PURPOSE AND IDENTITY: LINKS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION

Abstract

The relation between identity and purpose has been highlighted both by the legal frameworks that define purpose as the axis of basic education in Brazil and by studies on purpose published in the country and abroad. However, documents such as the Common National Curriculum Base and the New High School do not provide theoretical foundations that enable education professionals to know how identity and purpose are built and articulated, as well as to understand their pedagogical implications. At the academic level, in turn, the relationship between identity and purpose has been little discussed in an explicit and systematic way. This article, of a theoretical nature and inscribed at the interface between education and psychology, explores the articulations between studies on purpose and on identity with regard to the constitution, development and functioning of these constructs, as well as discusses their implications for education. Therefore, it defines the concept of life project according the perspective founded by the Center for Studies on Adolescence at Stanford University (United States), coordinated by William Damon, and circumscribes the processes of construction and functioning of identity to approaches to identity states, narrative identity and moral identity, whose common matrix is ​​the work of Erik Erikson.