6.2.1 Understanding Possible Selves in Imagination
The personal recounts of the six student participants concerned their expectations towards the semester’s learning and teaching, in particular by reflecting on one or two learning experiences and corresponding attitudinal evaluation.The attention was focused on exploring expectation, because it invokes individuals’ beliefs of how they are capable of accomplishing or achieving required behaviours (Markus & Nurius, 1986, p.961).It indicates both the desire for affiliation in a particular environment and the construal of ‘affiliation-related possible selves’ (ibid.) in individuals’ imaginations, either to avoid negative possible selves or to approach positive possible selves.Before reviewing the synoptic literature and analysis on possible selves below, it should be pointed out that the examination of possible selves in the current study only attempts to interpret contextual information of the potential of the Chinese students’ learning behaviours, attitudes and values in the first place.Rather than emphasising the importance of the link of cognition and motivation in identity construction like most other possible selves research (cf.Possible Selves:Theory, Research and Applications, 2006), it points to more concrete grammatical analysis of disciplinary identities in the use of classroom discourse in Chapter 7.
Possible selves are not only individualised but also socially determined across time and place.For the evaluation and interpretation of possible selves, the proposed approach is the meaning-making in looking at the developmental trajectory of possible selves (Markus, 2006).Individuals’ developmental experience can be reflected from their imaginative contents and influential consequences, and concerns how the constructed representation of different types of selves, such as expected selves, ideal selves, or feared selves derived from the individuals’ refection and imagination of the past and the future selves, align with or distance from the present self.On the one hand, the past and the future selves can be an interpretative context to understand the present self and to make sense of the continuity of personal experience from a developmental dimension.The past self can have strong influence on the constitution of the present self, because it is not difficult to measure individuals’ behaviour outcomes as long as contextual norms were set up, whereas it does not always be the case that the future self can impact on the present self since it tends to be more addressed from the individuals’ imagination.For example, the future self may be incongruent with or distant from the present self, if the present self has experienced difficulty in accomplishing or achieving tasks.
On the other hand, the positive or negative evaluation and interpretation of the past and present actions, goals or needs are important to explore how the present self feels proximal or distal to the future self.If the present self persists in acting on the experienced difficulty, the future self may feel congruent with the present self, and vice versa.Therefore, except for the past self and the present self, the future self in imagination matters because it ‘provides a sense of potential and an interpretive lens to make sense of experience, guide self feelings, and energize goal pursuit’ (Oyserman & James, 2011, p.118).Recent research on the future self extends the interest to examine the content of specific personal and social possible future identities associated with the future self as a whole (Kerpelman & Dunkel, 2006; Oyserman & James, 2009, 2011), which contribute to defining possible identities as the components of the future self by conceptualising how possible identities embedded in social identities are like social products, social cognition, and psycho-social and cultural forces.In this sense, possible identities are dynamic and can be ‘amended, revised, and even dropped depending on contextual affordances and constraints, and these changes are not necessarily conscious and deliberate’ (Oyserman & James, 2011, p.120).Moreover, contextual information, including cultural, social and historical legacies, is important in shaping the future self as a whole, which in turn has impact on the present self.