Dr. Chavella Pittman from Dominican University and Effective & Efficient Faculty, presented at the 2021 Lilly Conference online on “10 In the Moment Responses to Acts of Student Incivility.” I believe I watched another session by Pittman last year. Pittman is a Professor of Sociology and also a Diversity and Inclusion in Teaching consultant. Pittman talked about lowering barriers to include diverse learners and faculty in higher education and stressed that developing effective strategies for classroom incivility and inclusion is an ongoing process. Right away, Pittman started with a brainstorming activity to ask participants for definitions of classroom incivility and examples. People shared definitions such as breaking the norms, disrespectful behaviors, makes us feel uncomfortable. One audience example that caught my attention was “refusing to answer questions” as I never considered this incivility. Eye rolling was also mentioned. Incivility in the classroom was defined by Pittman as “disrespect for standards of classroom behavior as posted in the syllabus” and “behaviors that hamper the ability of instructors to teach and students to learn.” Pittman did mention that they often use quotes around incivility because the word does have culture and privilege surrounding it too. The literature, mentioned Pittman, also calls this disruptive behaviors. I thought it was interesting to hear that Pittman emphasized that we don’t have to list all behaviors and should focus on the ones we believe affect the learning environment in our classroom. The next question, Pittman asked was: “why do you think incivility in the classroom occurs” and several responses were read out loud. According to Pittman, in the literature, most things listed, are out of our control. The next question was: “who experiences classroom incivility?” and the answer was “everyone!”. Pittman explained that faculty from marginalized statuses usually experience “much more extreme, threatening, frequent things based on their marginalized status” which is not surprising to me and also saddening. Someone in the audience mentioned incivility on course evaluations too. Pittman said that ignoring incivility does affect student learning, and we should be doing something about it! Pittman mentioned that these topics are addressed in two two articles they recently published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Pittman explained that having scripts and knowing what to say and do for different common scenarios are strategies reported in the literature. When it comes to threatening student behavior, Pittman was clear: call 911 and follow your campus’ emergency procedure. These are “scripts” instructors should know. Pittman highlighted that some scenarios require shutting down the discussion/behavior because you cannot let someone have a learning moment while another student(s) suffers. For other scenarios, practice a script to make it a learning moment. Pittman mentioned that the classroom is a learning environment and that free speech should be focused on the content. I appreciate that Pittman explained that as instructors we should address disrespectful behaviors even after they have occurred and let students know why you are discussing this. I do like the idea of developing scripts. This may be an opportunity for our Program to have some scripts and discuss them with instructors and for the JEDI committee to draft a document to share for feedback. This was a great session! I reached out to Dr. Pittman and hope we get to learn strategies more and considerations soon! I’ll have to look up the articles in the Chronicle!
