Constructing and Validating Students’ Psychological Contract Violation Scale

For two and a half decades, psychological contracts are researched mainly in work organisations as drivers of the attitudes and behaviours of employees, overlooking the importance of understanding the nature of the psychological contracts of students in higher education. This study constructs and validates a new scale for measuring the perceived psychological contract violations of students in the context of faculty incivility. A mixed-method approach was applied to study the issue in three phases. First, a qualitative method was used to capture and analyse the perceived entitlements of students, as described by 78 college students, resulting in 37 items or elements identified by students as reflecting their psychological contracts. Second, a sample of 244 students was studied to identify the perceptions of violated expectations of students. In the final phase, items were rephrased as expectations and were given to the third sample of 154 undergraduate college students to determine the level of fulfilment of these expectations. Additionally, to ascertain discriminate and convergent validity measures, students were asked about the extent to which they experienced faculty incivility (discriminant validity) and frustration with the quality of interaction with their faculty (convergent validity). From these results, students’ psychological contract violation scale was constructed and validated.

Incivility Within and Beyond Classrooms: Exploring the Perceptions of Targets, Instigators, and Observers

This study aimed at understanding the perceptions of female students who had experienced or witnessed incivility by faculty, and instigated incivility in or out of the classroom and how it affected them. Through the application of a phenomenological and qualitative approach, data were collected from eight (8) female business administration students from public sector universities of Quetta, Pakistan. The findings of the study revealed that female students experienced and witnessed faculty incivility within and beyond the classrooms, which included harassment, character assassination, and humiliation characterized as intense behaviors of faculty. These encounters of faculty incivility resulted in psychological distress like depression, interrupted sleeping patterns, and fear. Furthermore, the findings concerning instigated incivility exhibited that those female students who misbehaved with their instructors were distressed and wanted to quit their studies. The results of this study would be helpful for the university administration to develop policies to combat incivility in educational institutions.

Nursing students’ experiences of faculty incivility: A qualitative exploratory study

Background & Aim: Academic incivility has a common problem in academic settings including nursing schools. The aim of the present study was to explore nursing students’ experiences of faculty incivility. Methods & Materials: This was a conventional qualitative content analysis approach. Fourteen bachelor’s nursing students were purposefully recruited from two faculty of nursing in, Karaj, Iran. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and analyzed via the conventional content analysis. Results: We derived two main categories from students’ experiences; “hidden faculty incivility” and “obvious faculty incivility”. Hidden incivility contained four subcategories, includes lack of mastery over the subject matter, inattentiveness to the learning climate of the class, inability to manage the class, and unfair evaluation. Obvious incivility also included the three subcategories of speech-behavior contradiction, authoritative behavior, and unconventional behavior. Conclusion: This study suggests that faculty incivility can have various aspects and beyond obvious offensive behaviors which mainly pertains to faculty interaction and teaching skills. Nursing faculties and nursing education authorities need to acquire adequate knowledge about the different aspects of faculty incivility and employ strategies for its prevention and alleviation.

Faculty Incivility Toward Graduate Students: Voices of Two African American Women

Student workers are placed at a disadvantage as they have little social power, making them vulnerable to maltreatment by those with higher social power such as supervisors and other faculty members. There is little research that documents incidences of incivility toward student workers. In this study, we delineated the experiences of two African American women who encountered faculty incivility while serving in the role of graduate student worker. The related literature offers insight into the existence of incivility, including the prevalence of workplace incivility, incivility in higher education, social identities and personal accounts. We offered the Student Worker Support (SWS) model that can serve as a reference for adult educators as they encounter, supervise, or instruct student workers.