You are not an impostor : mediating impostor phenomenon feelings in graduate students through literacy interventions

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Impostor phenomenon, which refers to an overwhelming feeling of being an intellectual fraud, affects highly capable individuals in a number of creative fields, including graduate education. This convergent, mixedmethods project had two purposes: (1) to identify the ways in which graduate students struggle with impostor phenomenon feelings; and (2) to determine if four literacy-based workshops would reduce impostor feelings in the graduate student participants. Grounded in literacy theory and pedagogy, these four interventions identified impostor phenomenon (Intervention I), explored disciplinary and academic literacy strategies (Intervention II), and taught graduate students how to read academic journal articles (Intervention III) and write literature reviews (Intervention IV). Both quantitative and qualitative data indicated that the literacy-based interventions were successful in increasing the participants' perceived success in their graduate programs and decreasing impostor phenomenon feelings. This project argues for a similar series of interventions to be implemented across graduate programs in order to reduce the significant consequences of impostor phenomenon in graduate students and to ameliorate the fiscal costs of graduate student attrition.