Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Instruction & Curriculum Leadership

Committee Chair

Craig Shepherd

Committee Member

Andrew Tawfik

Committee Member

Yeonji Jung

Committee Member

Rachel Mannahan

Abstract

Building off seminal works on community including McMillan and Chavis, Lave and Wenger, Graves, and Wenger et al, the Institutional, Program, and Professional (IPP) community framework for online allows students, faculty, administrators, and alumni the opportunity to consider how to support community beyond online courses into programs, the institution, and the early career (profession). At the same time, as this way of thinking about community in online learning is emerging, academia is increasingly acknowledging the presence of imposterism, also known as imposter feelings, Imposter Phenomenon, or Imposter Syndrome for students, scholars, and early professionals. Researchers are increasingly considering imposter feelings as a consequence of the gendered environment of academia where persons who do not fit the profile of the male academic are labeled as outsiders. Literature states that academic community supports student satisfaction and growth from student to scholar to professional. However, imposter feelings may be a consequence of lack of a sense of belonging and community in academia at every level of the framework. This predictive correlational study used an adapted Classroom Community Scale and Leary’s Imposterim Scale to see if sense of program community predicts imposterism. The predictor variables used in this study were gender, years of expertise in the subject, sense of community scores, university choice, and time in program (measured in semesters). The dependent or criterion variable was imposterism. The data collected was analyzed using standard multiple regression to determine the predictive power of the independent variables. The study found that imposter scores are positively associated with sense of program community. The implications of practice from this study include awareness that imposterism is a phenomenon that students are experiencing in their programs. Fully online graduate programs that are traditionally male-dominated are encouraged to continue investigating imposterism among their students to determine what variables affect students’ imposterism.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest.

Notes

Open Access

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