Mi:Lab Principle 2: Intellectual Humility is the Force for Change.
Change only happens when we challenge our biases, question norms & are open to new ideas.
As Mi:Lab engaged with key stakeholders who drive and enable change in Higher Education Institutions, intellectual humility emerged as a core characteristic for enabling change. The concept of intellectual humility has been associated with several essential innovation and change characteristics, including knowledge acquisition, reflective thinking, engagement, curiosity, open mindedness, collaborative learning and intrinsic motivation to learn (Krumrei Mancuso et al., 2020).
Intellectual humility is distinctly tied together with a love of learning, curiosity, and a desire to seek the truth (Briggs, 2015). When we embrace intellectual humility, we embrace an opportunity to learn. By questioning our assumptions, our line of thinking and then considering the perspectives of others we find it much easier to embrace virtues, such as intellectual humility.
In Higher Education, these characteristics are particularly important in, which has been described as inflexible, resistant to change and characterised by conservatism in practice, goals and culture (Lane, 2007). With the possible frailty of their assumptions, we can effectively begin to question the non-negotiable orthodoxies that HE is wedded to (Palmer, 2009).
“Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.”
-Thomas Nagel
Familiarisation with intellectual humility is not a new phenomenon. An early parable of the Six Blind Men & An Elephant depicts the stubborn nature of acceptance many of us experience when projecting our opinions, assumptions and biases. The parable follows the tale of six blind men who came into contact with an elephant along their journey. Each man touched a different part of the elephant and based on their own point of view, jumped to conclusions on how it looked. Each man then refused to listen to opinions of all other men.
The first approached the elephant and touched its sturdy side. He compared it to a wall. The second felt the tusk, and compared it to a spear. The third approached the elephant grabbing the trunk. They believed it felt very much like a snake. The fourth reached out and felt about the knee. He believed it was like a tree. The fifth man touched the ear of the elephant and assumed it a fan. Finally, the sixth man held onto the elephant’s swinging tail and swore it was a rope.
The men disputed for quite some time, each with their own opinions that only grew stronger and stronger. Although each man was partly in the right, all were in the wrong. As the moral of the parable depicted, we are often ignorant to what others mean as we convince ourselves that we can’t be wrong.
