Situating imposter syndrome in the experience of becoming and being an entrepreneurship educator

Purpose: The proliferation of entrepreneurship education in higher education has heightened the demand for individuals to teach this subject across diverse academic disciplines. Moreover, while many entrepreneurship educators follow a serendipitous entry into the field, a discourse about how such diverse cohorts of entrepreneurship educators experience their professional becoming and being remains limited. As an extension of a broader investigation into the competence development of entrepreneurship educators, this study explores their transition into their role. Design/methodology/approach: This study conceptualises career behaviour as a socially constructed phenomenon. In total, 19 graphic-mediated interviews were conducted with entrepreneurship educators from 11 public universities across England, exploring their lived experiences in higher education. Findings: Our work underscores imposterism as a prevalent and formative aspect of becoming an entrepreneurship educator in higher education. We pinpoint specific incidents that serve as triggers for imposterism and elucidate professional development opportunities considered most effective for assisting entrepreneurship educators in coping with imposterism. Research limitations/implications: This study was limited to a small sample of entrepreneurship educators in England. An avenue for future research would be to explore imposterism in the experience of a larger sample of entrepreneurship educators. Furthermore, our sample was solely situated in higher education in England, and we recognise that our findings may not be generalisable to other contexts. Hence, future research may extend internationally to facilitate a broader comparative analysis. Thirdly, the study relied on self-reported data, which may be subject to inherent biases. Other studies exploring imposterism have applied quantitative methods using instruments such as the Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale (Clance, 1985) or the Leary Impostorism Scale (Leary et al., 2000). Future investigations may enrich our understanding of the phenomenon by complementing the qualitative insights from the present study with such quantitative methods and scales. Practical implications: One important implication for those staffing entrepreneurial education programs is to consider the specific backgrounds of the educators and attempt to tailor an induction and ongoing professional development based on potential triggers of imposterism. For instance, professional entrepreneurship educators entering from outside academia should be provided with opportunities to enhance their subject knowledge and socio-cultural knowledge about higher education. Additionally, academic entrepreneurship educators should be provided with support for their research activities, a key trigger for imposterism. Secondly, this research confirms extant work on the importance of non-formal and situated learning as coping mechanisms pertinent to entrepreneurial education (Hutchins and Rainbolt, 2017; Wilkinson, 2019). A key recommendation for academic developers is to provide entrepreneurship educators access to role-specific informal and formal learning communities to enhance their pedagogical content and subject knowledge and build a peer network for mutual support. This is particularly relevant to institutional contexts that employ few entrepreneurship educators or provide limited resources for continuous professional development. Originality/value: The novelty of the current study is derived from the extension of the literature on imposterism into the nuanced context of the lived experiences of entrepreneurship educators in higher education. We position our research as important for scholars intrigued by the profiles and perspectives of entrepreneurship educators and for academic developers tasked with the professional advancement of a diverse cohort of entrepreneurship educators.