‘They just don’t seem to really care, they just think it’s cool to sit there and talk’: Laddism in Higher Education

Professor Carolyn Jackson Lancaster University

c.jackson@lancaster.ac.uk

Background

Student ‘lad culture’ has become a national issue. The phenomenon, often associated with the website Unilad, has become a catch-all term for anything from boozy boisterousness to casual misogyny and even sexual abuse. But despite numerous media reports on laddism, universities still have little idea of how widespread its effects are. (Guardian.co.uk, 05/04/13) Lad culture's beery, shouty voice is dominating student life and alienating women (The Observer, 28/4/13)

NUS Project

‘Lad culture’ was seen as a ‘pack’ mentality evident in activities such as sport and heavy alcohol consumption, and ‘banter’ which was often sexist, misogynist and homophobic. It was also thought to be sexualized and to involve the objectification of women, and at its extremes rape supportive attitudes and sexual harassment and violence.

(Phipps and Young, 2013: 53)

NUS Project‘Lad culture’ affected our participants in educational, social and personal spheres of their university lives. While many felt that its impact was limited in educational settings, they also described these environments as ‘gendered’, and during our discussions it became evident that many factors in this gendering could be linked to elements of ‘lad culture’.

(Phipps and Young, 2013: 53)

Overview

• The research project• What constitutes laddism in this H.E. context?• Laddism in teaching-learning contexts–Who is laddish and how is it manifest?–Challenging Laddism– Impact on the lads

• Summary

The Research (SES funded)

• Steve Dempster (Lancaster University) and Lucie Pollard (University of Greenwich)

• Site - one post-1992 university in southern England

• Questionnaires – all sports science students (years 1-3) • Observations – 6 x 2 hour lectures• Interviews - individual interviews with 33 students (11

women and 22 men) and 5 members of staff (2 women and 3 men).

Jackson’s Secondary School Research (2002, 2003, 2006, 2009, 2010)

Two projects exploring motives for ‘laddishness’

• 8 secondary schools: 6 co-ed, 2 single-sex• Questionnaire data from ~800 pupils• Interviews with 203 pupils (year 9)• Interviews with 30 teachers

What constitutes laddism in this H.E. Context?

‘Lads’ were typically presented as: loud and attention-seeking, confident, into sport, popular, jokers, often heavy drinkers and sexually promiscuous.

What constitutes laddism in this H.E. Context?

Quite cocky, loud, I guess athletic, big personalities, just boyish really. (Hazel, Y1, sports science)

There is this laddish culture with drinking and stuff and I think it goes with every university. … I’d say to include sleeping around as well sometimes, I think, and yeah, just, you know, looking to be popular as well. So … in a team, like in a sports team or whatever, like say the rugby team or something, you know, and quite a big figure in the team. (Jack, Y3, sports science and football)

What constitutes laddism in this H.E. Context?

… like typical look at me, I’m just an idiot. Basically I see them [lads] as an idiot but they think they’re really cool. (laughs)OK, so what do these sort of ‘idiots’ do and why do they think it’s cool?Because … they seem to want to be the centre of attention and [want] people laughing at them, like their friends laughing at them: oh, that’s really funny, I’ll do that again, I’ll carry on doing that. But as long as they’re getting a laugh they’ll do it again and again no matter how stupid they look.

(Justine, Y2, sports science and coaching)

Laddish behaviours in teaching-learning contexts

There’s a big group of them [lads]; they turn up about twenty minutes late … and I’ve complained about them a few times … I sit like right at the front [of the lecture theatre], so for me to be able to hear them like it’s affecting my learning ... I’ve had to ask for extra help when I shouldn’t have [had to] because I would have understood it if they weren’t talking, so that’s annoying. But that’s just boys isn’t it! … but they just don’t seem to really care, they just think it’s cool to sit there and talk. Like the worst is a Monday morning because they’ll talk about football and you don’t really want to hear about football when you’re in an anatomy class. (Paris, Y1 Sports Science)

Laddish behaviours in teaching-learning contexts

It’s more of the popular ones that will act like that [laddishly]. The quieter ones that sit at the front, they don’t act all laddish and that, it’s the popular guys that go on like that.OK, so it’s the guys that don’t sit at the front. And what are the ways they behave that sort of distinguish them from the guys that sit at the front?Stupid. Like, they might, it’s the loud jokes that they make, or they might even throw stuff at each other, you know, all that silly laddish stuff where they’ll throw things at each other and they find that funny. They do nothing against like the women or anything, it’s just towards each other, they just, yeah, they just act like boys; they just throw things and laugh about each other and all that.

Mia continued (Y2, sports science)Yeah. And does it actually disrupt the teaching sometimes, do you think?Yeah, it does, yeah, big time … I can hear them laughing and joking behind me, and that alone, that just stops whoever’s teaching to tell them to be quiet. Or if they catch them throwing something at one of their friends then that stops the class as well, and it’s just little things like that that they do. Or even, some of them will make stupid noises, just silly noises that their friends will find funny - nobody else does - and that, again, would stop the class. …Does that tend to be blokes, are women involved?It’s the guys. No, the women, there’s only some girls that will be there and you’ll hear them laugh, but they’re not, there’s no girls on our course that act like the boys where they’ll start throwing things and being really destructive.

Challenging Laddism

With sports science you get a lot of students who just came out of school so, you know, a lot of them are growing up still … For me, being a mature student, I’m there for a reason: I’m not there because my parents told me I must go, I’m there to learn I think one of my biggest problems we had in class was basically people being rude and disrespectful in class, and basically making noise, not paying attention to lecturers ...Were they in the minority would you say, or was it quite a sizeable group?Yeah, they were only a minority, a group of boys really.A group of boys. OK. With that group of boys sort of like being rude or maybe being noisy, would that affect your learning do you think, in the class?

Challenging LaddismYeah, it does, it does, it does when you’re trying to listen to a lecturer explaining to you something you don’t know, you’re learning something new and you’ve got people in the background making noise, disrupting the class, you know. It does interrupt with your learning and it interrupts with listening, especially if … you don’t get something because someone’s been making noise in the background and then you have to keep asking the lecturer ‘oh can you repeat yourself’. … a couple of times I had to say, and a couple of my other classmates had to say, you know, ‘quieten down, I’m here to learn, I pay my fees to come here, if you don’t want to learn come out of the class’.

(Saisha, Y1 sports science)

Challenging Laddism

Do you think the laddish behaviour affects other people’s learning?Sometimes, coz I know some students that sit at the back can get quite loud while lecturers are talking, so I know some of the girls at the front always have a go at them for talking too loud, or for talking at all during a lecture.So students at the back are talking during the lecture?Yeah.Right. And is it just a few people who find that a nuisance, or would you say most people?I’d say it was most people, but it’s only those couple of girls at the front that actually have the courage to speak up and actually tell them to be quiet. (Hazel, Y1, Sports Science)

Challenging Laddism

‘one student a couple years ago, she was great, a very strong lass, who stood up, turned round and said, “Will you shut the fuck up, I’m trying to learn”. And they did … peer pressure gets them a lot more ‘coz suddenly they’re made to look fools by a girl, and actually, they didn’t like that.’ (John, Lecturer)

Impacts on ‘the lads’

Sitting in my classes now compared to the first year is completely different.In what way?Oh, just like … the laddishness and the messing about and sort of the effort is sort of completely flipped around with almost all the students.So what were they like in the first year?You can definitely tell there was more … laddishness, loudness, messing about, giggling, laughing in classes and trying to get away with stuff and push the teacher as much as they could.

(Pete, Y3, sports science with coaching, mature)

Impacts on ‘the lads’

From year 1 to year 2 you see the biggest drop, where you lose all the students that either are not really cut out for the university life or don’t really have the drive to carry on to university. And I guess that’s the thing with year 1, it weeds out the people that are not really that focused and want to go on to year 2, and I guess year 2 to year 3’s pretty much the same as well. (Ryan, Y3, sports science)

Utilising this concept [alienation] can help to explain the behaviour of some students in terms of coming to lectures late; talking at the back of the lecture theatre; texting throughout, all of which lecturers and students highlighted as problematic. This behaviour could be construed as refusing to adopt the ‘good student’ subjectivity (Grant 1997) but what it actually points to is the need for lecturers to look afresh at teaching styles and the context of learning in which some students are being marginalised.

(Burke et al 2013, 40)

In respect to the football coaching side of it, I think, well speaking to the other lads they were quite disappointed with the fact that we thought we’d be more hands on with the football coaching side of it and we weren’t actually. We didn’t actually do that much practical and when we had the coaching lectures they were just generalised coaching whereas we thought they’d be more football based.

(Tim Y3, sports science with football)

Quite a lot of students who come to do sports science come from a BTEC background, and I think the problem with that is they are used to doing things in a practical fashion more than actually in a classroom set up. And some of the students who come in suffer from the actual perception that it is a sports thing that they are coming to do here, OK, and they miss that it’s sports science. And that is what creates, I think, some of the problems which we have seen in sports science. I can’t say that it’s a major, you know, a huge, big problem we have been seeing, but I think they come in thinking that it’s going to be more of a physical thing rather than sitting in a classroom and being introduced to metabolism and biochemistry and physiology and things like that. (Nader, Lecturer)

‘They just don’t seem to really care, they just think it’s cool to sit there and talk’: Laddism in Higher Education

Professor Carolyn Jackson Lancaster University

c.jackson@lancaster.ac.uk