Classroom Incivility in Community College Classrooms
This paper examines classroom incivility as a particular concern in community college settings. It identifies six types of student incivility — disengagement, disinterest, disrespect, disruption, defiance, and inappropriate behavioral disturbances — as described by Gonzalez and Lopez (2001). The paper discusses how community college student populations differ from those at four-year institutions in terms of academic preparation, motivation, and cultural attitudes toward education. It also explores the role instructors play in both provoking and preventing incivility, drawing on Morrissette (2001) and Mills (1998) to outline strategies such as modeling appropriate behavior and reducing status differentials in the classroom.
- Introduction: Why community college incivility warrants special attention
- Types of Classroom Incivility: Six categories of disruptive student behavior defined
- Community College vs. Four-Year College Student Populations: How community college students differ academically and culturally
- Instructor Responsibility in Causing and Preventing Incivility: How faculty behavior triggers or reduces student incivility
- Conclusion: Shared responsibility for managing classroom incivility
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What makes this paper effective
- Draws directly on peer-reviewed and discipline-specific sources to define and categorize incivility, giving the argument a clear empirical foundation.
- Moves logically from defining the problem, to contextualizing it within a specific student population, to assigning shared responsibility — creating a coherent analytical arc.
- Uses direct quotations strategically to let authoritative voices carry the most specific claims, while the writer's own analysis frames and connects them.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective synthesis of sources: rather than summarizing each source in isolation, the writer integrates Gonzalez & Lopez (2001), Morrissette (2001), and Mills (1998) into a single argument about causes, contexts, and solutions. This multi-source synthesis is a foundational graduate and upper-level undergraduate skill.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a classic problem-context-response structure. The introduction establishes why incivility is a distinct concern in community colleges. The next two sections define the types of incivility and characterize the student population most likely to exhibit them. The fourth section pivots to instructor responsibility and prevention strategies. The conclusion synthesizes all threads, restating the shared nature of the problem without introducing new claims.
Introduction
Student incivility in class is an issue in education generally and on community college campuses in particular. At the grade school level, student conduct problems are most likely related to issues with the social development of individual students. At the high school level, student conduct problems may reflect both individual developmental issues as well as peer-group dynamics and adolescent rebelliousness. Because grade school and high school students are minors, parents and administrators have much greater authority for responding to conduct issues, including involving parents and guardians.
That is not necessarily the case when classroom conduct issues present themselves beyond high school, largely because most college students are adults and no longer as subject to external authority as minors. More particularly, community college students may exhibit higher levels of incivility than four-year college students as a function of some of the characteristic differences between those respective student populations. To a great extent, student incivility in class can be prevented by effective awareness and response strategies on the part of professors and instructors.
Works Cited
Gonzalez, Virginia and Lopez, Estela. "The Age of Incivility: Countering Disruptive Behavior in the Classroom." AAHE Bulletin (April 2001).
Morrissette, Patrick J. "Reducing Incivility in the University/College Classroom." International Electronic Journal for Leadership in Learning, Vol. 5, No. 4 (2001).
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