Academic identity of graduate students is of considerable importance in their lives in graduate school and the process in which they became academics. In this study, we aimed to examine how education graduate students in South Korea construct their academic identities. In pursuing this purpose, we included maste.r students as well as doctoral students. In addition to this, we focused on the academic identity of part-time students, in this case mostly teachers. Semi-structured interviews with nine graduate students in a university were used to understand their experiences. Analysis procedure included open coding, axial coding and selective coding of transcriptions. The results indicated that the criterion to distinguish undergraduate, master's, and doctoral experiences was the degree of autonomy in academic work. There were also significant differences between doing a master's and a doctoral degree, including the relationship with the advisor and students ' perception of academic work. In addition, this study found that part-timers experienced floating identities, and explored factors that influenced their identity formation. The result of this study is expected to contribute to improving formal and informal educational practices in graduate schools of education in South Korea and facilitate intercultural conversation on graduate education.

• Hye-Na Kim(Pusan National University in Korea)
• Ewha Kang(Korean Council for University Education in Korea)
• Dae-Hyun Kim(Pusan National University in Korea)