“I don’t even recognize myself anymore”: An autoethnography of workplace bullying in higher education

Abstract

The purpose of this autoethnography was to contextualize a personal workplace bullying experience in higher education with the intention to promote action and change within higher education policy and practice. The research questions that guided this study were: How do I tell the story of my experience with workplace bullying in higher education? What are the personal and social impacts of my experience with workplace bullying? What strategies did I use to persevere through the workplace bullying experience? Bullying and incivility in higher education contexts persists despite having knowledge of the negative implications and desire of institutions for change. Three themes emerged in this autoethnography: (1) I don’t even recognize myself anymore; (2) Reliving past trauma: I thought that part of my life was over; and (3) Coping and Survivor’s Guilt. This autoethnography adds to the body of literature surrounding bullying and incivility in the workplace; offers examples of how workplace bullying and incivility impacted a victim’s professional and personal life, along with the victim’s psychological and physical well-being; and facilitates critical reflection on this experience in order to generate innovative methods to address the prevalence and minimize the impacts of similar experiences in the higher education environments.

Bullying in higher education: an endemic problem?

“…This change primarily results in the well-defined and identified practice of bullying being replaced with victims enduring the accumulated impact of acts of varied disrespect such as negative comments, under the breath comments, intentionally misinterpreting instructions or spreading rumours, collectively known as incivility. (Heffernan & Bosetti, 2021, p. 1; see also Higgins, 2023) The evidence shows that bullying appears to work both ways, bottom up as well as top down. Thus, deans, who oversee faculties or groups of departments and are a key part of higher education's middle management, have been identified as particularly subject to bullying: 'a majority of deans currently experience regular acts of bullying or incivil-ity… Many deans believe that an inherent part of their role is that they will be bullied, and as such, part of their role is to deal with these actions' (Heffernan & Bosetti, 2021, p. 16).…”

Documenting and analyzing the relevance of Universal Design for Learning in developing inclusive provisions for culturally diverse learners in online pedagogy

“…In higher education, auto-ethnography allows professionals with broad and rich scope in their work mandate and professional objectives to use these institutional experiences as the basis for groundbreaking analyses that can support transformative change in the sector (Pithouse-Morgan et al, 2021). Auto-ethnography has gained credibility as a unique window into the analysis of organizational challenges that would otherwise remain unexplored, under-researched, and under-documented (Higgins, 2023).…”

Working on scorched earth: Contemporary risks of higher education leadership critique through autoethnography

“…Contemporary leadership critique in autoethnographies of higher education may in some instances be a cathartic process by which the individual undertaking the project seeks to reclaim a sense of self (e.g. Higgins, 2024), and autoethnography may give a false perception of providing a safe space where the marginalised can speak with impunity. However, the ingrained power imbalance between leaders and their 'followers' may not be so easily set aside, and given that "good leadership has frequently been associated with the possession of particular moral traits" (Deckers, 2021, p. 76), where leadership is challenged in autoethnography, it is not uncommon for the focus to be on failures of these moral traits, with the position and the person closely entwined.…”