" The Temporary" and Developing the Theory of Doctoral Student Professional Identity in Iran

In recent years the number of doctoral students in Iran have been increased. This phenomena has changed the attitude toward status and activity of doctoral students and hence has affected their professional identity development process. Accordingly this study aims to investigate the professional identity development of social science PhD students. Grounded theory is a method of this study. By a pragmatic reading of grounded theory, this study propose a Abductive model as a logic of discovery of grounded theory that clarify the role of researcher, concepts and literature review in various stages of collecting and interpreting data. Data have been collected through interview with 15 student of the social science at Allameh Tabatabaie University. The finding shows the indeterminacy of doctoral student’s professional identity. Temporarily Students do various activities in different areas that is a reaction to the lack of professional position prospect. Various and temporary activities of doctoral student in different fields has been explained by a theoretical concept of "The Temporary" so that to illustrate variety of student’s action in concrete level. In short, "The Temporary" is a time condition, between the present and unknown future. This ambiguous position is fragile and fluid. In this position Student cannot recognize his role and place in the future, so depending of subjective estimate, he/she trains and acts in a various fields. Accordingly, indeterminacy of doctoral student’s professional identity is an informed tactics of student to deal with "The Temporary".