Resistance to peer influence during adolescence: Proposing a sociocultural-developmental framework
Section snippets
Overview of the research
Of the early work on the development of peer conformity/resistance during adolescence, Thomas Berndt's 1979 article has been acknowledged most frequently by subsequent investigators. This is due, in part, to his assessment of peer conformity via hypothetical situations, an assessment procedure that has been taken up or adapted by many others over the years. Beyond the measure, Berndt's (1979) research warrants attention for addressing the main question that has continued to be debated: What are
Complicating the concept of peer resistance
Here we consider perspectives on resistance that are consistent with the broad category of sociocultural approaches that Kirschner and Martin (2010) call discursive and constructionist. In general, these perspectives direct attention to the complexity and contextual specificity of influences and resistances, often as observed in interactional settings. Explicit in these views is rejection of the still fairly common implication within the adolescent literature of peer pressure or influence as a
Sociocultural-developmental framework
What we wish to propose in this section is that taking a sociocultural approach to the study of peer resistances needn't imply a restrictive focus on situated action and microgenesis to the exclusion of ontogenetic processes. It is possible to bring together contemporary “hybrid” constructionist and discursive positions (Raby, 2005) that offer insights on resistances and the study of ontogeny within a theoretically coherent sociocultural framework. In this section, we turn to another of
Summary
The main features of the proposed sociocultural-developmental framework are as follows:
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This framework connects with constructionist/discursive sociocultural approaches in the importance placed on process-oriented analyses of particular people acting in relation to particular contexts, including probing the details of exactly what is being resisted, and how resistances are expressed. It includes taking into consideration dialoguing with many aspects of context including the immediate setting and
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