Study of the factors affecting the process of formation and development of professional identity of faculty members

The faculty members of the universities have a key role in training the professional and efficient human resources needed by the society and creating insight in them, so it is very important to pay attention to their professional identity. The present study sought to identify important factors in the process of formation and development of their professional identity by studying the lived experience of faculty members and used qualitative research method and phenomenological strategy. Study population was faculties of Kurdistan University who were selected by purposive sampling method and the sample size reached 14 people due to saturation of opinions. The data collection tool was a semi-structured interview and using the data coding, the relevant findings were categorized and placed in the main and sub-categories and themes. Data were analyzed by using the seven-step Colizzi method. The result of the analysis was the extraction of semantic units embedded in the experiences of faculty members that were important in the formation and development of their professional identity and included five main themes "creation and effectiveness", "effective teaching", "Attention to environment", "classified audience" and "organizational coordination". These topics expressed the depth of experiences of university professors in relation to the phenomenon of professional identity and the extent of development of these cases was a measure of their work success. Attention to the findings of this study can provide insights to higher education institutions to better understand professional identity of faculties and create the ground to strengthen the important issues in its formation and development and thus in training quality and efficient human resources to be more effective.