Participant Examples¶
Element · All elements
Evidence · 2 claims (1 for, 1 mixed) · 2 studies (2 qualitative),q1–q2· 1 of 2 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study
Description¶
A participant example (Wortham, 2006) occurs when someone analyzing a case or example also becomes a character in it — positioning their own identity as analogous to, or continuous with, the case's subject, and using the case's reasoning to make an argument about their own category membership. This differs from a standard academic example, in which a distant third party is analyzed at arm's length. When a learner treats a historical or legal case as personally self-referential ("if this person counts, then so do I"), the academic content becomes a vehicle for identity reasoning rather than being separate from it. Repeated use of the same case as a participant example across multiple learners can "thicken" a shared identity category over time.
Design Implications¶
Context¶
Requirements¶
- A case, text, or example with enough ambiguity or contestation in its own resolution that a learner can plausibly draw a personal analogy from it (a settled, uncontroversial case gives little room for this move)
- A learner already holding, even implicitly, a personal question that the case can be mapped onto
Constraints¶
- Emerges as an unsolicited move in the source study rather than something the curriculum directly assigned — attempting to force the move by explicit instruction ("now relate this case to yourself") is untested and may not produce the same depth of engagement
- Documented via a single case's discourse; the reliability of the mechanism across learners and topics is unclear
Target Learners¶
- Learners who hold an unresolved personal stake in a category the curriculum addresses (identity, belonging, membership)
Target Learning Goals¶
- Using academic case analysis as a vehicle for personal identity reasoning, not only propositional content mastery
Affordances¶
- Humanistic Knowledge Building Community — a knowledge-building design whose curated, deliberately contested materials created the conditions for this move to emerge
- Perspective-Taking
Claims¶
Related Elements¶
- Perspective-Taking — both involve reasoning through another's position, though participant examples specifically fold the reasoner's own identity into that position
- Case Study
Examples¶
- Participant examples support identity reconstruction through academic content [+W] — a secular Jewish-Israeli student used a Supreme Court case about a Christian convert's Jewish national status to argue for his own status as a secular Jew
Key Sources¶
- Wortham, S. (2006). Learning Identity: The Joint Emergence of Social Identification and Academic Learning. Cambridge University Press.
- Cohen, E., Hod, Y., & Ben-Zvi, D. (2023). From "Carrier" to "Creator": The re-construction of national identity in more inclusive terms. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 32(3), 427-454. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2023.2185147
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
element |
id |
participant-examples |
title |
Participant Examples |
description |
A discourse move in which a learner positions themselves as a character within a case or example under academic study, using the case to reason about their own identity category membership rather than only about the case's distant subject. |
status |
review |
canonical |
True |
generated |
by claude/unspecified on 2026-08-29 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — cohen-hod-benzvi-2023 |
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