Racial Identity Development in Middle School: A Case for School Counselor Individual and Systemic Intervention.

Conceptually, the emergence of middle schools is an attempt to attend to the unique growth and development of the emerging adolescent. The middle school format configures grades, classes, and learning opportunities to help facilitate development. Middle school counselors play a key role in this process. Guided by the American School Counselor Association's (ASCA; Dahir, 2000) National Standards, the ASCA (2003) National Model, and the Transforming School Counseling Initiative (The Education Trust, n.d.), middle school counselors advocate and systematically promote academic, career, and personal and social development. Although all three outcomes are important and interrelated, puberty often amplifies the personal and social developmental tasks in middle school. For decades, scholars (Blos, 1979; Erikson, 1968; Marcia, 1980) have recognized that identity formation is a key developmental task of adolescence. During adolescence, group belonging becomes a central theme for all youth (Newman & Newman, 1999; Poston, 1990). Developmentally, the increasing involvement and intimacy of the peer group heightens focus on identity as students determine who they are and who their friends will be. Erikson (1968) outlined the importance of achieving an identity in adolescence. He suggested that teenagers often experience an identity crisis, in which inner soul searching and experimentation lead to a mature identity (Berk, 1999). Middle school students are often in a period of foreclosure or diffusion, where they either accept the identity prescribed by authority figures, lack commitment to a specific group, or avoid the exploration of identity altogether (Marcia, Wetterman, Matteson, Archer, & Orlofsky, 1993). Research supports that students with an achieved identity or those who are actively exploring one have higher self-esteem, are more likely to engage in critical and abstract thinking, are more advanced in moral reasoning, and report more similarity between their ideal and real self as compared with students who do not explore or prematurely foreclose on an identity (Josselson, 1994; Marcia et al., 1993). A stable identity is also associated with positive youth development, including positive self-esteem and a sense of mastery (Eccles & Gootman, 2002; Marcia et el., 1993). Assessing, understanding, and helping to facilitate identity development in students are fundamental tasks for middle school counselors. Adolescent development encompasses a synthesis between cognitive, social, and emotional factors (Suizzo, 2000). In fact, Piaget suggested that information concerning one's social environment is equally important to the collective acquisition of knowledge in children (Suizzo, 2000). Research suggests that children from 5 to 8 years old take in information about their own identity and others' differences, whereas children between 8 and 12 years old begin to internalize and act on society's expectations (Comer, 1989). With developing cognitive abilities, middle school becomes a crucial time for identity exploration. With so much at stake, it is important to consider racial and ethnic identity development of middle school students. For students of color, unlike their White counterparts, race and ethnicity are often central themes to identity and create differential challenges and opportunities. For example, many studies have suggested that Black students are more likely than White students to encounter barriers to healthy racial identity development (Helms, 1989; Spencer & Markstrom-Adams, 1990). Tatum (1998) specifically discussed minority identity development in terms of race, because it is often the primary lens of dominant and subordinate cultures. When students of color become cognitively aware of racism and inequality in their environment, racial identity development adds an important layer to the development of the self. Boykin and Toms (1985) proposed that African American children face a triple quandary with the difficult task of integrating three distinct identities: mainstream American, minority, and African American identities. …