Peculiarities of identity dynamics of schoolchildren, teenagers and young people

The article analyzes the peculiarities of identity dynamics of schoolchildren, teenagers and young people. The author examines different approaches to this problem and the subjects whose identity is studied (the gender identity of schoolchildren, teenagers and youth by V.A. Peregudina, peculiarities of teenagers and youth identity by O.O. Savina) in Russian psychology and different approaches (Cockerham, Abdukeram et. al, Gecas et. al, Lay&Verkuyten, Steck) in international. The author comes to the conclusion that the usage of different psycho-diagnostic techniques is one of the objective difficulties for studying identity dynamics in general and particularly its development in the cases of schoolchildren, teenagers and young people. The lack of common and identical methodical techniques creates difficulties when analyzing comparatively the identity of people of different ages and gender. Consequently the usage of the same techniques would permit us to determine the peculiarities of the identity development in age and gender aspects. Having analyzed the identity peculiarities of 902 subjects with the help of the most widely used techniques such as "Semantic differential" and "Twenty statements", the author comes to the following conclusions: • The greatest identity dynamics is the attribute of schoolchildren. It can be explained by its instability as well as by fast changing of their social status. • One should note the graduate increase of social identity component and decrease of the level of personal identity component. This trend characterizes schoolchildren and teenagers. • There are some peculiarities of identity dynamics when speaking of schoolchildren and young people and they are connected with such identity components as integral identity of minor groups. The expressiveness of this component increases when speaking about primary schoolchildren and teenagers. On the contrary later when speaking about young people this component decreases and expressiveness of personal identity increases. In our opinion the latter fact is the criteria of identity crisis at different ages. The author concludes, that the dynamics of factors of Semantic differential among schoolchildren could be explained by the assessment of significant adults. So it could explain the high level of Valuation factor of Semantic Differential. But also it could lead to distortion of results.

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