NUR6023 Module 5 classroom management analysis example

The Grade Appeal That Became a Scene: Incivility in a Team-Based Pharmacology Class, How It Spiraled, the Instructor's Own Part in It, and the Norms That Came Next

Student Name

American College of Education

NUR6023: Transformational Teaching in Nursing Education

Module 5 Assignment

Instructor Name

June 3, 2030

The Incident

In the fourth week of team-based learning in Pharmacology for Nursing II, the class began as usual with the readiness tests. During the clarifying talk, two students at the back held a conversation loud enough that students nearby turned around. When the application exercise began, one team's discussion was dominated by a student who dismissed a teammate's answer with "that's obviously wrong, just go with mine" and later rolled his eyes when the team's choice proved wrong. Then, during the appeals phase, a student from another team stood and said loudly that the readiness test had been unfair, that I had tested material not in the reading and that "this whole team thing is a way for you not to teach." Several students applauded. I responded that appeals had to be written, as the syllabus said, and moved on, but my voice was tight and the room stayed tense for the rest of the session. Three students emailed me that evening, two apologizing for classmates and one saying she no longer felt comfortable speaking in her team.

What Incivility Is

Andersson and Pearson (1999) defined workplace incivility as low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target, in violation of norms for mutual respect, and distinguished it from aggression, where intent to harm is clear. The definition fits the incident. None of the behaviors was violent or clearly meant to injure; each was rude, disruptive or dismissive, and each violated the respect the class depends on. The ambiguity matters: the student who challenged the test may have believed he was advocating for his team, and the dominant team member may not have seen his behavior as rude. Andersson and Pearson also described an incivility spiral, in which one uncivil act provokes another in return and the exchanges escalate, sometimes to aggression, and they noted that incivility can spread through a group as others see it tolerated.

How the Episode Spiraled

Read through the spiral model, the episode did not begin with the grade appeal. The side conversations during the clarifying talk went unaddressed, which suggested that the norm of attention was not enforced. The dismissive comment in a team went unaddressed because I did not hear it. By the time of the appeal, several small violations had passed without response, and a louder one followed. The applause was the spread the model predicts. My own tight response, correct in content but curt in tone, was a smaller uncivil act of my own, and the tension that followed suggests it continued the exchange rather than ending it. Each unanswered small incivility lowered the bar for the next one, including mine.

What Nursing Students and Faculty Report

The behaviors in my class are among the most commonly reported in nursing education. In a national survey of 504 respondents, including 194 nursing faculty and 306 nursing students, the student behaviors most often cited as uncivil included distracting conversations, using computers for purposes unrelated to class and demanding make-up examinations and grade changes, and the uncivil faculty behaviors reported to occur most often included ineffective teaching methods, arriving late and deviating from the syllabus or changing assignments (Clark, 2008). The last finding made me look at my own part more carefully. When I introduced team-based learning in the fourth week, I changed the course's structure mid-semester, moved the unit examination date by a week to fit the readiness tests and did not fully explain why the method would help. From the students' side, the instructor had deviated from the syllabus and adopted a method they did not understand, which several may have experienced as a reduction in teaching. The student who made the accusation was wrong in how he said it, but not entirely wrong about what he had experienced.

The Response

The response had four parts. First, private conversations. I met the student who had challenged the test, acknowledged that the mid-semester change had not been explained well, and explained that his concern would be heard through a written appeal but that a public accusation affected everyone in the room. He submitted a written appeal, and one item was accepted, which showed that the process worked. I met the dominant team member, described the specific comment and its effect without labeling him, and asked him to invite a teammate's answer before giving his own. Second, shared norms. At the start of the next class, I apologized for not explaining the change better and asked each team to write three norms for how members would treat one another, and the class agreed on five norms for the room, including one on how to disagree with the instructor. The norms were posted in the course site and referred to in the peer evaluation. Third, early response. I now address side conversations immediately and quietly, by walking toward the students or pausing, rather than waiting for them to stop. Fourth, repair. The student who no longer felt comfortable in her team was not moved, since moving her would have rewarded the behavior, but I sat with her team for two sessions and the dominant member's behavior changed noticeably.

A later national study of faculty and administrators, which identified contributors to incivility and strategies to improve civility, reported that addressing the problem requires both individual and organizational effort (Clark et al., 2021). My contribution was at the level of one classroom; I have also raised with the program director the need for a program-wide statement of civility expectations, since students move between courses with different rules.

Evaluation

Over the following six weeks, I kept a brief record after each class of any uncivil behaviors I noticed and how I responded. Side conversations fell from several per session to one or two, usually stopped by a pause. There were no further public confrontations, and written appeals increased from one per test to about three, which I read as students using the channel designed for disagreement. The midterm peer evaluations showed that the dominant team member's scores from teammates had risen. These are one instructor's observations and not a controlled measure, but they suggest that small, early responses, shared norms and the instructor's willingness to name their own part changed the direction of the spiral.

Were I to introduce team-based learning again, three things would change. It would start on the first day of a course, not in the fourth week, so that no one would experience it as a change of rules. I would spend part of the first class explaining why the method puts application in class and preparation outside it, with the evidence and with graduates' comments, so that students did not mistake a different kind of teaching for less teaching. And I would set the class norms together in the first week, before anyone had broken them, since norms written after an incident inevitably feel aimed at someone. Each of these is a lesson about the instructor's side of civility, which the literature and this episode both suggest is easy to overlook.

References

Andersson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for tat? The spiraling effect of incivility in the workplace. Academy of Management Review, 24(3), 452-471. https://doi.org/10.2307/259136

Clark, C. M. (2008). Faculty and student assessment of and experience with incivility in nursing education. Journal of Nursing Education, 47(10), 458-465. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20081001-03

Clark, C. M., Landis, T. T., & Barbosa-Leiker, C. (2021). National study on faculty and administrators' perceptions of civility and incivility in nursing education. Nurse Educator, 46(5), 276-283. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNE.0000000000000948