Together we are Smarter: Using integrity and connection to unlearn a formative mistruth about teaching

Like many academics of my generation, I was never formally trained to teach. When I first stepped into the classroom as an instructor, I relied largely on memories from my own learning journey—on the teachers who had shaped my education, borrowing what they did well and avoiding, as best I could, what they did poorly. Over time, I learned to trust my own experience, experimenting and reflecting as I became increasingly aware of my strengths and limitations as an educator.

It wasn’t until years later that I came to recognize that I had internalised a fundamental mistruth about teaching—one that had quietly and persistently shaped my practice. It was the belief that the instructor must control the learning journey. I had an implicit sense of myself as a content expert, and I had grown accustomed to standing at the front of the room, dispensing information and answering questions. Without realising it, this false assumption influenced everything: the structure of my lessons, the physical layout of the learning spaces, even the tone of my voice.

Gradually, the artifice of this belief became impossible to ignore as a deeper truth emerged: learning happens in community. When I spoke from the podium, I was not hearing what the students had to offer. When I focused solely on content, I overlooked the fact that they were anything but empty vessels. When I assigned grades, I failed to value the ways that all of us—myself included—had been changed through the shared experience of learning together. The illusion of control and the mystique of expertise obscured something far more powerful: the experience of belonging to a community of learners, in which I had a role, but not sole authority. Together, we were—and are—smarter.

Of course, these are not new ideas. Paulo Freire articulates them powerfully in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed(1970), where he critiques what he calls the “banking model” of education—an approach that positions students as passive recipients of knowledge deposited by an expert teacher. Freire instead advocates for dialogical, problem-posing education grounded in praxis, reflection, and collective action. Yet even these radical commitments can be neutralized in practice. In the traditional academic classroom, it is possible to teach—even celebrate—Freirean ideas while leaving intact the very hierarchies, power relations, and instructional routines that Freire sought to dismantle. In this way, revolutionary pedagogy risks becoming another form of content, rather than a transformative way of being together in learning.

It wasn’t until I found myself out of my comfort zone that I first experienced the transformative power of learning alongside my students. Like many a sessional instructor, I was teaching a course well outside my core area of expertise. I prepared carefully—selecting a strong textbook, inviting guest speakers, and doing my best to stay ahead of the class. A few weeks in, the inevitable occurred: a student asked a question to which I simply did not know the answer. Rather than deflecting or improvising, I admitted my uncertainty and promised to return with a response at the next session.

At the next class, I was ready to address the question—but I was surprised to discover that several students had researched it as well. We shared our findings, and almost immediately the dynamic of the class shifted. Suddenly I was no longer positioned as the authoritative expert but as a fellow learner. We were investigating together. From that point on, the course became one of shared inquiries and collective exploration.

Years later, a former student told me that this class was the first in which a professor had openly admitted not knowing the answer to a question. Although I was caught off guard in that moment, such honesty might not have surfaced had I been comfortably teaching my regular slate of courses. Yet precisely because it was unexpected and from a place of authenticity, it served to invite students more fully into the subject. They felt more connected—to one another, to the material, and to their own learning—and, as a result, more invested in the process itself.

I learned something profound in that classroom as well. I learned, through experience, that teaching carries an ethical dimension: integrity and fidelity toward those with whom we are learning. Effective learning is not about preserving the status quo or maintaining a façade of expertise. Rather, as Freire argued all along, it is about honesty, humility, and the willingness to invite others into the shared work of inquiry—to explore, to understand, and to marvel at what becomes possible together.