From The Skillful Teacher by Stephen Brookfield
The Impostor Syndrome
From basic education students to students in doctoral programs, there is a very commonly reported perception of impostorship. Students within formal education say that they should not really be there, that they are somehow impostors. They report how, at the beginning of a new course or program, they wrestle with deciding whether or not to continue when they see how capable all the other students are.
….Ironically a great number of new students believe they have entered a program under false pretenses and perceive everyone else as being much more capable and confident than themselves. This feeling of being undeserving impostors who will sooner or later have their real, pathetically inadequate identities revealed is remarkably consistent across contexts. In my own practice I had expected such levels of poor self-regard from students stereotypically labeled as ‘disadvantaged,’ such as those in literacy or remedial education programs. It has been a revelation to encounter such feelings among many doctoral students and among participants in professional development workshops….
Reducing the Impostor Syndrome
Because this syndrome is experienced at such a fundamental psychological level, your efforts alone will probably not be enough to help students shed their perceptions of crippling inadequacy that have been periodically reinforced by feelings of failure experienced over the years. However, you can do some things to reduce the effects the syndrome produces. With care the syndrome can be kept at a level where it is less likely to interfere seriously with the activity of learning.
First, you can regularly affirm a student’s sense of self-worth. You can do this by treating respectfully and seriously the most halting and hesitant of contributions made by students in class. You can precede every oral and written criticism or suggestion for improvement you make with a recognition of what is meritorious about a person’s work. You can make an effort to refer back to a student’s earlier contributions during the later phases of an educational activity.
Second, you can decrease the intensity with which students experience the syndrome by acknowledging how you experience it yourself as a teacher. You should not do this to excess in an orgy of self-flagellation masquerading as modest self-deprecation. But teachers who have credibility in students’ eyes can do a great deal to relieve those who suffer from the impostor syndrome by talking about their own occasional feelings of inadequacy as teachers.
Third, you can encourage students to communicate to each other the fact that they feel this way. Knowing that one is not the only person who feels like a fraud and that this perception is, in fact, widespread, is an important factor in reducing its effect….You can inform students of how previous participants experienced, and survived, this syndrome, and you can ask some of these people to return to the current class to talk about this.