A snog-free zone

A sense of humour is essential in maintaining classroom discipline, says Sally Brown

During a lecture you are suddenly confronted with a pair of entwined students kissing passionately. Behind them a sports-mad student is attempting to listen to a cricket commentary via an earpiece.

A student in the front row is deeply asleep (and snoring). And a group of international students is continuously and irritatingly talking while you are trying to lecture. Then there is the student ostentatiously reading a newspaper. Or the students who are listening and laughing intermittently - it gradually dawns on you that they are conducting a sweepstake on how often you said "Right".

All these things have happened to lecturers known to me. Another time a serious scuffle broke out, with potential injury to one or more parties. Then there was the birthday-surprise stripagram.

We assume that students are well-motivated individuals who want to learn and that poor behaviour in class is something students grow out of. Nevertheless, as lecturers, we need to learn to manage disruptive behaviour effectively if we want to maintain a learning environment.

However, "classroom discipline" is not really a useful concept with a group of adults who are volunteers rather than conscripts and may be regarded as paying clients. A sense of humour helps. The lecturer faced with the snoggers was at first stunned and then amused, so stared pointedly at them. In a moment or two the room was silent, and when the couple at last came up for air, 200 people were staring at them. The lecturer continued, but the couple did not.

Students counting your irritating mannerisms can be terribly disconcerting. Trying to ignore them normally results in making it worse for you and funnier for them. Perhaps the best way to counter the problem once you have worked out what they are counting is to make a joke of it yourself.

The main thing is not to lose your temper because this is more likely to make you a figure of fun than of authority. All might not be as it seems. The lecturer who became annoyed with the chattering students was mortified to discover that the noise was generated by students simultaneously translating for each other. She felt bad that she had nearly over-reacted to what she perceived as discourtesy.

And the snoring student was discovered to have been up all night nursing a terminally ill parent. There are many reasons why a student may fall asleep in your classes and it is never wise to assume that it is just laziness. Many lecturers feel that it is best to ignore behaviour that is not affecting others. The sleeping student may only be noticed by the lecturer and it may be more effective to have a quiet word afterwards. This is what the lecturer with the cricket-mad student decided to do (having first checked the latest score).

Some kinds of behaviour must be addressed. We cannot prevent students reading material other than our handouts in lectures so long as they are discreet, but the student reading the broadsheet was making a not too subtle point and was asked to put it away or leave because the lecture was obviously proving of little value to him.

Similarly the scuffle had to be stopped. The lecturer has some responsibility for the safety of the students. Ideally this would be terminated by a stern word from the tutor, followed by a request for the students to desist or leave. However, you would be ill-advised to attempt to intervene physically as this could result in an assault on you, or charges of assault against you. If you are worried, seek or send for outside help from porters or security staff. If students will not leave when you ask them, you really have no alternative but to leave yourself.

You could try saying: "I am leaving the room for five minutes. When I come back only those who are interested in learning will remain." This is a better face-saver than trying to win a battle of nerves with an argumentative individual.

Leaving the lecture theatre was the only real alternative for the lecturer coping with the stripagram. A number of students left also. It is often difficult to establish who has initiated such an activity; in this case the culprits were never found, but the course leader made it clear that the incident would result in disciplinary proceedings if it recurred.

Unpleasantness like this is mercifully rare. Students are usually relatively well behaved if they are treated with respect by a tutor who prepares properly and who retains a sense of humour. After all, students in higher education have chosen to be there and have the ultimate sanction available to them of voting with their feet.

Sally Brown is director of quality enhancement, University of Northumbria.