An Analysis of Academic Identity Construction During Doctoral Education

This study aims to determine how doctoral students and the faculty members make sense of academic identity, to examine how doctoral students’ academic identity is formed, to analyze the academic identity construction of doctoral students by associating them with the views and practices of faculty members on creating academic identity. It was carried out through a case study, one of the qualitative research methods. The study group was determined by maximum variation sampling, one of the purposive sampling methods, and consisted of 17 faculty members and 34 doctoral students in a public university in Türkiye. The data was collected using interviews, observation and analyzed using content analysis. The results showed that academic identity is multidimensional, including academic (role), social and individual, and each dimension affects the construction of the academic identity of the doctoral student; the past experiences of the doctoral students affect the construction of academic identity, the economic and spiritual support provided by the family paves the way for the construction of a positive academic identity; the quality of the social environment in which doctoral students grew up and the cultural capital characteristics helped to solve the problems they encountered. It is important for the doctoral student to feel a sense of belonging to the academic community and that congresses, symposiums or scientific events contribute the most to their belonging to this community.