This article recounts the experiences of professors who taught entry level university humanities courses to adult learners on the margins of society and what their stories can tell the readers about a potentially transformative teaching and learning space. Based on interviews with 13 instructors in 3 programs, the study reveals that while the techniques of facilitative dialogue and gentle coaching are important in shifting learners from disengagement to engagement in the possibility of learning, it is the underlying stance of instructors’ mature authenticity and their desire to create and sustain trusting relationships with their students that is pivotal in cultivating the possibility of transformation for marginalized students within this program.
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