How a Possible Future Self Is Created and Influences Graduate Students' Professional Identity Development

• In Event: Professional Identity Formation and Development — Paper Session

Abstract

This qualitative study highlights how graduate students’ sense of a future possible self and community of practice contributed to building their professional identity, itself shaped by social roles, positions, and discourse skills in the process of graduate professional training. Data came from interviews and observations of 34 educational psychology doctoral students, collected across three years until data saturation was reached. Data were analyzed by constant comparative methods of coding and creating categories. Findings were that graduate students’ professional identity development seemed highly associated with the envisionment of a possible future professional self. To varying degrees, students created a possible future self that motivated engagement in various graduate training experiences associated with the community of practice of their field.  

Authors

• John Park, Penn State University

• Diane L. Schallert, The University of Texas - Austin