I am wondering what problem you might be hoping to address with such a study? I think it is characteristic of my communication style to use humour - hence I think much of my teaching, including the actual instruction, involves the use of humour. I'm so surprised you found no examples ... I suspect humour is common amongst some (not all) teachers in New Zealand primary (elementary) schools. It should be possible to collect data of humorous instructional events through classroom observation - perhaps of teachers identified as exemplifying the characteristics you are looking for (i.e. humour, particularly) in their teaching. An in-depth analysis of some rich classroom data from a small number of classrooms/teachers should offer some interesting insights and suggest further areas for study. Or perhaps you could work with some teachers to investigate how to use humour (more effectively/with more impact etc...?) in their teaching.

Just some rambling thoughts ... it's an interesting question you have posed!

Dear Zainab Haafar Auda,

thank you for your response.

I am familiar with the saying and thanks for pointing this saying out. However, I want to  address humor in more specific terms, not only as a stress reliever or as a means of commenting on situation in the classroom. I want to point out the possible involvement of humor in order to actually teach. Let's say that it is probably possible to use e.g. jokes or anecdotes in order to explain or to give examples of specific grammar structure or, mostly, a word or expressions in general which were students unfamiliar with before.

But there is the question, how could I research this type of involvement of humor (as a means, similarly to the example stated above)? And, the following question, is it possible to use humor as a means to teach not only in language education but also in other subjects as well?

Generally speaking, my dissertation is going to deal with the undergraduate training of future teachers, therefore, I am not going to deal only with future language teachers. 

Thank you again for your response and if you are interested, please, let me know and throw at me any thoughts you are getting regarding my kinda wide topic.

Hello, Ben,

thank you for your advice. I am familiar with the concept of usage of cartoons (containing humor) as a teaching device, I mentioned them in my master's thesis. However, the situation of employing humor in teaching is trickier for me since I am not a native speaker, I teach English as a foreign language. Since I am from an Eastern European country, there is still not enough of teachers who are able to teach English language while using ONLY English and, therefore, to use "advanced" means of teaching, e.g. humor, since the majority of them is convinced that the pupils would not be able to understand them and that it would be too time-consuming because of that... Therefore, I know, I've chosen a challenging topic, hence I am searching for different opinions in order to get  under the surface of the topic.

In the Czech Republic, in the English lessons, mostly the language itself is taught and, sometimes, the teachers tend to use out-dated methods, e.g. grammar-translation methods... But this whole situation is connected to the money involved in the field of education... However, not topic of my thesis since it would end in a Greek tragedy, I think...

Hello,

Are you familiar with the following website?

http://www.humoursummerschool.org

A few years ago, one of these summer schools were at Savonlinna, Finland, and it focused on discussing how teachers could use humour as a tool in education. It raised many interesting aspects that deserved further research.

Best regards,

Timo Tossavainen

Hello,

no, I was not familiar with the website you posted - thanks very much. However, I just briefly searched through the site and I do not see any proceedings or posters or anything regarding the presentations presented at the conference. Are there some?

Thank you

Jan Gregar

Thank you, @Zainab!

That's great, yeah, the questionnaire and direct interviews would be great... However, I do not want to be complain all the time, but... I found it hard to find at least some teachers to co-operate with me during my research which was executed in order to complete my master's thesis. The teachers did not want to co-opearate even though the direct observation and everything was done only for my research and everything was anonymous.... Therefore, I am skeptical about finding enough teachers to perform this type of research in which the co-operation would be even more necessary and more demanding from the side of teachers...

Dear Jan,

Strange, my browser took me on the page where I found Events and Links. If this does not work for you, try then to google following sites.

Website of the International Society for Humor Studies--ISHS

Website of The International Summer School and Symposium on Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research and Applications--ISS

Journal HUMOR and books in the Humor Research series

Internet Discussion list on Humor Research. An interdisciplinary forum for the discussion, debate and exchange of ideas and information associated with the study of humour in all its forms.

Academic courses on humour & laughter at Universities

Email addresses and www-sites of humor researchers

Jason Rutters bibliography of humour ("Laughingly Referred To")

Timo

Thank you again, Timo,

the thing is, I can get through to the site of Events and Links. However, there are only reports and discussion groups, which are not open for me, since I have not participated at the conferences. In the reports, there are only names of the contributions. Or, I have found some documents of old conferences of this type, but there were only abstracts in those pdf documents... Therefore, I am curious if there are some whole articles available for me to read... I even tried some of your entries which you send me in order to search them at google, but they are onyl informing about the conference but they do not provide the proceedings from the conferences that have already happened...

Jan

Hello Jan,

I think Gregor makes a good point about approaching the materials instead of the teacher as the source of humour. One place to look in addition to textbooks are the materials provided on the net, for example videos:

1. Fun way to learn about chemistry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBCmt_pJTRA

2. Illustration about internal motivation

I have used this following video of monkeys to illustrate what role fairness plays in internal motivation, not only in humans but also animals. It works well, because it appeals to senses (they are cute), it breaks the monotony of the lecture (visual rather than auditive). The message comes across without having to explain it. And it contains nice drama+comedy in a tight package.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOtlN4pNArk

Good luck with your study - it sounds really interesting!

Karoliina

Hi Jan,

You can also try to look into Affective Events Theory (AET) in organisational behaviour domain and humour in organisational setting to add to theoretical part of your research. It might also give you some ideas for your research questions.

Cheers,

Nataliya

I am wondering what problem you might be hoping to address with such a study? I think it is characteristic of my communication style to use humour - hence I think much of my teaching, including the actual instruction, involves the use of humour. I'm so surprised you found no examples ... I suspect humour is common amongst some (not all) teachers in New Zealand primary (elementary) schools. It should be possible to collect data of humorous instructional events through classroom observation - perhaps of teachers identified as exemplifying the characteristics you are looking for (i.e. humour, particularly) in their teaching. An in-depth analysis of some rich classroom data from a small number of classrooms/teachers should offer some interesting insights and suggest further areas for study. Or perhaps you could work with some teachers to investigate how to use humour (more effectively/with more impact etc...?) in their teaching.

Just some rambling thoughts ... it's an interesting question you have posed!

In Frankl's logotherapy, spawned in Nazi concentration camps, humor played a great role in survival and consequently in the search of man's meaning.  The inmates or victims in the camps would sometimes think of humorous future scenarios where they would meet and ask each other funny questions that only they would know or think of as funny.  

https://meaningtherapy.wordpress.com/tag/humor/

Interesting question. I think of Arthur Koestler's book The Act of Creation where he equates humour with creativity. He calls creativity 'the bringing together of previously separate matrices', and points out that this is typical of humour. 

We used this principle (long time ago) when commissioned by the Swedish National Museum of Natural History, planning a major exhibition on space. Our brief was to convey to visitors the sense of awe and discovery reported by astronauts on viewing the earth from a distance; and to do it in 5-12 minutes because they have a million visitors a year. We did it, with humour, and have since built educational games around the same principle.

Good luck with your research!

Some of my most enjoyable learning experiences were with teachers who knew how to use humor effectively to catch students off-guard (or sleeping, smile).  This is a special gift and it requires the teacher to first know his or her content extremely well but more importantly, to know each student and what might catch their attention if they seem disengaged for multiple reasons.  The key is cresting a climate and culture of making learning fun.  If I were to study this, I would first find out how students perceive the instructor and how they feel about his or her style of teaching and the approaches, including humor they find most enjoyable and pivotal to their engagement and success in meeting learning goals and tasks.  A list and discussion of developmentally appropriate learner-centered approaches (and the supporting research) can be found in my teacher module at: http://www.apa.org/education/k12/learners.aspx

Dear Jan, My E-textbook on the doing and writing of research is unique in that I have enclosed all humour in curly braces. {Like this.} My thinking was that English Second Language readers could skip the humour, and not waste time decoding it.

At the same time, the English First Language readers find my E-textbook to be engaging because of the humour. It is also makes it unique among the very dry textbooks about research.

Perhaps you would want to use my E-textbook as an easy-to-analyse case study on how, where and why to include humour. I will be glad to correspond with you. 

We have also written an E-book intended as a reader by teenagers and up, with a deliberate use of simple English.  In it, our humour is marked more conventionally by the use of exclamation marks. In it, the proportion of humour is much higher to catch the push-button generation's attention.

https://www.amazon.com/author/iankennedy 

Humor is a valuable tool for a professor in teaching. It helps to lighten the mood and to reinforce points of the lecture. However, in the United States two issues come to the forefront of any use of humor: Is it offensive and is it relevant? In the very politically correct environment of the university one must be careful not to use offensive humor or you will be in trouble with the administration. Freedom of speech is somewhat of an illusion here. The other point is that American students are so diverse that they may or may not have seen the same movies, watched the same TV shows, or read the same  books as the professor. Thus there is sometimes no common frame of reference for the humor. If you have to explain the joke, it is no longer funny. 

Greetings to you, Jan of Palacký University of Olomouc.

Similar to the cliche "Laughter is the best medicine", integrating humor in education, or specifically in the process of teaching and learning (T&L) can actually be one of the most effective learning strategies a teacher can utilize. The link between humor and T&L is that humor usually lead to laughter and having fun which in turn, activate the memory to its optimal (Ziv, 1979). In other words, humor enhances learning and makes learning outcomes (LO) much easier to be achieved. 

          Based on my own teaching experience (way back in 1999), students learn best when they are having fun and this includes more than just employing humor in the classroom. For example, I once taught English to 14-year-old students and used a game-based activity called "Who murdered the fat lady?", whereby students needed to ask questions in order to investigate who actually killed the fat lady. The scenario was presented and rules laid out clearly. The students had fun interrogating one another's group and learned the proper structures of question in the target language. There were laughters and a lot of positive vibes in the classroom. It was a win-win situation for students and me, as the teacher.

          However, teachers need to be able to master classroom management first so that students will not get out of hand. 

So, Jan, I hope my feedback helps you in your study of humor and education. Good luck!

Regards,

Hazel

https://www.uab.edu/Communicationstudies/richmond_files/Richmond%20Humor%20in%20Classroom.pdf

https://www.uab.edu/Communicationstudies/richmond_files/Richmond%20Humor%20in%20Classroom.pdf

I guess I'd suggest highjacking the issue by broadening it a bit.

Play, of which verbal humor is a type, is a principal way that mammals learn new relationships (maybe other animals, too, but it's harder to tell).  Maybe its the only way.

I was watching two young rabbits in the back yard.  One would run at the other, and the other would jump in the air, letter the first run under it.  Then the first would do it again from the other direction.  After awhile they reversed roles.  This went on for about ten minutes.  So both were learning a new social act, a new way of relating, by enacting the different roles with another.  It seemed obvious that they were "playing."

In play (or humor) an act has two contradictory meanings and what seems to be one meaning becomes, surprisingly, the other.  What seemed like a rabbit collision became, suddenly, free passage underneath the other.  

The reason that play is important is because it allows new relationships (including new concepts) to be explored without too much risk.  The playful bite or pseudo attack is revealed to be not a real one (see Gregory Bateson's theory of play and fantasy in Steps to an Ecology of Mind), signaling that it;s possible to explore or try out the relationship without severe consequences.  

The reason that teacher humor is important is then (hypothetically) because it shows a willingness to be playful, a willingness to try out new postures with students (or with oneself) and allow them to try things out too, without an overly punitive of judgmental response.  I largely agree with Hazeline's suggestion that students learn best when they are enjoying themselves, but "fun" is an ambiguous word that might suggest lack of seriousness, where what seems to be needed is a balance between novelty and seriousness, like recognizing that a sport is a game and not to be played to the death, but is also to be pursued with competitive vigor to bring out the best in everyone.  Here one might look at John Dewey on work and play (see his chapter on this in Democracy and Education).  

So...on this interpretation, teacher humor, or playfulness, is a vital part of education.  In creating possibilities for education and for learning new relationships or concepts the teacher needs to be playful, too, like one of those rabbits, although an older one.  (Another interesting source on this subject , and on the paradoxes of learning/developing, is the chapter on cognitive change in Newman, Griffin, and Cole's, The Construction Zone).

If you give yourself some scope, and play with it a bit, you're onto a great topic!

Dear Jan,

I add education and humour on a base of Czech Cimrman theatre company (mystification):

A question from educational test: To whom from the three world military generals could his friend say before Good Night, and Good Luck: and hold on  ",Close your eye and sleep"?

Three options:

a) John Zizka of Trocnov and the Chalice, Czech general and Hussite leader, follower of Jan Hus   

b)   Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté KB, British flag officer in the Royal Navy  

c)   Prince Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishchev-Kutuzov,  Field Marshal of the Russian Empire. 

Very important! It is not  sufficient to answer a, b, or c. It is necessary to give reasons for the choice. Clues: find correct answer in Wikipedia (study pictures of the three generals). Sorry, if I am hours sujet.

More in Czech language: http://lide.uhk.cz/pdf/ucitel/vaclavl1/jara.html

Hello, Jaroslav, 

that's nice, I am familiar with this play as well as the others and yes, this is sort of problem-based teaching, thank you!

HG

I have informally held that humor is about the unexpected. 

Others have suggested that biologically it hinges upon a threat which suddenly turns out not to be a threat.  Thus, to a baby who lacks object permanence, Mom disappears, and ceases to exist when she hides behind her hands, saying "Peeek."   This threat of loosing Mom is suddenly mitigated by her  appearing at the word " Boo!"  And babies often find this hilarious.

So to me the interesting question is why does humor have meaning in a teaching setting in this context, and does that imply some other insights into other strategies and interventions?

When students are having fun they are often learning despite themselves. As an example , my students had an exercise in which they had to write a new verse to a song - the point being to get them to analyse and use the prosody, rhythm and rhyme of a model. One group decided to be "naughty" and started their verse with "Don't go to music, wag (ie play truant) instead..."  They thought they were being very funny and wicked but in fact they were absolutely on task and getting as much out of the exercise as everyone else.

On the other hand, as Gregg mentioned above, sometimes you do need to be aware of peoples sensibilities, even when these might seem unreasonable. In a statistics class I once described a standard deviation in a throw away line as not your normal queer. A lesbian student got mortally offended - not I think by what was said, which is really quite unobjectionable if you analyse it, but because the concept of homosexuality was being talked of or referred to in a frivolous way. Of course other people have told me that they would be offended because it was such a feeble attempt at humour!

An interesting question to consider in your dissertation research might be this one: Given that there is some evidence in the literature that supports using humor to engage students in learning, what role do humorously written texts play in this process?

Benjamin is right, different words have different meanings to different people. Those meanings change over time. In a criminal justice context, "Queer" was a 19th century term that referred to counterfeit currency. It of course has different meanings today. The professor using humor has to take these into consideration. Winston Churchill once lamented that the English and the Americans were two great peoples separated by a common language. 

What itself is true, and the experience teaching me it confirms, as more interrelation positive is produces between Professor and group of students, best is the delivery of the teaching and the attention and motivation of the students. Humor with adequate and precise doses, is an element that adds and connects to teacher and student, creating a harmony that enhances the teaching-learning process.

Dear Jan:

It is a very good and wise question. I would like to say that according to my teaching experience humor and teaching must go together. There are numerous beneficial aspects when they go that way since humor helps you to establish a better relationship with students, reduce stress and anxiety, manage conflict, provide an emotional reward that motivates participation and study, and communicate the subject matter more efficiently, promote attention, creativity and memory. For me humor is a vital element in the teaching process. Humor is a didactic means.

My wife, Alleen, and are are writing a book for Cambridge University Press entitled Humor across the Disciplines.  Of course "Education" is one of those disciplines.  To get access to the PowerPoints that we will use for this book, please click on our web site:

http://www.public.asu.edu/~dnilsen

I would like to say that according to my teaching experience humor and teaching must go together. There are numerous beneficial aspects when they go that way since humor helps you to establish a better relationship with students, reduce stress and anxiety, manage conflict, provide an emotional reward that motivates participation and study, and communicate the subject matter more efficiently, promote attention, creativity and memory

To Don L. F. Nilsen -- I loved your Power Point and when I got to the end, I felt empathy for you and your wife ... How would trump react to your conclusion?  Was it kind and respectful?  I ask because the man has trouble with humor ...

Don LF Nilsen veo que tienen muchas presentaciones en power point relacionadas con el humor y diferentes temáticas. En la vida el humor siempre ha de estar presente de una forma o de otra y siempre desde el respeto. Y la profesión y la educación forman parte importante de nuestra vida...

Humour adds life to education.

Don Nilsen - that looks like a fascinating book! I hope we'll hear about it when it's ready.

Humour can be a gate (a "humourgate") to extent/pass the lessons' objects into an Nth-dimensions educational space (N>3+1).

One study pointing to humor's benefits appeared this year in College Teaching (Vo. 54, No. 1, pages 177-180). In it, Sam Houston State University psychologist Randy Garner, PhD, found that students were more likely to recall a statistics lecture when it was interjected with jokes about relevant topics. For example, in a lecture segment on reporting research findings, Garner used a metaphorical joke about a planned escape by one of two prisoners in a desert jail. One prisoner tries to escape after unsuccessfully persuading the other to go with him, only learning--after breaking out--that escape is futile as there is nothing but sand for hundreds of miles. After he's captured and returned to his cell, he tells the story of failed escape to the other prisoner who subsequently shares that he tried to escape a few years earlier. Incredulous, the first prisoner exclaimed, "You knew! Why didn't you tell me?" whereupon the other remarks, "Silly man, you should know that no one reports negative results."

"Well-planned, appropriate, contextual humor can help students ingrain information," explains Garner, who in his introduction to psychology course uses TV programs like the audition episodes from "American Idol" to demonstrate such psychological concepts as self-handicapping and selection bias.

Humor can also pique students' interest outside the classroom. In a 2005 article published in Teaching of Psychology(Vol. 32, No. 4, pages 246-248) Ohio University-Zanesville psychology professors Mark Shatz, PhD, and Frank LoSchiavo, PhD, found that when a professor inserted self-deprecating jokes, psychology-related cartoons and top 10 lists in an online introductory psychology course, their students more often logged on to the online system Blackboard and were more likely to enjoy the class.

"Professors' jobs are to educate, not to entertain," says Shatz. "But if humor can make the learning process more enjoyable, then I think everybody benefits as a result."

And the benefits may not be limited to academic performance, according to Berk in "Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator." In the book, he suggests that humor's primary psychological role is as an emotional response or buffer to relieve physical stress. Moreover, laughter has been shown to stimulate a physiological effect that decreases stress hormones such as serum cortisol, dopac and epinephrine.

In an upcoming article in Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, Berk found that during students' most anxious times, such as prior to or during an exam, humorous directions or test items may relieve students' tension and help them perform better.

"Humor can transform the testing situation from formal and stodgy to relaxed and comfortable," he says.

Don,  If you need a good quantum mechanics joke, I have a pair. Holler some time.

The role of humor in quantum mechanics is to blow off steam about the fact that nobody has a decent intuition about what it does.  We have to trust the math, and the math says weird things, which unfortunately are just what nature does.

Hello there,

There is no doubt to the fact that the funny bone is connected to the sense of wonder. and beyond that it creates a unique way to help in the retention of more facts than the conventional teaching technique, I hope your research also open newer frontiers to humor in education and explore terrains that have seldom been explored.

Good luck

Regards