Mass Media's Negative Narratives

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the secondary psycho-sociological trauma like school shootings on students' self-identity and academic success. School shootings' endless highlight reels challenge critical analysis skills for validated information, proper context, and navigating societal ills. Students' social concepts and social engagement contend for proper development with the plethora of unsubstantiated mass media news stories. This chapter establishes a conceptual framework toward teacher counternarrative social capital shaping student resiliency as students deal with mass media's psycho-sociological secondary trauma through the lens of young Black males. These findings have implications for how researchers approach the impact that mass media depictions of school shootings can have on students. This chapter concludes with a discussion of how educators should respond to mass media negative narratives like school shootings to support social-identity development and proper perspectives of societal ills.

A Longitudinal Investigation of the Ethnic and National Identities of Children With Migration Background in Germany

How immigrants define their ethnicity and nationality is relevant for integration: They can identify with their ethnic group, the receiving society, and a combination of both. A longitudinal study with elementary-school children with migration background ( N = 200; age 9–10) in Germany investigated the predictors and stability of ethnic and national identities. Ethnic identity was more highly endorsed than national identity. National and dual identities were compatible (i.e., positively related), whereas ethnic identity was compartmentalized (i.e., unrelated to national and dual identities). Contact with Germans predicted national identity over time, but not vice versa. Thus, the study contributes to a better understanding of multiple social identities of young ethnic minority children in light of social psychological theories of social identity development.

Coaches’ Perceptions of Social Identity in Youth Sport: When Youth Athletes Think and Behave as “Us”

This study sought to examine coaches’ perceptions of social identity among their athletes and explore the ways that they may attempt to influence its development. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 12 head coaches (Mage = 49.25 years; SD = 6.5 years; Mexperience = 15.75 years; SD = 7.66 years; nfemale = 1) of male (n = 8) and female (n = 4) competitive youth ice hockey teams. Three main themes were identified through our analysis. First, the coaches’ perceptions of athletes’ social identities were described through examples of peer connection and similarity (i.e., in-group ties), athletes’ experience of positive affect (i.e., in-group affect), and athletes demonstrating the meaning and value that they attribute to team membership (i.e., cognitive centrality). Second, the coaches discussed a variety of ways that they sought to develop and reinforce a shared social identity within their teams. These behaviors aligned with principles advanced within the social identity leadership literature—namely, the coaches acted as in-group prototypes, in-group champions, entrepreneurs of identity, and embedders of identity. Finally, the coaches identified parents and cliques as key social agents with the ability to undermine social identity development. The findings are discussed in relation to both their theoretical and practical implications.

A Grounded Theory of Adolescent High School Women’s Choir Singers’ Process of Social Identity Development

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to discover the process of social identity development for adolescent high school women’s choir participants. Purposive maximum variation sampling was used to identify three public high school women’s choirs where 54 interviews were conducted with 40 different public school singers. Three waves of data collection and analysis revealed a seven-step process beginning with coming in singing and ending with envisioning myself. The central phenomenon was identified as opening up my voice and me and emphasized singers’ increased self-confidence. Intervening conditions included competition, the absence of choral opportunities, and lack of understanding from those outside of the choral program. Amount of time in the choral program, number of groups, and community recognition were identified as contextual conditions. Dimensionalized properties, a temporal matrix, and propositional statements are presented.

Building Identity in Collegiate Midlevel Choral Ensembles

This study was designed to explore the director’s perspective on the role organizational images play in social identity development in midlevel choral ensembles. Using a phenomenological methodology, I interviewed 10 current or former directors of midlevel choral ensembles from eight midwestern U.S. colleges and universities. Directors cited different choral configurations, high performance standards, unique group identity, strong personal connections, and good faculty relationships as the primary tools used to build identity. Directors also revealed their perceived challenges with regard to midlevel choirs: director continuity, discrepancy in student musical ability and dedication, negative perceptions, and the need for director flexibility. No director mentioned preparing students to sing in the top ensemble as a purpose or priority of the midlevel ensemble; however, many stated that a good midlevel choir achieved this result and also raised the quality of the entire choral program. Implications of these findings reveal the importance of recognizing and addressing a midlevel identity phenomenon and the impact identity building efforts can make to facilitate stronger midlevel ensembles.