It’s a Bit Inappropriate: UK Students’ Negative Perceptions of Using Humor in Teaching Politics

Abstract

Existing literature on using humor in teaching identifies several social and pedagogical benefits, ranging from making students feel more comfortable and interested in the subject matter to facilitating a critical pedagogy approach. However, there are several risks associated with humor attempts that are detrimental to learning and to student experiences. Through analyzing qualitative data from three focus groups (FGs) with 2nd and 3rd year Politics and/or International Relations (Pol & IR) students, this article advances a student-centric understanding of the pitfalls of using humor in content delivery. While humor is often subjective, timing, frequency, established conventions, subject matter, and lecture persona all impact how students perceive humor used by lecturers. This article juxtaposes existing literature on approaches to using humor in teaching, and its pedagogical benefits, with empirical evidence of student perspectives and expectations to highlight the practical challenges and risks of including humor attempts in effective Pol & IR teaching.

Keywords:

• Humor
• politics
• Focus Group research

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the students who participated in the lively and insightful focus groups.

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was granted by The School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, UK. Date: 8 September 2020. Reference: SGIA-2020-08-05T16:38:01-nctz71.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A scoping review on the use of humor in teaching, across several disciplines, identified that it can facilitate comprehension (Garner 2006) (Özdoğru and McMorris 2013) maintain student interest (Hellman 2007), increase students’ interest and retention (Shatz and Helitzer 2005), improve student perceptions of learning (Wanzer and Frymier 1999), motivate students (Goodboy et al. 2015) facilitate rapport (Granitz, Koernig, and Harich 2009) and make lecturers more approachable (Appleby 2018). Furthermore, as students experience high levels of stress and anxiety, using humor can relax the students (Kher, Molstad, and Donahue 1999), “a wide range of low-risk humor techniques can be very effective in reducing anxiety and improving learning and performance” (Berk 1996, p. 88) and Fortson and Brown (1998) noted students preferred instructors who used humor. These findings are confirmed across disciplines as studies on Statistics (Berk 1996), Social Science and Physical Science (Nesi 2012), Psychology (Appleby 2018), Physics (Worner, Romero, and Bustamante 2010), Chemistry (André 2013) Medicine (Narula et al. 2011), Nursing (Englert 2010), and English as a foreign language (Rafiee, Kassaian, and Dastjerdi 2010) demonstrate numerous benefits including increased student subject engagement and improved critical analysis skills.

2 Host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show from 1999 to 2015.

3 Interview conducted by the author. https://www.danielaudritt.com/

4 The United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union. 

5 Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (2019) Brexit III. HBO. Available at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBQfSAVt0s&t=870

6 British slang for mocking or teasing.