Part 1, Navigating Classroom Dynamics & Disruptions
Contents:
Make A Plan | Connect with Students | Establish Expectations and Foster Community | Facilitate Respectful Dialogue and Free Expression
Make a Plan
Responding to disruptive classroom behaviors, conflicts, or challenges to the teaching and learning environment can start before the semester begins. Taking a few steps now to orient yourself with your department’s resources and policies can help you to feel prepared should the need arise.
As the semester begins, consider opening a conversation within your department or your teaching team (instructors and teaching assistants) to identify campus resources and communities of support. A proactive conversation can clarify what’s available and reduce stress should you need to find resources mid-semester.
Consider:
- What expectations do you have for students in your course? How do you communicate these? For team-taught courses including courses with TAs, how can the team convey consistent expectations to students?
- If a minor incident occurs in your classroom and you would like a thought partner to problem-solve, who can you turn to? If a major incident occurs, who in your department do you need to inform?
- If you need departmental support for yourself or a student, who can you contact?
- Should you need to know more about university processes or policies, who can you turn to?
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Additional Resources
Classroom Conflict and Challenging Conversations (L&S Instructional Design Collaborative) – A guide to support conversations within your department or teaching team
L&S Process for Significantly Disruptive Student Incidents (College of Letters & Science) – Guidance to assist L&S department leaders and instructors in decision-making during a disruption
Connect with Students
It’s important to consider how you can reduce classroom conflict by building connections with students. Creating a welcoming and effective learning environment involves developing social cohesion through instructor-student and student-student interactions.
Build rapport & trust
Investing time to develop positive relationships can help you to engage students in productive conversations when challenging dynamics arise. Communicate that you value students as individuals by learning their names and interests. This helps build a reservoir of trust.
Learn students’ names
Using students’ names in the classroom is associated with a number of positive outcomes (Moreu & Brauer, 2022). Memorizing a large number of names can be challenging for those teaching high enrollment classes, but research suggests that instructors do not need to know all names – using some is enough to create a welcoming environment (Cooper et al., 2017). Tools such as name tents, the photo roster found in Faculty Center, and NameCoach in Canvas can help.
Get to know your students
Learning about your students’ backgrounds, interests, and needs can help you to better understand and address experiences and perspectives that may be contributing to disruptive behaviors. Consider starting the semester with a survey or activity to get to know your students. Review the Course Demographics Profile for insights into enrollment trends for your courses.
Make yourself available one-on-one
Be available during office hours and take a few minutes before and after class to interact with students. Creating time and space for students to privately discuss concerns and challenges can prevent those issues from escalating during class time (Meyers, 2010).
Learn more: Hold Effective and Inclusive Office Hours (L&S Instructional Design Collaborative)
Seek mid-semester feedback
Asking for feedback from students during the semester serves several purposes. First, it communicates your respect for and interest in students’ perspectives – a practice that builds trust. Second, it provides an opportunity for students to privately share concerns. Student feedback can be used to proactively identify and address negative patterns with individuals or with the class as a whole (Morrissette, 2001).
Learn more: Strategies for Inviting Mid-Semester Feedback (Madison Teaching & Learning Excellence)
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Additional Resources
An Inventory of Supportive Instructor Practices (CTLM)
Inventory of Inclusive Teaching Strategies (University of Michigan)
References
Cooper, K. M., Haney, B., Krieg, A., & Brownell, S. E. (2017). What’s in a name? The importance of students perceiving that an instructor knows their names in a high-enrollment biology classroom. Life Sciences Education, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-08-0265
Meyers, S. A. (2010). Strategies to prevent and reduce conflict in college classrooms. College Teaching, 51(3), 94–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/87567550309596419
Moreu, G., & Brauer, M. (2022). Inclusive teaching practices in post-secondary education: What instructors can do to reduce the achievement gaps at U.S. colleges. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in HIgher Education, 34(1), 170–182.
Morrissette, P. J. (2001). Reducing incivility in the university/college classroom. International Electronic Journal for Leadership in Learning, 5(4), 1–13.
Establish Expectations and Foster Community
Taking the time to set clear expectations and build community in your course can establish a foundation of respect, trust, and understanding. This can head off escalation by providing space to talk about what classroom community members (students and instructors) need from each other as well as establishing language and procedures to address any conflicts that arise.
Communicate your expectations
Consider what expectations you bring to the classroom in order to establish those at the beginning of the semester.
For example:
- What expectations do I have for student behavior? Providing students the information they need to understand desired and expected behaviors, including how you hope they’ll interact with you, can encourage open lines of communication.
- What are my boundaries with my students? In addition to communicating what behaviors you would like to see, it can be helpful to reflect on your boundaries with your students. Setting boundaries can help students feel more secure in their understanding of what to expect from classroom interactions.
- How can I communicate expectations and boundaries to my students? Course documents and tools like the syllabus and Canvas course can provide space to clearly articulate expectations for students from the first day.
- What are the consequences if a student doesn’t meet an expectation? It is helpful to think this through ahead of time, even though the situation may not arise. Will a student lose discussion points? Be counted absent? Be asked to leave class? At what point?
- What are opportunities for me to clarify my expectations throughout the semester? Many expectations can benefit from being repeated in multiple places and ways. This provides a consistent message about behaviors in the classroom and also demonstrates how your expectations are applied in different scenarios (e.g., class discussion vs. small group work) if there are differences.
Develop mutual expectations
In addition to establishing your own expectations, engaging your class in developing expectations for one another can create a sense of community and help address conflicts when they arise. There are a number of ways to do this, including establishing community agreements and clarifying values.
Dedicate time for community building
Taking time during your first class meeting and periodically throughout the semester to build community and connections among students can go a long way to building trust, fostering belonging, and motivating students to engage in reflection and dialogue (Berry, 2017; Chlup & Collins, 2010; Lohr & Haley, 2018; McMillan & Chavis, 1986; Tanner, 2012).
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Additional Resources
Community Building in the Classroom (Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning)
Fostering Community and Belonging (Cornell University Center for Teaching Innovation)
Concrete Strategies for Building Community (Eberly Center)
References
Berry, S. (2017). Building community in online doctoral classrooms: Instructor practices that support community. Online Learning, 21(2), 42-63.
Chlup, D. T., & Collins, T. E. (2010). Breaking the ice: Using ice-breakers and re-energizers with adult learners. Adult Learning, 21(3-4), 34-39.
Lohr, K. D., & Haley, K. J. (2018). Using biographical prompts to build community in an online graduate course: An adult learning perspective. Adult Learning, 29(1), 11-19.
McMillan, D. W., & Chavis, D. M. (1986). Sense of community: A definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology, 14(1), 6-23.
Tanner, K. D. (2012). Promoting student metacognition. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 11(2), 113-120.
Facilitate Respectful Dialogue and Free Expression
At UW–Madison, we believe that the ability to exchange, consider, and challenge ideas is central to the educational process. Intentional preparation can go a long way to successfully leading discussion.
Prepare to facilitate
As the instructor, you are the facilitator of class conversations. You do not need to control dialogue, but you should take an active role in guiding it. While students have the right to express opinions relevant to the subject matter of a course, you as the instructors have the right to guide class discussion and to set reasonable limits on the class time made available to students for the expression of their opinions.
Determine your expectation for class dialogue
Exchanging dialogue has many benefits for learning and building community. Your learning goals should determine your dialogue approach. At different points in your course you may choose different approaches.
Consider the following:
- Discussion is sharing ideas or feelings without agenda or persuasion. Discussion helps students hear different perspectives and build community. Is your goal a discussion? Why?
- Deliberation is intentional sharing and listening to differing opinions in pursuit of understanding not only how folks think but why they think the way they do. The goal is not persuasion but deeper understanding. Is your goal deliberation? Why?
- Debate is persuading an opponent or audience of a particular way of thinking. Do you intend for this dialogue to be a debate? Why?
Create guidelines
Discussion guidelines are essential in promoting equity and belonging in the classroom. When students bring a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives, there may not be clear consensus on what success looks like. Guidelines provide clarity of objective and guardrails for dialogue across differences of opinion. See Guidelines for Classroom Interactions from University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching.
Define and inform students of your role as facilitator early and often
Students should know that you will intervene if and when dialogue moves beyond the boundaries of discussion guidelines or community agreements. When discussion goes awry, you as the facilitator should interrupt to reframe, rephrase, or redirect.
Plan how you will interrupt
Whether or not discussion is a large part of your course, it’s essential to develop and practice specific language so you are ready to intervene when needed. There are several reasons an instructor may pause classroom dialogue. You may interject to repeat or rephrase something, correct misinformation, or interrupt conflict.
Consider these examples:
- “Thank you for your contribution, I’d like to pause the conversation for a second.”
- “I am noticing some tension in the room. I’d like to pause for a moment and write some notes. I invite you all to take a few minutes to write what you notice in your thinking and feeling. In a few minutes, let’s debrief and decide on next steps.”
- “I notice that this discussion has strayed from our designated topic for today. Let’s re-center our focus back on course-related content and concepts.”
- “Hang on folks, let’s take a quick pause before anything regrettable is said.”
- “What I heard just now felt hurtful [to me or to another student]. There is no room for incivility in this class. We are going to keep going here, but I will follow up with you after class.”
- “I need a minute to collect my thoughts before we continue.”
Focus on course content & concepts rather than personal opinions
As tempting as it can be to bring local and global events into classroom discussion and debate, please take care with this practice.
Consider:
- Is this topic related to my course learning outcomes?
It is human for all of us – students and instructors – to be affected by local and global events. Acknowledging current events and offering support builds rapport and trust with students, but prompting dialogue about topics unrelated to the course may cause discomfort and frustration. While some may welcome the dialogue, others may want to move on with regularly-scheduled course content. - Are my students and I prepared to discuss this topic?
Occasionally, controversial current events may be relevant to course content. Or course content may be inherently sensitive or challenging. Emotions can run high. It is good practice to (1) provide students advance warning when sensitive or challenging topics will be discussed (especially if students are graded on participation) and (2) provide clear reasoning and justification for engaging with the sensitive or challenging topic. - Do students think I am speaking on behalf of my department or the university?
If you decide to acknowledge or share your thoughts related to current events, take care not to state or imply that you are speaking on behalf of the department or UW–Madison. This applies regardless of whether you are acting in your professional or personal capacity. Be mindful of the impact of your speech and conduct, particularly in situations (like the classroom) where power differences are present. - Is it essential that students share their personal feelings, opinions, or experiences?
It is possible to have meaningful dialogue without stating a personal stance. Can you prompt students to consider and discuss multiple perspectives without stating their own? Deliberation (described above) can be a useful dialogue strategy for considering opposing viewpoints.
Learn more:
Handling Controversial Topics in Discussion (University of Michigan)
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Additional Resources
The Discussion Project (UW–Madison)
Guidelines for Deliberation (Brown University)
From Debate to Deliberation (Edutopia)
Debate, Discuss or Deliberate? (Ohio State University)