Crafter, S;
(2015)
Can people really change? Changing self-identity and ‘other’ relationships across the lifespan.
In: Capdevila, R and Dixon, J and Briggs, G, (eds.)
Investigating Psychology 2.
(pp. 197-243).
Open University Press: Milton Keynes, UK.
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Abstract
My eldest daughter first stood up in a school assembly when she was five years old. The pupils at her school had been invited to make a hat for an ‘Easter Bonnet’ competition. She probably wouldn’t have been so keen to know, while she was cutting, sticking and gluing, that as one of the winners of the competition she would be required to collect her prize in front of the whole school. The reason for this is that my daughter would have been described as an ‘extremely shy’ child. She looked so scared doing this; it was very difficult to watch as a parent. She stood at the front of the school hall, with tense shoulders up near her ears, and visibly shook. However, she did it! While shyness in children may be perceived as cute, it is not generally valued in adulthood. So, over the years there was a lot of gentle nudging from her family (and sometimes the schools she went to) to be brave and do things she was not comfortable doing. At the time of writing this, she is undertaking a university course that requires her to give a presentation on her work, in front of her peers and tutors, every week. More than this, she tells me she is actually starting to enjoy them. What does this tell us about the changes to my daughter’s sense of ‘self’? What roles have family, teachers and peers had in helping to shape that exceedingly shy five-year-old into a more confident young woman? Is shyness an underlying characteristic that she has learned to cover up, or has the culmination of all those experiences and interactions with others allowed her to construct an altered sense of who she is? How has her self-identity changed as she engages in different life transitions?
| Type: | Book chapter |
|---|---|
| Title: | Can people really change? Changing self-identity and ‘other’ relationships across the lifespan |
| ISBN: | 1780078579 |
| ISBN-13: | 978-1780078564 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | https://oro.open.ac.uk/46294/ |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Lifespan development, Identity, Continuity, Discontinuity, Transition |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1508494 |
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