Today young people are confronted with pluralism in many aspects of life triggered by trends in social, technological, economical and geopolitical changes. Examining views of postmodernism by Lyotard (1987), Foucault (1969), Derrida (1978), Bourdieu (1986) and Welsch (1996) the paper assumes that this situation provides special challenges for the development of personality and identity (Beck, 1986; Keupp et al., 2006) especially during adolescence (Merkens, 1996). Being confronted with attributions of belonging and culture, the question “Who am I“ becomes even more difficult to answer taking into account the fact that many young people have to cope with heterogeneous expectations, codes and value systems in different contexts of their lives. However, offers for identification are often not based on individuality, but on stable aspects of belonging either to a group or to a neighbourhood, to a society, to a culture, a religion or to a nation. All these concepts claim relevance for the establishment of a stable and reliable general self concept. 

Zones of fracture, drifting and overlapping between these different aspects are identified under the label of interculturality. However, the performative dimension of young peoples’ confrontation to multiple contexts is often neglected. This paper develops a concept of intercontextuality assuming that discourses of interculturality do not cover the challenges many young people experience especially in urban settings and that intercultural approaches in education can produce bad practise despite good intentions.

Addressing developmental theories of personality (e.g. Rogers, 1961), the theoretical concept of developmental tasks (e.g. Havighurst, 1982) as well as the concept of silent revolution (Inglehart, 1977) it is hypothesised additionally that the impact of pluralism increases these tasks by offering information about possibilities of life style and strategies of coping and problem solving additional to those existing in the traditional living context of a young person, but without educational support how to learn from these information. This lack of support involves the appraisal of these possibilities and the acquisition of skills to perform viable behavioural patterns.

Furthermore, the paper questions the term ‚urban education’ as intercontextual environments  in cities cannot be understood by the concept of the city only. Based on the concept of intercontextuality it is argued that urban settings can have village, town and city features which have to be taken into account by educational intervention.

The paper will present a study focussing on three questions: (1) How do young adolecents develop, perform  and evaluate concepts of identity within complex urban settings, which is the scope of divergence and convergence with regard to self perception, family, friends, neighbourhood, home town, culture, nationality and European citizenship. (2) Is there a correlation between identity discourse and performance in formal education and training systems? (3) Which educational support can help young people to perform successfully in different contexts and at the same time develop an autonomous understanding of themselves? 

Beck, U. (1986). Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt / Main: Suhrkamp. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Derrida, J. (1978). Writing and difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, M. (1969). L'archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard, Havighurst, R. J. (1982). Developmental tasks and education. (7th ed.) New York: Longman Inc. Inglehart, R.(1977). The silent revolution. Changing values and political styles among Western publics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Keup, H., Ahbe, Th., Gmür, W., Höfer, R., Mitzscherlich, B., Kraus, W., Strauss, F. (2006). Identitätskonstruktionen. Das Patchwork der Identitäten in der Spätmoderne. Reinbeck: Rowoldt. Lyotard, J.-F. (1987). Der Widerstreit. München: Wilhelm Fink. Merkens, H. (1996). Youth at risk. Attitudes and values concepts among young people in Euope at a time of social change. In D. Benner, D. Lenzen (eds.) Education for the new Europe. (pp. 45-68). Oxford: Berghahn Books. Patry, J.-L. (1997). The Lesson Interruption Method in assessing situation-specific behaviour in classrooms. Psychological Reports, 81, pp. 272-274. Patry, J.-L. (2007). VaKE – Introduction and theoretical background. In K. Tirri. Valus and foundations in gifted education. (pp. 157-169). Bern: Peter Lang. Rogers, C.-L. (1961). On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Welsch, W. (1996). Unsere postmoderne Moderne. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.