“Everyone Has Their Own Places”: Mapping as a Storied Approach to the Study of Youth Identity

Authors

  • Erin Spring University of Calgary

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.20360/langandlit29521

Abstract

This article highlights part of my work with ten 16 and 17-year-olds at two Canadian secondary schools. My multiple case study sought to make visible my participants’ stories of place: how did they construe the role of place within their own lives? How did they record their journeys within, through, and between places? I share how my participants articulated their place-identities as dynamic encounters rather than fixed surfaces (Massey, 2005; Ingold, 2016). Employing story-mapping as a research method encouraged my participants to articulate their lives in their own terms, affording me the opportunity to understand how they negotiated their identities.

Author Biography

Erin Spring, University of Calgary

Dr. Erin Spring is an Assistant Professor in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary where she teaches and researches in the areas of young people’s texts and cultures. Her research projects are united thematically by a shared investment in stories and storytelling as a way of articulating adolescent identity development, with a particular focus on the influence of place. She is on the executive committee of the Association for Research in the Cultures of Young People.

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Published

2021-02-22

How to Cite

Spring, E. (2021). “Everyone Has Their Own Places”: Mapping as a Storied Approach to the Study of Youth Identity. Language and Literacy, 23(1), 79–96. https://doi.org/10.20360/langandlit29521