Investigating the impact of status and context on workplace incivility.

Abstract

Incivility has been reported as having an adverse impact on student learning, faculty staff retention and student commitment within Higher Education. As such this behaviour has the potential to reduce student achievement and could have a financial impact on institutions. The aim of this two-stage study was to examine the impact of teaching context (lecture versus tutorial) and instigator status (staff versus student) on the perception and impact of incivility in academia. Study 1 recruited participants from Scotland and utilised a vignette-based approach to evaluate status and context effects across four fictional teaching scenarios, each illustrating the uncivil behaviour of ignoring someone. Study 2 recruited participants from the UK and Ireland and used an online survey to gather quantitative and qualitative data investigating uncivil behaviours within lectures and tutorials. The combined results indicate that the uncivil behaviours absenteeism, non-participation, ignoring and unrelated behaviours were all more frequent during a lecture in comparison to a tutorial. Uncivil behaviours were associated with a higher emotional impact within tutorials as opposed to lectures and an assertive response to incivility was more likely in a tutorial than a lecture. In terms of status student behavior was perceived as more uncivil than the equivalent staff behavior, yet a higher emotional response was reported for staff as opposed to student incivility, regardless of context. These results indicate the need for a tailored context-specific approach to addressing incivility within Higher Education, with practical implications discussed.