Constructing Doctoral Students’ Professional Identity: Based on the Perspective of Identity Theory

Abstract

Professional identity (PI) is not only the goal of socialization of doctoral students, but also has a close relationship with their learning and practice. The PI establishment of doctoral students can promote their development. On the contrary, identity deficiency or conflicts struggling by doctoral students will bring a series of problems, such as students’ lack of self-confidence and scientific spirit, their inappropriate participation in academic competition, and their renunciation of pursuit in academic career. The identity theory directly derived from the structural symbol interaction theory explores the relationship between individuals and society, and is a powerful tool for analyzing the development of identity in doctoral education. This study defines doctoral students’ PI as the identity of two roles of “researcher” and “professional,” comprehensively using the identity theory of structural orientation and interactive orientation to analyze how to construct doctoral students’ PI, and proposes three countermeasures: (1) help doctoral students clarify the combination of salience hierarchy in social structure to provide reference for the PI; (2) create conditions to promote the role performance of doctoral students and provide possibilities for exploring the PI; and (3) promote the multi-subject interaction of doctoral students and seek role support to stabilize the PI.