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Missed Expectations: Incivility in the ClassroomIt should not be surprising that students and teachers regularly fail to meet one another’s expectations and, consequently, act in ways that may be considered incivil. Classroom incivility is a slippery concept. We can all
certainly agree that shouting an insult or picking a fistfight in the classroom
is uncivil. But how about drawing a picture in a notebook or eating a sandwich during class. What about walking in late? Or leaving early? Interrupting to ask a question? Or interrupting to make a derisive comment? Agreeing on examples isn't easy, is it? Some standards for behavior are widely understood. For example, we agree that a fistfight is uncivil, whether in a classroom, a grocery store, or a parking lot. Other standards apply only in particular environments. Most adults understand that loud conversation is inappropriate in a piano recital, but unremarkable at a rock concert. Standards vary from person to person. I may be offended by a student who wears a baseball cap or sleeps in class, but I may not care if the student fails to call me “Sir” or passes a note to his neighbor. It’s in this last realm that teachers and students have the most trouble defining incivility. We each have different personal expectations, so we have different definitions. Teachers’ expectations can shift from one type of learning situation to another and from one group of students to the next. Teachers hold some expectations simply because they understand the teaching role differently than students do. It’s important to recognize that the same is true of students. Students in a single class may have different standards of behavior, and any single student's expectations may vary from one class to the next. Every teacher has, at some point, been a student. But, despite this reality, students as a rule understand their own role differently than teachers do. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that students and teachers regularly fail to meet each other’s expectations and thus—accidentally or purposefully—do things that may be considered uncivil. There are, I believe, five possible ways for classroom incivility to develop:
The ‘Expertise’
Problem Colleges hire new faculty on the strength of their credentials in a subject area and, on many campuses, on the promise that they will stretch the limits of scholarship in their disciplines. These professional expectations may lead some teachers to misconstrue their role in the classroom. New college teachers, in particular, commonly make the mistake of assuming that their job is simply to tell students what they know—to transmit knowledge. This is a seductive point of view because it reinforces a teacher’s self-image as an expert and leads a teacher to favor those students who, in turn, behave like experts. As Alexander Astin notes, this perspective leads teachers to reward being smart rather than becoming smart—and reflects an expectation that learning is an outcome rather than a process. To be fair, this is what many students expect, too. Many students expect they will gain knowledge simply by listening to what an expert has to say, just as they expect to receive a product in the store simply by paying the price. This misconception about learning and the role of expertise has been the subject of much debate among educators—and remains a source of controversy among many faculty. But a growing recognition of the shortcomings of one-way knowledge transmission is spurring a movement away from traditional lectures and toward more interactive styles of instruction. Still, lingering mismatched expectations are common enough to be at the root of many disappointments as teachers adopt active methods. For example, teachers and students who focus on learning as a product may tacitly expect the learning process to be easy. But active learning requires personal effort—and it's hard. When students discover that they cannot learn effectively without some active participation in discussion, problem solving, or questioning, they can feel betrayed. They may reason that the teacher isn’t working hard enough, so students are having to do more than they expect in order to learn. Other students may assume they’re to blame for failing to learn material that might have seemed easier to understand in a traditional lecture. Teachers, for their part, may conclude that when students fail to learn in an active classroom it’s because the students aren’t trying hard enough or are stupid. The ‘Maturity’
Problem Legally, society considers these students old enough to vote, marry, own property, and serve in the military. Most of them have job skills that offer a measure of financial and social independence. At the same time, college students are typically new to life away from family and home community. They lack the confidence that comes from mastering diverse learning challenges and the resilience that develops from surviving disappointments. In significant ways, they are, really, “apprentice” adults. Teachers and students can each err by underestimating the importance of this apprentice role. It may not be reasonable, for instance, for teachers to expect students to appreciate adult views about time management, “polite” classroom discourse, and acceptable responses to disappointment. These concepts become increasingly important throughout the teen years, but they become adult expectations only as students arrive at the brink of independence. So part of a college teacher's responsibility should be to model the adult role and to make adult behavioral expectations explicit. For their part, students may set unreasonable expectations by failing to see themselves as apprentices. As some parents are fond of saying, “If you expect to be treated as an adult, you have to behave like one.” But this is easier said than done. From Disappointment to Incivility
and Beyond But, in one way, we’re lucky when mismatched expectations do generate incivility. When we can see overt signs of a failing relationship, we can look behind them for the expectations that we need to meet or adjust in order to rebuild it. Beyond lies recovery and more effective learning—and a greater degree of civility. |
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