Preparing Students to Understand the Role of Incivility and Civility: A Cross-National Study

• In Event: New Directions in Education for Civic Life: Research With Students and Teachers

Abstract

This exploratory study examined how in-service social studies teachers from two dissimilar cultural and political contexts—Singapore and the United States—conceptualized civility and incivility and the role of each in preparing students for public life. Civility involves formal and informal social norms governing expression and behavior and generally entails self-restraint, a disposition to listen to others, and willingness to accommodate alternative perspectives (Calhoun, 2000; Peterson, 2019). Educators such as Moore (2012) and Crocco et al. (2018) have argued that schools, and particularly civic education, should inculcate civility as a part of civic virtue.

Standards of civility, however, can be used to blunt social change, stifle dissent, and prevent challenges to the status quo (Edyvane, 2020; Mayo, 2002). Acts of incivility, aimed at violating norms and disrupting the social order, are therefore an important element of public life that can be used strategically to challenge, resist, and oppose structural injustices. In the context of East Asia, for example, Kim (2014) has pointed to the long-standing tradition of “Confucian incivility” (p. 20). Civic education, then, should prepare students to make informed judgements about when civility or incivility is warranted. Notably, though, norms and practices of civility and incivility vary significantly across national and cultural contexts, and this means that there can be no one universal standard for what constitutes these practices.

Previous research has not investigated teachers’ ideas about civility and incivility. This study sought to fill that gap through interviews with in-service secondary social studies teachers in Singapore and the U.S. The semi-structured protocol consisted of questions and elicitation tasks designed to surface participants’ perspectives on civility and incivility and their ideas about helping young people understand the role of each in public life. Findings showed how teachers’ understandings differed both across and within contexts, and how national and global discourses—including Confucian norms of ritual propriety (Tu, 1972) and liberal democratic ideas of individualism—framed their thinking. This study demonstrates the importance of attending to teachers’ understandings of the concepts of civility and incivility, as well as to their beliefs about preparing young people to make judgments about civil and uncivil actions in the public arena.

References
Calhoun, C. (2000). The virtue of civility. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 29(3), 251-275.

Crocco, M., Halvorsen, A.-L., Jacobsen, R., & Segall, A. (2018). Less arguing, more listening: Improving civility in classrooms. Phi Delta Kappan, 99(5), 67–71.

Edyvane, D. (2020). Incivility as dissent. Political Studies, 68(1), 93-109.

Kim, S. (2014). Confucian democracy in East Asia: Theory and practice. Cambridge University Press

Mayo, C. (2002). The binds that tie: Civility and social difference. Educational Theory, 52(2), 169-186.

Moore, J. (2012). A challenge for social studies educators: Increasing civility in schools and society by modeling civic virtues. The Social Studies, 103(4), 140-148.

Peterson, A. (2019). Civility and democratic education. Springer.

Tu, W. (1972). Li as process of humanization. Philosophy East and West, 22(2), 187-201.

Authors

• Li-Ching Ho, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Keith C. Barton, Indiana University