Chris Martin. Welcome to this Kosmos Online podcast. I'm Chris ...

CM. It would probably depend on how severe the misbehavior was. If it was a situation where
other student being immediately threatened, not just physically threatened but threatened with
some verbal disrespect, you would have to intervene immediately. Have you ever had to involve
the administration in a classroom disruption issue?
PM. Not directly in classroom disruption, more so with some other problems, with academic
dishonesty, cheating that kind of thing.
CM, But usually with just the misbehavior it’s sufficient to correct?
PM. Right, right. You have a group going on, we’ve gotten into some very heated political
debates, the classes I teach are mostly in policy, political science or political history, so there’s a
lot of room for disagreement, and people get very passionate about issues, sometimes those
passions overwhelm the discussion, but that’s the point where the instructor should be the person
who steps in and kind of guides the discussion back onto track and 99% of the time that
sufficiently works to diffuse the situation.
CM. Now how would you do that? Would you do that with a mini-monologue about the issue
involved, would you pose a question?
PM. Normally, if a student is really going off-base or berating one of his or her colleagues for a
point that was made, that’s the time to step in as the instructor and guide the terms of the
discussion back onto more of a civil point. You know, it could even be a comment of saying,
“Let’s keep this away from something personal” and onto the particular arguments that are being
made.
CM. That’s a great point, and actually as you’ve seen in our IHS seminars, we’ll even say
explicitly at the start of seminars, it’s about the idea, not about the person. It’s not the ad
hominem sort of attack. But you’re right; the instructor needs to be the grown-up in the room, in
a way, for these students…Are there any other strategies can you think of to address disruptive
behavior? On the first day of class, do you tell students, for example, when to pose questions
during the lecture? Do you say, “hold your questions til’ the end of the lecture, interrupt in the
middle, raise your hand”?
PM. I normally let them know, the first day of class, we have a general talk about the discussion
environment that’s going to play out during the course of the semester, I let them know that since
it is a politically-oriented class, there will be times when discussion is appropriate, and that
discussion is in fact welcomed within these boundaries. For a particular class, I normally try to
structure the lecture, I’ll write it out on the board what I’m trying to do, and it’ll be maybe the
first twenty minutes of the lecture are on a particular topic. Then we have time set aside for
discussion and an assignment that follows, so it’s clear before the opportunity even arises, what
the appropriate time is to hold that discussion will tend to be.