Handbook Table of Contents > Creating a Positive Environment > Civility
Indiana University Teaching Handbook
Civility
- Affective Concerns of Teaching
- Keeping Students Engaged
- Communication Checklist
- Assisting Emotionally Troubled Students
Affective Concerns of Teaching
Students who feel comfortable in a classroom and who have some positive rapport with the teacher are likely to speed up learning processes as the semester goes on. In one Indiana University study, students reported that one important condition of their achievement in class is that they feel their instructor “cares about them.” In the long run, you will accomplish more learning by spending some time, especially in the first few classes, on creating a supportive environment.
Learn Student Names
This may seem like a simple suggestion, but it has profound results. All of us respond to being approached individually and personally, and the logical way to begin that process is calling us by our names. The immediate problem is how to learn the names of 100 or more students each semester. Campus Instructional Consulting has a list of many techniques to help you learn students’ names; copies are available in the Teaching Resources Center in Ballantine Hall 132.
You can gather biographical information on students by asking them to fill out index cards or to complete a short survey at the beginning of the semester. This information can be valuable in helping you to assess “where your students are” in terms of their academic backgrounds, and may also alert you to opportunities where course material can be made more meaningful by integrating it into students’ personal experiences. The more you know about your students, the easier it is to remember their names.
Provide Nonverbal Encouragement
Provide a secure, reassuring, positive atmosphere. Several ways of encouraging such an environment do not involve the spoken word. Maintain eye contact with students. Move around the room. Be animated and expressive in your presentation. Control nervous mannerisms. Students interpret fiddling with a tie or with a lock of hair to mean that you are not self-confident. This can be particularly unnerving to students. Students react most positively to teachers who seem to be firmly in control of the situation.
Avoid Judging Students
Without realizing it, teachers can exhibit judgmental behaviors that discourage students by making them feel even more inadequate than they already may feel. Do not judge students on the basis of appearance or dress. Do not allow yourself to be turned off by a student who is unkempt or who is wearing nontraditional clothing. You should also avoid gender stereotyping. Ask yourself if you unconsciously assume that females have a certain set of interests and males have another. Age stereotyping is another judgment trap. Do you unknowingly expect certain behaviors from people in certain age groups? For example, do you assume that older students are automatically more self-assured or serious about their work than are 18-year-olds?
Even though you may believe you are not prejudiced, racial or ethnic considerations can cause you to react subconsciously in ways that students find disturbing. Do you expect different attendance patterns from certain groups of students? Do you find yourself avoiding certain subjects in the classroom because you fear offending somebody? Do you tend to target your examples towards certain groups in your class? Do you assume that students have certain expertise based on racial or ethnic characteristics? Becoming aware of this type of judgmental behavior can help you avoid it.
Personalize Relationships
For some students, this is unnecessary, but other students find an “unapproachable” instructor difficult to learn from and intimidating. This strategy requires some effort and energy on the part of the teacher. Learning how many children a student has, what his or her personal interests and hobbies are, or what kinds of books he or she likes to read can help you establish fairly quickly a warm relationship with that student. Whatever your discipline, you should try to find ways to bring out students’ personal interests.
If you expect students to share with you, it is important for you to be willing to share parts of yourself and of your personal life with your students. You can accomplish this in easy ways. In classroom presentation, you can speak occasionally from personal experience. This will encourage students to respond to you not only as an authority figure, but as a person. However, use discretion with this technique; no one wants to spend a semester listening to an instructor telling his or her life story.
Respect Students as Adults
Sometimes teachers unwittingly put down their students by treating them as children, by overlooking them, or by exhibiting impersonal kinds of behavior. We often hear instructors refer to their students as “my kids.” This is especially upsetting to younger students who are just establishing themselves as adults. Another way of showing your students that you think they are important is spending time with them informally. This could be in the cafeteria or in your office. Before and after class you can chat informally with groups. When you meet a student in the hall or on the campus, smiling and giving a personal greeting is very effective. Call the student by name; it makes a great deal of difference. This again shows students that you care.
Keeping Students Engaged
Provide Specific Positive Reinforcement
Taking the time to compliment a student on something specific that he or she has done well can have tremendous payoffs for a teacher. The key here is specificity. Students will sense a lack of genuineness if you compliment profusely and generally, but if you can pick out one particular element of their work or one particular aspect of their attitude that you like, your comment will have much more meaning. A student who has written a paper that is not particularly effective but who has used a striking metaphor, for example, can be complimented on that use. (See “Rewarding Student Participation and Providing Feedback” for more on this topic.)
Make Yourself Available
Any teacher who is responsible for teaching several sections of English composition or for teaching three lab courses will recognize that being available is often difficult. However, it is essential, particularly with students who may be having difficulty.
You are serving as a role model to these students, and keeping reliable office hours gives them a sense of your commitment. If you set office hours, be sure to keep them. Be on time. Spend as much time in the office as you have promised; if for any reason you won’t be able to be in your office on a given day, give your students advance notice. You have, in essence, made a contract with them and you should keep it.
The easiest way to be available to your students is to get to class early and stay late. Electronic mail is also a way to increase your contact with students without investing huge amounts of your time.
Make Your Class Safe for Your Students
Although you do not intend to humiliate students, you may inadvertently interact with them in ways that are embarrassing or that make them uncomfortable. Even if such embarrassment is subtle, it can discourage a student and make it difficult for him or her to come back to your class. Avoid sarcasm with students, as well as teasing that is destructive in nature.
Be as Positive as Possible
Being positive is not easy when you are having a hard day, but some techniques can make you and your students feel positive. Voice quality, for instance, is extremely important. Be energetic and bright in your inflection. A monotone or a deep, tired voice will give away your lack of interest. Be willing to laugh in class, and use humor in your teaching. Chatting with students will sometimes be therapeutic for you; if your energy level is running low, a few exchanges with students can energize you.
Read Inattentive Behaviors
We all have observed inattentive behavior in teaching situations. Some behaviors to look for are shuffling or shifting in chairs, persistent coughing by one or more students, glances at other students or watches, and stacking books when there are five minutes left in the class period. These behaviors indicate that you have lost student attention. Also notice posture, attitude, and lack of eye contact. The research on adult attention span tells us that attending to a single type of activity for more than 20 minutes is quite difficult.
When you notice that your students are drifting away, your response should be immediate and decisive. Changing the pace of the class can be most effective. We call this the “change-up.” For example, switching from lecture to small-group activity can wake up the class. Breaking the rhythm of your usual behavior can break the monotony.
We recommend planning your classes in 15- to 20-minute sections with a change of mode between each section. This will allow you to have the students’ fresh attention several times in each class, rather than just at the beginning. Changing activities can make a big difference in your students’ success. Campus Instructional Consulting has published an article on this topic, offering many suggestions of “change-up” activities.
Commit Yourself to an Individual Conference with Each Student
These conferences need not be long when the students do not have significant problems. They may simply be friendly, personal conversations. Yet this kind of conference shows the student that you care. For students with significant problems, however, the conference is crucial. Often a conference is the only means of convincing them of your interest. Sometimes you yourself can solve some of the student’s problems, or you can guide the student to someone who can help him or her. Surprisingly, many students are not familiar with the counseling services available at the university.
A word of caution is in order here. Discuss the problem only with the student, or for AIs, if you feel it is necessary, with the instructor in charge of the class. Otherwise respect the student as an adult and keep information concerning his or her performance confidential.
Telephone Students When High-Risk Patterns Develop
Examples of high-risk patterns are several missed assignments, chronic absences, and perpetual tardiness. Telephoning students can be an effective way of reaching them; students are often impressed that an instructor would take the time to call them.
Communication Checklist
Adapted with permission from Jenkins, Gappa & Pierce, 1983
Instructors may find it difficult to be aware of all the dynamics in the classroom while simultaneously transmitting lecture content or guiding a discussion. Have a friend or colleague observe some specific behaviors of your own or your students’ that you want carefully observed. This informal observation may give a perspective on that behavior about which you were not aware. You can ask a student to audio- or videotape some of your classes. Media Production (855-1983) will also videotape class meetings; they require at least one-week advance notice, but the only cost to you is the videotape. Self-analysis of tapes can answer many of your questions.
- Are you conscious of gender- or race-related expectations you may hold about student performance?
- How do you react to uses of language (accent, dialect, etc.) that depart from standard English or that are different from your own? Do you discount the speaker’s intelligence and information?
- What is the number of males versus females or students of various racial or international groups called on to answer questions? Which students do you call by name? Why?
- Which of these categories of students participate in class more frequently through answering questions or making comments? Is the number disproportional enough that you should encourage other students to participate more frequently?
- Do interruptions occur when an individual is talking? If so, who does the interrupting? If one group of students is dominating classroom interaction, what do you do about it?
- Is your verbal response to students positive? Adversarial? Encouraging? Is it the same for all students? If not, what is the reason? (Valid reasons occur from time to time for reacting or responding to a particular student in a highly specific manner.)
- Do you tend to face or address one section of the classroom more than others? Do you establish eye contact with certain students more than others? What are the gestures, postures, and facial expressions you use? Are they different for men, women, people of color, or international students?
Texts, Lectures, and Course Content
Whenever possible:
- Do you and the texts you choose use gender-neutral language? If your text uses the masculine generic, do you point this out in the classroom?
- Do your texts and lectures incorporate new research and theory about men, women, and people of color? If not, do you point out areas in which scholarship about gender and race is modifying the discipline? Do you provide additional bibliographic references for students who want to pursue these issues? When you order books for the library, do they reflect these changes in discipline?
- Do your lectures and texts portray the activities, achievements, concerns, and experiences of women, people of color, or people of foreign origin? If your texts do not, do you provide supplemental materials? Do you bring omissions to the attention of your students?
- Do your lectures and texts present the careers, roles, interests, and abilities of women and people of color or foreign origin without stereotyping? If there are stereotypes in your texts, do you point this out?
- Do your lectures and texts use balanced examples and illustrations (both verbal and graphic) in terms of gender and race? If your texts do not, do you point this out?
- Do your texts and lectures reflect values that are free of bias with respect to sex, race and ethnic or national origin? If not, do you discuss your/their biases and values with your students?
- Do your exams and assignments encourage students to explore the roles, status, contributions, and experiences of women and people of color or foreign origin?
Handling Problems in the Classroom
Adapted with permission from Unruh, 1986
In most cases you eventually will face students who present various kinds of management problems. A common example is the student who wants to talk too much, frequently on irrelevant material. You can treat these students with respect, but make it known that they are overpowering the discussion; by systematically calling on many members of the class, you can often get a very active class. The students seldom want one person to dominate any more than you do.
Frequently, it is useful to talk to the offender outside of the class. Students usually respond to your request for less or different participation on their part. Sometimes they lapse back into the old pattern. It is a natural pattern for this kind of student. Remember that these students are seldom deliberately destroying the class; they think they are adding to the class with their participation. Don’t hesitate to remind them politely if they forget their talk with you.
One technique that is often effective with wisecracks and insults is to treat them as straightforward, non-evaluative statements. Treat sarcastic remarks as if they were not sarcastic. Some such remarks should, of course, just be ignored. Either treatment takes the sting out of the comment because you are not responding the way the wisecracker wants you to. Just refuse to play the game. You will be doing the rest of the class—and yourself—a favor.
Resolving Disagreement
Adapted with permission from University of Tennessee, 1986
In dealing with disagreement, confrontation, and inappropriate behavior, a new instructor should probably seek the advice or guidance of a more experienced person. Department heads and coordinators for associate instructors have dealt with similar problems and can advise you on appropriate steps. New instructors are often afraid to share problems because they feel that these problems are their own fault or constitute a poor reflection on their teaching abilities. Similar problems arise continually, however, with new or experienced faculty, young or old, outstanding or less capable. In fact, students sometimes sense an inexperienced instructor and believe they can “get away with” more because of the instructor’s lack of experience. For these reasons, and for the reassurance it gives, it is usually best to discuss your interpersonal problems with someone who can help you.
The best way to deal with conflict is proactively. Set the ground rules for discussion and disagreement at the beginning of the semester. If you are teaching a course in which you expect to raise controversy, explain to students the kinds of evidence and arguments that are acceptable in the class and those which are used by scholars in your field.
Dealing with a student who disagrees politely, calmly, rationally is a pleasure. If you state your position openly, calmly, and rationally, the two of you are almost certain to reach a reasonable solution. The most problems occur with open hostility or conflict. Here are some suggestions for dealing with confrontation:
- If the confrontation occurs in a public setting, attempt to move it to a private setting, e.g., an office. Often the confronting student relies on the public nature of the attack and the encouragement of other students to press the argument.
- Listen carefully, openly, and professionally to the full criticism or grievance. Do not attempt to respond to allegations made during the narrative. Let the critic express all existing problems. Repeat the main points of the argument, as you understand them, to be sure both of you see the same issues.
- Accept any valid criticism and state your intended corrective action. Show a genuine willingness to compromise where you think it is appropriate.
- Explain that you have different thoughts on the issue and would like an opportunity to express your point of view. State your opinions, and allow your critic to respond.
- If it appears that the issue cannot be resolved in a mutually satisfying way, indicate regret that there remains a difference in view. Restate your position, making clear any action you intend to take. Indicate what recourse your critic has to other appeal channels. Refer the student to your supervising professor or department chair and to Section II of the IU Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct — “Student Complaint Procedures.”
- Move in a polite and professional manner to close the conversation.
- If the critic becomes agitated, remain calm. Often your remaining calm will return the conversation to a more placid tone.
- It sometimes helps to ask a colleague to join in a confrontation, if the colleague can remain neutral and point out possible routes for solution of the problem. The student can also see the other person as a guarantee of fairness in the proceedings.
Assisting Emotionally Troubled Students
Should a student come to you with serious emotional problems, or if you become concerned about a student’s emotional health because of comments made in classes or in writing, you may want to refer the student to Counseling and Psychological Services at 855-5711. AIs: Consult with your supervising professor first.
