In my department's recent PD meeting, we were given a quick introduction to the term lateral violence. This was initially just part of the introduction of a new Human Resources employee, whose past work focused on working in US hospitals to identify and decrease this. However, what began as an introduction quickly became thirty minutes of meeting digression.
Essentially, lateral violence is all the traditional indirect and sometimes direct aggression or violence directed towards one's peers. Examples include non-verbal innuendo (eyebrow raising), undermining activities, backstabbing, broken confidences, etc. There are only three full-time faculty in my program, and about eight part-time. We all work very closely, and the three of us full-time faculty share office space, and collaborate and work together in detail every single day. Another program within our department that is much larger immediately began to show obvious disdain between smaller groups of their whole. Even as we discussed these concepts, the display of lateral violence within the room was immediate and obvious. It was hard, and sadly entertaining, to see such behavior within my colleagues and between peers that were supposed to be on the same team. The majority of them agreed that we should as an entire school engage in lateral violence training, which would include we carry pocket cards with pre-written replies whenever encountered with such acts. I chose to bring this up, because it seems to relate to what I've been reading elsewhere in this PME 811 course, regarding noticing behavior and working to change it. A large part of that however, is noticing behavior you wish to change for the betterment of others, and perhaps those involved here don't wish to? It sounds like it has become to an extent that it is affecting teacher attendance and life outside of the workplace. Perhaps this group needs to identify a project to work on with a skilled facilitator as suggested be Bradley Ermeling and LearningForward. Perhaps this behavior requires what Noddings termed confirmation, where instead of criticizing their behavior, they are pointed towards a better course of action - similar to the lateral violence approach but with less officialdom. Has anyone else been introduced to this type of terminology or training? Perhaps I am naive to think that as professionals we should be able to put aside differences and work together, after all we should be modelling the behavior we aspire of our students. For more information on Lateral Violence: https://www.arnnl.ca/sites/default/files/Civility%20and%20Nursing%20Practice.pdf Noddings, N. (2010). Moral education in an age of globalization. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(4), 390–396. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2008.00487.x https://learningforward.org/publications/learning-principal/learning-principal-blog/learning-principal/2012/10/24/the-learning-principal-fall-2012-vol.-8-no.1
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AuthorI teach Paramedicine at Cambrian College, in Sudbury, Ontario. I also continue to work as a paramedic, and ride bikes. This is my third semester in the PME program, and I look forward to learning with everyone! Archives
March 2017
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