Possible Selves and Higher Education: New Interdisciplinary Insights ed. by Holly Henderson, Jacqueline Stevenson, and Ann-Marie Bathmaker

Abstract

Reviewed by: Possible Selves and Higher Education: New Interdisciplinary Insights ed. by Holly Henderson, Jacqueline Stevenson, and Ann-Marie Bathmaker Honggang Liu and Yang Xia Holly Henderson, Jacqueline Stevenson, and Ann-Marie Bathmaker (Editors). Possible Selves and Higher Education: New Interdisciplinary Insights. London: Routledge, 2018. 158 pp. Paperback: $35.95. ISBN 978-1-138-09803-9 Three decades ago, Markus and Nurius (1986) proposed an influential concept they termed Possible Selves. These include the selves that we expect to become (ideal selves), the selves that we are able to become (actual selves), and the selves that we are afraid of becoming (ought to selves). This model leads us to connect our lives with our imagined world and our past experience, and motivates us to rethink our lives in a new way. Although the concept of possible selves "…has its origins in the field of social psychology" (p. 2), it has long been researched as a psychological concept, with less concern about its social aspects. To fill this gap, this volume offers theorization about possible selves from a sociological perspective in the first four chapters (Chapters 1 to 4), and goes on to discuss empirical studies related to how this concept may be applied to study in higher education in the following five chapters (Chapters 5 to 9). Chapter 1 describes the context, significance, and development of possible selves. It further argues why this concept can be applied to the study of issues in higher education. Students in universities or colleges are guided to set up or adjust their future/ideal selves during different periods of their lives. When approaching their ideal selves, they may worry about becoming selves that they are not eager to be. The higher education system itself is driven by tension between its present self and its future imagined self; as the author of this chapter describes, "possible selves [are] already there" (p. 2). All these facts serve as motivations to explore the different topics presented in this volume. Chapter 2 looks at the potential and challenges of using possible selves to examine students' motivations. The author contends that the complicated nature of emotional valence arouses researchers' curiosity about the roles of positive and negative emotions in students' motivations. The author advocates efforts to encourage positive emotions to sustain students' higher motivations. This chapter also suggests that future research on motivation needs to explore the relationships between possible selves, life tasks, and care of important others (for example, parents, friends, and students). Chapter 3 examines possible selves from a narrative perspective and talks about the relationship between possible selves and subjectivity. Possible selves offer a temporality within which a person holds the present self and imagines an ideal self, suggesting the possibility of capturing a narrator's assessment of the past and expectations of the future. This discursive production of possible selves is construed in people's participation in their educational practices, which is highly influenced by social structures. Their educational subjectivity is correlated with possible selves. Chapter 4 turns a spotlight on how theories of possible selves are extended and theorized from sociological perspectives. This chapter demonstrates the author's emphasis on temporality and self in terms of sociological significance through reflections on data collected from a PDP (Professional Development Program). It also concludes that possible selves are diverse, situational-based and variable across time and space, while emphasizing [End Page E-27] them "as a mechanism for understanding how a particular group of learners viewed their futures and how they were able/unable to use their imaginings to actively shape their present actions" (p. 52). Chapter 5 describes the first of the empirical studies. In this chapter the author adopts an ethnographic approach to examine the English classroom interactions between teachers and students in a state secondary school in Slovakia. The study found a strong relationship between the degree of realization of teachers' possible selves and the extent of the students' involvement in the interaction. Chapter 6 centers on familial influences on students in the process of molding their possible selves, focusing on a group of students with dyslexia. A discussion of dyslexia as well as a review of relevant research enables the author to...