The Relevance of Intellectual Humility for Educators: A Closer Look

“You know just enough to start your teaching career, but you’ll learn more as you go.”

Teaching other humans is complex, humbling work. The best teacher education programs prepare you with an array of resources, developmental theories, academic content knowledge, and pedagogical tools. However, just like any other profession, you continue to perfect your craft as you go.

You tend to idealize yourself as a joyful “lifelong learner,” yet deep, meaningful, down-in-the-dirt learning can make you feel vulnerable and exposed.

Are you comfortable sharing your learning steps and missteps with your colleagues—the inquiry lesson that went rogue or the difficult conversation with the parent that backfired?

Research tells us that we can all benefit from intellectual humility, the ability to recognize the limitations of our knowledge and beliefs. Studies link intellectual humility with open-minded thinking, curiosity, and intellectual engagement.

In fact, students who are intellectually humble are more likely to learn from a disagreement, bounce back after receiving negative feedback, persist in learning, and even perform better academically than their less humble peers.

If intellectual humility enhances our capacity for learning, how can you get more comfortable with the “messy middle” of your own learning as educators, your day-to-day anxieties about your teaching performance, and your general discomfort with uncertainty as humans in this world?

Here are some tips:

1.??? Get comfortable with a level of uncertainty: “I really don’t know (yet)”

According to a researcher, the “size” of your humility does matter. It can be helpful to draw on the “Goldilocks principle” in each situation—assuring that your humility isn’t too big (i.e., revealing a lack of self-confidence) or too small (i.e., demonstrating arrogance).

In other words, can you hold an honest and accurate view of yourself and your own limitations (an intrapersonal skill) while respectfully engaging with others (an interpersonal skill)?

As a teacher educator, you may often ask your students to practice using think-aloud as instructional tools. During a think-aloud, you verbalize all your thoughts as you engage in a learning task like solving a math problem, reading a poem, or drafting an essay. Some teacher candidates may be hesitant to try this themselves. What if your students think you don’t know what you’re doing? What if they don’t trust you? Aren’t you supposed to be the authorities in the classroom?

Those are valid questions, to be sure. But, when you intentionally share your own vulnerabilities around learning—the stops and starts, the mistakes, the moments of confusion—you can demystify the struggle for others.

This is a powerful form of risk-taking—exposing your learning anxieties (“I don’t know what comes next…”)—as it opens you up to more authentic learning. When you try something new, you can feel foolish and inept, and that’s OK.

But how much humility is too much? And when might it become “too much of a good thing”? As new teachers, your students worried about giving up their power in the classroom. They feared not looking like the “expert.”

It would be na?ve to sidestep the reality of power dynamics here, which is why researchers have also studied the dangers of over identifying with your limitations while ignoring your intellectual strengths.

In fact, research tells us that too much intellectual humility (i.e., intellectual “servility”) can backfire, particularly among those of you who are from traditionally marginalized and oppressed groups who may feel force-fed extra doses of humility in your day-to-day lives. Intellectual servility (e.g., doubting your abilities) can lead to unhealthy perfectionism as well as decreases in civic engagement, conscientiousness, and openness.

The key here is finding a sense of balance that works for you. And there are several potential pathways to “right-sized” intellectual humility that you can practice as teachers.

2.??? Get curious: “I want to learn more”

When it comes to curiosity and your own love of learning, do you feel passionate about what you teach? If not, what sparks your interest right now?

According to a researcher, curiosity has multiple dimensions. For example, “need to know” curiosity (technically called “deprivation sensitivity”) compels you to seek answers when there is a gap in your knowledge, like when you’re prepping for a science lesson and the robot you built goes belly-up, literally. What do you need to know to fix it?

There’s also “accepting the anxiety” curiosity (also known as “stress tolerance”). It’s that ability to tolerate the uncomfortable feelings that come with a new experience, so they don’t hold you back, like learning how to drive a car or dance the tango for the first time.

With these examples in mind, it may not surprise you to know that researchers link curiosity (i.e., the “need for cognition” or “cognitive closure”) with intellectual humility. If you are aware of limitations to your knowledge or understanding, you may be more likely to seek out new information or experiences.

One of the best ways to model a curious stance in your classrooms is by encouraging open-ended questions rather than feeding your students with all of the answers. Why do we dream? What makes something beautiful? Is happiness a right or a privilege?

3.??? Be playful and creative: “It’s fun experimenting and trying new things”

?“Failure gets you closer to the answer,” while creativity and exploration are fueled when we try things “with no expectation.”

When you’re freed to experiment as you learn, you can “embrace new ways of doing things instead of seeing them as wrong or incorrect.”

We teachers are fundamentally creators of learning experiences. However, you may struggle to allow yourself the freedom and vulnerability to let go and play—particularly when you experience ongoing time pressure at work.

And yet, when we experience creative “flow,” we may find ourselves lost knitting, drawing, dancing—or even in a rich exchange of ideas—and we can lose self-consciousness through a joyful immersion in the task at hand.

The links between creativity and humility are less clear in the research, yet studies indicate that open-mindedness and curiosity, correlates of intellectual humility, feed creativity.

Further, when a leader expresses humility (e.g., openness to learning, advice, and others’ ideas), team members report creativity and greater self-efficacy (i.e., “I can do this!).

4.??? Nevertheless, persist: “Let’s keep trying”

Are you driven to solve puzzles or scale mountains? Maybe you strive to perfect your baking skills. Each of these tasks requires your dedication, patience, and a belief in your ability to keep going.

When it comes to the classroom, your most rewarding learning experiences emerged out of deeply humbling academic challenges where kindhearted (yet mildly intimating) educators motivated you to practice, practice, practice.

Classic learning theories suggest that you are regularly reconstructing your “schemas” (or ways of thinking) to accommodate new ideas, and yet our assessment systems don’t necessarily reflect this ongoing, formative nature of learning.

How are you providing open-ended opportunities for personal and academic growth in your lessons? How are you structuring assessment so that your students can openly acknowledge their learning struggles, track their own progress, and note the ways in which their thinking changes and grows?

A research found that teachers in intellectually humble classrooms value effort and persistence in process-based, strategy-focused feedback. They also model humility with a growth mindset, normalizing mistakes while promoting student participation.

5.??? Revel in awe: “This is amazing!”

Your classrooms come alive when you create spaces for meaningful exploration, whether your students are captivated by scientific discoveries (“big ideas”), fascinated by architecture or art (“visual design”), or moved by the “moral beauty” of an act of kindness they read about in literature.

Those are three examples of the eight wonders of awe that researcher Dacher Keltner describes in his new book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world,” he says, and studies find that awe promotes humility.

In fact, experiences of awe help us to see ourselves as part of a larger whole. Sensing our smallness is an expression of humility that compels us to know more.

That sense of wonder—joined with curiosity, playfulness, and persistence—can fuel true intellectual humility. As you continue to grow as an educator-human, you’re struck by the way these fundamental keys to learning and development all seem to support each other. They can help you to pause, reflect, and check yourselves, rather than accepting easy answers: Is this what you really believe? Is this the right next step? It’s questions like those that open spaces for meaningful learning.

The Last Bit:

"The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know."

Being open to learning and admitting that you don't have all the answers is crucial for educators. It's about being okay with not knowing everything and understanding that learning is a lifelong process.

So, keep exploring, keep asking questions, and keep embracing the journey of learning together with your students. It's through this humble approach that true growth and meaningful learning can happen for everyone involved.