Journal of the European Teacher Education Network 2016, Vol. 11, 163-172 On the Importance of 'Positive Identity' to Transformative Education Boaz Tsabar David Yellin, College of Education Hebrew University Israel Abstract The article seeks to highlight the fundamental importance of positive concept of identity to transformative education. The paper will claim that critical education needs to address the complex dialectical nature of identity - its immanent tensions between the individual and the collective and between liberation and empowerment. The paper will also argue that radical postmodern concept of identity can lead to suppression and reduction of identity. Through its critical examination this article hopes to re-establish the dialectical nature of positive identity and its importance for transformative education. Key words: Urban education, critical education. Introduction The question of the identity is arguably one of the most significant issues in the field of critical pedagogy. It is especially important to urban educators who work in multicultural and multiclass societies. The question of Identity, the personal and the collective, carries a significate existential value which educators needs to addressed in order to successfully integrate and empower their students into their current society. In the following pages I will claim that it is important to realize that any educational project must combine two contradiction levels of operation: one, negative, which is manifested as "emancipation from" (to resist the oppressive characters of the hegemonic culture) and the other, positive, which is manifested as "empowerment toward" (the ability to understand and integrate). In order to do so I will try to highlight the importance of "positive" identity to transformative education and reveal the immanent limitations of "negative" concept of Identity, as manifested in some postmodern versions of critical pedagogy. To this end, I will present the unique stance of critical theory regarding the identity of “the oppressed,” and analyze its philosophical and pedagogical implications. My main assertion is that postmodernist critical theory’s radical pursuit of the unshackling of identity from all limitations and definitions (The ideal of "negative identity") is based on a problematic concept of identity. Beyond its theoretically problematic character, such a concept of identity has serious pedagogical and political ramifications.