Developing intellectual humility in adolescence: Why it matters and how schools can help

Humans are not omniscient. For individuals, appropriately reckoning with intellectual limitations requires intellectual humility or acknowledging the boundaries of their knowledge. Adolescence is a time of immense developmental potential, but is intellectual humility valuable for adolescents to develop, can they develop it, and how might it be developed? Rooted in recent research, in this article, we describe why intellectual humility benefits adolescents in intellectual, social, and civic domains. We also explain why adolescents have the capacity to develop intellectual humility due to developmental changes in both cognitive sophistication and self-understanding. Finally, drawing on an emerging evidence base, we describe how experiences in school shape the development of intellectual humility and we identify priorities for future work in this area.