Academic Bullying and Incivility in Adult, Higher, Continuing, and Professional Education

Abstract

Bullying and related incivility have become critical social issues influencing not only individual lives but also society at large; yet, extensive research on bullying only began about four decades ago (Randall, 2001; Sanders, 2004). At that time, bullying was understood as a temporary phase in childhood development. Later, in the early 1990s, aggressive behaviors such as bullying became more systematically studied and were found to also be adult issues (Adams, 1992; Leymann, 1996; Randall, 2001). In recent years, bullying, incivility, and violence have gained national attention in the media because of incidents such as Tyler dementi's cyberbullying in New Jersey. News reporters and social commentators discussed how bullying incidents were connected with uncivil and violent acts and behaviors and discussed how incivility and violence affect people, communities, and society. Although an increasingly serious issue in contemporary society, bullying has not been discussed much as an adult problem affecting adults. The 2014 WBIU.S. Workplace Bullying Survey, conducted by the Workplace Bullying Institute, found that one-quarter of adult Americans (27%) said they directly experienced abusive conduct at work (Namie, Christensen, & Phillips, 2014, p. 4), and over one third of adults are aware of incidents of workplace bullying. Bullying in adulthood, therefore, appears to be prevalent in U.S. society and should be addressed as a major social issue. However, as the connotation of bullying is typically regarded as a children's developmental issue, addressing issues of bullying in adulthood is often negatively perceived, avoided, and even taboo (Keashly & Neuman, 2010; Misawa, 2013). Yet, it is a serious problem affecting bystanders as well as victims (Randall, 2001) and must be addressed in the process of planning, designing, and implementing democratic and inclusive learning environments, one of adult education's purposes (Lindeman, 1926). This special Adult Learning issue aims to provide an overview and understanding of historical and contemporary academic bullying and related incivility based on literature and empirical studies, so readers can be better informed about the prevalence of bullying, incivility, and violence. In addition, we hope the contemporary theories and concepts, such as cyberbullying and positional bullying, will enable researchers and scholars to identify these behaviors when they occur and explore them further. Snapshots this special issue's articles follow. In Cuts and Bruises Caused by Arrows, Sticks, and Stones in Academia: Theorizing Three Types of Racist and Homophobic Bullying in Adult and Higher Education, Mitsunori Misawa discusses how academic bullying, based on the intersection of racism and homophobia, is prevalent in higher education and how adult bullying influences faculty in higher education. He discusses three types of bullying and describes how each manifests and affects participants. Melissa Wright and Lilian Hill, in Incivility Among Health Sciences Faculty, discuss manifestations of faculty-to-faculty incivility and provide examples of how it affects faculty-to-faculty interactions. The article provides suggestions and strategies to develop policies to deal with faculty-to-faculty incivility. Edwina Washington talks about a new area of bullying in Overview of Cyberbullying in Higher Education and examines the current status of state and federal laws on cyberbullying from a legal perspective. She argues that cyberbullying is a serious social issue due to new technology that enables perpetrators to bully victims using text messages, photos, and videos over the Internet. For prevention, she points out that laws directly addressing cyberbullying must be enacted at a local level in higher education. In Those 'Mean Girls and Their Friends': Bullying and Mob Rule in the Academy, Audrey Dentith, Robin Redmon Wright, and Joellen Coryell discuss their experiences as adult education faculty targeted by bullying. …