Empowering Students and Faculty Beyond Impostor Feelings

• What is Impostor Phenomenon (IP)?

• IP’s prevalence in education, music education, academic settings

• Our Research: Trioethnography of Faculty and Student Experiences, Impact

• Potential IP Management Strategies

• Questions?

• First labeled by Clance and Imes (1978) in a study on high-achieving women.

Music Students

• K-12. Purdon (2024) developed music student IP scale (overall a = .876). IP exists in K-12 music students. 

• UG As students progressed through their degrees, social media use and comparison to peers increased, and increased IP (Rinn, 2023). 

• UG Music Ed majors’ exhaustion and negativity increased over the degree (Clance) (Nápoles et al., 2023), and Silvey et al. (2025) found perfectionism and first gen predicted IP scores (scales: Hewitt and Flett, Clancy).

• GR Music Ed students overall are impacted. Being full time, single, first generation, female was associated with higher IP (Sims & Cassidy, 2020).

Music Teachers

• IP exists particularly when working in unfamiliar territory, when they had less control over environment. Support varied by source (admin, colleagues, parents, community), isolation played a part (Carpency, 2025).

• Less experience, teaching environment, self-doubt, perfectionism predict higher IP levels (Warnock & Luke, 2026).

Higher Ed (Music/Music Ed)

• In women band directors moving into higher ed, IP seen in insecurities about their own abilities and perfectionism (Huddleston, 2024). 

• Imposter syndrome was an issue surrounding conducting research (Pellegrino et al., 2014; Sims & Cassidy, 2019). 

Method Decisions

• Turning the Corner from Survey Research - where is the gap?

• Considering Qualitative Options

  • Duoethnography (Habibie & Sawyer, 2024; Sawyer & Norris, 2013)

  • Trioethnography (Rogers-Shaw et al., 2021).

  • Importance of sharing personal experiences with IP.

• Deciding on new research questions:

  • What do Impostor Phenomenon (IP) experiences realistically look like in faculty/students (us)?

  • How do participants (we) manage their own IP experiences?

  • How are those (our) experiences aligned, or not aligned with researcher identified IP traits?

• Deciding to Dedicate Formal Time to share our experiences.

• IRB Approvals (considered non-human subjects)

Data and Data Collection Proceesses

• Data included…

  • Conversations about literature, journal entries, group text messages, formal question-answer conversations, personal experiences, all interactions about IP. 

  • As we are analyzing data, new data is created through those conversations. 

• Data Collection

  • Weekly recorded and transcribed meetings. 

  • Zoom AI summaries to remind us what we talked about the week before. NOT in the data analysis. 

  • Journaling and video self-reflection when unable to meet.

Challenges

• Aligning Schedules

• Developing Trust Between Authors

• Sharing Deeply Personal Information

• Commiting to Sharing for “The Greater Good”

• Content Fatigue

• Meeting Fatigue

Leading Questions for Disucssions

• When is the first time you remember feeling the sense of being an imposter? What age/time/event? Trace back to a specific event?

• What is imposter phenomenon to you?

• Relation to mental health, well-being, physical health?

• How have you managed your IP? Have you sought professional support, employed other interventions, etc.? 

• Do you think (gender, age, academic position) contribute to your IP?

• Do IP experiences ever impact your decision making? How?

Data Analysis Approach(es)

• Shared folder with all transcribed data. 

• Each author read through the data from each formal session and independently (informally) coded throughout. 

• Codes were discussed and a code table was created to record both the codes, subsequent themes, and what each means.

• Particularly significant quotes were highlighted. 

• Informal items were also considered (such as informal journals, text messages, etc. 

• And, as mentioned, sometimes new data emerges from these discussions.

Persistent Self-Doubt

Ongoing feelings of inadequacy or lack of competence.

• “I don't feel like I know what I'm doing, if that makes any sense…and no amount of me studying and learning is going to change that."

Perfectionism

Holding oneself or one's work to unusually high standards. 

• "I'd start writing my name. I would write it, and then erase each letter until each letter was perfect, and then I'd erase, and then write again and again."

Humor as Deflection

Using humor to redirect attention from vulnerability. 

• “I think humor… is also one of the… coping mechanisms… that I started back then… to be funny so that people don’t really look.”

Seeking Control

Seeking control to reduce vulnerability or inadequacy.

• “ Going back to… my voice changing, I could control my voice. Then I lost control. It wasn't perfect. It was flawed, in my opinion. And I was working very diligently to get the flaws out.”

Questioning Belonging

Doubting whether one genuinely belongs or is wanted. 

• “I always feel like the odd one out in the social groups. I'm always wondering…do my friends actually like me, or are they just here because they feel obligated to have me be here?"

Identity Loss

Disruption or uncertainty in how one understands their identity.

• “When my voice started to change, I felt like I lost part of my identity, and I started feeling like I was an imposter.”

Discounting Competence and Accomplishment (Fraudulence)

Difficulty accepting success as evidence of competence.

• “So I remember that year as being a year that I was not good enough. And I made it to freaking Allstate.”

Emotional Responses

Driven by feelings, many times associated with anxiety 

• “ …But I also think for me personally, I think it's a feeling. It's almost an overwhelming feeling, not just of anxiety, but of loss.”

Peer Support Groups (Outcomes)

(Kuebel, Waters, & Svec, 2021)

• Decreases feelings of isolation 

• Expands professional connections

• Increases accountability for work-life balance

• Eases overall tensions associated with IP

Psychological Care

(Chamarthi et al., 2025; Sweet, 2023)

• Self-Care

• Self-Advocacy

• Mindfulness - box breathing, guided meditation, body scans

• Professional Counseling, such as:

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT)

  • Exposure Therapy (personal experiences)

• Others examined IP in different populations via different IP scales and online questionnaires.

• Some examined IP qualitatively through interviews. 

• We are just beginning our trioethnographic data analyses, which also leads to new data (method) about our IP experiences, thoughts, and management strategies. 

• Through reporting our own personal experiences with IP our hope is to give hope to those who feel alone in what they experience. 

• Bravata D. M., Watts S. A., Keefer A. L., Madhusudhan D. K., Taylor K. T., Clark D. M., et al. (2019). Prevalence, predictors, and treatment of impostor syndrome: a systematic review. J. Gen. Intern. Med. 35 1252–1275.

• Burić, I., Jakšić, K., & Balaž, B. (2024). Teacher self-efficacy and teaching quality: A three-wave longitudinal investigation. International journal of psychology : Journal international de psychologie, 59(6), 1317–1325. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.13255 

• Chamarthi, S, Parsi, S, Ravi, U, Kashyap, R., & Chamarthi, V.S. (2025). Coping mechanisms and resilience strategies for addressing impostor phenomenon in healthcare professionals. Cureus, 17(11), e97367. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.97367 

• Clance, P.R. & Imes, S. (1978). The impostor phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention. Psychotherapy Theory, Research, and Practice, 14(3). 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006 

• Cokley, K.O. (Ed.) (2024). The impostor phenomenon: Psychological research, theory and interventions. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000397-000

• Goopy, J. & MacArther, S.L.R. (2025). Music learning and school-aged children’s and adolescents’ wellbeing: A scoping review. Research Studies in Music Education 48(1), https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103X251323562 

• Gottlieb, M., Chung, A., Battaglioli, N., Sebok-Syer, S, & Kalantari, A. (2019). Impostor syndrome among physicians and physicians in training: A scoping review. Medical Education, 54 (2), 116–124. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.13956

• Figueroa, A. . (2025). Influence of Teacher Mindset in Performance and Learning. Florida Journal of Educational Research, 62(2), 22–41. https://doi.org/10.62798/KWIV1199 

• Haibibie, P. & Sawyer, R.D. (2024). Duoethnography and English for research publication purposes: Promises and challenges. Research Methods in Applied Linguistics 3(2024), 1000148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rmal.2024.100148 

• Huecker MR, Shreffler J, McKeny PT, & Davis, D. (2023). Imposter Phenomenon. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing, National LIbrary of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK585058/ 

• Ilari B and Cho E (2023) Musical participation and positive youth development in middle school. Front. Psychol. 13:1056542. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1056542 

• Jiang J. (2024). Impact of music learning on students' psychological development with mediating role of self-efficacy and self-esteem. PloS one, 19(9), e0309601. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309601

• Kark R., Meister A., Peters K. (2022). Now you see me, now you don’t: a conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences of leader impostorism. J. Manag, 48 1948–1979. https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063211020358 

• Ma, K., Cavanagh, M., Zhang, J., & Chutiyam, M. (2025). The association between teacher self-efficacy and student academic performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Educational Research Review (48). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2025.100701 

• Mayo Clinic (2026). Somatic symptom disorder. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-
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• Nápoles J., Springer G., Silvey B., Montemayor M., Rinn T. J. (2023). Burnout and impostor phenomenon among undergraduate music education majors. Journal of Research in Music Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/00224294231207267 

• Neufeld, A., Babenko, O, Lai, H, Svrcek, C. & Malin, G (2022). Why do we feel like intellectual frauds? A self-determination theory perspective on the impostor phenomenon in medical students. Teaching and Learning in Medicine, 35(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/10401334.2022.2056741 

• Para, E., Dubreuil, P., Miquelon, P., & Martin-Krumm, C. (2024). Interventions addressing the impostor phenomenon: a scoping review. Frontiers in psychology, 15, 1360540. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1360540 

• Pellegrino, K., Sweet, B., Kastner, J. D., Russell, H. A., & Reese, J. (2014). Becoming music teacher educators: Learning from and with each other in a professional development community. International Journal of Music Education, 32, 462–477. https://doi.org/10.1177/0255761413515819 

• Rinn, T.J. (2024). Online social comparison and impostor phenomenon among music education undergraduates. Journal of Music Teacher Education, 35(1), 15-35. https://doi.org/10.1177/10570837241277781

• Rogers-Shaw, C., Carr-Chellman, D. & Choi, J. (2021). A trioethnolography of organic mentoring in the doctoral process. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 29(4), 389–411. https://doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2021.1952394

• Sawyer, R.D. & Norris, J. (2013). Understanding qualitative research: Duoethnography. Oxford University Press.

• Silvey, B.A., Nápoles J., Springer, D.G., & Montemayor (2025). Perfectionism and impostor phenomenon among undergraduate music education majors. Psychology of Music, 54(5), 947-961. https://doi.org/10.1177/03057356251369510 

• Sims, W. L., & Cassidy, J. W. (2019). Impostor Phenomenon Responses of Early Career Music Education Faculty. Journal of Research in Music Education, 67(1), 45–61. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48588768

• Sims, W. L., & Cassidy, J. W. (2020). Impostor feelings of music education graduate students. Journal of Research in Music Education, 68(3), 249–263. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022429420946899

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