The creation and educational usage of identity artifacts

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to illustrate the notion of identity artifact through two examples which try to link both the school curriculum and educational practice with the learner’s subjectivity. By identity artifact we understand any product created by the students (textual, visual, multimodal) in which their own experiences, areas of interest and issues which are significant for them are included in their production, and that teachers use with educational purposes to optimize teaching and learning processes. After situating the concept of identity artifact from the principle of meaning -signification- of Vygotsky (the creation and use of signs to manage behavior); we present and discuss two examples which intend to illustrate how these identity artifacts can be used for educational purposes. In one of the examples we present the creation and use of some artistic productions that come into dialogue with an illustrated book and which are linked to both literacy and artistic competences. In the other example, carried out in a non-formal context, science is incorporated in an out of school discussion setting for 14 to 19 year old adolescents when creating a collage and a short documentary. It is suggested that identity artifacts can be used pedagogically to bridge the learning contexts and experiences in and out of school.