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Călin, R.A. & Bîrsănescu, I.A. (2017). The role of humour concerning the
learning activity - an exploratory study susţinut la Conferinţa Internaţională
”Education & Psychology Challanges Teachers for the Knowledge Society”
- 4TH Edition (EPC-TKS 2017), Ploiești, 19-20.05.2017

The role of humour concerning the learning activity

-an exploratory study
Călin Răzvan-Alexandrua, Bîrsănescu Irina-Alexandrab

ᵃSenior Lecturer, PhD, Teacher Training Department, University of Craiova, Romania

ᵇStudent, Faculty of Letters, University of Craiova, Romania

Abstract

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
a
Tel. +04-0768-259-777; E-mail adress: calinrazvanalexandru@yahoo.com
b
Tel. +04-0784-231-423; E-mail adress: irinabirsanescu@gmail.com
 Călin Răzvan-Alexandru, Bîrsănescu Irina-Alexandra /EPC-TKS 2017
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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.

Keywords: humor, education, training

1. Introduction

Once addressed a question concerning the ideal template of a professor,

the majority of nowadays’ youngsters responds easily confused. Oftentimes,
they cannot find their courage or inspiration to come up with and emphasize
individual missing points which could be conveniently surmounted,
pleasing both sides. Moving to a more familiar background, we can consider
that the youth, being participant to the teaching activity, wishes to break the
boundless wall built between student and professor, wall that evidently
obstructs any kind of interaction outside the prospective subject limitation,
but also influencing the student in a negative direction, taking away the
opportunity to feel like taking part of the actual communication process.
Mentioning the presence of a communication scheme, we can dig deeper
into understanding and assimilating different influential factors which drift
upon the process itself, in an educational context. One of the main purposes
of this study is represented by humour, element defined as a universal mean
of communication and social imprint which holds a variety of functions
(Martin, 2010, p.5). Humour presents the image of an instrument which
makes possible demolishing that former wall we were talking about, once
using it properly, keeping in mind its well-contoured criteria and finite area.
In another work of his, Martin brings up some of the effects humour has not
only physically, but psychically, implying specialised experiments which
can prove everything he stated and also, he lists paramount roles humour
has (once exposed to a subject) as a diminishing stress factor and analgesic.
Although his theory is quite solid, Martin’s work can’t bring completely
valid and pure arguments, reason for the remaining free space for
subjectivity and an urge for superposed research (Martin, 2001).
Implications of humour in our everyday life are numerous, but much
more relevant would be the use of humour in the teaching activity, process
which requires substantial knowledge of the human being generally, along
with really understanding the undergrounds of pedagogy. As an active part
of the teaching system, humour – used where and when needed – can
contribute to boosting morale, combat blue moods, set in the right ambience
for teaching and also entertain. Anyhow, things can get easily out of control,
justification for the need to designate boundaries of using humour as a
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teaching practice. On the one hand, there can be noticed adaptive-positive
feedback which is definitely directed to progress, while on the other hand
there can be detrimentally noticed maladaptive-negative feedback which can
appear the exact moment when humour is forced in or incorrectly used.
These are two contrasting dichotomy situations that result in a calamitous
inconsistency (Kuiper et al., 2004).
But whichever are the limits of using humour in the teaching activity as
identified by specialised literature? Humour used erroneous in the context of
training can be scattered into several formalized segments after Wanzer:
student-oriented deprecating humour, offensive humour, self-oriented
deprecating humour (Wanzer, 1999). Getting humour reach out of hand is
directly altered by words as given and by out-breaking the edges of possible
creative combinations, resulting in nuances that are socially inacceptable
(racism, ethnic and moral issues) which are questionable, eventually causing
repercussion towards the teaching activity, or worse, the teacher him/herself.
This can lead to distaste and, in the long run, avoiding attending that exact
situational context i.e. the course. (Tatum, 1999).
As mentioned before, there are two preeminent segments of reaction for
using humour: adaptive and maladaptive. To summarise their
characteristics, adaptive humour is used in facilitating coping with stressful
situations of everyday routine (coping humour), as a factor of cohesion
collectively in a social group (affiliative humour), for self-emphasis without
stirring other people’s opinions (self-enhancing humour) or for the
mainstream trigger of amusement in social situations (skilled humour).
Furthermore, maladaptive humour refers to deriding and depreciating
oneself in an exaggerate manner (generating a distorted image of oneself,
with major repercussions in the everyday life and any kind of performance
field – self-defeating humour), to failing using humour as a strategy,
eventually underrating one’s own abilities and potential (usually people use
this kind of humour just for the sake of others – belaboured humour), to
antisocial humour which targets disparaging and intentionally hurting
people around oneself (aggressive humour) or even cruel humour, irrational
humour which often gets beyond any kind of borderline of decency (rude
humour). Seemingly, using one type of humour or another has serious
consequences in relation to personality, both transmitter’s and receiver’s
(Kuiper, 2004).
Hence, it is observable that humour can have devastating side-effects
while used without reason or with adverse intentions. Racist jokes, looks-
based jokes, human typology jokes and so on can affect interlocutors as
much as positive humour does towards progress.
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2. Methodology

2.1. Objective

This exploratory study aims to contour the exact fine line between the
normative use and the regressive use of humour, accentuating the positive
segment of its utilization, providing that the key-apparatus in moulding
students is securely held by teachers, in the palm of their hands.
Additionally, we intend to offer mentors/teachers an inventory of
desirable behaviour elements, circumscribed to the actual sense of humour,
useful in the training activity itself and also, in the context of an ultimate
self-instruction build-up.

2.2. Participants

168 students (92 male and 76 female), members of the Craiova

University, final year, agreed to participate to this study. Their age vary
between 21 and 29 years, with an average of 21.8 years.
Successively, 10 teachers, members of the same University served as the
group of experts who contributed to the completion of highlighting and
describing social behaviour related to mentors’ sense of humour.

2.3. Instrument and procedure

This exploratory research had as a main basis an investigative demarche,

based on The Critical Incident Technique of J.C. Flanagan (1954), mixed
with P.C. Smith’s and L.M. Kendall’s behaviourally anchored rating scales
(1963), obtaining an inventory of desirable behaviours circumscribed to the
teachers’ sense of humour, organized and prioritized in terms of importance
perceived by their direct beneficiaries – students – being designated as a
result.
Initially, the 168 students were asked to develop a list with a number of
minimum 10 professors they did consider the most humorous during the 3-4
years of studying they experienced. They were also asked to rank them from
the lowest to the highest mark. After that, the students were supposed to
leave out 5 of the 10 possible choices, respectively the ones that didn’t have
such a big academic impact than the others.
The lists were reunited and the first 10 professors’ names whose
mentioning frequency was the highest were grouped. This group became the
expert group which will be later consulted, during the research, with the
purpose of removing prospective evaluation mistakes.
There are four steps in our exploratory demarche.
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Step I: The students were asked to make up a list describing the
behaviours of the professors which generated well-being, laugher or
impressive reactions amongst other students in their opinion.
These lists containing description of humorous behaviours were
centralized, reunited and kept in a unique list which combined the first 10
names with the highest mentioning frequency. The chosen dimensions were
collated, the redundant, frivolous or trivial information was removed, the
resulting list being once again subject of a debate where explanatory
definitions were needed for each dimension (the duration of action varied
between thirty and sixty minutes).
Step II: The list of dimensions, along with their definitions was shared
with the expert group, with an additional request to reflect and give
examples of the respective referent. After collecting the examples, they were
synthesized into one unique list, removing redundant information once
again.
Step III: Another group of 30 experts was called into a meeting. The
experts were given a list with dimensions and definitions and another with
examples from the preceding step, aleatory. The task of this group was
distributing each example to its dimension. This operation is called
qualitative point of view. The examples which cannot be distributed to their
dimension represent ambiguous anchors, so they won’t be used, therefore
they will be eliminated.
Only the items (examples) whose relocation frequency was beyond 67%
were kept. Also, any dimension with less than 60% example allocation was
eliminated.
Step IV: From the final list, students were asked to choose the first 7
form conditions they considered paramount for a teacher to possess in order
for him/her to present positive humour and successful student-teacher
relationships.
Moreover, we ought to mention the fact that only those behaviours
(related to the sense of humour), with a percentage of 10% or more, were
being kept out of the given opinions.

3. Results and discussion

Table 1. The inventory of desirable behaviour related to mentors’ sense of humour

Opinion
Behaviour Description percentage Range
(%)
Colloquial expression 75 1
Self-irony 54 2
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Vocal impressions of popular comic characters 51 3
Wordplay 41 4
Funny Stories 34 5
Nonverbally suggestive behaviour 22 6
Exaggeration 13 7

These results obtained through our study speak for themselves (Table 1).
Depicting, correlating and blending them in with our antecedent mentioned
information regarding the study’s investigative approach allow some
closure.
Our study is definitely not a broad one. It does contain a pinch of
personalism, imminent in any research that has to do with different subject
opinions. In fact, the results retrieved analyse and make clear all
information gathered by various studies respecting using humour in the
teaching activity.
The identified desirable behaviours can be ranked in the context of
different classifications of humour forms (Kuiper, 2004, Martin, 2001,
2010). The entire purpose of this piece of work was determining these
behaviours, as a first step in the direction of developing a formative strategy
specific to each and every one of them, dedicated to training mentors.
Regardless the fact that we agree to Forabosco (1992), who states that
subjectivism is the determinant which makes humour being perceived
dissimilarly, our study result show the fact that it is possible to mention a
consensus regarding the foremost behaviours which include positive
humour used in training.
The first three behaviours identified subsume to a spontaneous strategy
used by pedagogues when a stress-relief is needed, the moment when
attention is lost or feedback becomes indistinct. Moreover, the behaviour
that designates the so-called “colloquial expression” it does not assert
anything more than just the fact that youngsters nowadays wish that their
professors would speak to them accordingly to their needs, to their age,
eventually managing to understand and – what is more – to solve their exact
problems.
Placing a concept as self-irony as a second point in our discussion makes
us wonder and question ourselves: are they enough professors capable of
self-irony without risking to fall into an endless pit of ridicule, mockery and
embarrassment?; are they able to be self-ironic and yet maintain their self-
esteem constantly high at the same time, being truthfully respected at their
fair value of saying and doing?
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We can bring down the curtain by acknowledging the fact that we do
consider beneficent an activity regarded as formative and pointed in the
direction of professors, of certain behaviours. This said, we can only
recommend role-playing as an efficient way to be used as to the entire
teaching process (Călin, 2010).
Utilising any of these behaviours has as an outcome the implication of an
appropriate environment, the connection created between teacher and
student while using humour (gathering enthusiasm, positivism, optimism,
well-being etc.).
The exact purpose of any training approach is not the actual delivery of
the information itself, but achieving these formative objectives we should
keep in mind. Schooling – with every small thing it implies – belongs to
students, and not to teachers, trainers or mentors. In this context, any
adapting attempt of the educational process to the psycho-social
characteristics is not, by any means, too much.
Professors are often faced to a constant competition held between the
inducement, stimulus, interactivity of technology and the conventional ways
of doing things, taking into account the fact that Marc Prensky’s concept of
“Digital Natives” includes the extensive majority of young people (2001).

References

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