Academic incivility and its social and cultural contexts: Students' and lecturers' perspectives in colleges of education in Nigeria

Incivility in Nigeria, as in many parts of the world, is a topical issue. In Nigeria there is an outcry against the rise in incivility especially in educational institutions. Generally educational institutions are looked up to for maintaining and transmitting civility. As teachers are seen as pivotal in maintaining and transmitting civility in the educational institutions, this study explored civility, or its lack, in Colleges of Education in Nigeria. It investigated the influences on pre-service teachers' attitudes to civility and practices that promoted civility in the Colleges. This study was based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) that seeks to explain the relationship between intention, subjective norm, self-efficay and attitudes. Seven measures, six of which were adapted from Indiana University Survey on Academic Incivility (2000) and one from Schwarzer and Jerusalem (1995) and Schwarzer and Renner (2000) were used to collect data for this study. These measures were administered to student-teachers in selected Colleges of Education sampled for this study. Data was also collected through classroom observation and focus group interviews. This was through two days of class observation in each of the four Colleges which was followed by focus groups interviews of three lecturers and five students per College. SPSS and AMOS were used to analyze the survey data while the data from classroom observation and focus group interviews were analyzed by sorting, interpreting and categorizing into themes. The significance of this study was its use of the TPB with the issue of incivility in a distinctive cultural and social context and the integration of qualitative data to supplement the results of the survey. The findings were: incivility was an issue in all the Colleges, subjective norm was the most dominant predictor of behavioural intention and the level of self-efficacy of the students was not high. The finding that subjective norm was the most significant predictor of behavioural intention has important implications for policy and practice. At the same time, the not so high levels of self- efficacy among the sampled students suggested an important area for student development. Direct observations of incivility in college classrooms reinforced the survey results as did interviews with students and teaching staff. This study contributes to a growing international literature at the same time it will create awareness of civility, or its lack, in the Colleges of Education in Nigeria. All rights reserved.