The Challenges of Academic Incivility

Book excerpt: The book introduces readers with theory and empirical findings related to uncivil behaviour in academic settings and discusses its precursors, implications and remedies. In the first part, we define academic incivility, its manifestations and dimensions, while distinguishing between academic incivility and workplace incivility. We then discuss the prevalence of faculty incivility (FI) and students’ incivility (SI) in academic settings and focus on the dyadic relationships between faculty and students in the broader context of incivility in academia, with an added focus on faculty incivility. The second part introduces the main contributors to academic incivility. Personal factors, in this case, social-emotional competencies, and contextual factors, in this case, learning environments, are explored by combining up-to-date research data, personal stories and interviews with lecturers and students. A deep understanding of the precursors of academic incivility is critical to the examination of possible coping strategies within academic settings and elsewhere. In the third part, we explore the potential and practical remedies that can mitigate incivility in academic settings and, in particular, the enhancement of emotional and social competencies and the modification of learning environments.