‘Laddish behaviour’ forces university to abolish lectures

Disruption caused by “laddish behaviour” was so bad that a UK university had to stop teaching via lectures on one course.

The case was disclosed by researchers who have explored the pervasiveness of lad culture in higher education and found that its prevailing association with alcohol consumption and sports teams meant that other forms of sexism and misogyny were going unrecognised.

Interviews with staff in six UK universities conducted by Carolyn Jackson and Vanita Sundaram, authors of Lad Culture in Higher Education, found that loutish behaviour was widespread in teaching and learning contexts, not just in social situations.

This included students – predominantly young men – arriving late, frequently interrupting lecturers, undermining or heckling tutors or other students and being unprepared for class discussions.

In one case identified by the researchers, this behaviour was so extreme that a university gave up large group lectures on one course and switched to seminars and group project work because, “try as they might”, they could not get students to engage properly. Other programmes at the same institution witnessed more misconduct – “quite serious disruptive behaviour” – but lacked the flexibility to alter their course design, an interviewee said.

The interviews confirmed that such behaviour was aimed predominantly at female lecturers, particularly in subjects that were considered more “masculine”, such as sports science and business and management.

This included sexist comments being called out during lectures and sexualised comments being left on student feedback forms.

The interviews also showed that different types of laddish behaviour were found in different contexts. Laddish disruptions to teaching and learning were more frequently reported in post-92 institutions, while in pre-92 institutions misconduct was more likely to be found in social contexts.

In social situations, laddish behaviour was most commonly associated with white, middle- and upper-class, heterosexual men. Those who engaged in it seemed to have an “entitled approach” to life and a sense that they could get away with it, according to the authors. The attitude was epitomised by men’s rugby teams, although this was by no means the only place it was found.

In teaching and learning contexts, the disruptive laddish behaviour was seen to come from “non-traditional” students, ie, learners who were not middle or upper class, the authors say. However, they add, the distinction was “not clear cut”, with examples of classroom disruption in pre-92 institutions from “traditional” students also emerging.

Professor Jackson, professor of gender and education at Lancaster University, said the research showed that the strategies often adopted by universities, such as targeting student drinking or curbing the behaviour of certain sports clubs, “would not solve the problem”.

“We need to see this as a gender-based problem, rather than individualised, and to think how we can challenge those gender norms that are underpinning it,” she said.

Without recognising that it occurred in different contexts and in different ways, laddish behaviour was “trivialised and rendered less visible”, she said.

Universities would need to enact culture change, she said. “The first step is acknowledgement and recognition that this is not a small issue. Universities need to understand it and take it seriously across the whole institution,” she said.

“From the sexualised imagery students are presented with on flyers for club nights to all the ways that the hierarchy of gender works within an institution, such as senior management teams that are largely made up of men, it’s all inextricably linked.”

anna.mckie@timeshighereducation.com