Effective social factors on Academic Identity among Students of Islamic Azad University

The main concern of this article is to measure academic identity among students of Islamic Azad University, and to explore its effective social factors. The theoretical framework is based on Richard Jenkins's theory of exogenous-indigenous dialectics, which is a compilation of Coley, Mead, Goffman, Marx and Bourdieu's ideas. According to the theoretical framework, variables such as academic culture (including education culture, learning culture, organization and management culture, and student's subculture), cultural capital (including incarnation, objectified and institutionalized capitals) and educational motives identified as effective social factors of academic identity. Research design was survey type non-experimental research. Research population was all undergraduate students were under education in four Islamic Azad University branches– including Roudhen, Shahriar- Shahre-Ghods, karaj and Pishva-Varamin branches. 380 students were selected as representative sample of all the students, and 351 of them were participated in this research. Method of sampling was non proportional stratified sampling. The tool for gathering data was a questionnaire designed by the researcher. The questionnaire’s validity and reliability realized respectively by applying content validity and internal consistency methods. Data were analyzed using SPSS 12 and LISREL 8.5 software. Results show that academic identity is significantly correlated by academic culture, cultural capital and educational motive. And, at first, academic culture, and then, cultural capital have more significant effects on academic identity, and educational motives has no significant effect on academic identity.