📄 social_science

Teacher Humour in the Classroom: Comparing Teacher Reports, Student Reports, and Observer-Coded Humour Indicators

This study of 15 German secondary classrooms reveals that teacher, student, and observer perspectives on four types of classroom humour show systematic perceptual divergences, with teacher and student reports generally aligning more closely with each other than with observer ratings, thereby demonstrating that humour is a perspective-dependent phenomenon where different reporting methods provide complementary rather than equivalent insights.

Original authors: Hassan Banaruee, Julian Wagner, Sonja Bieg

Published 2026-06-30

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CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Hassan Banaruee, Julian Wagner, Sonja Bieg

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

Imagine a classroom as a stage where a teacher is performing a comedy show. The paper you're asking about is like a behind-the-scenes investigation trying to answer a simple question: Do the teacher, the students, and an outside observer all see the same jokes?

The researchers found that the answer is a resounding "No." Depending on who is watching, the "show" looks completely different.

Here is a breakdown of the study using simple analogies:

The Three Cameras

The researchers set up three different "cameras" to record the same 15 English classes in Germany:

The Teacher's Camera (Self-Report): The teacher filled out a survey about how often they tell jokes.
The Students' Camera (Student Report): The students filled out a survey about how often they felt the teacher was joking.
The Observer's Camera (External Rating): Two trained experts sat in the back of the room, watched a single 45-minute lesson, and ticked boxes on a checklist whenever they saw a clear, visible joke.

The Four Types of Jokes

The study looked at four specific types of humor, which we can think of as different genres of comedy:

Course-Related: Jokes about the lesson itself (e.g., a funny example about grammar).
Course-Unrelated: Random jokes about nothing to do with the lesson (e.g., a story about a weekend trip).
Self-Disparaging: The teacher making fun of themselves (e.g., "I'm so bad at math, I need a calculator to count my fingers").
Aggressive: Jokes that target or tease the students (e.g., mocking a student's answer).

What the "Cameras" Captured

1. The Teacher and Student Connection (The "Insider" View)
The teachers and students were mostly on the same page when it came to Course-Related humor. If a teacher thought they were making a funny connection to the lesson, the students usually agreed.

The Analogy: Think of this like a couple who share an inside joke. They both know the context, so they laugh at the same things.

2. The Observer's Blind Spot (The "Outsider" View)
The outside observers were the most different. They saw much less humor than the teachers and students did, especially for jokes about the lesson or jokes where the teacher made fun of themselves.

The Analogy: Imagine a tourist watching a local festival. The locals are laughing at subtle cultural references and shared history. The tourist, who doesn't know the history, just sees people standing around and thinks, "Nothing funny is happening." The observers missed the "inside jokes" because they only saw one single lesson and didn't know the class's history.

3. The "Aggressive" Humor Gap
This was the most surprising finding. The students reported significantly more aggressive humor (teasing/ridiculing) than the teachers did.

The Analogy: Imagine a parent who thinks they are just "playfully teasing" their child. The child, however, feels the sting of the tease. The parent (teacher) might not realize how sharp their words sound, but the child (student) feels it immediately. The observers, sitting in the back, often missed these subtle, relational stings because they weren't part of the emotional dynamic.

The Big Takeaway

The study concludes that humor is not a single object that exists in the room; it is a relationship.

Teachers see their intentions (what they meant to do).
Students feel the impact (how it landed on them).
Observers only see the visible actions (what was physically obvious).

The researchers argue that you can't just pick one "camera" to tell the whole story. If you only ask the teacher, you miss how the students feel. If you only watch the video, you miss the context that makes a joke funny (or hurtful).

In short: A joke isn't just a joke; it's a conversation. And depending on who is listening, the conversation sounds very different.

Technical Summary: Teacher Humour in the Classroom

Problem Statement
Teacher humour is a relational, context-dependent phenomenon that relies on interpretation rather than being solely an individual teacher behaviour. While existing research establishes humour as a feature of instructional quality, the field has predominantly relied on single-perspective self-reports, most frequently student ratings and less frequently teacher self-assessments. A critical gap exists in understanding how different types of teacher humour are represented when viewed through the lenses of teachers (intention), students (experience), and external observers (visible indicators). Previous studies have not systematically integrated these three perspectives within the same instructional context to determine whether teacher humour is a shared communicative phenomenon or if different perspectives capture distinct aspects of it. Furthermore, it remains unclear which humour types are accessible across perspectives and which require specific relational or contextual knowledge to be identified.

Methodology
The study employed a multi-perspective design involving 15 secondary school English classes in Germany, comprising 15 teachers, 376 ninth-grade students, and two trained observers per class. Data collection occurred in authentic classroom settings using three distinct instruments:

Teacher and Student Reports: Both groups completed parallel versions of the HUMLAS-based questionnaire (Bieg & Dresel, 2016), assessing four humour types: course-related, course-unrelated, self-disparaging, and aggressive. Responses were measured on a 5-point Likert scale.
Observer Ratings: Two trained observers conducted real-time coding of a single 45-minute lesson per class using the Coding System for Humour in the Classroom (CSHC). This system was deductively derived from HUMLAS items, translating self-report constructs into observable behavioural indicators (e.g., humorous examples, jokes, self-directed comments, student-directed teasing). Observers were blind to self-report data.
Data Analysis: Student ratings were aggregated to the class level after verifying reliability via Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICCs). Inter-rater reliability for observers was also assessed using ICCs. The study utilized bivariate correlations to examine within-perspective association patterns (H1) and repeated-measures ANOVAs with Bonferroni-adjusted pairwise comparisons to test mean-level differences across perspectives (H2–H5).

Key Results
The analysis revealed systematic perceptual divergences across the three perspectives:

Within-Perspective Associations: Teacher reports showed significant positive correlations among all humour types. Student reports showed a significant correlation only between course-related and self-disparaging humour. Observer ratings showed no significant associations among the four humour types, suggesting a more restricted, temporally bounded representation of humour.
Cross-Perspective Convergence: Convergence was strongest between teacher and student reports for course-related humour ( $r = .60$ ). Aggressive humour showed no significant convergence across corresponding perspectives. Observer ratings showed limited convergence with insider reports; the only significant cross-perspective association was a negative correlation between teacher-reported aggressive humour and observer-rated course-unrelated humour.
Mean-Level Differences:
- Course-related and Self-disparaging Humour: Both teachers and students reported significantly higher levels than observers. No significant difference existed between teacher and student mean ratings.
- Course-unrelated Humour: Students reported significantly higher levels than observers. There was no significant difference between teachers and observers, nor between teachers and students.
- Aggressive Humour: Students reported significantly higher levels than teachers. Observer ratings did not differ significantly from either teachers or students.

Key Contributions
The study's primary contributions are conceptual and methodological:

Conceptual: The research conceptualizes teacher humour as a perspective-dependent classroom communication phenomenon. It demonstrates that teacher reports, student reports, and observer-coded indicators provide non-equivalent but complementary information. The findings support the view that humour is not merely produced by teachers but is co-constructed through student reception and is only partially identifiable through external observation.
Methodological: The study introduces and validates the initial feasibility of the CSHC, a structured observation framework derived from self-report scales. It demonstrates that while structured observation can function as a bounded external lens, it captures different aspects of humour than insider perspectives, particularly for affiliative types that rely on shared classroom history or implicit cues.
Empirical: The findings provide initial evidence that convergence and divergence vary by humour type and perceiver position. Specifically, affiliative humour types show greater teacher-student similarity at the mean level, while aggressive humour exhibits greater divergence between teachers and students.

Significance and Claims
The paper claims that discrepancies between perspectives should not be interpreted merely as measurement error but as meaningful information reflecting different standpoints on the same phenomenon.

For Theory: The findings extend the Instructional Humour Processing Theory (IHPT) by highlighting that the processing logic of humour has measurement implications; humour is represented differently depending on whether it is self-perceived, experienced, or observed.
For Practice: The study suggests that teacher education should address potential discrepancies in humour perception, particularly regarding aggressive humour where students perceive higher levels than teachers. This supports the need for reflective practice to help teachers evaluate how their humorous remarks are received.
Modesty of Claims: The authors explicitly state that the study does not establish observer ratings as an objective criterion against which insider perceptions are evaluated, nor does it claim one perspective is superior. The findings are limited to the class level and a single observed lesson; therefore, observer ratings reflect external visibility within that specific lesson rather than general humour frequency across a school year. The study provides initial evidence and a methodological foundation for future multiperspective research rather than definitive conclusions on the frequency of humour types.

The Three Cameras

The Four Types of Jokes

What the "Cameras" Captured

The Big Takeaway

Technical Summary: Teacher Humour in the Classroom

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