All I'm askin' is for a little respect¹: How can we promote civility in our classrooms?

Abstract

Across geographical regions and academic disciplines, faculty members are lamenting the rise in behavior problems in the classroom. We present here a review of the literature on classroom incivility and a categorization of uncivil behaviors. Next, attributing classroom incivility, in part, to cultural characteristics of our current undergraduates, we compare Millennials to earlier generations and discuss the impact of specific cultural characteristics on their classroom behavior. Then, using transactional and transformational leadership theories to frame our recommendations, we combine insights from research on Millennial culture to offer pedagogical methods for helping to prevent incivility, as well as how to respond to it and how to fortify ourselves against it.

Keywords:

• civility
• Millennials
• pedagogy