姝 Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2012, Vol. 11, No. 2, 228–243. http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amle.2009.

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Student Identity,
Disengagement, and Learning
KATHY LUND DEAN
JAMES P. JOLLY
Idaho State University

Current student engagement literature fails to fully appreciate the psychosocial aspect of
learning, especially the process of “opting out” of learning opportunities. We formulate a
model of identity-based disengagement in an attempt to understand why some students
choose to reject learning opportunities. Management education in particular may be subject
to student disengagement due to learning activities that engender affective, identity-
challenging responses. Using social identity theory, we model how some learning activities
can trigger elements of students’ identities, forcing a cognitive dissonance confrontation. We
suggest that students undertake an identity-based risk–reward assessment when determining
which learning opportunities to accept or reject. We argue that by increasing sensitivity to
the process of disengagement, instructors can help draw students back into learning
opportunities. Practical implications of the model and suggestions for future research end the
article.
........................................................................................................................................................................

There is a vast, multidisciplinary literature about
factors that facilitate or obstruct student learning. As
management educators, we continually seek in-
sights into what impacts student learning and en-
gagement with classroom material (e.g., Burke &
Moore, 2003) and what empirical relationships exist
among pedagogical techniques and student learn-
ing outcomes (e.g., Carini, Kuh, & Klein, 2006). The
common conceptual denominator is “engagement,”
or energy that students purposefully spend on activ-
ities that make up their educational experience (Rob-
inson & Hullinger, 2008). Engagement with learning
materials is viewed as a make-or-break factor for
learning to take place; without engagement, factors
such as faculty credentialing and institutional repu-
tation make little difference in student outcomes
(Kuh, 2003). However, based on our experiences with
some students, we argue that the current engage-
ment literature fails to fully appreciate the psycho-
A version of this paper was presented at the annual Acad-
emy of Management meeting, Chicago, 2009. A workshop based
on this paper was presented at the OBTC Teaching Conference
for Management Educators, 2007, Pepperdine University.
Thanks to the anonymous reviewers from both AMLE and
the Academy’s MED division for their outstanding comments
and suggestions. We also thank Blake Ashforth for his encour-
agement and comments on earlier drafts of the model and
Andrew Gauss for his graphic design assistance.
228
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social aspect of learning, especially the process of
“opting out” of learning opportunities.
We extend the engagement literature by ex-
panding on the process of disengagement, or what
happens when students deflect or reject learning
opportunities. After reviewing germane literature,
we reframe the learning process using social iden-
tity theory, and argue that “learning” at root must
include a process of recognizing and adapting
one’s different identities. We offer a model of iden-
tity-based disengagement that takes into account
how students process classroom experiences and
participate in an adaptive learning loop— or not.
We address disengagement by modeling how
learning activities can trigger elements of stu-
dents’ identities, forcing a cognitive dissonance
confrontation. The model makes explicit the iden-
tity-based processes that students may utilize in
learning environments, suggesting that students
undertake an identity-based risk–reward assess-
ment in learning environments when determining
which opportunities to accept and which to reject.
After discussing the model, we end the article
with implications of identity-based dissonance.
Understanding relationships among student iden-
tity, the socially constructed self, learning activi-
ties, and adaptive learning loops sheds light on
the seemingly “antilearning” student behaviors
we have observed. We argue for increased instruc-
2012 Lund Dean and Jolly
tor sensitivity to the process of disengagement,
and offer possible empirical avenues to continue
this conversation.
ISSUE IDENTIFICATION
Occasionally, we have had students disengage
from classroom learning opportunities and ac-
tively resist them in a variety of ways. For exam-
ple, one author has occasionally encountered the
student who attends class but refuses to partici-
pate in classroom activities such as group work
and simulations; when directly called upon to
comment, this student declines. Although he will
regularly attend class, he routinely fails exams,
because he will not do homework or other assign-
ments required in the course. Despite a midterm
counseling session with the instructor, indicating
imminent course failure if behaviors do not
change, the student continues this pattern and
even sits for the final exam. The student fails the
course, forcing him to retake this required course
to graduate, losing his tuition dollars, and earning
an “F” on his permanent transcript.
In another example, a student suddenly became
hostile toward the instructor during a discussion of
anonymous class feedback. Previously a high per-
former in class discussions, the student lashed out
at the instructor, accusing him of singling out the
student’s comments for public ridicule. After the
instructor reminded the entire class that the feed-
back comments were anonymous and designed to
improve class functioning, the student abruptly
left the room.
These are only two examples that we have en-
countered over a combined 4 decades of classroom
experiences in management education. We have
found these occurrences curious to say the least,
given that matriculating into a university program
is still (relatively) optional, and that college is a
significant financial undertaking. Thus, we’ve
sought to understand this phenomenon and to as-
certain options we may have to reconnect such
students to learning opportunities.
Generally, the learning literature has empha-
sized the “learning objectives” to “learning activ-
ity” to “student outcomes” link in a rational way
(e.g., Pintrich & De Groot, 1990). Goodman and
Beenen’s (2008: 523) learning contract model is rep-
resentative of a relatively linear understanding of
antecedents to and outcomes of learning opportu-
nities. We need to move outside of traditional
thinking, however, to understand the process of
disengagement in students. For example, students
who achieve deep involvement (or what we will
define below as engagement, consistent with a
229
number of other authors) exhibit what Baxter Ma-
golda (2007: 69) defines as transformational learn-
ing, or “how we learn to negotiate and act on our
own purposes, values, feelings, and meanings
rather than those we have uncritically assimilated
from others.” Transformational learning, in turn, is
predicated on developing “self-authorship,” or,
control over how one defines beliefs, identity, and
relationships (Baxter Magolda, 2007).
When we privilege a relatively rationalistic or lin-
ear “learning objectives” to “learning outcomes” pro-
cess, we do a disservice to our students by underes-
timating the threat to the holistic student self during
learning activities. When we encounter resistant stu-
dents, we may dismiss them or label them as “un-
reachable,” “closed-minded,” or “unwilling to learn”
(Hawk & Lyons, 2008). What is our responsibility in
trying to reach even those outlier students? What
might we do to reach them? Our model of identity-
based disengagement tracks student learning be-
haviors from the time they enter our classrooms to a
potential risk–reward analysis they perform as they
encounter learning activities, through to outcomes
based on whether they decide to engage with the
learning opportunity being offered.
As a result of our experiences and the subse-
quent research we did trying to understand them,
we now see that classroom circumstances may be
“extremely strong situations” (Sluss & Ashforth,
2007: 12) where identity dissonance is triggered. In
management education, we often attempt to move
students outside their comfort zones to stimulate
real learning. Management education is where,
within a business school curriculum, one most of-
ten encounters experiential and active pedagogies
that holistically challenge student learners (e.g.,
Whetten & Cameron’s, 2011, workbook for manage-
ment skills improvement; McKnight, 1995). When
we operationalize calls to integrate affective man-
agement pedagogy, dealing directly with emo-
tively charged situations, ethical dilemmas, and
values identification (Ghoshal, 2005; Mintzberg,
2004), we should not be surprised if the resulting
learning discomfort leads some students to enact
coping behaviors or to disengage altogether.
In fact, because the best learning may often occur
along the delicate boundary of a student’s sensitive
line (Whetten & Cameron, 2011), we should not blame
the student who reacts defensively. If we push stu-
dents to explore new possible identities we must be
prepared for their possible reactions. The situational
salience and subsequent identity dissonance are not
our fault, nor are they the fault of the student; rather,
they are natural consequences of pushing the learn-
ing envelope.
Defensiveness and subsequent disengagement
230 Academy of Management Learning & Education
can be caused by a wide variety of factors, most, if
not all, of which are invisible to the instructor. The
learning environment, with its norms and expecta-
tions, may be dissonant with part(s) of a student’s
identity (“It’s not cool to speak up in class”). Aca-
demic success overall may be inconsistent with
strongly held social identities, such as racial
norms or economic class norms (Schmader, Major,
& Gramzow, 2002).
Additionally, someone important in the student’s
life may not believe academic success or enacting
academic norms is worthwhile, triggering a disso-
nant self-referent gap analysis, or dissonance in
what Thatcher and Zhu (2006) call “self-verifica-
tion.” We have seen this enacted with our student
population, which includes some 50% first-genera-
tion college students. Family or other significant
referents’ messages (“College is a waste of time
and money”) internalized while growing up, and
continuing after the student has entered college,
may be strongly at odds with the student’s new
“college student” identity.
Further, some new identity and some old identity
may be “butting heads” as the student tries to
enact role-supporting behaviors. Students who, for
example, expressed themselves as being outside
the mainstream in high school— complete with
body jewelry, tattoos, and multicolored hair—may
struggle with perceived and real pressures to rein
in their uniqueness and follow professional busi-
ness appearance standards more closely. Last, the
professor him- or herself may be representative of
some identity-based dissonance (“A blind person
should not be a professor”).
Hawk and Lyons (2008) and Chio and Fandt (2007)
argue that it is perhaps the disengaged students for
whom we may have the most lasting influence—a
lifelong positive impact—and that it is worth our
care to try to reach them. Zull (2002), chronicling his
own journey of discovery about how students learn,
concurs. He offers a variety of student vignettes ar-
ticulating what many of us are perhaps reflexively
prompted to do when we encounter disengage-
ment— dismiss the student as a “student from hell”
(64). Although we recognize that we generally expe-
rience students who do not display such extreme
behaviors, the genesis for creating our model was
indeed driven by these episodic encounters with be-
wildering student behavior.
CONCEPTUAL GROUNDING
The literature driving our conceptual framework
derives from four major streams— higher educa-
tion engagement, intrapersonal development and
coping, social identity theory, and cognitive disso-
June
nance. Each forms a crucial conceptual component
for our explanatory process-based model (intro-
duced below). Although Chickering (1969: 78) as-
serted that, ultimately, all aspects of student de-
velopment and perhaps subsequent student
experience could fall under the umbrella of “iden-
tity formation,” we believe a more finely grained
analysis is appropriate. We discuss each research
stream below.
Engagement
Student “engagement” is a concept designed to
measure the quality of learning experiences as a
whole. Setting the standard for measuring student
engagement is the annual National Survey of Stu-
dent Engagement (NSSE). George Kuh, former di-
rector of the NSSE effort, defines engagement as
“the time and energy students devote to education-
ally sound activities inside and outside of the
classroom, and the policies and practices that in-
stitutions use to induce students to take part in
these activities” (Kuh, 2003: 25).
In Kuh’s definition, the assumption is that stu-
dents direct energy for positive learning purposes,
meaning their energy goes toward engaging in
learning activities. For our purposes, we are inter-
ested in examining what may be happening when
student-directed energy results in classroom dis-
engagement. Because our model explains disen-
gagement as a complex, emotionally significant
outcome, we prefer Astin’s (1999: 518) concept of
involvement: “the amount of physical and psycho-
logical energy that the student devotes to the aca-
demic experience” because at least in terms of
definition, involvement energy could be directed
either toward or away from learning, and includes
psychological energy as well as physical energy.
Kolb’s work (1984, 2002; Kolb & Kolb, 2009) exam-
ines the “how” of engagement— broadly, how do
certain types of learning activities facilitate posi-
tive involvement when different student learning
styles are considered? The seminal 1984 work of-
fers a helpful discussion of “learner– environment
interactions” (200 –202), wherein Kolb found that
the same learning activity, say a lecture or peer
feedback, was experienced completely differently
by students with different learning styles. For ex-
ample, those of us who are committed to experien-
tial learning methods may assume that these ac-
tivities positively involve all of our students.
However, Kolb found that activities such as simu-
lations were unhelpful for learning for the Abstract
Conceptualizers, but helpful for the Concrete
Experiencers.
2012 Lund Dean and Jolly
Similarly, Svinicki and Dixon (1987) found that
engagement with experiential learning activities
is stronger when student readiness to do so
matches the classroom approach taken. For exam-
ple, if the student self-perceives as being a “re-
ceiver” of information, she is not ready to experi-
ence field work or a classroom simulation, and so
experiential learning would be paradoxically dis-
engaging. Of course, the difficulty lies in our know-
ing these mostly invisible and sometimes uncon-
scious self-identifiers for students: Receiver?
Abstract Conceptualizer? Reflective Observer? For
our purposes, it is clear that assuming experiential
learning will increase student engagement has
been shown to be a poor strategy; experiential
learning can be a powerful pedagogical tool, but it
is not a panacea for increasing engagement.
Zull (2002), a biologist building physiologically
on Kolb’s experiential learning cycle, offers a de-
tailed account of what happens to the brain while
encountering new knowledge and choosing how to
handle it—what we would call “learning.” Using
Kolb’s learning cycle, Zull (2002: 40) suggests that
new neural networks are created during a trans-
formation of “data” into “ideas, plans, and actions”
or accepting new knowledge. Of greatest interest
to us, Zull includes many discussions of what may
be happening when we as instructors come across
a student who appears to simply not want to learn.
To “learn” something means that students are
allowing some new thing into their brains—some-
thing is coming in, being processed, and then
acted upon. This is a chemical action in the brain,
and provocative experiences trigger emotional
chemical reactions. Positive experiences facilitate
learning, bringing a feeling of pleasure. Negative
experiences trigger stress or fear, potentially dam-
aging areas of the brain associated with learning
(see Zull, 2002: 81– 83, for a fuller description).
Thus, students who appear to resist learning op-
portunities may be acting on two different levels:
experientially, the learning activity that is being
offered does not speak to their reflexive learning
style in helpful ways, or, biologically, the learning
activity that is being offered engenders a negative
or fear-based associative memory trigger. In either
case, disengagement follows.
Last, Chio and Fandt (2007: 485) discuss peda-
gogical accountability and the epistemological is-
sue of learning ownership. They worry about
learning opportunities that “are often marked by
an implicit assumption on students’ part that the
issues and problems being considered are always
someone else’s, apart from and not belonging to
the self” (italics in original). The authors suggest
the term, “participative engagement” (487), or par-
231
ticipation in unique pedagogical activities, in this
case photography. Participative engagement di-
rectly connects the learner with course material by
encouraging individual students to interpret
course content for themselves.
Participative engagement builds on prior en-
gagement literature by overtly recognizing diverse
student life experiences in the classroom and how
those impact the overall learning process. Litera-
ture extending participative engagement indicates
that a lifelong process of directly linking learning
materials with unique aspects of the self begins
with young children (e.g., Papadopoulou & Birch,
2009). The common conceptual thread throughout
participative engagement literature is that the
learner must personally recognize the “knowl-
edge” or information being offered as valuable
and relevant. A crucial aspect of learning owner-
ship is internalizing personal relevance to the ma-
terial, something that cannot happen when stu-
dent identity is under threat.
Understanding the dynamic of how and why stu-
dents may or may not engage with learning oppor-
tunities has shifted from a relatively monodirec-
tional energy focus, and assumed linear and positive
outcomes, to a much richer picture of that process
that even includes biological retooling. In accepting
that “engagement” is an emotive, cognitive, and bi-
ological amalgam, we can then consider the larger
trajectory of student development processes and how
students cope with the enormous changes they en-
counter upon entering college.
Intrapersonal Development and Coping
The development and coping literature situated
within higher education, with students’ develop-
mental trajectories as the subject of interest, is a
massive and multidimensional collection. “Stu-
dent development” as a general term subsumes all
manner of important changes documented when a
young person enters a higher educational setting.
Aspects of the student self that undergo modifica-
tion while attending college include cognition,
identity, moral reasoning, interpersonal relation-
ship-building, emotion, and autonomy (Chicker-
ing, 1969; Chickering & Reisser, 1993); reflective
self-awareness (Baxter Magolda, 2004); and physi-
cal brain development (Zull, 2002). And that is not
an exhaustive list!
Not surprising, then, is that seminal literature
describes college student development as a disori-
enting and bewildering process; indeed, the meta-
phors are particularly rich. Chickering (1969: 12)
likens the process to being “a hog on ice”— un-
grounded and desperately attempting, without
232 Academy of Management Learning & Education
success, to enact forms of coping that were for-
merly efficacious. Parks (2000: 30, 154) likens stu-
dent development to a “shipwreck” that forces stu-
dents to confront loss and pain by experiencing a
traumatic event, afterward seeking a “hearth” or
place of warmth, stability, and positive social con-
tact. Almost everything important about them-
selves may change during students’ time in higher
education. Thus, holistic threats to the self may be
particularly likely during college.
Drawing from Kegan’s (1980: 374) summative
work about the “distressing” nature of understand-
ing life events and how they contribute to self-
development, Baxter Magolda (2004, 2007; Quay &
Baxter Magolda, 2007) forges the term, epistemo-
logical reflection to describe the system of beliefs
that make up the self. Rather than being discrete or
disconnected bits of information about oneself, a
personal epistemology constructs connections
among one’s assumptions about oneself and the
world, facilitating meaning making for those willing
to accept what reflects back from the mirror of
self-analysis.
It is crucial, therefore, that we attempt to under-
stand what happens when students react to such
potential disequilibrium. When we encountered
this literature, we were struck by how often young
adult or student development as a process was
described as threatening, bewildering, and down-
right scary. As faculty, whose profession is predi-
cated on routinely learning new ideas situated in a
learning environment, we may seriously underes-
timate how students’ selves are affected by learn-
ing. Until we delved into the student development
work, we would not have expected “learning” to
have such potentially negative impacts on stu-
dents’ holistic interpretations of themselves.
The coping literature dovetails into the student
development literature when students’ reactions to
learning and growing opportunities engender sig-
nificant personal stress and anxiety. Again, semi-
nal work informs our thinking about what happens
when students confront a classroom experience
that threatens their sense of self. Weiner (1979)
draws on attribution theory to explain how stu-
dents make sense of classroom successes and fail-
ures. His theory includes three causal, interactive
dimensions by which students explain what hap-
pens to them in the classroom: locus (internal or
external causes); stability (variant or invariant
characteristics or traits that may continue over
time); and controllability (a continuum that indi-
cates to what extent students control aspects of
learning outcomes).
For our purposes, Weiner’s work indicates that
while instructors may believe achieving learning
June
objectives (however that is measured) is the end of
a learning process, students are in the midst of a
complex calculus to fit who they are with what just
happened. Then, they must create coping mecha-
nisms for conclusions they reach. For example,
when students ascertain that “success” came to
them because of high ability on a difficult task
(both stability dimensions), their motivation to en-
gage with the learning opportunity is high. This is
intuitive. However, if “failure” occurred because
they got sick and missed an exam (unstable and
uncontrollable), students will be motivated to re-
engage when circumstances allow them to take
more ownership over learning events. Student fail-
ures, then, do not necessarily result in disengage-
ment, and certain reasons why students fail lend
themselves to more functional coping than others.
Some of Weiner’s later work (e.g., Brown & Weiner,
1984) examines solely emotional consequences of
student attributions of success and failure. Public
shame and humiliation are relative death sentences
on educational self-esteem and, we would extend,
students’ ability to productively cope with educa-
tional failure. Folkman and Lazarus (1985, 1988: 466,
472) tested a variety of student coping mechanisms
that occur during stressful educational situations,
such as taking an exam, and found that the relation-
ship between emotion and coping is bidirectional
and mutually interdependent.
Coping skills mediate emotional responses, and
through factor analysis and regression analysis,
Folkman and Lazarus found four coping behaviors
associated with emotional change. Two create
positive emotional responses: planful problem
solving, or taking proactive steps to ameliorate a
problem situation, and positive re-appraisal, or re-
assessing oneself and taking stock of helpful
changes or functional attributes. Two behaviors
were significantly associated with negative emo-
tional changes: distancing, or emotionally and
psychologically detaching from a problem situa-
tion, and confrontive coping, or relatively aggres-
sively attempting to change the situation to
one’s favor.
The coping literature is extremely helpful in ex-
tending our understanding of what is happening
between introducing a learning activity and ob-
serving how students react. Research indicates
that emotional reactions to learning and subse-
quent coping styles are critically important medi-
ators of whether students continue to engage in
learning opportunities or opt out. As such, coping
mechanisms form an important part of our mod-
eled process and enhance opportunities to reach
disengaged students. We move now to examining
2012 Lund Dean and Jolly
how students construct and modify their selves
during learning.
Social Identity Theory
Ashforth and Mael (1989) built upon Tajfel and
Turner’s construction of social identity theory (SIT)
in explaining group and intergroup relationships
(e.g., Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel & Turner, 1985; Turner, 1982,
1984). Social identity theory helps explain the com-
plex concept of “self” in a social context and as-
serts that people determine their own social cate-
gory membership(s) based on what they consider
to be prototypical characteristics of group mem-
bers (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). People then self-clas-
sify into any number of social groups or categories,
operationalizing different identities that each
carry various values, goals, demands and norms.
Social identity allows a contextual understanding
of oneself, although this process may not be di-
rectly acknowledged or understood. Social identity
is also “relational and comparative” (Tajfel &
Turner, 1985 as cited in Ashforth & Mael, 1989: 21),
providing for interpretive and differential meaning
making based upon feedback a person receives
from a group.
The organizational literature on SIT following
Ashforth and Mael’s seminal piece is extensive
and builds upon implications for a socially con-
structed self. Sluss and Ashforth (2007) augment
the understanding of SIT with relational identifi-
cation, the interpersonal aspect of the self. They
argue that, in contrast to SIT, which does not de-
mand close relationships among group members,
people do enter into interpersonal relationships
that become stronger over time with certain group
members. These relationships then form a partic-
ularized identity cornerstone, becoming an impor-
tant contextual assessment mechanism for under-
standing the self.
Key for our work here is the argument that the
self is largely predicated on roles— behavioral ex-
pectations associated with some position. The
“self” then is a mix of roles demanded by the var-
ious identities a person takes on. Roles take on
meaning during enactment, a process embedded
in values, goals, demands, and norms. It is intui-
tive to expect occasionally competing claims due
to role conflict. Role and identity dissonance occur
when role enactment challenges deeply held self-
identifications; roles, identity, and role enactment
are interdependent.
Normally, a person is allowed a certain amount
of latitude in interpreting and enacting roles, but
in certain very well-defined situations, that lati-
tude may be proscribed or eliminated (Sluss &
233
Ashforth, 2007: 12). When balancing multiple iden-
tities, situational aspects become critical in deter-
mining which identity-based roles become en-
acted. Students may concurrently self-identify in
any number of ways: senior student, food service
worker, parental caregiver, and community volun-
teer. In a classroom setting, for example, an as-
signment or discussion may allow aspects of the
“student” and “worker” identities to be enacted,
but perhaps no space is given to enact the “care-
giver” role. For the student, then, particularized, or,
specifically relevant, aspects of being a caregiver
are proscribed in this environment.
For our purposes, the organizational contexts
identified in Ashforth’s work are extended to in-
clude learning environments. We argue that many
of the processes that he and colleagues have dis-
cussed with respect to identity theories mirror
learning engagement and subsequent student
learning processes. Social group membership, role
enactment and possible constraints, interpersonal
relationships that become more important over
time, and role conflict and potential dissonance all
gain prominence as we examine whether and how
students choose to participate in learning.
Leonard, Beauvais, and Scholl (1999) form a com-
plex model of self-concept-based motivation, theo-
rizing that any gaps between perceived self and
ideal self can be measured by assessing self-
esteem. Building on Bandura’s (e.g., Bandura, 1991)
self-efficacy mechanism, Leonard and colleagues
discuss an individual’s constant “matching” eval-
uation between the ideal self and the perceived
self. Although not defined as such by those au-
thors, we see their self-esteem construct as a dy-
namic version of cognitive dissonance, changing
in strength and adaptations as the gap between
perceived and ideal moderates through feedback
and self-development. This iterative process is
fundamental to our modeling of opting in and opt-
ing out of learning because as Kegan (1980) notes,
young peoples’ meaning-making systems involve
how they make distinctions between themselves
and others. And, this process may be distressing.
Adding nuance to the “ideal self” is the concept
of “possible selves.” Markus and Nurius (1986: 954)
in their seminal piece describe possible selves as
“representations of the self in the future” combin-
ing “enduring goals, aspirations, motives, fears,
and threats.” Oyserman, Bybee, and Terry (2006:
188) describe them as “positive and negative im-
ages of the self already in a future state.” Closely
related to Ibarra’s (1999) “provisional selves,” these
identity-based possibilities get conceptualized,
tested out for fit and viability, modified by way of
verbal, nonverbal and social feedback, and re-
234 Academy of Management Learning & Education
engaged as partially descriptive aspects of the
holistic self. “Working self-concept” (Markus & Nu-
rius, 1986: 957) illustrates the dynamic nature of
this self-concept choice process. People select be-
haviors that encourage positive possible selves
and discourage negative possible selves.
Self-regulatory behaviors, or “normative struc-
tures” (Ashforth & Mael, 1989: 29) are the mecha-
nisms by which these “possible” or “provisional”
self choices get made. Cognitive scripts are inti-
mately associated with the construction of the self
and provide one of the most important regulatory
tools. Described as “subconscious autopilots,”
scripts are actioned ways of behaving appropri-
ately within certain roles (Gimstedt & Gimstedt,
n.d.). Ibarra (1999) includes scripts within what she
calls provisional “repertoires” (773), or acts that
demarcate identity-acceptable attitudes, styles,
self-preservation tactics, behavioral routines, lan-
guage, and demeanor.
Ultimately, Markus and Nurius (1986), Oyserman
and colleagues (2006), and Ibarra (1999) all main-
tain that possible selves must be perceived as
plausible, attainable, and consistent with impor-
tant social identities. When identity-based discrep-
ancies occur, active self-management techniques
get activated. For students, then, discrepancy man-
agement between the “unschooled” self and the
“learning” self may activate either consciously or
unconsciously. This discussion makes a natural con-
ceptual link to the next section, on dissonance.
Dissonance
Essentially, people strive for cognitively smooth
and consistent existences (Festinger, 1965). When
cognitive consistency is threatened by uncomfort-
ably holding conflicting ideas at the same time,
one actively resolves the tension by changing be-
liefs, justifying behaviors or attitudes, or rejecting
a dissonant idea outright. The concept of cognitive
dissonance as proposed mainly by Festinger is one
of the most well-researched topics in social psy-
chology, so we will not dwell on it here. We offer a
few notable examples of how dissonance and self-
concept inform our student learning model.
Dissonance resolution is a complex process and
one that has been generally described as episodic
or used on an as-needed basis when threats arise.
For example, Liedtka (1989) described decision
making as a fit-based comparison between one’s
self-image and the suggested course of action.
When there is discrepancy, she found that one’s
dominant self-image wins out, and decisions are
made in three major ways: by adhering to powerful
referents that support the chosen self-image, by
June
“blowing the whistle” to force change that sup-
ports the chosen self-image, or by separating from
the organization when the chosen self-image sim-
ply cannot be sustained (807– 808).
Sluss and Ashforth (2007) describe “relational
disidentification” as an interpersonal relationship
withdrawal process when both one’s role-based
and person-based identities cannot be sustained
through the relationship with the other person. In
other words, an identity-nourishing relationship
over time becomes dissonant, causing disidentifi-
cation with the other and relational withdrawal to
resolve the internal tension.
Dissonance, in Festinger’s conceptualization, is
broadly defined and applied. Overall, the disso-
nance literature in almost any context reports that
people are motivated to reduce dissonant feelings
whenever they occur. Briñol, Petty, and Wheeler
(2006) found this empirically but also report that
researchers do not have much insight into how
people actually go about resolving dissonance
since the processes are largely invisible and emo-
tionally tied to the self, making reporting difficult.
Helpfully, with students we almost always ob-
serve some kind of behavior that we now associate
with dissonance resolution—no longer attending
class, verbally attacking a peer’s comment, or con-
versely, participating in a discussion for the first
time. The invisible process to consider could be a
shift within the student’s salient identity, or a
change in the ranking of identities within the self.
Modifying Liedtka’s idea of a dominant self-image
and Sluss and Ashforth’s idea of relational identi-
ties’ hierarchy, we believe students may be prior-
itizing certain identities at different times to re-
solve dissonance.
Understanding identity-based dissonance as a
related, but unique, form of cognitive dissonance
helps us model this elusive process. Because iden-
tity forms and adapts cognitively, socially, rela-
tionally, and emotively, we want to make more
visible the triggers and methods by which identity-
based dissonance is resolved.
MODELING LEARNING AND DISENGAGEMENT
We’ve come to believe that engagement with
learning opportunities is predicated on accepting
risky or identity-threatening information and func-
tionally processing and resolving it. In learning
environments, students go through a risk–reward
assessment to decide whether to accept or reject
changes to various identities. Accepting changes
would modify the values, norms, and expectations
germane to identity. Students who reject changes
eliminate dissonance by rejecting learning activi-
2012 Lund Dean and Jolly
ties and by behaving in a variety of potentially
disruptive ways.
Thus, we would extend traditional definitions of
student engagement to include not only students’
time and physical energy directed toward learning
opportunities, but also the emotional energy re-
quired to enter into the adaptive learning process.
Engagement occurs when students accept a level
of identity-based risk and are willing to experience
potentially emotional outcomes associated with
learning, both positive and negative. Experiencing
frustration or fear, and conversely, delight or
pride, expends emotional energy, as does the pro-
cess of reformulating their current selves. In other
words, due to willingness to engage, the potential
reward lies in students’ increased personal insight
that serves as the foundation of more skillful and
emotionally mature behaviors (McKnight, 1995;
Whetten & Cameron, 2011).
Figure 1 represents our thinking of how students
may either engage to varying degrees or disen-
gage based on identity risk versus reward. We
model, from the student’s perspective, the decision
process encountered when a learning activity is
presented.
FIGURE 1
Identity-Based Student Disengagement
235
A student’s sense of identity ultimately is re-
sponsible for his or her willingness to engage with
a given learning opportunity. Students enter the
classroom with a current self, complete with val-
ues, goals, demands, and norms. This current self
is relatively stable, representing what Ashforth
and Mael (1989) describe as a loosely joined set of
identities.
The current self is what students bring in to a
learning setting. The salient identity is the stu-
dent’s most prominent self-descriptor and can be
triggered by situational cues (Oyserman et al.,
2006; Thatcher & Zhu, 2006). The current self also
includes the social identity, which is a larger sys-
tem of socially contextual identities based on per-
ceived group memberships; the relational identity,
which is a particularized identity based upon some
close interpersonal relationship(s); and cognitive
scripts, the internalized mechanisms that guide
how we effectively respond to environmental stim-
uli. Scripts help people manage daily encounters
without having to “recreate the wheel” of accept-
able responses. For our purposes, within the cur-
rent self, working cognitive scripts (e.g., Briñol et
al., 2006; Marcussen, 2006; Tajfel & Turner, 1985)
236 Academy of Management Learning & Education
have thus far assisted students with responding to
their world, but they may become ineffective as
new selves replace the old, adding to students’
anxiety.
Students then encounter some kind of learning
activity proffered in a class— our situational cue—
and the salient identity is triggered. Learning ac-
tivities and their potential confrontations with the
current self will increase in frequency and dyna-
mism as the student moves through learning pro-
cesses (Chickering, 1969; Chickering & Reisser,
1993). Whenever we introduce a learning activity,
students have an opportunity to undergo both cog-
nitive and psychosocial change. Engaging with
the learning means students will not stay the same
“self,” and it is the learning activity that triggers
possible identity-based dissonance.
As students are presented with a learning activ-
ity, they encounter an initial risk assessment. It is
here that a key choice point for student disengage-
ment occurs. They assess the perceived threat to
the salient identity, or, the extent to which partic-
ipating in the learning activity would allow the
salient identity to remain positive and consistent
with who they believe they are. Perceived threat is
operationalized by assessing the provisional
selves, or possible future representations of the
self, for fit and attractiveness. Such an assessment
includes students’ perception of provisional selves’
plausibility, attainability, and consistency with im-
portant social identities (Ibarra, 1999; Markus &
Nurius, 1986). Provisional selves (“what I might be”)
are constructed from new social and relational
identities and require new cognitive scripts to sup-
port them. Students examine the possibilities as-
sociated with new identities, such as new self-talk,
new coping mechanisms, and so on, test them out
for fit, and seek feedback. It may be something
like: “If I participate in X, it may mean that I am A,
B, or C” or, “If I participate, I might discover A, B, or
C about myself.”
Although a model is functionally limiting, we
think three possibilities illustrate an initial
identity-based risk assessment. With a high per-
ceived threat to the self, the student cannot accept
any of the possible selves to which they are ex-
posed, and so disengages from the learning. For
these students, the learning activity and subse-
quently created and tested provisional selves cre-
ate threatening dissonance at too significant a
level. In other words, the provisional selves
threaten to expose aspects of the current self with
which the student is disengaged, or of which they
are unaware. This sense of dissonance crosses stu-
dents’ “sensitive line” and results in behavior com-
June
monly referred to as the threat-rigidity response
(Staw, Sandelands, & Dutton, 1981; Weick, 1993).
This results in a “fight-or-flight” coping response,
engendering well-documented outcomes. Whetten
and Cameron (2011: 59) describe how individuals be-
have when they encounter a threat to the self leading
to a threat-rigidity response: “When discrepancies in
the self-image are encountered . . . the validity of the
information or its source is denied, or other kinds of
defense mechanisms are used to ensure that the
self-concept remains stable.” In a learning environ-
ment, the student might enact any number of self-
regulatory behaviors (defense mechanisms) during
the cognitive dissonance confrontation to reduce felt
dissonance.
In the model, we use Folkman and Lazarus’ con-
frontive coping as the “fight” response. “Fight” ex-
amples of resisting the learning activity include
lashing out verbally in the classroom, disrupting
other students, attacking the professor’s creden-
tials, or attacking the validity of the learning goals
and activity itself. Distancing is the “flight” re-
sponse. “Flight” examples include walking out of
the classroom, not showing up to class, or not be-
ing “present” while physically in the class, that is,
daydreaming, doing other homework, texting
friends, or simply going through the motions of
classroom activities.
All these behaviors have the same purpose—to
protect the student’s current self and, conse-
quently, sense of well-being. By resisting the
learning opportunity, the student does not have to
rewrite scripts that have been effective in the past
and can preserve the current self without modify-
ing the current identity construction. Whether con-
sciously or unconsciously, the student continues to
rely on existing, identity-preserving scripts and
behaviors, and rejects all provisional selves.
If, back at the model, the student perceives a
moderate threat to the self, she goes through a
secondary risk assessment. The changes to the self
that the student perceives the learning activity will
engender— operationalized by a provisional self-
examination—might be valuable. To determine
this, the student enacts coping behaviors such as
seeking social support, or finding out more infor-
mation (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985), or polls her self-
efficacy as to whether she has sufficient psycho-
logical hardiness to withstand potential changes
(Bandura, 1977). Assessing the effectiveness of the
coping behaviors moves the student to the next
possible choice point. When coping behaviors sim-
ply cannot bridge the threat to the self, the student
experiences disengagement, characterized by the
“fight” or “flight” maladaptive coping behaviors.
If, however, coping helps manage the student’s
2012 Lund Dean and Jolly
anxiety, and a possible self becomes more attrac-
tive and valued, the student will engage in the
learning activity, deciding at what level of en-
gagement to participate. Adding this point to the
model helped us understand that, although the
student has decided to participate in the learning
opportunity, there may still be some skepticism
about the learning outcomes and subsequent mod-
ification of the self. The student may choose to
participate relatively fully and see what happens.
Or, as indicated in the model, she may still not be
quite sure about the value of the learning activity
with respect to identity-based threat. In that case,
she may participate in a more guarded fashion.
Thus, choosing whether to engage is not a
cleanly binary choice but happens along some-
what of a continuum; perhaps the student will par-
ticipate in heated discussion, but draws the line at
all-class role play. In any case, the student enters
the adaptive learning process, and at some level
she takes part in positive change-based behaviors,
such as Folkman and Lazarus’ positive re-
appraisal and planful problem solving. Students
modify their identities, learning new behaviors,
developing new cognitive scripts, and developing
a new sense of self—a new current self that now
encounters another learning activity. Conceptual-
ized ideally, the cycle repeats and continuous
learning occurs.
Finally, with little or no perceived threat to the
self at the initial risk assessment stage, the stu-
dent simply chooses to engage with the learning
activity. She enters the adaptive learning process
and its concurrent adjustments to identity.
Re-examining the learning process as an affec-
tive, identity-based phenomenon aids our under-
standing of the response behaviors students
choose. In the model, those choices reflect how the
student has responded to perceived level of iden-
tity-based dissonance. Functionally, students may
decide that the rewards of examining and chang-
ing their values and behaviors as a result of learn-
ing are worth the attendant risks to the self. Stu-
dents may also dysfunctionally decide such
rewards are not worth it, and move directly into
disengagement.
DISCUSSION AND CONSIDERATIONS
Our model argues that students maintain multiple
selves who “show themselves” (particularize) de-
pending on situational triggers, in this case, a
learning activity. Because in learning situations
there are competing claims on the self, identity
theories and dissonance theory maintain that
some resolution must take place. Students for
237
whom the role or activity does not overly threaten
their currently constructed self, or who seem to
understand that learning means encountering po-
tential changes beyond course content, are willing
to enter the adaptive learning loop. They are will-
ing to engage with critical questions about their
own values, beliefs, and norms, try them out pro-
visionally, and integrate the answers into newly
accepted selves. Students whose identities are sig-
nificantly threatened cross the sensitive line and
engage in defensive coping behaviors such as
those mentioned above.
Additionally, and equally invisible, students
may have past college scripts that have embedded
an unsuccessful student self-concept. Diener and
Dweck (1978) describe students who cope with
what they call “learned helplessness.” Mazen’s
(2008: 340) dramatic opening vignette tells of a fe-
male student breaking down in tears during a
math tutoring session, “reveal[ing] that she is not
as smart as she should be, that she just doesn’t get
it, she isn’t good enough, it’s not as easy for her as
it should be, etc.” These internal scripts or self-talk
have dramatic effects on student perceptions of
self and learning efficacy and are representative
of identity boundaries.
So, what does all this mean to us as educators?
We’ve argued that student “engagement” is a more
holistic and emotionally driven construct than has
been previously thought, and that learning is de-
pendent upon students’ engagement with poten-
tially dissonant identity-based information. Al-
though we’ve indicated that identity and role-
based issues are invisible, and thus, may be
difficult or impossible to anticipate, our model
gives us a better understanding of what students
are going through. Students make meaningful en-
gagement-related choices that fundamentally af-
fect outcomes. If our model helps us to see, from the
student’s point of view, that the behaviors chosen
make sense, we may be less inclined to write the
student off as unreachable or uncooperative. Oth-
erwise, we might inappropriately judge and blame
students when they exhibit behaviors that Vince
(1998) described as “willing ignorance,” where stu-
dents choose to remain free of new knowledge, or
that Argyris (1991) called “skilled incompetence,”
where students perpetuate doing demonstrably
wrong things, rather than try to find avenues of
re-engagement. In understanding disengagement
as a response to a significant perceived threat, we
can reframe and relabel negative behaviors.
Of course understanding all of this on a rational
level does not divorce us from affective reactions.
We may intellectually appreciate something but
still find it difficult to act upon. Or, we may find the
238 Academy of Management Learning & Education
student’s behavior so annoying that we attribute it
as an assault on our credentialing or classroom
management (Kaiser & Kaplan, 2006). Another
value we find of modeling unsuccessful classroom
behaviors, then, is that we do not have to own or
internalize the reasoning that is driving the stu-
dent’s unusual behaviors. That is, we can resist the
negative emotional drain of thinking students
don’t like us or hate our course, and we can re-
spond more supportively, helping the student iden-
tify possible selves that coincide with learning
goals. We move now to examine some of those
supportive responses.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
Based on our model, we offer several practical
implications with respect to identity-based student
disengagement. The upside is the potentially un-
precedented positive impact we can have on cer-
tain students (cf. Chio & Fandt, 2007; Hawk & Ly-
ons, 2008). We can become more sensitive to, and
in some cases preempt, the process of identity-
based disengagement. The following suggestions
are designed to facilitate further exploration into
increasing holistic student engagement in our
classrooms, and drawing back into learning oppor-
tunities students who may have opted out.
Explicitly Acknowledge That “Learning” Means
Both Intellectual and Emotional Change
Up front, we can facilitate conversations with stu-
dents that include explicit recognition of learning
as a values-based, identity-changing activity. We
can reflect on, and share, learning norms such as
grading, participation expectations, interaction
norms, and definitions of professionalism. In other
words, we can share the “why” behind the “what”
to help students be more comfortable with the roles
and selves expected and evaluated with our learn-
ing activities. In having to explain such norms and
expectations, we are correlatively forced to defend
them, effectively eliminating policy arbitrariness
and enhancing student perceptions of fairness.
Being explicit about the emotional changes em-
bedded in learning can also offer students “per-
mission” to test provisional selves. Talking about
being a “hog on ice” gives students a vivid, humor-
ous example of the potential discomfort endemic to
a holistic learning process. Students may not have
to craft new scripts from scratch when we repeat-
edly use emotionally engaging learning activities,
such as role-plays or reflection logs, and provide a
consistent feedback process. Classroom activities
may offer somewhat ready-made replacement
June
scripts as students iteratively test new selves. Un-
derstanding the “why” in learning reduces the
emotional threat and the risk of disengagement.
Assess Learning Activities for the Extent to
Which the Affective Reward Matches or
Supersedes the Risk
As we discussed above, it is most likely within
management curricula that business students will
encounter potentially identity-challenging course
materials. Instructors should consider the extent to
which values-challenging work will be done in
their courses, and what pedagogies are used to
enable it. As an example, we both teach a man-
agement skills course using Whetten and Camer-
on’s Developing Management Skills (8th ed., 2011),
a strongly reflection-based text. One of us walks
students through the 5-step model upon which the
book is based, in which students are asked to be
increasingly emotionally engaged as they proceed
through the steps in each chapter. The other dis-
cusses the intensely personal nature of the skill
sets to be gained and the degree of internalization
of course requirements that must occur. In our ex-
perience, the rewards gained with course skill
mastery significantly outweigh the risks, and we
continue to actively assess this each semester we
teach it.
We both contextualize course-based learning
risks by laying out three distinct types of knowl-
edge students will encounter in the course: cogni-
tive (what they know), skills-based (what they
know how to do) and being (who they are and what
is important to them). The most valuable reward of
the course—increased “being” knowledge about
themselves—is directly related to the extent to
which students are willing to engage in reflection
and potentially identity-threatening feedback
about themselves, and we have built in assign-
ments and appropriate grade weighting mecha-
nisms to make it attractive to engage in this risky
fashion. Although this is a difficult conversation to
have with a group of students we may not know,
we have found from course feedback that students
appreciate the honest framing of course require-
ments. From the “learning logs” they complete for
the course, we have found most reflection efforts to
be honest and sometimes humbling in their
candor.
Understanding the idea of “student readiness”
(Kolb, 1984) to encounter experiential learning
helps remove some of the negative affective risk
from the instructor side. When students disengage
because they are unable to respond positively to
some learning opportunity, instructors may strug-
2012 Lund Dean and Jolly
gle with feelings of rejection and frustration. Svin-
icki and Dixon (1987) and Zull (2002) help us under-
stand there is a complex process of pedagogical
matching going on over which we have little to no
control. We can assist with students’ taking own-
ership over their classroom experiences by allow-
ing them to occasionally opt out of an activity
without the emotional baggage that may be asso-
ciated with that.
For example, we show the Enron documentary,
“The Smartest Guys in the Room” (Ellwood, 2005),
an R-rated film. Because of religious convictions,
some students do not watch R-rated films. We al-
low those students to read the book on which the
film is based (McLean & Elkind, 2003) and to craft a
short paper on it in lieu of attending class the day
the movie is shown. If we were not to allow a
substitute activity, we see that at our model’s ini-
tial risk assessment stage, we would push the stu-
dent across their sensitive line, resulting in disen-
gagement. For us as instructors, recognizing the
risk assessments our students undertake helps us
avoid taking it personally when students opt out of
a learning activity.
Remove the Instructor as the Sole Source
of Feedback
Zull (2002: 64 – 65) relays a vignette of an assidu-
ously feedback-impervious student who receives
surprising (to himself) and negative feedback quite
casually from a peer. Although Zull had tried to
offer this student the same feedback, having it
come from someone Zull describes as an “unin-
volved” referent made it click for the student, who
immediately changed his unhelpful behaviors. We
see much insight from this story as relevant for
potentially increasing student engagement. By re-
moving the instructor as the sole source of impor-
tant feedback, we may be able to decrease identi-
ty-based threat. Some students may be able to own
identity-threatening information coming from a
different social referent, perhaps one not associ-
ated with authority.
Peer evaluations of equal or more weight than
those of the instructor are one way to facilitate
noninstructor led feedback. We consistently use
dyads, triads, and small group activities to let stu-
dents provide one another with real-time feedback.
With role-plays, we may take on a role within a
group of students and then have our performance
critiqued along with the others. Using observer
feedback instruments helps put a relatively struc-
tured process around the daunting call to critique
the professor!
239
Allowing multiple sources of feedback increases
the probability that at least one source will not be
perceived as so threatening that it crosses a stu-
dent’s sensitive line, leading to disengagement.
Seeking feedback is a critically important part of
trying on new selves, and testing out new ways of
being. Having a variety of feedback sources can
support students through both risk assessment
stages: when they decide the threat may be man-
ageable as well as when they enact coping behav-
iors that are sufficient to get them into the adaptive
learning process.
Increase Direct Student Control Over Learning
Processes, Outcomes, and Environments
Steele and Fullagar (2009) used the job character-
istics model (Hackman & Oldham, 1980) to measure
how flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) may positively
influence student engagement and found that the
only significant regression coefficients belonged
to control-oriented variables: environmental clar-
ity and professor support for autonomy. In partic-
ular, grading transparency, with student design
over rubrics and assignment weightings, can be
enormously liberating in terms of giving students
a sense of ownership and control over course out-
comes (e.g., Hinchcliff-Pelias, Lind, & Treinen, 2000;
Mainkar, 2008; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990).
Creating consistent mechanisms for students to
have input into class activities is powerful. We
routinely make modifications to class operations
based on feedback from a midterm evaluation. Us-
ing students’ life situations as the source of role-
play data sends a signal that their experiences
have value while freeing the instructor from hav-
ing to decide class content. Additionally with re-
spect to role-plays, students created what they
now call the “Pink Box of Death,” (PBOD), which is
a way to choose which small group will role-play
their scenario in front of the entire class. The PBOD
is only a Tupperware container with group num-
bers on folded pink pieces of paper; a random
student picks a paper to make that decision. This
seemingly mundane tool has translated into inclu-
sive ownership over whole-class role-play activity,
even though we instructors were, prior to the
PBOD, also making random choices of which group
would “perform.”
When students control aspects of learning activ-
ities that result in positive outcomes, it is a confi-
dence building exercise that can pull them into
adaptive learning and the positive emotional
changes that occur there. Students’ increased con-
fidence makes engagement with the learning ac-
240 Academy of Management Learning & Education
tivity less threatening to new selves and the pro-
cess of positive reappraisal.
Have Difficult Conversations
We can be willing to engage in difficult conversa-
tions with students who have behaved in “outlier”
ways. Rather than letting disruptive or disengaged
behavior simply slide by (“I have 75 students this
semester! What kind of time can I spend with
John?”), we can request one-on-one meetings,
wherein we reiterate our expectations, probe for
difficulties, connect policies to classroom learning
goals, and if needed, explain potential conse-
quences of their choices. Whetten and Cameron’s
(2011) model of supportive communication,
grounded in transparency, reciprocity, and mutual
ownership of outcomes, is particularly helpful for
grounding these conversations. McKnight’s (1995:
194) “mirror-imaging” process of communicating
indicates that, especially in difficult or conflict sit-
uations, people want to have confidence and pos-
itive “mirroring” from others that they can be ef-
fective. Thus, when we present difficult feedback
to students in a positive, other-affirming frame,
self-concept-based threats are minimized and
functional resolution can follow.
These encounters often result in the student’s
re-engagement. One of us invited a student, whose
classroom behavior changed dramatically about
two thirds through a course, to have this kind of
conversation. Initially in class, the student was
among the most vocal and thoughtful discussants
and was consistently active in break-out group
conversations. Abruptly, he changed his seat to the
back of the room, did not contribute to conversa-
tions, and began playing fantasy football during
class time. During our discussion, the student
shared that he was undergoing medical treatment
for depression and that he had moved back home
to help treat it. After this conversation, the stu-
dent’s classroom behavior reverted back to his ini-
tial level of engagement, and he expressed thanks
for the “intervention” in a postcourse e-mail.
Help Students Gain Access to Institutional
and Out-of-Classroom Support Resources
Because identity is largely a socially constructed
phenomenon, we can help students access socially
consistent resources that support a new “learner”
self. We can research and be alert to the availabil-
ity of institutional resources that may foster suc-
cessful provisional selves for students, in an at-
tempt to provide the social support that Folkman
and Lazarus (1985) found to be very important to the
June
coping process. Privately suggesting additional
support resources to struggling students increases
the probability that they will be able to cope with
perceived identity-based risks.
For example, we occasionally recommend that
students access resources related to the Americans
with Disabilities Act (ADA), from sophisticated
electronic devices to policies that allow for extra
testing or assignment completion time. We also
have recommended to certain students that they
make appointments with student counseling ser-
vices when we believe professional clinical assis-
tance might be appropriate.
MOVING FORWARD
Model-driven suggestions lend themselves to
some avenues for future research. We offer some
testable propositions based on model constructs
and relationships, as well as more generalized
inquiry avenues, for readers’ consideration.
Propositions
1. Students react to their felt level of identity-
based threat, based on anxiety that their cur-
rent self is being threatened by some kind of
presented learning activity. The felt level of
threat ultimately determines the student’s
level of disengagement or engagement.
2. Students experience different levels of per-
ceived threat when considering the impact of a
learning activity on new possible selves. The
more the students see the learning activity as
highly threatening to sense of self, the more
likely they will disengage by employing either
confrontive coping or distancing behaviors.
3. There exist identifiable classroom and learn-
ing activity triggers that make some students
uncomfortable with continuing the learning
process, not because they question the value of
the learning activity or they question the in-
structor’s expertise, but because they question
who they are in the context of learning.
4. The more the student believes that coping be-
haviors can be effective due to the availability
of either internal (self-efficacy levels) or exter-
nal (instructor coaching) resources, the higher
the probability the student will engage to at
least some degree with the learning activity
and enter the adaptive learning loop.
5. Students must develop new, appropriate, and
helpful scripts to manage new selves. The ex-
tent to which students ascertain new scripts
are available to help them feel authentic and
effective in new roles associated with new
selves will determine how readily students
may accept new identities in learning. Among
the most fundamental of adaptive learning ac-
tivities is habituating new and more appropri-
ate scripts that help students manage the new
2012 Lund Dean and Jolly
encounters associated with new identities
more smoothly and convincingly.
Inquiry Avenues
It would be interesting to ascertain students’ percep-
tions of the line between increasing student control
over course learning processes and perceived in-
structor abdication. How much control is the right
amount for students to feel empowered but still
guided? We might test from which aspects of class-
room and course design students derive the most
constructive sense of control. In what novel ways
may we construct learning environments to be less
emotionally threatening, thus facilitating identity re-
formulation and acceptance of new knowledge? For
example, do reflection assignments such as learning
logs allow structured ways for students to test out
possible selves in relative safety?
Also, assessing by what mechanism students gain
the most from peer feedback would be a valuable
project. Should it be anonymous? Is it more effective
on an individual or group level? Should it count as
part of their course grade, or should it be just for
student development? These are important ques-
tions about which the literature is not consistent.
Of particular interest for testing the “difficult
conversations” suggestion would be to explore
what approaches, including language and models,
are most helpful for instructors to use. Given that
the literature has long-affirmed almost everyone’s
aversion to conflict, how could we best assist
faculty in functionally managing dysfunctional
student behaviors? And, what aspects of these con-
versations would students consider most facilita-
tive to re-engaging with learning opportunities?
Testing whether in fact out-of-classroom support
mechanisms increase engagement is an important
line of inquiry. If so, identifying key mechanisms
will help direct instructor energy when connecting
students to those resources. Students, too, may
identify resources that are currently not in use on
our campuses. What do we currently think is help-
ful that may not be so? What resources are we
missing that could assist with managing student
learning threats?
Fundamental to any success we might have in
helping students deal with identity dissonance is
trust (Carini et al., 2006; Cokley & Moore, 2007;
Hinchcliff-Pelias et al., 2000). All of our suggestions
serve to promote improved trust, and in turn, de-
crease the likelihood of disengagement. Over time,
and iteratively, building trust with students by
consistently linking the learning activities we ask
them to undertake with valuable learning out-
241
comes can decrease students’ perceived identity-
based threats. Students must trust that we have
their learning interests in mind, and they must
trust that identifying and “trying on” new provi-
sional selves will not harm them. We can help
students understand which parts of their current
identities have become unhelpful and perhaps
may need to be discarded, similar to what Weick
(1996, 2007) calls “dropping your tools.” We may
then be instrumental in helping students replace
current tools (scripts and behaviors) with more
learning-oriented ones. Future research may ex-
plore both affective and cognition-based forms of
trust and their relationship to student engagement,
using for example McAllister’s (1995) measure-
ments as well as rich qualitative methods.
In summary, we have argued that the key to
successfully re-engaging resistant students is to
seek ways to employ learning opportunities as
means to expose students to positive “possible
selves.” If we can diagnose why our learning ac-
tivity(s) creates dissonance in a student, we can
develop collaborative ways to lessen that disso-
nance and its associated disengagement. In so
doing we improve our chances of helping the stu-
dent develop a more positive provisional self.
Bauman (2006: B5) notes some of the challenges
of instructing “others”—“those abused, depressed,
or saddled with intense poverty, ADD, addictions,
handicaps or other ‘issues’ live in a different cul-
ture from that of students who are healthy,
wealthy, and unscarred.” He reminds us that each
instructor must answer certain questions that only
he or she can answer: How much energy do I put in
to bringing them back? What’s my responsibility
toward this student? Do I have a right to intervene?
Am I trained to do so? (“I’m not a therapist!”) When
does “odd” behavior become disruptive to learn-
ing? How much behavioral latitude can we allow?
It is important to acknowledge that some student
skepticism about identity-threatening learning ac-
tivities is healthy and helps students learn to set
boundaries for themselves. Management educa-
tion “lore” considers pushing students’ emotional
boundaries a normatively good thing; however,
there are serious voices that would challenge this
claim (Fish, 1989, 2008). Our model encourages in-
structors to leave the ultimate risk–reward assess-
ment where it belongs—with the student.
Hawk and Lyons (2008) offer a stark picture of the
frustration and hopelessness students feel when
instructors are insensitive to their struggles in the
classroom, such as giving up on the entire course,
or avoiding the instructor for any future courses.
They ask us to reconsider how we can connect with
students who have lost their way. Based on our
242 Academy of Management Learning & Education
own personal answers to these questions, we can
decide how much effort to exert with a particular
student. Assuming we feel it’s worth a try, the
model and the suggestions contained here may
provide significant help toward success.
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Kathy Lund Dean earned her PhD from Saint Louis University. She is professor of management
at Idaho State University. Currently, Lund Dean is researching ethics and decision making
among entry- to midlevel managers, how Title VII is being interpreted in religious accommo-
dation disputes, and student disengagement issues.

James P. Jolly earned his PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas. He currently is professor
and chair of management at Idaho State University. Jolly’s current research interests lie in the
areas of student disengagement and learning, legal issues in pre-employment inquiries, and
practical applications of employee selection programs.