Girls Discuss Choice of an All-Girl Middle School: Narrative Analysis of an Early Adolescent Identity Project

The narrative creation of identity by young adolescents has so far been addressed mainly from an identity-in-interaction perspective, focusing attention on the multiplicity and variability of identity negotiation as adolescents interact with others, typically with peers. In contrast, a sociocultural/dialogical perspective draws attention to the importance of organization as well as variability in identity systems, and thus to the creation of personal identity stories. Our purpose is to illustrate how this perspective serves as a guide in the analysis of girls' narratives about their decision to attend a new, all girls' middle school. We emphasize how the stories are constituted by girls' transactions with the sociocultural context, including societal discourses surrounding single-sex education, and we propose "specialness" as an emergent identity concept that serves to organize the identity narratives.