Charting the sociocultural territory of the dialogical self: Insights from the education of culturally diverse youngsters

This paper brings dialogical self theory into conversation with a wider literature on the schooling of ethnic minorities. As grounds for cultural contact, the schooling environments of ethnic minorities invite attention to how ethnic identities are negotiated through interaction with student peers and teachers from different heritage backgrounds. Against this backdrop and using dialogical self theory as a starting point, I employ sociocultural concepts of identity construction to outline how I-positions are tethered to social practices, relationships, power, and relations within institutions. I analyze a video clip, produced by a Hong Kong born and raised Filipino student, to show how the integration of dialogical self theory and a sociocultural perspective can highlight the contours of dialogical frictions. Such dialogical frictions are a result of negotiation with power across different contextual levels by leveraging and transcending supportive and opposing collective voices in an institution to arrive at a desired I-position. I propose that this dialogical interaction constitutes a sociocultural territory of the dialogical self, a meta-position that portrays how cultural resources—enacted through power and encounters of cultural differences—contribute to dialogical movements and positioning in institutions. This integrated account provides a unique view to investigate how identities of ethnic minorities are tensioned, transformed and reproduced temporally in culturally diverse schooling environments. Copyright © 2018 10th International Conference on the Dialogical Self.