enthusiasts or adventurers, however, fail to sometimes carry through on their commitments. Their execution and attention to detail are sloppy, and need strong people to balance them.

People interested in following a career in public speaking need to have some traits of Adventurers, as they go from one situation to the other, telling stories of successes and new models for growth.

h. Bosses or Asserters:

People with the ‘Boss’ personality are those with high determination and are possessed with a sense of direction. They have a clear idea of the direction to be taken, and are dismissive of other’s views.

Some of the traits bosses or asserters exhibit are:

1. Courageous:

Asserters have strong conviction of thought. They have an independent mindset, and are confident of their approach. They are not afraid to take unpopular decisions.

2. Power orientation:

They love to have the power and even demonstrate the power to their subordinates and peers. They come across as dominating in meetings and sometimes are poor listeners.

3. Supportive of team:

Strange as it may seem to some, asserters fight for their people and protect them in discussions where their worth is challenged. Asserters are strong personalities who may be dismissive of good suggestions from their team members, if these are contrary to their opinion.

Extremely assertive leaders sometimes lead to a high-stress situation in organizations, and often cause bum-out. One who needs to turnaround an organization from a crisis by taking hard decisions can learn from the skills of asserters.

i. Mediators or Peacemakers:

An organization cannot do without peacemakers. Conflicts are common in any organization, and peacemakers ensure these do not go out of hand. While peacemakers play an important, sometimes invisible role in an organization, they sometimes feel frustrated at the lack of due recognition for the thankless role they play.

Peacemakers are characterized-by the following:

1. Good at arbitration and trustworthy :

These leaders observe situations and carefully listen to positions of all concerned. They then deftly look for possible middle-ground. They are trusted by all, because they do not play games and are genuinely interested in a solution. This helps them to be effective in volatile situations.

2. Hate conflict :

Peacemakers try to take the steam out of confrontational situations. They tell the warring parties why ‘winning’ is inconsequential and take both sides to a compromise. They thrive in harmony.

3. Like to be respected :

They have an inherent desire to be respected for the critical role they play in an organization to keep the harmony. But whatever might be the types of personality of a leader, leadership in general means the ability to influence others and convert them to their own opinion. A leader is capable of changing the scenario from you versus me, to you and me.

It has been said that a leader is a person who knows the road, who can keep ahead and who pulls others with him. A leader gains the confidence of others because he has confidence in himself whatever might be the adversities he faces.

He knows that even if he can’t direct the winds, he can at least adjust the sails. He understands how to win the heart of others and win his objective. Leadership qualities can be ascertained with the help of different kinds of personality tests.

Related Articles:

• Personality Development: Definition and Characteristics
• Top 9 Types of Personality Traits
• Personality: Short Essay on Personality
• Role of Will and Character in Personality Development

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6.3: Social and Personality Development in Childhood

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University of California, Davis

Childhood social and personality development emerges through the interaction of social influences, biological maturation, and the child’s representations of the social world and the self. This interaction is illustrated in a discussion of the influence of significant relationships, the development of social understanding, the growth of personality, and the development of social and emotional competence in childhood.

learning objectives

• Provide specific examples of how the interaction of social experience, biological maturation, and the child’s representations of experience and the self provide the basis for growth in social and personality development.
• Describe the significant contributions of parent–child and peer relationships to the development of social skills and personality in childhood.
• Explain how achievements in social understanding occur in childhood. Moreover, do scientists believe that infants and young children are egocentric?
• Describe the association of temperament with personality development.
• Explain what is “social and emotional competence“ and provide some examples of how it develops in childhood.

Introduction

“How have I become the kind of person I am today?” Every adult ponders this question from time to time. The answers that readily come to mind include the influences of parents, peers, temperament, a moral compass, a strong sense of self, and sometimes critical life experiences such as parental divorce. Social and personality development encompasses these and many other influences on the growth of the person. In addition, it addresses questions that are at the heart of understanding how we develop as unique people. How much are we products of nature or nurture? How enduring are the influences of early experiences? The study of social and personality development offers perspective on these and other issues, often by showing how complex and multifaceted are the influences on developing children, and thus the intricate processes that have made you the person you are today (Thompson, 2006a).

Understanding social and personality development requires looking at children from three perspectives that interact to shape development. The first is the social context in which each child lives, especially the relationships that provide security, guidance, and knowledge. The second is biological maturation that supports developing social and emotional competencies and underlies temperamental individuality. The third is children’s developing representations of themselves and the social world. Social and personality development is best understood as the continuous interaction between these social, biological, and representational aspects of psychological development.

Relationships

This interaction can be observed in the development of the earliest relationships between infants and their parents in the first year. Virtually all infants living in normal circumstances develop strong emotional attachments to those who care for them. Psychologists believe that the development of these attachments is as biologically natural as learning to walk and not simply a byproduct of the parents’ provision of food or warmth. Rather, attachments have evolved in humans because they promote children’s motivation to stay close to those who care for them and, as a consequence, to benefit from the learning, security, guidance, warmth, and affirmation that close relationships provide (Cassidy, 2008).

Although nearly all infants develop emotional attachments to their caregivers--parents, relatives, nannies-- their sense of security in those attachments varies. Infants become securely attached when their parents respond sensitively to them, reinforcing the infants’ confidence that their parents will provide support when needed. Infants become insecurely attached when care is inconsistent or neglectful; these infants tend to respond avoidantly, resistantly, or in a disorganized manner (Belsky & Pasco Fearon, 2008). Such insecure attachments are not necessarily the result of deliberately bad parenting but are often a byproduct of circumstances. For example, an overworked single mother may find herself overstressed and fatigued at the end of the day, making fully-involved childcare very difficult. In other cases, some parents are simply poorly emotionally equipped to take on the responsibility of caring for a child.

The different behaviors of securely- and insecurely-attached infants can be observed especially when the infant needs the caregiver’s support. To assess the nature of attachment, researchers use a standard laboratory procedure called the “Strange Situation,” which involves brief separations from the caregiver (e.g., mother) (Solomon & George, 2008). In the Strange Situation, the caregiver is instructed to leave the child to play alone in a room for a short time, then return and greet the child while researchers observe the child’s response. Depending on the child’s level of attachment, he or she may reject the parent, cling to the parent, or simply welcome the parent—or, in some instances, react with an agitated combination of responses.

Infants can be securely or insecurely attached with mothers, fathers, and other regular caregivers, and they can differ in their security with different people. The security of attachment is an important cornerstone of social and personality development, because infants and young children who are securely attached have been found to develop stronger friendships with peers, more advanced emotional understanding and early conscience development, and more positive self-concepts, compared with insecurely attached children (Thompson, 2008). This is consistent with attachment theory’s premise that experiences of care, resulting in secure or insecure attachments, shape young children’s developing concepts of the self, as well as what people are like, and how to interact with them.

As children mature, parent-child relationships naturally change. Preschool and grade-school children are more capable, have their own preferences, and sometimes refuse or seek to compromise with parental expectations. This can lead to greater parent-child conflict, and how conflict is managed by parents further shapes the quality of parent-child relationships. In general, children develop greater competence and self-confidence when parents have high (but reasonable) expectations for children’s behavior, communicate well with them, are warm and responsive, and use reasoning (rather than coercion) as preferred responses to children’s misbehavior. This kind of parenting style has been described as authoritative (Baumrind, 2013). Authoritative parents are supportive and show interest in their kids’ activities but are not overbearing and allow them to make constructive mistakes. By contrast, some less-constructive parent-child relationships result from authoritarian, uninvolved, or permissive parenting styles (see Table 1).

Parental roles in relation to their children change in other ways, too. Parents increasingly become mediators (or gatekeepers) of their children’s involvement with peers and activities outside the family. Their communication and practice of values contributes to children’s academic achievement, moral development, and activity preferences. As children reach adolescence, the parent-child relationship increasingly becomes one of “coregulation,” in which both the parent(s) and the child recognizes the child’s growing competence and autonomy, and together they rebalance authority relations. We often see evidence of this as parents start accommodating their teenage kids’ sense of independence by allowing them to get cars, jobs, attend parties, and stay out later.

Family relationships are significantly affected by conditions outside the home. For instance, the Family Stress Model describes how financial difficulties are associated with parents’ depressed moods, which in turn lead to marital problems and poor parenting that contributes to poorer child adjustment (Conger, Conger, & Martin, 2010). Within the home, parental marital difficulty or divorce affects more than half the children growing up today in the United States. Divorce is typically associated with economic stresses for children and parents, the renegotiation of parent-child relationships (with one parent typically as primary custodian and the other assuming a visiting relationship), and many other significant adjustments for children. Divorce is often regarded by children as a sad turning point in their lives, although for most it is not associated with long-term problems of adjustment (Emery, 1999).

Peer Relationships

Parent-child relationships are not the only significant relationships in a child’s life. Peer relationships are also important. Social interaction with another child who is similar in age, skills, and knowledge provokes the development of many social skills that are valuable for the rest of life (Bukowski, Buhrmester, & Underwood, 2011). In peer relationships, children learn how to initiate and maintain social interactions with other children. They learn skills for managing conflict, such as turn-taking, compromise, and bargaining. Play also involves the mutual, sometimes complex, coordination of goals, actions, and understanding. For example, as infants, children get their first encounter with sharing (of each other’s toys); during pretend play as preschoolers they create narratives together, choose roles, and collaborate to act out their stories; and in primary school, they may join a sports team, learning to work together and support each other emotionally and strategically toward a common goal. Through these experiences, children develop friendships that provide additional sources of security and support to those provided by their parents.

However, peer relationships can be challenging as well as supportive (Rubin, Coplan, Chen, Bowker, & McDonald, 2011). Being accepted by other children is an important source of affirmation and self-esteem, but peer rejection can foreshadow later behavior problems (especially when children are rejected due to aggressive behavior). With increasing age, children confront the challenges of bullying, peer victimization, and managing conformity pressures. Social comparison with peers is an important means by which children evaluate their skills, knowledge, and personal qualities, but it may cause them to feel that they do not measure up well against others. For example, a boy who is not athletic may feel unworthy of his football-playing peers and revert to shy behavior, isolating himself and avoiding conversation. Conversely, an athlete who doesn’t “get” Shakespeare may feel embarrassed and avoid reading altogether. Also, with the approach of adolescence, peer relationships become focused on psychological intimacy, involving personal disclosure, vulnerability, and loyalty (or its betrayal)—which significantly affects a child’s outlook on the world. Each of these aspects of peer relationships requires developing very different social and emotional skills than those that emerge in parent-child relationships. They also illustrate the many ways that peer relationships influence the growth of personality and self-concept.

Social Understanding

As we have seen, children’s experience of relationships at home and the peer group contributes to an expanding repertoire of social and emotional skills and also to broadened social understanding. In these relationships, children develop expectations for specific people (leading, for example, to secure or insecure attachments to parents), understanding of how to interact with adults and peers, and developing self-concept based on how others respond to them. These relationships are also significant forums for emotional development.

Remarkably, young children begin developing social understanding very early in life. Before the end of the first year, infants are aware that other people have perceptions, feelings, and other mental states that affect their behavior, and which are different from the child’s own mental states. This can be readily observed in a process called social referencing , in which an infant looks to the mother’s face when confronted with an unfamiliar person or situation (Feinman, 1992). If the mother looks calm and reassuring, the infant responds positively as if the situation is safe. If the mother looks fearful or distressed, the infant is likely to respond with wariness or distress because the mother’s expression signals danger. In a remarkably insightful manner, therefore, infants show an awareness that even though they are uncertain about the unfamiliar situation, their mother is not, and that by “reading” the emotion in her face, infants can learn about whether the circumstance is safe or dangerous, and how to respond.

Although developmental scientists used to believe that infants are egocentric—that is, focused on their own perceptions and experience—they now realize that the opposite is true. Infants are aware at an early stage that people have different mental states, and this motivates them to try to figure out what others are feeling, intending, wanting, and thinking, and how these mental states affect their behavior. They are beginning, in other words, to develop a theory of mind , and although their understanding of mental states begins very simply, it rapidly expands (Wellman, 2011). For example, if an 18-month-old watches an adult try repeatedly to drop a necklace into a cup but inexplicably fail each time, they will immediately put the necklace into the cup themselves—thus completing what the adult intended, but failed, to do. In doing so, they reveal their awareness of the intentions underlying the adult’s behavior (Meltzoff, 1995). Carefully designed experimental studies show that by late in the preschool years, young children understand that another’s beliefs can be mistaken rather than correct, that memories can affect how you feel, and that one’s emotions can be hidden from others (Wellman, 2011). Social understanding grows significantly as children’s theory of mind develops.

How do these achievements in social understanding occur? One answer is that young children are remarkably sensitive observers of other people, making connections between their emotional expressions, words, and behavior to derive simple inferences about mental states (e.g., concluding, for example, that what Mommy is looking at is in her mind) (Gopnik, Meltzoff, & Kuhl, 2001). This is especially likely to occur in relationships with people whom the child knows well, consistent with the ideas of attachment theory discussed above. Growing language skills give young children words with which to represent these mental states (e.g., “mad,” “wants”) and talk about them with others. Thus in conversation with their parents about everyday experiences, children learn much about people’s mental states from how adults talk about them (“Your sister was sad because she thought Daddy was coming home.”) (Thompson, 2006b). Developing social understanding is, in other words, based on children’s everyday interactions with others and their careful interpretations of what they see and hear. There are also some scientists who believe that infants are biologically prepared to perceive people in a special way, as organisms with an internal mental life, and this facilitates their interpretation of people’s behavior with reference to those mental states (Leslie, 1994).

Personality

Parents look into the faces of their newborn infants and wonder, “What kind of person will this child will become?” They scrutinize their baby’s preferences, characteristics, and responses for clues of a developing personality. They are quite right to do so, because temperament is a foundation for personality growth. But temperament (defined as early-emerging differences in reactivity and self-regulation) is not the whole story. Although temperament is biologically based, it interacts with the influence of experience from the moment of birth (if not before) to shape personality (Rothbart, 2011). Temperamental dispositions are affected, for example, by the support level of parental care. More generally, personality is shaped by the goodness of fit between the child’s temperamental qualities and characteristics of the environment (Chess & Thomas, 1999). For example, an adventurous child whose parents regularly take her on weekend hiking and fishing trips would be a good “fit” to her lifestyle, supporting personality growth. Personality is the result, therefore, of the continuous interplay between biological disposition and experience, as is true for many other aspects of social and personality development.

Personality develops from temperament in other ways (Thompson, Winer, & Goodvin, 2010). As children mature biologically, temperamental characteristics emerge and change over time. A newborn is not capable of much self-control, but as brain-based capacities for self-control advance, temperamental changes in self-regulation become more apparent. For example, a newborn who cries frequently doesn’t necessarily have a grumpy personality; over time, with sufficient parental support and increased sense of security, the child might be less likely to cry.

In addition, personality is made up of many other features besides temperament. Children’s developing self-concept, their motivations to achieve or to socialize, their values and goals, their coping styles, their sense of responsibility and conscientiousness, and many other qualities are encompassed into personality. These qualities are influenced by biological dispositions, but even more by the child’s experiences with others, particularly in close relationships, that guide the growth of individual characteristics.

Indeed, personality development begins with the biological foundations of temperament but becomes increasingly elaborated, extended, and refined over time. The newborn that parents gazed upon thus becomes an adult with a personality of depth and nuance.

Social and Emotional Competence

Social and personality development is built from the social, biological, and representational influences discussed above. These influences result in important developmental outcomes that matter to children, parents, and society: a young adult’s capacity to engage in socially constructive actions (helping, caring, sharing with others), to curb hostile or aggressive impulses, to live according to meaningful moral values, to develop a healthy identity and sense of self, and to develop talents and achieve success in using them. These are some of the developmental outcomes that denote social and emotional competence.

These achievements of social and personality development derive from the interaction of many social, biological, and representational influences. Consider, for example, the development of conscience, which is an early foundation for moral development. Conscience consists of the cognitive, emotional, and social influences that cause young children to create and act consistently with internal standards of conduct (Kochanska, 2002). Conscience emerges from young children’s experiences with parents, particularly in the development of a mutually responsive relationship that motivates young children to respond constructively to the parents’ requests and expectations. Biologically based temperament is involved, as some children are temperamentally more capable of motivated self-regulation (a quality called effortful control ) than are others, while some children are dispositionally more prone to the fear and anxiety that parental disapproval can evoke. Conscience development grows through a good fit between the child’s temperamental qualities and how parents communicate and reinforce behavioral expectations. Moreover, as an illustration of the interaction of genes and experience, one research group found that young children with a particular gene allele (the 5-HTTLPR) were low on measures of conscience development when they had previously experienced unresponsive maternal care, but children with the same allele growing up with responsive care showed strong later performance on conscience measures (Kochanska, Kim, Barry, & Philibert, 2011).

Conscience development also expands as young children begin to represent moral values and think of themselves as moral beings. By the end of the preschool years, for example, young children develop a “moral self” by which they think of themselves as people who want to do the right thing, who feel badly after misbehaving, and who feel uncomfortable when others misbehave. In the development of conscience, young children become more socially and emotionally competent in a manner that provides a foundation for later moral conduct (Thompson, 2012).

The development of gender and gender identity is likewise an interaction among social, biological, and representational influences (Ruble, Martin, & Berenbaum, 2006). Young children learn about gender from parents, peers, and others in society, and develop their own conceptions of the attributes associated with maleness or femaleness (called gender schemas ). They also negotiate biological transitions (such as puberty) that cause their sense of themselves and their sexual identity to mature.

Each of these examples of the growth of social and emotional competence illustrates not only the interaction of social, biological, and representational influences, but also how their development unfolds over an extended period. Early influences are important, but not determinative, because the capabilities required for mature moral conduct, gender identity, and other outcomes continue to develop throughout childhood, adolescence, and even the adult years.

As the preceding sentence suggests, social and personality development continues through adolescence and the adult years, and it is influenced by the same constellation of social, biological, and representational influences discussed for childhood. Changing social relationships and roles, biological maturation and (much later) decline, and how the individual represents experience and the self continue to form the bases for development throughout life. In this respect, when an adult looks forward rather than retrospectively to ask, “what kind of person am I becoming?”—a similarly fascinating, complex, multifaceted interaction of developmental processes lies ahead.

Outside Resources

Discussion questions.

• If parent–child relationships naturally change as the child matures, would you expect that the security of attachment might also change over time? What reasons would account for your expectation?
• In what ways does a child’s developing theory of mind resemble how scientists create, refine, and use theories in their work? In other words, would it be appropriate to think of children as informal scientists in their development of social understanding?
• If there is a poor goodness of fit between a child’s temperament and characteristics of parental care, what can be done to create a better match? Provide a specific example of how this might occur.
• What are the contributions that parents offer to the development of social and emotional competence in children? Answer this question again with respect to peer contributions.
• Baumrind, D. (2013). Authoritative parenting revisited: History and current status. In R. E. Larzelere, A. Sheffield, & A. W. Harrist (Eds.), Authoritative parenting: Synthesizing nurturance and discipline for optimal child development (pp. 11–34). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
• Belsky, J., & Pasco Fearon, R. M. (2008). Precursors of attachment security. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd ed., pp. 295–316). New York, NY: Guilford.
• Bukowski, W. M., Buhrmester, D., & Underwood, M. K. (2011). Peer relations as a developmental context. In M. K. Underwood & L. H. Rosen (Eds.), Social development (pp. 153–179). New York, NY: Guilford
• Cassidy, J. (2008). The nature of the child’s ties. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd ed., pp. 3–22). New York, NY: Guilford.
• Chess, S., & Thomas, A. (1999). Goodness of fit: Clinical applications from infancy through adult life . New York, NY: Brunner-Mazel/Taylor & Francis.
• Conger, R. D., Conger, K. J., & Martin, M. J. (2010). Socioeconomic status, family processes, and individual development. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72 , 685–704
• Emery, R. E. (1999). Marriage, divorce, and children’s adjustment (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Feinman, S. (Ed.) (1992). Social referencing and the social construction of reality in infancy . New York, NY: Plenum.
• Gopnik, A., Meltzoff, A. N., & Kuhl, P. K. (2001). The scientist in the crib . New York, NY: HarperCollins.
• Kochanska, G. (2002). Mutually responsive orientation between mothers and their young children: A context for the early development of conscience. Current Directions in Psychological Science , 11, 191–195.
• Kochanska, G., Kim, S., Barry, R. A., & Philibert, R. A. (2011). Children’s genotypes interact with maternal responsive care in predicting children’s competence: Diathesis-stress or differential susceptibility? Development and Psychopathology, 23 , 605-616.
• Leslie, A. M. (1994). ToMM, ToBy, and agency: Core architecture and domain specificity in cognition and culture. In L. Hirschfeld & S. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture (pp. 119-148). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
• Meltzoff, A. N. (1995). Understanding the intentions of others: Re-enactment of intended acts by 18-month-old children. Developmental Psychology, 31 , 838-850.
• Rothbart, M. K. (2011). Becoming who we are: Temperament and personality in development . New York, NY: Guilford.
• Rubin, K. H., Coplan, R., Chen, X., Bowker, J., & McDonald, K. L. (2011). Peer relationships in childhood. In M. Bornstein & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Developmental science: An advanced textbook (6th ed. pp. 519–570). New York, NY: Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis.
• Ruble, D. N., Martin, C., & Berenbaum, S. (2006). Gender development. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Series Eds.) & N. Eisenberg (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development (6th ed., pp. 858–932). New York, NY: Wiley.
• Solomon, J., & George, C. (2008). The measurement of attachment security and related constructs in infancy and early childhood. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd ed., pp. 383–416). New York, NY: Guilford.
• Thompson, R. A. (2012). Whither the preconventional child? Toward a life-span moral development theory. Child Development Perspectives , 6, 423–429.
• Thompson, R. A. (2008). Early attachment and later development: Familiar questions, new answers. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd ed., pp. 348–365). New York, NY: Guilford.
• Thompson, R. A. (2006a). Conversation and developing understanding: Introduction to the special issue. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 52 , 1–16.
• Thompson, R. A. (2006b). The development of the person: Social understanding, relationships, self, conscience. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Series Eds.) & N. Eisenberg (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development (6th ed., pp. 24–98). New York, NY: Wiley.
• Thompson, R. A., Winer, A. C., & Goodvin, R. (2010). The individual child: Temperament, emotion, self, and personality. In M. Bornstein & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Developmental science: An advanced textbook (6th ed., pp. 423–464). New York, NY: Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis.
• Wellman, H. M. (2011). Developing a theory of mind. In U. Goswami (Ed.), Wiley-Blackwell handbook of childhood cognitive development (2nd ed., pp. 258–284). New York, NY: Wiley-Blackwell

Welcome To MIT Vishwashanti Gurukul

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"Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man"

- Swami Vivekananda

Personality Development in School

A school is considered as the second home of a child. It is rightly said that the personality of children depends on the way parents deal with them. But this is the half-truth. The personality of a child also depends on his/her involvement in school activities. School is not only meant for imparting education, but it is responsible to shape the personality and character of a student.

The students who are encouraged to merely focus on academics are dumb and under confident. Students can never be trained to beat the competition of the real world only by imparting bookish knowledge. Along with education, personality development holds significance to run in the race of life.

A personality is a group of qualities that makes a person different from others. Development of such qualities is called personality development. A good school focuses on both the academics as well as the extracurricular activities to enhance the thinking ability of students, which in turn, develops their personality. MIT Vishwashanti Gurukul understands its role of molding the future generation. Being considered among the best boarding schools in India, it aims at the physical, mental and spiritual development of students. The school develops the personality of its student through various activities.

Steps adopted to groom the personality of students

• MIT Vishwashanti Gurukul organizes cultural activities, games, sports, debates, etc and encourages its students to participate in these activities in order to boost their confidence and discover their special talents.
• It conducts regular seminars and conferences to provide extra knowledge to the students that they don’t get from the books.
• It encourages students to participate in ethical activities like life valuing, animal caretaking, etc, to inculcate the feeling of empathy and care for others.
• MIT Vishwashanti Gurukul conducts special classes of value education.
• It holds special meditation session and yoga sessions for the physical, mental and spiritual development of students.
• It focuses on improving the intellect and team spirit of students by engaging them in group discussions.

Need for the personality development of students

1. it boosts confidence.

A good personality elevates the confidence level of students. When a child knows he is properly attired and groomed and the knowledge he possesses is up to the mark, it automatically boosts his confidence level.

2. Improves communication skills

Development of communication skills is one of the most important aspects of personality development. A person with good communication skills can easily convey his message to others. The process of development of communication skills should start right from the childhood days. The way teachers and students communicate with each other plays a key role in developing communication skills.

3. Gives edge in competition

Only hard work and talent is not sufficient to be successful in this highly competitive world. Good personality matters a lot. Most of the companies have two levels of the job selection process, one is a written exam and another is an interview. The written exam tests a candidate’s knowledge but interview aims at testing the personality of the candidate.

So, if you want to mold the personality of your child into a winning personality, then apply for admissions in MIT Vishwashanti Gurukul, one of the top residential schools in India.

'Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man' - Swami Vivekananda

Driven by this belief and the responsibility to mould the future generation, MAEER’s MIT Vishwashanti Gurukul is an IB World School known for imparting value-based education for more than a decade.

We are inspired and strongly believe that this is the era to revive the age-old principle of Guru Shishya Parampara . Based on this traditional style of learning combined with modern amenities and facilities , we endeavor to create global citizens of tomorrow who are still connected with their history & heritage.

In this fast paced world which is increasingly coming closer and with the advancement of technology, what we really need today is not just advanced technology, but men and women of strong character who are self-disciplined and capable of being global citizens making the utmost use of technology for the benefit of mankind.

Vishwashanti Gurukul aims to do this while creating awareness of the ancient Indian culture and the deep-rooted ethos of our country. The Gurukul system is the perfect blend of modern technological advancements and the ancient Indian culture to create a new generation of confident & winning personalities.

We are committed to providing these values to the students to make them physically strong, mentally alert and spiritually elevated along with academic excellence.

Dr. Vishwanath D. Karad

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Mit gurukul, international school in pune,maharashtra.

In this era of globalization, it is the need of the hour to keep the students abreast with both local as well as international issues and to train them to endure in the global sphere. This is where the international school has its significance as it is based on international academic standards and it imparts global perspective to the students. An international school is the best in this ever-changing world as it aims at creating global citizens who are connected to their heritage.

If you are looking for the best international school in Pune,Maharashtra , then your search ends here. MIT Pune’s Vishwashanti Gurukul is a pioneer international school in Pune,Maharashtra . The school follows the curriculum of International Baccalaureate (IB) board and believes in creating responsible citizens with strong character.

IB Schools in Pune,Maharashtra

A school is a place where a child spends most of his/her childhood. Whatever a child learns at school stays with him/her lifelong. That is why parents are very particular about their child’s schooling. However, education should not just be confined to the syllabi and rather it should include imparting life skills and inculcating moral values to the child so that he/she grows up as a well-balanced individual. For this, you should send your child to an international school. Vishwashanti Gurukul is one of the finest IB Schools in Pune,Maharashtra that creates future leaders.

Best School in India

MIT Vishwashanti Gurukul is one of the best schools in India as it prepares your child to face all impending challenges. It is an IB board school that is based on international academic standards. The student to teacher ratio is low such that every child gets individual attention. The school’s value based education aims at imbibing the skill of inquiry, action & reflex in the child and makes them risk takers. It motivates the child to come out with ingenious ideas and respect the perspective, religion, culture and heritage of others. All these factors make Vishwashanti Gurukul the best school in India.

MIT Gurukul - Boarding and Residential School in Pune,Maharashtra

Vishwashanti Gurukul is a residential school that provides affable ambience to the students and serves as a ‘home away from home’. The boarding at MIT Gurukul Boarding School Pune, Maharashtra offers world-class facilities along with inculcating India ethos. The hostels are equipped with all the modern amenities and have a robust infrastructure. The Guru-Shishya Parampara is fostered in the hostels where every child learns discipline and life skills under the guidance of Guru.

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Importance of Sports in Personality Development of Students

Some of the most successful people globally, well-known not just in their fields, but admired by everyone, are sportspersons. From Sachin Tendulkar to Sania Mirza, India itself has an abundance of sportspersons for people to look up to and feel inspired by. In the last few decades, the nation has placed a considerable emphasis on children taking sports up as professional careers, teaching people about the importance of sports in the personality development of students . Today, sports have become an intrinsic part of our lives – from an academic and a professional perspective. This subject forms a strong focus in schools and colleges, allowing students to compete with and against each other and causing sports and education to go hand in hand. 

What is it about sports that bring students together? 

Playing sports is a lot more than just technique and scoring – it involves wholesome personality development. Ever wondered how physical activity can contribute towards building soft skills, assist in character development and help build a child’s overall personality? Let’s take a look at all the benefits and importance of sports in respect of a student’s personality development – 

Physical and Mental Fitness 

Playing a sport regularly can help keep the body active, irrespective of a person’s age. Whether you choose cricket, badminton, tennis, or any other sport, it allows you to engage in physical motion. This has a number of benefits – from helping control weight and building muscles to improving agility and mental reflexes, and coordination. Playing sports allows the body to become more aware and facilitates better psychological and physical balance. 

Discipline 

Playing a sport and excelling at it requires a good amount of discipline. By teaching children a sport and allowing them to pursue it, you can help a child focus and set their mind to achieve certain goals. If a child is extremely passionate about a sport, they will learn how to commit themselves, exert self-control and learn the art of being determined to accomplish what they set their mind to. These characteristics go a long way in not just helping children excel at sports but setting goals in life. 

Teamwork & Camaraderie

When sports are played in teams, it encourages children to work together, solve problems and come up with solutions to achieve goals. Team sports help children understand how important each member’s role in the team is and how a well-working team can holistically contribute to a final win. Most sports, even the ones that are played individually, involve a lot of camaraderies and help children increase their social skills towards one another. 

Behavioural Influence 

Aside from developing skills and characteristics within children internally, playing sports also has an external behavioural influence on children. When playing with others, children come across all kinds of traits they can pick up – be it a technique, skill, or behavioural trait, children are impressionable. Thus, it is important to have proper mentoring and coaching where such mentors can shape a child’s mind up with positive behavioural influences. 

Strength & Skill 

Playing sports helps in developing strength, both internally and externally. While constant exercise helps in becoming physically fit, children also become strong mentally as they realize how to tackle victories and defeats with equal sportsmanship. This helps them build life skills such as taking things in their stride, motivating themselves to do even better, as well as not back down before they reach their goal.

Playing sports allows children to exhibit leadership skills and qualities. By leading or co-leading a team, they understand how to delegate functions, keep their head in the game, motivate their team members to win, and support playing functions. It teaches children the art of being a leader. 

Release Stress

Being physically active allows the mind to be lifted and feel positive, thus helping in destressing. When the body is indulging in physical activity, the mind has an outlet for releasing negative thoughts. Sporting activities enable the body to produce and release endorphins, or happy hormones, which help in combating stress and negativity. 

At The Sports School , we truly believe that children learn to benefit a lot from sports and education blended together optimally. Thus, we provide students with focused training and mentoring to help them hone their skills. We understand that excelling at a sport requires a lot more than just technique and skill – it also requires wholesome personality development. We have a host of mentors and coaches that help children train both physically and mentally so that they are fit and ready to take on the world. 

At The Sports School, our goal is to have our students develop a holistic personality and become great leaders tomorrow – both on the field and off it.

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Mustafa Ghouse (born 19 August 1980) is the Chief Executive Officer of JSW Sports, the sports vertical of The JSW Group. The JSW Group owns and operates Indian Super League club Bengaluru FC and Pro-Kabaddi League team Haryana Steelers. Ghouse is also the Director at JSW Sports’ Indian Premier League franchise Delhi Capitals.

Prior to his involvement in Management of Sport, Ghouse was a professional tennis player who represented India at the 2002 Asian Games in Busan, South Korea and the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar, winning a bronze medal in the Men’s Doubles event at the 2002 edition with partner, Vishal Uppal.

Pullela Gopichand (born 16 November 1973) is a former Indian badminton player. Currently, he is the Chief National Coach for the India national badminton team. He won the All England Open Badminton Championships in 2001, becoming the second Indian to achieve this feat after Prakash Padukone.He runs the Gopichand Badminton Academy. He received the Arjuna Award in 1999, the Dronacharya Award in 2009 and the Padma Bhushan – India’s third highest civilian award – in 2014

Rohan Bopanna is a global doubles phenomenon, ranked as high as no. 3 in the world. He has represented India in the Olympics, Davis Cup, and Hopman Cup. Rohan won the 2017 French Open Mixed Doubles title, 16 ATP Tour doubles titles, and has consistently ranked within the top 15 in the world.

Shikha Tandon (born 20 January 1985) is an Indian former swimmer from Bangalore, India. Tandon has won 146 national medals, and 36 medals in international competitions, including five gold medals. Currently, she is a member of USADA’s science team, assisting in the daily operation, development, and maintenance of the resources, reporting, and projects critical to USADA’s scientific initiatives.

Bapu Krishnarao Venkatesh Prasad (born 5 August 1969), is a former Indian cricketer, Cricket Coach, Commentator who played Tests and ODIs. He made his debut in 1994. Primarily a right-arm medium-fast bowler, Prasad was noted for his bowling combination with Javagal Srinath.

He is the bowling coach for Kings XI Punjab in the Indian Premier League, having formerly performed the same role for the Indian cricket team from 2007 to 2009.

He currently serves as Deputy General Manager for Canara Bank.

Vickram Kanth (born 11 April 1987) is an Indian field hockey player who plays as a defender. He was part of the Indian team that won gold at the 2007 Men’s Hockey Asia Cup, as well as the teams that won bronze at the 2007 Sultan Azlan Shah Cup and silver at the 2008 Sultan Azlan Shah Cup.

Dr. Vivek Jawali is Chief Cardiothoracic & Vascular Surgeon and as a Chairman, he heads the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences at Fortis Hospitals, Bangalore. Dr. Jawali has also been nominated as a council member to the newly constituted Medical Council of India (MCI), the premier statutory body that governs the standards of medical education and recognition of medical qualifications in the country. He is also on the MCI’s academic council.

He is a pioneer in minimally invasive cardiac surgery in India and has performed over 18,000 cardiothoracic & Vascular Surgeries till date. He performed India’s first beating heart bypass surgery in 1992 and performed India’s first minimally invasive bypass surgery(MIDCAB)in Sept 1994. Dr. Jawali did India’s first Awake Cardiac surgery (Surgery without GA or ventilator, done under continuous high thoracic epidural) in June 1999. He also performed world’s 1st awake open heart surgery (a 74 yrs patient underwent triple bypass with aortic valve replacement without G.A. or a ventilator) in April 2002.

Dr. Jawali was the president of the Indian Association of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeons (IACTS) in 2008. He is the founder member of the International Society of Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgeons (ISMICS) and is the only Indian on the editorial board of its journal – Innovations in Cardiac Surgery. He is also the council member of the Asian Association of Cardiothoracic Surgeons. He has been the Vice President of the Indian College of Cardiology. He is on the editorial board of the journal of Indian Association of Cardiothoracic Surgeons (IACTS), journal of Cardiac Anaesthesia, CTSNET (a comprehensive global website of cardiac surgeons around the world).

Srinivas is the Co-Founder at The Sports School. He is also the founding partner at o3 Capital and co-heads the investment banking division. Srinivas has more than 19 years of investment banking experience and has been instrumental in development of o3 Capital’s investment banking practice.

Prior to o3 Capital, Srinivas was with TAIB Bank – Bahrain, where he focused on setting up their investment banking practice in India. Srinivas holds an M.Com degree from Bangalore University and is a CFA from ICFAI, Hyderabad.

Dr. Chenraj Roychand is the Founder Chairman of JGI Group. A visionary leader, educationist, social entrepreneur, and angel investor, he has been promoting the educational and entrepreneurship sectors in India for more than two decades. Dr. Chenraj Roychand incepted JGI Group in 1990 with the aim of providing quality educational and entrepreneurial opportunities to the masses.

Dr. Sankar UV is the Director of The Sports School and has worked as a Sports Director in one of the leading Universities- Jain University.

He began his over 25 years long career with a stint in Sainik School in Bijapur, where he spent his formative years in an atmosphere charged with the duty, dedication, and physical perseverance. These formative years stood with him in good stead, during his PUC (XI and XIIth Std) at KCP Science College, Bijapur, through a BA Degree at St. Joseph’s Arts and Science College, Bangalore. Always a fitness enthusiast, Dr. Sankar UV focussed his attention towards a Bachelor’s Degree followed by a Masters in Physical Education at Rama Krishna Vidyalay, Maruthi College of Physical Education, Coimbatore in the year 1991 to 1993. He acquired a Diploma in Athletics from Nethaji Subhaschandra National Institute of Sports (NSNIS), South Centre, Bangalore, in 1994.

Dr. Sankar UV joined Sri Baghwan Mahaveer Jain College (SBMJC) in 1995 with all the determination of a dedicated teacher and endurance of a marathon runner to set his vision of molding students in high achievers.

A simple glance at the row of accomplishments of his students is enough proof of his impact on his students. The list below is a narration of the achievements of his proteges at the National Level in sports like Cricket, Basketball, Swimming, Hockey, Badminton, Tennis, Shooting, Volleyball, to name a few. Olympians like Gagan Ullalmath, Sharath Gayekwad appears at the beginning of the endless list, followed by stars like Rehaan Poncha, Varun Aaron, Adithya Prakash, Khalin Joshi, Rakesh Manpath, Prakash Jolly, Surabhi Tipre, Karun Nayar, Shankar Patil, Abrar Kazi, H S Sharath, Aaron D’Souza, K.L.Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Poorvisha Ram, Jacquelina Rose Kunnath, Fariha Zaman, Diya, Shreya Gopal, Poorva Kiran Shetye, Trishul Chinnappa, K.V. Siddharth, Samarth Ravikumar. Other names include stars like Pankaj Advani, Robin Uthappa, Shikha Tandon, Anup Shridhar, Sheetal Gautam, Rohan Bopanna, Hari Prasad, Rohith Havaldar, Kaushal, Ravikumar, Manish Pandey, Ajay R.M., Sanjay Raj, Gautam Dhiman, Asha Nandakumar, Anit Verma, Abhishek Bakshmi, Bharath B Raj, Aswini Jayram, etc.

His belief is to impart training and mentorship of the highest standards to build confidence, while also enabling and empowering each sportsperson to achieve higher degrees of mental and physical composure. He supports and encourages athletes that want to pursue their training without letting go of their education.

With over 40 years of experience in Industrial and Project Management, Gopal Anand is known as a turnaround specialist. He is the Indian Representative of DCD London and Mutual PLC, specialized in Trade finance and Properties. He was the Project and Regional Manager of the largest Diary Project “Operations Flood” which led India to be self-sufficient and become the world’s largest milk producer and exporter.

Anand has graduated in Bsc (Hons) Mathematics from Delhi University and received an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur.

Mr. Mahadeva.T, is an Engineering Graduate having over 25 years of industry experience in project management of software and infrastructure development companies. During Initial stages of his career, he has worked in Software Companies in India and United States. Since, year 2000, he has been associated with ‘Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise Ltd’, in the execution of the prestigious ‘Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project’.

Presently, he is the Vice-President of the Company in-charge of acquisition, managing, development of lands and infrastructural facilities, and a key strategist for improvement of Toll Management System. He is also a Board member in many other notable Infrastructure Projects and Project Management Firms.

With over 18+ years of experience in investment banking and agri business, Priyatham leads the business diversification initiatives of Sam Agri Group while handling finance and international marketing.

Priyatham completed his graduation from BITS Pilani and his masters from IIM-B.

Mr. KR Choudary is a fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India with strong expertise in Project Consultancy and management Consultancy. He commenced his career with his own firm M/s. KR Choudary & Co, Chartered Accountants and has a rich experience of more than 20 years.

During his career, he has handled various assignments which include statutory audits of large PSUs, statutory and internal audits of Public & Private limited companies engaged in various field from manufacturing to chit funds, as well as Management Audits. He is a specialist in project financing with several successful fund raising cases under his belt.

He is an active member of FKCCI (Federation of Karnataka Chamber of Commerce and Industry) and sits on the Committee on Corporate Affairs & CSR.

Meena N is a Director at The Sports School. She also serves on the board of Inventus Financials Pvt Ltd, a boutique financial advisory firm. She is a a post graduate in commerce from Bangalore University and has over 10 years of teaching experience.

A renowned Professor of Electronics with a passion for academic and student development and history of success in developing effective strategies to overreach curriculum goals. 21 years of teaching experience has established him as an accomplished teacher, excellent guide and effective leader. Presently, working in conjunction with professionals, paraprofessionals, management and administrative staff to enrich and maintain high reaching standards at The Sports School – a perfect place to nurture talents of sports and pursue academic goals.

Prof. A.S Venkatesan has authored a text book named “A Text Book of Electronics for II PUC.” He has designed and developed curriculum based online video classes for II PUC students in Electronics, in collaboration with makemelearn.com.

Masters in Mathematics from Annamalai University & bachelors in Education from Ranchi University, Ms.Jayapriya is pursuing MSc (Statistics) currently. She is ranked 41 nationally in Mathematics in the Teacher’s Olympiad (2018) and received the best National Mathematics teacher’s award in 2017 from Indian Didactics Association. She has acquired the Marker’s accreditation from Cambridge. She is an executive committee member for the Association of Mathematics Teachers of India. She has presented papers in the National Conferences of NCERT. She has been associated with the JGi group for the past 10 years.

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Reshma Maruri

Former India Number 1 – U16 & U18 girls

I am Reshma Maruri and I am doing my 2nd year BBA in The Sports School. I was ranked number 1 in the AITA Indian National rankings among the under-16 and under-18 girl’s categories. Before coming to The Sports School, I had to travel to different places for tennis training, fitness, physio, and school and this was very time-consuming. After joining the BBA course here, everything we require for competition training is easily accessible and neatly coordinated as all the facilities are made available in one place. We have world-class facilities and a well-equipped gym and also the teachers here are very supportive in helping us balance both sports and academics. I am able to perform well in both education and competition because of the well-designed sports ecosystem at TSS

R. Ananth is a veteran in Indian Domestic Cricket with a rich experience of more than three decades. He played an important role in bringing Ranji trophy back to Karnataka in the year 1995-96. He was also part of the team who went on to defend the Irani trophy in 1996-97. In 1996, he wrecked Hansie Cronje’s visiting South African team at Kochi, by taking six wickets.

Since retirement, he is a level 2 certified coach by National Cricket Academy (NCA), with a specialization in spin bowling. He regularly coached the spin department at zonal camps conducted by NCA. He has also been a selector for Karnataka State Cricket Association for the age groups U16 and U19 till 2001. Between 2001 – 2004 he was promoted to the Senior Selection committee and then in 2008 to the selection committee of Ranji team in Karnataka till 2010. During this period, cricketers like Manish Pandey, Abhimanyu Mithun, S Arvind, Stuart Binny, and Robin Uthappa made their entry into first class cricket.

He worked as Asst. Director in Karnataka State Cricket Academy from 2009 to 2014 and was responsible for setting up Zonal Cricket Academies in Karnataka and also conducted coach’s education program in zonal centres.

An ITF Level 3 coach and AITA Coaches Education Tutor, Balu has over 29 years of coaching experience, and has worked with several of India’s top players including Prajnesh Gunesawaran, Sriram Balaji, Vishnuvardhan etc. He is also the former National Doubles Champion in 1993.

Overlooking the Grassroots and Youth Development programs at Bengaluru FC Head of Coaching – FC Utrecht Academy Phase Coach and Head of Individual Player Development – Arsenal First team assistant and opponent analyst – VFL Wolfsburg Head of youth education – Willem II.

Coach Brhamastafany Dhanu Utomo, who hails from Indonesia, is a BWF Certified Level 1 Badminton Coach. He has coached various National & International Laurels. Dhanu has been a Former Coach at Badminton Association of Malaysia. He has also been a former Sparring Partner for Indian National Badminton Team. As a player, he has been finalists at various tournaments in Malaysia. Currently he is coaching at Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy and has joined The Sports School as Head Badminton Coach.

Suhitha Maruri

2nd PUC at The Sports School

Hi, I am Suhitha Maruri. I am currently ranked number 2 in the AITA U18 girl’s National rankings. I am pursuing my 2nd PUC at the Sports School. My ambition here is to prepare to play all the grand slams and represent India in the Olympics. After joining, all the facilities needed like yoga, gym, physio, and training center are very accessible and nearby. This makes it very convenient for us to train consistently. With a lot of tournaments to play, it is a challenge to balance studies and tennis. However, the teachers here are supportive and coordinate with our calendar. This helps me balance my academics equally well.

Footballer at TSS

I am studying with The Sports School since October 2020. The academics are conducted very effectively by TSS teachers. My football coaching classes conducted by highly experienced coaches from Bengaluru FC. I thank all my teachers and coaches for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this fantastic program at The Sports School and helping me get to the next level.

Nirmanyu Singh

I have been studying with The Sports School since October 2020. The academics are conducted very effectively by TSS teachers. My football coaching classes are conducted by highly experienced coaches from Bengaluru FC. I thank all my teachers and coaches for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this fantastic program at The Sports School and helping me get to the next level.

Have any question?

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Role of A School in a Child’s Personality Development

Like older days, schools are not the institutes of learning anymore. A school is more than a place for imparting knowledge. Schools nowadays care about education and non-educational aspects of a child’s life as well. Schools are also helping to improve the personality of the children from the early stage of their life.

Best schools in South Kolkata focus on providing a personalised learning experience to nurture the brain and personality of the children. A class in a school generally comprises students who are shy, timid, over smart, slow and fast learners. Hence, catering to the needs of every child is essential. Teachers nowadays thus resort to social interactions within the classes while they teach to understand the students’ minds effectively.

The teachers need to understand the attributes of every child. Personality development from an early age ensures the development of positive behaviour in kids. Schools play an integral part in the same.

How Does a School Help to Develop a Child’s Personality?

1. Improve the academic potential

In the majority of the best schools in South Kolkata, the focus is on developing the children’s academic potential to its farthest limits. Schools work hard in developing problem-solving, rationality and solution-seeking skills in the children. This not only improves the academic potential but also improves the personality of the child. Moreover, schools focus on engaging the kids through interactive sessions to develop knowledge acceptability skills.

2. Helps in positive character building

Along with helping the children get good marks, the schools have to help them develop good behaviour. It falls within the duty of the school to develop common behaviours within a child. Thus, apart from academic help, teachers also focus on teaching children manners, respect, empathy, honesty, and integrity. For instance, the act of raising hands for asking questions in a school is an apt behaviour. This is taught to the kids from the very beginning.

3. Development of social skills

The primary focus of the schools is on developing social skills as well. Excelling in academics doesn’t make a child a good human being. Thus, the teachers in the schools focus on developing the social interaction skills of the kids. They are taught ways to get rid of their shyness, apprehensions, fear and phobias. This helps in preparing a child to interact with the outer world. An encouraging and understanding environment within the school helps a child to blossom and grow up fast.

To help the children develop their personality traits, the schools and the teachers must develop a positive learning culture. Children are sensitive, hence being strict with them doesn’t solve the problem. Purushottam Bhagchandka Academic School has been a symbol of excellence in the field of education for years. We are focused on imparting the best quality education to our students and ensuring complete personality development.

We engage kids in different extracurricular activities and foster overall development. Check out our website for more details and enrol your child into one of the best schools in South Kolkata.

• 63, Mahatma Gandhi Road (Paschim Putiary), Tollygunge, Kolkata - 700041.
• +91 33 24027137

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