Teacher humor, instructional quality and learning processes of students: Experimental and longitudinal analyses

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Sonja Bieg
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning ; Developmental and Educational Psychology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 455082042

The proposed project will analyze the effects of different types of teacher humor on students’ socio-emotional, motivational, and cognitive learning processes, as well as on their perceived instructional quality. Prior research has shown that the use of content related humor is positively linked to students’ learning processes. Thus, it can be assumed that content related humor plays a key role in perceived instructional quality. Nevertheless, this relationship has not yet been empirically investigated and the causal direction remains unclear. Consequently, building on a theoretical model of teacher humor types and own previous work, the present project seeks to examine whether the use of such humor types is positively associated with students’ perceptions of socio-emotional and motivational instructional characteristics, as well as their emotional experience and well-being. Moreover, it is expected that content related humor will be positively associated with students’ perceptions of cognitive instructional characteristics, objectively measured knowledge acquisition, and motivational development. In contrast, negative effects are expected concerning aggressive teacher humor on the aforementioned instructional characteristics and learning processes. To examine these relations, a model will be used to derive differentiated evidence-based recommendations for the use of humor in class. Taken together, this project aims to (1) analyze the effects of teacher humor (especially content related humor) on perceived instructional quality, and (2) on students’ cognitive, motivational, and emotional learning processes (including well-being at school), (3) detect potential mediators of these effects, and (4) illuminate conditions for the development and stability of teacher humor types. To this end, two experimental studies and one longitudinal study will be conducted in which four types of teacher humor, as well as humor orientation using multiple perspectives will be operationalized: Study 1a (N =180 teachers, experimental) will examine the effects of teacher humor types on instructional quality from expert perspectives. Study 1b (N = 210 students, experimental) will investigate the effects of teacher humor types on students’ perceived instructional quality, emotional and motivational experiences, and knowledge acquisition. Study 2 (N = 60, longitudinal over one school year) will examine personal and contextual determinants of teacher humor types and their effects on students’ learning processes, well-being, acquisition of competencies, and perceived instructional quality, as well as the development of teacher humor types. Overall, the studies will provide valuable information about the effects of teacher humor types, which have important implications concerning improved instructional quality.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants