At the #POD20 session on #ImposterSyndrome among Faculty & Educational Developers and I have some thoughts on why this is such an issue in our field...

(1) most of us don’t also have the opportunity to teach while in this job, which makes us feel “out of touch” with the classroom and harder to convince certain faculty that we have enough "on the ground" experience.

(2) most of us have to consult and support faculty in disciplines outside of the fields in which we were formally trained or have taught in (e.g., I direct the Health Sciences Teaching Academy and never taught in a clinical setting and every year this stresses me out).

(3) most of us didn’t go to school to become educational developers and had to learn the literature and practices on the job… but our jobs are so overwhelming that we don’t have time to read the literature and therefore feel like imposters #breakthecycle

(4) most of us don’t hold any specialized credentials to show we are certified “faculty developers” so we are constantly having to both legitimize the field & our role. that is why developer statements, portfolios, and doing peer-reviewed research & publications is so important.

(5) most of us don’t have good practices for self, peer and formal assessment of skills, let alone agree on what a set of competencies should be. How can we feel like we are doing a good job if we aren’t getting formative feedback beyond program evals steeped in implicit bias?

(6) most of us are so busy with daily work, we don’t have time to do professional development or publish (especially since the pandemic) which would both shape and showcase our skills in a way that is legible to faculty - and make us feel less like imposters.

(7) most of us who have tried to "self-promote" or publish have been made to feel like it is against the ethos of a field where we are supposed to focus on making our faculty “look good” even though we spend years in graduate school training to do write/research/generally hustle.

(8) finally - lets not pretend that #impostersyndrome equally impacts everyone in our field. Developers from minoritized backgrounds are constantly put in situations where we have to prove our value to our "clients," our center leadership, our institutions and even our colleagues