Elements of Humour in the Classroom A Qualitative Approach to Data (original) (raw)

What's Laughter got to do with it? The Case for a Humorous Philosophy of Education

A survey of the history of Western philosophy suggests that relatively little has been written about humor, laughter and amusement. While many philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle, touched on humor in their writings, they generally did not address this topic in depth or attempt to create a general theory of humor. Writing in the 1980's, humor theorist John Morreall noted that-until a few years ago, the study of laughter was treated in academic circles as frivolous.‖ 1 Morreall attributed this neglect to the misguided belief that since laughter is not a serious activity, it is neither possible nor desirable to investigate this phenomenon seriously. Moreover, since laughing has rarely been considered a capacity that is uniquely human, it never received the kind of attention and serious investigation that was dedicated to thinking and speaking. Aside from a general tendency to neglect humor, Morreall argues in several works including The Philosophy of Laughter and Humor and Comic Relief that throughout most of the history of Western philosophy, the assessment of humor has not been kind. 2 Indeed, not only Plato and Aristotle but also Descartes and Hobbes generally viewed humor with scorn and tended to focus on the negative rather than positive aspects of humor. Plato argues in The Republic that the guardians-must not be too fond of laughter. For usually when one indulges violent laughter, such a thing is apt to bring in oneself a violent upset of feeling.‖ 3 In addition, he claimed in the dialogue Philebus (48-50) that laughter is usually prompted by negative feelings such as malice and the enjoyment of seeing other people making fools of themselves.

The role of humour concerning the learning activity - an exploratory study

Regarding the manner a learning activity barges in, one significant element is treated with not enough attention – humor. To make yourself enjoyable in correlation with the ones attending your performance implies a lot more than just appearance and knowledge. An unambiguous sense of humor can help you catch all the attention and interest you seek, within the realm of possibility. Although alluding to this subject may seem infinitesimal or frivolous, in reality, the presence of humor in the vast repertoire of values a teacher should acquire represents an asset, a way to come up with something innovative, an optimization, an update. Adding a nuance of playfulness in the learning process implies profound psychological characteristics (from inherent capacities to gained ones) which need to be studied in detail. This exploratory study aims to follow the impact that humor's presence has on one's performance during the formal context of a learning activity. Authors' exploratory advancement, this study merges both the perception of professors and students, accordingly to the desirable demeanor of the aforementioned – professors – generating relaxing training frameworks based in humor. An evaluation where P.C. Smith's and L.M. Kendall's behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS) were used (starting from J.C. Flanagan's critical incident technique), while using short explanations represented by adjectives, verbs or short descriptions, results in a quantifiable clarification of key performance dimensions for a certain type of modern teaching activity.

An Experimental Study of Students' Perceptions of Classroom Humour

International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 2021

This study examines the benefits of using humour in the language classroom. It investigates the incorporation of humour in the classroom and how it can facilitate and create pertinent conditions for learning and teaching. It probes students' attitudes towards their teachers' humour, and whether they consider it a learning aid or not. The study used a quasi-experiment that involved two tests and two groups of students: a treatment group and a control one. The pre-test and post-test results and findings revealed that humour facilitates learning and teaching by reducing anxiety, increasing motivation, encouraging participation, boosting concentration and improving retention.

The necessity of using humour in the teaching activity

IJSEI, 2017

The importance given to the pragmatic and functional nature of humor in the educational system expresses the existence and assumption of specific teaching strategies of the school organization. The idea we want to analyze is to see to what extent the use of humor in didactic activity becomes relevant and, at the same time, to analyze the (direct/indirect) relationship between it and the social and educational reality. Thus, we are interested in capturing the main ideas that refer to such an approach to humor in relation to the idea of education and, implicitly, to the didactic activity.

Educators, Students and Humour in the Classroom: Creating a Positive Pedagogical Experience

The use of humour in a pedagogical setting has always been viewed as frivolous and not to be encouraged. However, researchers and educators alike have discovered that humour can create a positive environment for students to learn and develop social networks, including memory and behaviour skills. The history of humour has changed as the world develops and changes, cultures begin to review their educational systems and teaching methodologies. The following paper on humour in the classroom discusses theories on humor and teaching and its effect in the learning environment as a teaching tool.

The Laughing Classroom: Humor, Teaching, and Learning

2021

Diverse strategies are employed nowadays to ascertain effective teaching- learning process. Among these methods chosen to achieve desired result is the making use of humor—a teaching approach which has been discerned as an effective way of creating a more productive teaching and learning, may it be language. This paper discusses the place and importance of humor to teachers, learners, and education as a whole. Barriers and guidelines to using humor are also discussed. The Biblical foundation of humor stresses the benefits humor (laughter) gives.Diverse strategies are employed nowadays to ascertain effective teaching- learning process. Among these methods chosen to achieve desired result is the making use of humor—a teaching approach which has been discerned as an effective way of creating a more productive teaching and learning, may it be language. This paper discusses the place and importance of humor to teachers, learners, and education as a whole. Barriers and guidelines to using...

Teachers’ Perceptions of Humor in Teaching

"During the last years more and more teachers move away from the traditional pedagogic perception according to which humor does not fit the serious work of teaching. This development is connected i.a. with the realization and empirical verifi-cation of the positive effects of humor from the Education Science and other scientific disciplines (Medicine, Psychology etc.). Despite this, research shows that some teach-ers avoid humorous situations in the classroom, because a) they are afraid that they may lose control of the students, b) they do not believe in humor’s positive effects and c) they construe teaching as a very serious affair. There is also evidence that teachers use humor in their classroom in order to attract the attention and the interest of students, to decrease the stress of teaching, to improve the social climate and their rela-tion with the students, to promote learning, but also to feel themselves comfortably and relaxed. The studies on humor in the classroom have increased by far in recent years. This shows the importance of humor in teaching but also contributes in the clarifica-tion of teachers’ perceptions and practices about humor and the terms and conditions for humor’s presence in the classroom. In this frame we investigated the perceptions of 771 teachers of elementary school in Greece concerning humor in their teaching. More concretely we examined the perceptions of teachers concerning the advantages of humor but also the likely dangers that may come from it, the frequency and the forms of humor that they use in their teaching and finally their more general apprecia-tion for the importance of humor in their school life and in their life in general. The first analyses show that teachers are very positive towards humor, they rate it very highly relative to other elements of teaching, recognize the same positive effects that research has highlighted, but they also recognize some negative aspects (aggressive/hostile humor: irony, sarcasm). "

Pedagogical Effect of Humor on Teaching

DigitalStream Proceedings, 2009

Humor is a social phenomenon and a form of communication that should not be disregarded in any learning or teaching environment. It plays a fundamental role in creating harmony and cohesion between students and teachers. The significant role humor plays stems from the fact that humor is conducive to the learning process and intercultural awareness. I Questionnaires were distributed to students to see whether or not they have learned subject-matters in humorous teaching and learning environments. The effect of humor on the learner's creativity will also be examined. Questionnaires were analyzed and a rationale was provided as to the effect and role humor plays on their educational outcomes. Conclusions were drawn and further pedagogical implications were provided for further studies. t helps break the monotony and keeps students tuned in to their teachers. One of the purposes of this paper is to examine the role humor plays in teaching and students' learning. It attempts to show how humor can be used as a teaching and an effective communicative device in the classroom. The paper also identifies the functions of humor, its effect in a teaching environment, and its contribution to learners' creativity.

No Laughing Matter: Why Educators Need to Take Humor More Seriously

2021

Humor may make people laugh, but linguistically it is no laughing matter. This paper proposed to the educators, teacher preparation programs, and educational researchers who need to take humor and the related phenomenon of play more seriously in their approach to understanding the dynamics of classroom interaction and how challenging humor and play can be to interpret and navigate as they unfold spontaneously in teacherstudent interactions. This study aimed to identify the kinds of metacommunicative awareness that teachers, particularly novice educators, need to develop to navigate the interactions they engage with successfully. Meta communicative awareness referred to a deep-seated understanding of how meaning in interaction is constructed and an ability to step outside one's immediate interpretive frame. The study was conducted between 2016 and 2018 in a community-based afterschool program. The program serves adults and children in the surrounding area who identify as Bangladeshi. The data were collected through audio-recorded interviews with 18 university participants, approximately 40 hours of audiorecordings of homework help sessions, samples of university students' notes and reflective writing from their time as volunteers, and samples of the children's schoolwork. The homework helpers were undergraduate and graduate students from two universities. Some of the homework helpers were pursuing master's degrees in education. They aspired to careers as teachers, and others had volunteered for the program to fulfil institutional community service requirements. At the program, these homework helpers were referred to as "volunteers," and they occupied both the institutional and interactional role of "educator" concerning the children. It can be concluded that humor and play-interpreted talk in educational settings quite challenging. Moreover, a failure to recognize talk as play could have serious consequences for what ultimately happens between teachers and students and how they come to see one another.

The Humor as a Form of Artistic Expression in Education

Review of Artistic Education, 2021

The relevance of the idea of humor at the social level expresses, from our viewpoint, the need to understand, assume and, why not, use it at the level of social communities. Under these conditions, we consider the usefulness and functionality/applicability of such an idea in educational terms, and in particular, at the level of the class of students. Such an idea is the very idea of humor as it is found in the educational dimension. Moreover, our interest is focused upon seeing and to what extent, the idea of humor can be considered to be an art, if we consider stylized / “aestheticized”, artistic, expressive criteria. That is why, the assumed purpose of this approach that we have achieved consists in an exhaustive analysis of the idea of humor and, implicitly, of the art of humor in education, as well as of the way in which it manifests and it is recognized at the educational level.