Teachers’ Humour Use in the Classroom: A Scoping Review

Teachers frequently use humour, but it is unclear how this affects the academic experiences and psychosocial development of students. There is sparsity in the literature regarding the impact of teachers’ humour on adolescent students. Teachers and the use of humour in the classroom have the potential to foster healthy development of social and academic skills during this key formative stage of maturation, but equally may be detrimental. This scoping review aimed to determine how and why teachers used humour in the classrooms of students aged 11-18, and the effect humour may have on students’ educational experiences. The Joanna Briggs methodological framework and PRISMA extension for Scoping Reviews checklist were used. The narrative synthesis generated six themes from 43 empirical papers. Many studies have considered humour as a single construct, reporting improved classroom management and students’ learning processes. However, other reports have suggested that humour use could lead to a loss of class control and for important information to be lost. Studies considering specific humour styles have identified affiliative humour as increasing engagement in deeper thinking. However, aggressive and course-related humour have reported mixed effects on educational experiences. This review identifies the humour styles and sub-styles reported in the sparse literature. It also highlights the lack of a comprehensive humour styles measure that adequately captures humour use and perceptions in teachers of adolescents and, importantly, how teachers’ humour is perceived by this population. Such a tool is vital to enable understanding of how teaching humour styles may directly affect adolescents’ educational experiences.