What exactly is intellectual humility?
For anyone looking to step back from a contentious argument or a challenging discussion, intellectual humility offers a path. It’s the ability to admit that you are wrong, that you might not have all the answers, that you are fallible. As psychologist Tenelle Porter and others explain, it doesn’t mean that you avoid conflict; instead, you pursue a disposition of inquiry or curiosity that can lead to a “more interesting and productive” conversation, including one in which you can learn from others who don’t hold the same worldview.
We know that educators are struggling when it comes to having potentially charged discussions in the classroom, school, district, or with the broader education community. They can feel inherently binary—each person firmly entrenched in their respective corner.
Discussing the 2024 presidential election offers a clear example:
In a recent EdWeek Research Center nationally representative survey, nearly 60 percent of teachers said they do not plan to address the election in their classrooms, with just over half saying it was “entirely unrelated” to the subject they teach. But the survey also reflects tension: Of the educators who won’t be talking about the election, 1in 5 educators cited the concern that students wouldn’t be able to discuss it in a “respectful manner.” Educators also registered their fear of complaints from a parent or student, warnings by an administrator or supervisor to avoid the topic, and/or that such a discussion was against school or district policy or rules.
Educators are shunning a range of topics, not just the national election. In some instances, they said in open-ended survey questions, they avoid conversations with colleagues if they are unsure of how they might land.
Intellectual humility could mean the difference between recoiling at the thought of an argument instead of embracing a healthy discussion. It could be the difference between growing intellectually and closing yourself off. Ultimately, practicing intellectual humility could mean that students learn how to engage in hard conversations by modeling the adults who are doing it well.
This project is part of a special report called Big Ideas in which EdWeek reporters, the EdWeek Research Center, and contributing researchers ask hard questions about K-12 education’s biggest challenges and offer insights based on their extensive coverage and expertise.
In responses to questions that assess intellectual humility, educators do say that they respect others, even if they disagree with them “in important ways” about the field and that they are willing to hear out those with whom they disagree. They also say that they are open to “revising [their] important beliefs” about the field when presented with new information. This is good news.
But there is a sticking point.
Educators were also more likely to say that they, personally, are open to discussing important topics with people they disagree with than they were to believe that other people in their schools or districts were. For instance, 7 in 10 said they are personally very or extremely willing to have those conversations, but less than half thought teachers, administrators, parents, or students in their districts or schools are. And this raises the specter of personal bias: You might be more likely to see yourself in a favorable light in a disagreement than you are to see others.
Those findings highlight the complex perspectives that can contribute to or reduce polarization. What we do know from intellectual-humility research is that a willingness to admit you’re wrong can open the door to learning faster and better relationships.
To dig a bit deeper, the EdWeek Research Center adapted psychology researchers Elizabeth J. Krumrei-Mancuso and Steve V. Rouse’s Comprehensive Intellectual Humility Scale to gauge whether educators have characteristics that can contribute to positive interactions with others. The scale assesses self-reported data on four factors: independence of intellect and ego, openness to revising one’s viewpoint, respect for others’ viewpoints, and lack of intellectual overconfidence.
The research center asked educators a set of survey questions examining those aspects of intellectual humility and developed an index ranging from an overall score of 22 to 110. Possible scores for the full index range from 22 to 110 because there are 22 questions and each question is worth between 1 and 5 points. So, if you were to get 1 point for every question, you would get a score of 22. If you were to get 5 points for every question, you would get a score of 110.
On average, educators received an overall intellectual humility score of 78 out of 110.
Scores for teachers (77), school leaders (80), and district leaders (80) did not differ considerably. This in itself is an interesting finding. The research center did not compare how educators’ intellectual humility stacks up against other professions, which points to an area for further research.
Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
