The Relationship of Teachers' Use of Humor in the Classroom to Immediacy and Student Learning.

This study investigated teachers' use of humor in relationship to immediacy and learning. The amount and type of humor recorded by 206 students as observations of things teachers did to show “a sense of humor” were analyzed and correlated with overall immediacy and perceived cognitive and affective learning outcomes. The results indicated that amount and type of humor influenced learning, that students were particularly aware of tendentious humor, and that an overdependence on tendentious humor diminished affect. The effects of humor were more pronounced for male students and male teachers; however, indications of previous research that humor use negatively influenced evaluations of female teachers and that female teachers' humor was largely different than male teachers' humor were not supported.

[1]  E. Bergler.  Laughter and the Sense of Humour , 1956 .

[2]  R. Coser,et al.  Some Social Functions of Laughter , 1959 .

[3]  C. Gruner.  A further experimental study of satire as persuasion , 1966 .

[4]  Charles R. Gruner,et al.  EFFECT OF HUMOR ON SPEAKER ETHOS AND AUDIENCE INFORMATION GAIN 1 , 1967 .

[5]  A. Strauss,et al.  The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research aldine de gruyter , 1968 .

[6]  A. Farina,et al.  Humor Appreciation as Social Communication. , 1970 .

[7]  J. Ascough,et al.  Humor, anxiety, and task performance. , 1971, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[8]  William E. Lampton,et al.  Effects of including humorous material in a persuasive sermon , 1972 .

[9]  T. M. Scott.  Humor in Teaching , 1976 .

[10]  Thomas R. Kane,et al.  Humour as a Tool of Social Interaction , 1977 .

[11]  Robert M. Kaplan,et al.  Humorous lectures and humorous examples: Some effects upon comprehension and retention. , 1977 .

[12]  J. Bryant,et al.  Teachers’ humor in the college classroom , 1979 .

[13]  J. F. Andersen.  Teacher Immediacy as a Predictor of Teaching Effectiveness , 1979 .

[14]  J. Bryant,et al.  Acquisition of information from educational television programs as a function of differently paced humorous inserts. , 1980, Journal of educational psychology.

[15]  Jennings Bryant,et al.  Relationship Between College Teachers' Use of Humor in the Classroom and Students' Evaluations of Their Teachers , 1980 .

[16]  P. Kearney,et al.  Teacher immediacy for affective learning in divergent college classes , 1985 .

[17]  J. Mccroskey,et al.  Power in the Classroom V: Behavior Alteration Techniques, Communication Training, and Learning. , 1985 .

[18]  Patricia Kearney,et al.  Effects of Teacher Immediacy and Strategy Type on College Student Resistance. , 1986 .

[19]  Virginia P. Richmond,et al.  Power in the classroom VI: Verbal control strategies, nonverbal immediacy and affective learning , 1986 .

[20]  Virginia P. Richmond,et al.  Power in the classroom VII: Linking behavior alteration techniques to cognitive learning , 1987 .

[21]  Virginia P. Richmond,et al.  The Relationship Between Selected Immediacy Behaviors and Cognitive Learning , 1987 .

[22]  J. Gorham,et al.  Effects of immediacy on recall of information , 1988 .

[23]  J. Gorham.  The relationship between verbal teacher immediacy behaviors and student learning , 1988 .

[24]  J. Nussbaum,et al.  An analysis of teachers' verbal communication within the college classroom: Use of humor, self‐disclosure, and narratives , 1988 .

[25]  Humor and communication , 1989 .