Navigating a diverse university context in South Africa: A student's narrative about identity formation

Emma Groenewald
Sol Plaatje University, South Africa

This article focuses on the navigation and negotiation of a Zulu student on a diverse university campus in South Africa. Students in higher education institutions bring their life stories, shaped by lived experiences, culture, history, and language, to the campus, while the interconnection between race, language, culture, and gender creates new possibilities for identity formation. The study is guided by the central research question: How do students navigate and negotiate their narrative identities in a diverse university context? Reflective writing exercises and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from a black male isiZulu-speaking student. Using the narrative methodology, the lived experiences of the participant were explored. Tajfel and Turner's social identity theory was employed as a theoretical lens. An inductive thematic analysis highlighted the following themes in the data: language and race; culture; gender and sexuality; and social class. The findings reveal that narrative identities can be negotiated and navigated through re-creation, adaptation, and limited adjustment.
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Author: Dr Emma Groenewald is a senior lecturer in the School of Education, Sol Plaatje University, Kimberley, South Africa. She holds a PhD in philosophy of education. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and presented papers at national and international conferences. Her research interests are narrative identity construction and social justice issues in higher education. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6342-3145 Email: emma.groenewald@spu.ac.za Please cite as: Groenewald, E. (2024). Navigating a diverse university context in South Africa: A student's narrative about identity formation. Issues in Educational Research, 34(3), 1053-1069. http://www.iier.org.au/iier34/groenewald2.pdf