Shame and Adult Learners

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the ways that educators can nurture transformative learning for adult students by engaging emotions, particularly shame. I discuss how shame mitigates adult student experiences, successes, and failures in higher education, and how a relational pedagogy of vulnerability can support adult learners. This approach not only helps adult learners but reifies liberatory education for students and teachers alike, challenging hegemonic norms in higher education that often limit and exclude adult learners.

To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin ( Hooks, 1994 , p. 13).

Education scholar, practitioner, and advocate Jude Walker (2017) explained that “[a]dult learners, especially nontraditional students or those in adult basic education, are often in educational shaming recovery” (p. 368). I take this to mean that the shame they carry as adult students filters their educational experiences, and that their recovery is necessary for them to learn, grow, and succeed. As educators of adult learners, we must facilitate that recovery and view it as integral to our students’ participation in their education. This facilitation can even be viewed as a form of healing. One way to do this is through attending to emotions, in particular shame. In this paper, I explore some ways in which educators can address shame pedagogically to help adult learners feel a sense of belonging and succeed.

A note first on the term “adult learner.” I am aware that there is no universal definition of the adult learner, and that the diversity of positionalities, experiences and even age ranges such learners carry cannot fully be acknowledged in the category. I am also aware that adult learners occupy spaces in vocational, arts, professional, college and pre-college settings, among others. While my focus in this paper is on adult learners within an adult degree-completion program at a State University, I argue that attending to shame for adult learners with the methods and suggestions in this paper can foster transformative learning as well as success in a variety of formal learning settings. I liken this focus on shame to the same movement of educators who push to be “trauma-aware…acknowledge[ing] that our students are shaped by their life stories, in ways that determine what, how, and even whether they learn in our classrooms” (Olson, 2022, p. ix, emphasis original). Thus, this article urges adult educators to frame their teaching in ways to be shame-aware.

One way to foster shame-awareness is through taking a relational and critical pedagogical approach. I use Adams’ (2018) definition of relational pedagogy “as the intentional practice of caring teachers interacting with students to build and sustain positive relationships that cognitively and emotionally support their students throughout their journeys together” (p. ix). And I use Ross’s (2018) “core idea of critical pedagogy” as having the goal of “submit[ting] received understandings to critical analysis with the aim of increasing human knowledge and freedom” (2018, p. 372). I employ what Brantmeier (2013) defined as a pedagogy of vulnerability, which “is an approach to education that invites vulnerability and deepened learning through a process of self and mutual disclosure on the part of co-learners in the classroom” (p. 3). Through relationship building (Hickey et al., 2021), shared vulnerability, co-learning, and an attention to emotions, particularly shame, educators in higher ed and beyond can offer adult learners the opportunity to reframe their perceptions of education, their relationships to formal education, and how they understand themselves as learners.

This approach also works to disrupt the hegemonic hold over access and belonging in higher ed especially for adult students. I define hegemony as that framework “where people are found ‘to embrace as commonsense wisdom certain beliefs and political conditions that work against their interests and serve those of the powerful” (Duenkel et al., 2014 quoting Brookfield, 2014, p. 267). While the demographics of higher ed have shifted in the past few decades (Grawe, 2019; Guidry, 2018; Hanson, 2022; Klein-Collins et al., 2021) and some claim that the categories of nontraditional and traditional have lost their meaning, the institutional hold and cultural imagining of traditional-aged students dominating the systems of higher education remain (Modenos, 2020). The reality is that many adult learners continue to internalize shame for not fulfilling a social norm of a college degree within the “correct” timeframe. And the shame that adult students can and do feel in relation to that system and their place within it tends to prevent them from attempting college once again. It also can and often does influence their experiences with fear when they do decide to return, potentially harming their success (Spagnola & Yagos, 2020). While there are many areas where we can challenge hegemony and attend to shame in a diverse array of programming for adults, in this paper, I focus specifically on the intersections of vulnerability in the classroom, and curricula with and for adult learners. The data in this paper come from a decade of teaching and advising adult learners in an online adult degree-completion program. The patterns of behavior I have observed in the past decade form the basis for this paper and its argument.

Emotions

Our adult students are “not…object[s] separate from the ‘educator’ in teaching-learning situations. The positionality of the educator (whether as expert, coach, liberator, observer, arbiter, commentator, guide, decoder) affects how learners perceive, feel, behave and remember” (Fennwick & Tennant, 2004, p. 55). This relationship between educator and learner has been theorized for thousands of years yet this recognition of power is still a revolutionary concept in higher education. Freire’s (1970) problem-posing education (1970) is one such theory that has continued to influence liberatory and critical pedagogies and that introduced the idea of a more dialogic relationship between teacher and student as co-learners. Attending to this power differential is an important part of teaching and learning in education and especially in the adult education world (Alsobaie, 2015, p. 155). But even Freire himself grappled with the “ambiguity” of emotions in “education for critical consciousness” (Sherman, 1980, p. 35) and while he embraced emotions in the process of learning, he also saw some emotions as “irrational upsurgings” (Sherman, 1980, p. 35).

Emotions are often deemed taboo in traditional academic worlds. “The restrictive, repressive classroom ritual insists that emotional responses have no place. Whenever emotional responses erupt, many of us believe our academic purpose has been diminished” (Hooks, 1994 interviewing Scappa, 1994, p. 155). Traditional academic pursuits still prioritize so-called unemotional and “logical” methods of engagement, and demonize emotions in the academy, particularly in the classroom. Such perceptions tend to privilege particular ways of being, as patriarchal, classist, racist, ableist, and sexist perceptions still hold strong in academia and help to reproduce and maintain boundaries of belonging and behavior especially as they connect to emotions. These “‘emotional rules’ that govern how, when, and who is allowed to express particular emotions” should be “identif[ied] and challenge[d]…when they no longer serve our teaching, our students, and ourselves” (Quinlan, 2016, p. 105).

Yet even with the inclusion of emotional intelligence as part of the academic development of students in fields from accounting to sustainability, emotions in the classroom are still considered taboo. When we as educators express, discuss, embrace, or explore emotions, we are often quickly dismissed as illogical, feminine (Lutz, 1986), problematic, and less “rigorous”—and I use quotes here as rigor has rightfully been critiqued as it acts more as a code for belonging and gate keeping than true academic growth (Jack & Sathy, 2021). Yet “emotions matter in college teaching and learning as an aspect of enriching social and relational experiences that support student development” (Quinlan, 2016, p. 101). Walker (2017) asserts that “we need to stop shying away from emotions in adult learning” (p. 357) and instead embrace liberatory pedagogies, including relational pedagogical theories and practices that directly engage emotions in the learning process (Nesbit et al., 2004, p. 74). If we truly want an inclusive academy for all (Hickey et al., 2021), we as educators must reframe our ideas about emotions in the classroom (ours and our students’) (Dirkx, 2008). And if we truly follow a relational pedagogy, then I wholeheartedly agree with Quinlan’s “assumption that emotion matters in higher education because education is relational, and emotions are central to relationships” (2016, p. 102).

In her chapter on Moving Beyond Shame, Hooks (2003) fully examined how shame plays a role “as a barrier to learning” (p. 93) particularly for students of color. Many of the same issues often intersect for other marginalized students (which includes adult learners) with their experiences in and relationship to higher education. Shame is, according to Walker (2017), “that which lies in the unconscious but which drives our everyday actions and interactions” (p. 357), and if left unexamined will continue to be a barrier to learning and affect student experiences and successes (and failures). Further, shame may act as gatekeeper for the powerful to maintain boundaries of belonging. Hooks (2013) reminds us that “we have to remember constantly that shaming is one of the deepest tools of Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist patriarchy because shame produces trauma and trauma often produces paralysis” (2013, 01:13). When we attend to shame we may also disrupt this system that maintains the gates of academia and barriers to learning. In this way, being more than just shame-aware but also directly attending to shame with adult learners becomes one of many ways educators can work to be counter hegemonic (Mayo, 1999, p. 136).

The emotional experiences of adult learners and their relationship to formal education are well known to those of us who work in adult higher ed. They are the unspoken signs (such as disappearing from the course without communication), and sometimes overtly spoken confessions (such as “I don’t belong here”) from our students. Those signs and confessions reveal student perceptions about their trajectories, their fears, their self-worth, how they feel about their educational abilities, and that ever present impostor whispering in their ears. Those signs reflect and reproduce the gatekeeping boundaries in academia that maintain privileged spaces for privileged bodies and privileged trajectories. And those signs often reveal trauma as it relates to shame and education. In her piece on The Power of Empathy (2022), Larsen (2022) explains that observing these same types of behaviors in her students, with empathy, taught her “that what might otherwise be characterized as poor academic behavior may be better understood through the lens of trauma or other interfering factors in students’ lives” (p. 370). Trauma and shame “interfere” and mitigate these experiences and should be named. And while these experiences are by no means exclusive to adult learners, as traditional-aged students can and do face these same fears and insecurities, particularly those traditional-aged students who come from historically marginalized communities, and include First Generation, low-income, and disabled students. But for adult students (who may also be First Generation, low-income, and disabled), these feelings of not belonging tend to be heightened. And these feelings of not belonging can trigger shame. Shame in this essay is viewed thus “not…as an object, but…a force that animates and materializes social process in the classroom, and an optic that makes palpable the contours of power—raced, classed, gendered—in institutionalized learning” (Werry & O’Gorman, 2007, p.214). In other words, shame is not just an emotion that is seen “as internal to individuals…private and, often, in need of management or regulation” (Quinlan, 2016, p. 102). It is a social phenomenon and can be used as a tool in which educators can either reinforce hegemonic ideas of belonging in academia with our students, or, a tool in which we challenge those ideas by engaging shame with adult learners critically to be part of their liberatory educations.

Shame

Shame is defined in a myriad of ways by different disciplines and perspectives, but a common theme is discernible: shame is about the self as it relates to a deviation from larger social ideas and norms. In Brown’s (2006) research with women and shame in the U.S., her “participants contrasted shame with guilt, which they defined or described as a feeling that results from behaving in a flawed or bad way rather than a flawed or bad self” (p. 45, emphasis original). Here guilt is an action while shame is related to our innate selves. In psychology, a distinction is often made between shame and guilt as diametrical experiences. These diametrical experiences can “be…thought of [as] close, sibling emotions that differ by degree” (Leach, 2017, p. 17) and the degree of difference can be measured in terms of the relation of the emotion to self and other. Guilt is often viewed as an emotion that emerges when one goes against an internal value, and shame is more related to an assumed external social value and society viewing us and our behavior in a negative light (NICABM site, nicabm.com/guilt-vs-shame). Further “shame is a painful emotion that responds to a sense of failure to attain some ideal state” (Heshmat, 2015, para. 1) and that ideal state is not defined and constructed solely within the self. It is always in relation to the larger social world we dwell in, thus, shame is “a social phenomenon” (Leeming, 2004).

As an anthropologist, my lens regarding shame includes cross-cultural perceptions of shame and culture with a focus on the social experience and definition of shame through cultural meaning making. While animals can be and are social (for example, packs, herds, colonies, pods), the idea of social morality determining animal behaviors remains controversial. What we do know is that shame is part of the human experience as it is a socially constructed moral compass in which the group is attuned. Shame mitigates our behaviors and is part of how we engage with our group and make sense of our place in the world. And anthropology has expanded our ideas about shame through cross-cultural explorations to reveal that, while it may be found in just about all human societies, the particulars of how it manifests and the meaning we connect to shame by the group show us the diverse ways we can be human.

Historically, cultural anthropology has studied and defined shame for close to a century. Honor and shame cultures were identified in comparison to guilt cultures (Benedict, 1934; 1946) and entire geographic areas were defined in this way, such as the work in the Mediterranean with cultures defined by honor and shame (Peristiany, 1966). Essentializing ideas about culture, behavior, and ideologies held strong in the discipline for decades, and those Mediterranean cultures, for example, were not afforded diversity or nuance when their cultures were defined in this theoretical framework. Eventually anthropologists began to challenge their own theories and recognize that culture is not static or a separate bounded entity to study and codify. Instead “anthropology has shifted its attention from culture to studying what it is to be human in different places and relationships, and how we engage with the world around us” (Merz, 2020, p. 136). In other words, anthropologists recognized that honor and shame became such rigid categories to define cultures that human agency in their research was ignored. Anthropologists now give us insight into how culture works, how social worlds exist, and how individuals participate in those worlds—“as agents of culture” (Merz, 2020, p. 135). Humans reproduce meanings and ideologies, challenge them, and transform them. Cultures are not static categories; they are dynamic and everchanging. And shame is not an easily defined category that remains stagnant either. In other words, shame is but one social category in which humans filter, experience, and define their place in the social order of things.

As for the social order of things regarding higher ed, while there are different ways we may navigate this world there is a dominant, hegemonic notion of college—who belongs, what is expected, and who keeps the gates. For adult students that notion is often very strong as many were once insiders but lost their access, and they now carry the burden of being outsiders. For so many adult students who have various obligations, (family, community, and work obligations), not being college graduates is often an added burden of shame as “[t]his subject is taboo among friends, coworkers, and family members. For many, the embarrassment of not finishing college is often a closely held secret that weighs on them as they discuss, engage, and compete to meet the challenges of the workforce in the 21^st century” (Bergman, 2019, preface xiii). Many adult learners hide their lack of college degree from their colleagues and friends, and studies show that shame, when deemed part of a secret that cannot be shared, carries even more weight on the souls of students (Johnson, 2012). Add the persistent common perception that college students are assumed to be (or “should” be) between 18 and 22, (again, despite demographic shifts in higher ed in which the adult student population has grown), and adult learners feel even more marginalized.

That marginalization is intricately tied to shame and trauma for adult learners and filters their experiences when they return to school. In his work on trauma and the adult learner, Bruce Perry (2006) explains that:

It is well known that adult learners may have experienced maltreatment, shame, and humiliation in childhood, leading to traumatic stress. It is clear, however, that not only do many adult learners have a history of significant trauma, but they are also sensitized to the ordinary demands of schooling. Deadlines, exams, and having to speak in class, for example, will result in moderate activation of the stress response. We know that moderate chronic activation of the stress response systems can also have an impact on key brain areas involved in learning and memory. The end result is that many adult learners are doubly stressed as they return to the classroom setting (p. 22).

This “doubly stressed” experience can be triggered at any moment when adult learners return to school, with even the slightest hiccup or challenge. Perry goes on to explain how the biological brain functions under trauma—that when “an individual feels threatened, [they] move along the arousal continuum” and “[t]he adult learner with a history of trauma or with a background of educational failure or humiliation is sensitized and moves along the arousal continuum faster in the face of significantly less challenge or perceived threat” (2006, p. 23). A challenge or perceived threat may act as stimulus that triggers a quicker and longer-term stress response by many adult learners, and it is something that is rarely attended to by adult educators. Instead, it is often ignored, sidestepped, or sometimes indirectly attended to through other systems put in place to help support the learner (such as high touch advising, workshops and other resources to help circumvent the issue of trauma and shame directly). But trauma does not go away that easily, and the relationship between trauma and shame in the adult learner is one that must be addressed. Further, “[f]or many adult learners, the classroom triggers memories of failure and shame that might have once driven them from school” (Cozolino & Sprokay, 2006, p. 14). So when the classroom itself is a place of shame for adult learners, whether that classroom is in person or online, educators should work to transform these spaces for our students and be more direct in our attention to shame.

When adult students return to college (or begin later than traditional-aged students), this burden of not belonging can be exhausting. It may feed the shame they might already feel due to not following traditional paths, or due to prior failures, and if left unexamined can be debilitating. Educators of adult learners must recognize the power we have to “provide an appropriate environment for adult learning” (Imel, 1991, p. 2) and to construct the best possible “climate” (Knowles, 1980) of the learning space so that student and teacher not only name the elephant in the room of shame, power, and belonging in higher ed, but work together to reduce its enormity. Student-centered, soul-supporting, emotionally present, shame-aware, and shame-reframing pedagogy are what help us as faculty to attend to issues related to shame that manifest in our classrooms. We must recognize these issues, understand their roots, disrupt them, and attend to them. In what follows, I explore some strategies we can (and might already) employ as adult educators and situate them in the larger process of directly addressing shame for our adult learners. One strategy is through a pedagogy of vulnerability.

Vulnerability in the Classroom

One very powerful way to connect to our students and help ease the burden of their feelings of shame is to share our own stories. Work done with trauma survivors reveals the importance of sharing stories to make a connection, feel solidarity, and in turn release shame and fear particularly in peer support groups. “Shame thrives in secrecy” (Smith, 2019, para. 13) and when we share our stories, or hear others share their stories that are like ours, we connect—we are no longer isolated. When we name shame (directly or indirectly), we can begin to lessen its stranglehold on our thoughts.

We have all been there with our adult students who feel less than, not good enough, embarrassed that they do not belong. They forge a protective shield that may get heavier over time, attempting to hide the imagined impostor from others, especially from us faculty who are in positions of authority over their presence and performance. When we focus solely on content in our teaching and ignore the students and their diverse needs, traumas, and emotions, we do not, in fact, teach. Dirkx et al. (2018) argue that the “expressive dimensions” of teaching must be present alongside any critical pedagogy in order to nurture learning. They state we “need to augment the analytical process of critical reflection in transformative learning with a reliance on story, narrative, and the work of our emotions and imagination” (p. 4). Not just in course content, but in teacher/student interactions and dialogues as well (Dirkx, 2008). Stories are tools that can be more readily accessed by students who might already be stressed. Stories, not hard data, can function better to help transform student experiences and perceptions. Stories, not hard data, can help to reframe trauma and shame. Brown’s (2014) insight that “maybe stories are just data with a soul” (Brown, 2014) resonates here.

“[R]esearch suggests that stories are 22 times more memorable than straight facts alone” (Bergman & Olson, 2019, p. 12) and if students are already in a heightened sense of stress due to trauma from prior educational experiences, data and facts might not be the best approach to engage them. Stories, instead, can engage the brain and nervous system, make connections, and have the potential to reduce stress triggers. Brantmeier (2013) urges “those university faculty interested in more deeply exploring how and when sharing their stories can deepen student learning” (p. 3) to adopt a pedagogy of vulnerability. “The concept is simple” Brantmeier explains, “open yourself, contextualize that self in societal constructs and systems, co-learn, admit you do not know, and be human” (2013, p. 2). Many of us do this already with our teaching, engagement with students, and in our course discussions and content on various levels as relational teachers. But Brantmeier asks us to do more, because “the complex terrain of a pedagogy of vulnerability is tangled given the power dynamics inherent in student and teacher cultural role sets” (p. 3). Herein lies the work of the vulnerable teacher, to not only offer your own vulnerable story to students in order to help heal their shame and set them on the path to educational recovery, but in so doing, reject and challenge the power connected to your own status and identity in the hierarchical university system. This is not easy for many faculty as their identity may be tied up with their status. This may also be difficult especially for many First Generation faculty, Black faculty, Indigenous faculty, and faculty of color, many of whom had to traverse more obstacles than some of their privileged peers to make it to the level of faculty. Further, the potential costs for marginalized faculty when lowering the curtain of their authority in the classroom can be high. But it is this very action of vulnerability that challenges hegemonic ideas about belonging, which not only helps our students, but also helps us faculty counter our own internalized ideas of belonging in the academy. Brantmeier (2013) explains that “[t]he depth of sharing and the pace at which self-disclosure take place is negotiated according to comfort level” (p. 5), for both student and faculty. Vulnerability takes courage.

“Being vulnerable with students requires that we let down our guard to show the shortcomings and struggles that require us to keep growing and learning, otherwise we create an ideal persona that gives students the perception that they must be perfect in order to achieve” (Lowrie, 2019, para. 4). When we are vulnerable and tell our students our own stories of not-so-perfect educational trajectories, First Generation experiences, doubts we felt, challenges we faced (and still do), we pull the curtain away and reveal real human beings in these so-called positions of authority. This is transformative.

In their first course back to college, I give my adult students an assignment early on regarding their educational trajectories. I have students write up a reflective piece—an educational autobiography, in which they explore their relationship to formal education from kindergarten up to the present day. For many students, this can and often does trigger some anxiety and stress, due to their nontraditional trajectories. So, I do not wait for my scared, embarrassed, and impostor syndromed student to open up and reveal their vulnerability to me in their assignment (or avoid it). I take the lead. I tell them my story. I share my educational journey and in the process reveal my own vulnerability, my own working-class roots, high school dropout turned professor, going from a GED to a PhD story, and all of the struggles therein. In the process, I show them my own disrupted trajectory, and my own growth. Not every faculty member will have the same story as mine of course. Even those faculty who come from the spaces and groups that academia privileges have stories to tell about struggle, about being less than perfect, about needing to remove the curtain and grow. By also “contextualiz[ing]…[ourselves] in societal constructs and systems” (Brantmeier, 2013, p. 2), we as faculty help our students frame their own experiences in a more critical way.

It is in the telling of “a personal story [that] creates a strong connection between you and your students” (Osborne, 2021, para. 7), especially one that reveals struggle with formal learning. It is in connection where shame dissipates, stress subsides, and learning can happen (Rampe, 2022). When I tell my students that their professor failed math in college, did not know how to navigate college bureaucracy, and was a terrible undergraduate writer (and that she still struggles with writing today), when I reveal these clearly less than ideal traits of the academic authority in the room, it shifts the relational dynamic between teacher and student. Students become less embarrassed to ask questions, more willing to ask for help and admit if/when they are lost, and often feel more comfortable in their nontraditional identity as adult student—these might not seem like major transformations but for adult learners, these are enormous shifts. They are so relieved to hear that they don’t have to carry that shield anymore with a professor who is seen as instantly more accessible. And they tell me this directly. When those in a position of power reveal their vulnerability, even those professors who come from privileged place and spaces—or perhaps especially from those professors, they open the gates and allow adult learners a seat at the table. And the space in which learning can now happen becomes safer and more accessible (Douglass, 2022; Gilbert, 2022; Rampe, 2022).

Curricula

There are many barriers to adult student success in higher education, especially in relation to access, finances, and institutional supports (Bergman & Olson, 2019; Kasworm, 2012). When adult students become matriculated, other factors come into play, specifically time and fear (Spagnola & Yagos, 2021). Adult learners have many obligations (work, family, community), and when school is added to the mix, often something has to give. Juggling this added responsibility often results in observable patterns of behavior. Students tend to disappear from the course for weeks at a time, without communicating. They stop responding to emails. They apologize for missed work when they do communicate, but then disappear again. Of course, life gets in the way. But I have observed another phenomenon after reaching out to adult students who have disappeared—shame. Admissions like “my writing is not as good as the other students,” or “I feel stupid I just can’t get the material,” or “maybe I made the wrong choice coming back,” often emerge in conversations once we have reconnected. Beyond the material reality of adult life and its pressures influencing student engagement, these other sentiments are almost always present. I have heard a variation of each of these statements every semester since teaching adult students. These sentiments reproduce Dweck’s (2001) definition of a fixed mindset—students’ abilities, their intelligence, their talents are seen as fixed. Fixed mindsets regarding ability in higher education abound with adult learners as their prior failures become internalized as personal flaws.

Walker (2017) explains that “[s]tudies from educational psychology suggest catalysts for shame include attributing failure to a defect in oneself, the conflation of learning and achievement” (p.361). The evidence is clear for so many adult learners who failed once before and are failing at doing the college thing once again—they are defective. That sense of powerlessness is pervasive and when students see new “evidence” of defectiveness when they return to college, from not understanding the material, or earning a bad grade or from comparing others’ academic abilities to their own, it becomes even more solidified. Brown (2013) explains “[s]hame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change” (p. 28). This perception of being incapable of changing reinforces the power of a fixed mindset.

So how do we as adult educators tackle this assumption? How do we challenge that deeply held internalized belief in our doubly stressed adult students about their abilities? Even after sharing our own stories about our trajectories and challenges, students may still carry this fixed mindset about themselves (sure my professor was able to grow, but I am not able to). So, what do we do? We move beyond our own stories to theory. After sharing my personal story of growth, change, and transformation, I delve into growth and fixed mindset materials and research. I place my development and changes within a framework that they can also use for their own educational autobiographies. Thus, growth is no longer solely on the individual and their innate talents, but instead connected to a general theory of brain plasticity, perception, and development. After placing my story in the larger field of mindset studies, I help students to place theirs there too and we work together to explore our personal stories as they connect to larger theoretical concepts. This also crafts a dialogic relationship, here instead of a power/shame dynamic between teacher and student, I forge a mutual vulnerability/empathy dynamic (K. Birth, personal communication, January 5, 2022). This adds to both a relational pedagogical approach as well as a pedagogy of vulnerability and connection with my students.

Through this “mutual disclosure,” this dialog and exploration of growth and fixed mindset ideas, I help students reframe those assumptions they might have held about themselves and their educational journeys. This helps students disrupt that fixed mindset paradigm and explain that they will and can “get it.” They’re just not there yet—as Dweck explains. Not yet is a great strategy when describing the growth mindset, which emphasizes the ability to learn and grow with effort over time (Dweck, 2014). “Success of others is seen as inspirational” (Judd, 2017, p. 2), particularly someone whose abilities are assumed to have been infallible. I, the assumed expert who holds that traditional position of power and authority in academia, share my own story of insecurity and failures and my many moments of “not yet”—even ones that continue to the present. Suddenly I become someone who is accessible, understands, and will not judge (that latter part is extremely important when it comes to shame and the outside Other’s perception of the self). This combination of reducing the stratification in the classroom along with a growth mindset pedagogy for adult learners helps to lessen the power of the shame they carry and opens their own perspectives to future growth.

When students begin to learn from this material and through this teacher/student dynamic they realize that they are still very capable of learning, and that their past trajectory does not define their capacities. Through reflection, students reframe their experiences and begin to no longer see a defective person who failed due to innate academic inability, but instead a student who maybe did not get the right supports to help them grow and learn. It is paradigm shifting for so many students and it helps to break down the power that shame holds over our adult learners. This is how we “[a]s instructors…can create pedagogically courageous spaces” (Hooks, 2003, p. 39) and something as “simple” as mindset materials embedded in a safe classroom space can reframe student perceptions of themselves, their histories, and, their academic and personal futures.

Further, in the semester, I introduce the concept of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) and I have students return to their original assignment and use an intersectional framework to critically analyze their own educational autobiographies. While students reflect upon their educational trajectories critically, they move away from an internalized individual who is flawed and learn to situate themselves and their experiences into a larger system that is social and political. Once again we move away from an internalized concept of failure to a much more critical understanding of education and access. Students learn that many of our experiences with education early on can be connected to (or at least influenced by) our class, race, gender, and other social identities and experiences, thus affecting our mindsets from an early age. This is extraordinarily transformative for students as they have carried this shame of being internally flawed for years, sometimes decades. This approach to critical pedagogy with adult learners reinforces Nesbit’s et al. (2004) process which emphasizes how “[t]he teacher reflects the students’ experiences back to them in ways that enable them to analyse and discuss them critically, and then to consider ways in which they might change their lives” (p. 84). Many are amazed that they never considered class issues when writing their original educational autobiography, that their single parent who worked two jobs never helped them with their homework because they could not help them. Many students are taken aback by their lack of awareness regarding their school budget issues as affecting classroom size, resources, and their ability as children to navigate such difficult systems. This exercise, using an intersectional lens to critique their own writing and reflections, helps students deepen their understanding of their own trajectories and the blinders through which they viewed their own educational experiences and abilities, and alters their “frames of reference” (Knowles et al., 2015) regarding their learning.

It is important to add that there is often a side effect of these lessons beyond transformed perspectives, dissipation of shame, and empowerment for some students. As this approach helps to begin to tackle shame for adult learners, what can emerge is a new emotion: grief. When some students learn a bit more about their place in the world through critical reflections on their experiences, they often learn about how their class background, neighborhood, racial identity, ethnicity, disability, etc. influenced their upbringings and access to resources, and how this not only filtered their experiences but also might have influenced which mindset was nurtured in them when they were young. When this happens shame often becomes overshadowed by sadness (and sometimes anger). For some students, the grief is not as strong, and instead the realization that the “defect” is external helps reframe their perspectives. But for others, the social and political influence over their particular experiences is seen as a powerful force that is unjust and can sometimes be overwhelming.

For some students, removing those blinders can be a very uncomfortable experience. As educators, we must attend to this grief and include the full range of experiences these learning moments have for our students as they are all part of a critical liberatory pedagogy. Discomfort often lies at the heart of critical learning, for the privileged and oppressed alike, and as educators we can and should enable and nurture courageous and “brave spaces” to expand engaged learning (Cook-Sather, 2016; Pawlowski, 2019). Critical pedagogy is not just about teaching students about oppression and their place within oppressive systems, but also about offering “resistance strategies” related to their voices, mindsets, and agency in the world that will further their liberation once they leave our classrooms. Connecting personal reflections and stories to larger frameworks that reveal the meaning we associate with our experiences helps students shift their perspectives on their learning—from the past, and, for their future. This approach is empowering for students (Allen & Rossatto, 2009).

Conclusion

There is a power differential in teaching, no matter how engaged and informed we are. Some weaponize that differential and reproduce the hierarchy in academia that continues to exclude many “doubly stressed” adult learners. However, a more relational and liberatory approach challenges that differential for our students’ benefit. “Being vulnerable requires bravery and trust” (Dukes, 2018, para. 7) and if teachers are willing to be vulnerable with our students, remove the curtain that maintains hegemonic notions of expertise, belonging, and academia, then we invite our students to free themselves of the shame they feel for not being experts, for feeling like they do not belong, and for failing academia one or more times before. Being an adult student also requires bravery and trust, and a relational approach to their return to college can nurture both.

For those students for whom the hegemonic rules benefit, seeing a person in a position of authority who does not quite fit the stereotype also helps to dismantle ideas of expertise, belonging and higher education. Representation matters not only for the adult learners in the class who feel marginalized and out of place, but also for the comfortable students who fit more easily—for when they see someone who does not fit the bill as authority, there are ripple effects which can have lasting ramifications. For those faculty who also fit more easily within the context of academia, any admission of struggle or vulnerability also helps lessen the power of the assumed flawless expert in the room and allow all students the space to try without fear of failure.

“The pedagogy of relation will not necessarily solve the problems of inequality and prejudice that plague our schools” (Bingham & Sidorkin, 2004, p. 7) but it does offer a strategy to disrupt internalized hegemony for our students related to their belonging and learning in formal settings and, I argue, begin their “educational shaming recovery” (Walker, 2017, p. 368). Relational, vulnerable, and critical pedagogies cultivate emotions and connection in the classroom, and can be especially “crucial to the wellbeing of students from social groups that are underrepresented in universities” (Pearce & Down, 2011, p. 492), which includes adult learners. They can also help to construct and nurture a “restorative landscape” in the classroom in higher ed for our adult learners (Douglass, 2022).

In order to help adult learners succeed and transform through their education, we must attend to shame. I have discussed two main ways to do so in this essay, that many of us may already use in our classrooms. One is through connection via stories—by sharing our own stories we help demystify higher education and let our students see that it is a place for them too, regardless of how uneven their trajectory was. It offers a space for vulnerability in a place that is often rigid in performance and hierarchical boundaries. When our students can connect, feel seen, and understood, then they can begin to learn and grow.

The other way to attend to shame is with our curricula that includes a direct discussion of fixed versus growth mindset to help our students reframe their learning and their sense of self. Placing individual experience onto a larger theory of learning, brain plasticity, and development, students move from internalized inferiority to an idea of growth. By situating mindset into a larger framework of intersectionality and critical pedagogy, students can position their stories into larger meanings and better understand the relationship of the personal and political. Lastly, doing all of this with a focus on connection and relational learning with our students helps both teacher and student to grow, reflect, and disrupt hegemonic notions of belonging in college.