This is an empirical, ethnographic study about middle school students' mathematical joy in a formal math classroom. This study is situated in a year-long Research Practice Partnership with 6th grade mathematics teacher and 21 students in her 3rd block class. Through this collaboration, the teacher and I sought to design tasks to support students'…

Open-ended guided tours and choices on tours have become more common in art museums as educational and curatorial practices focus on visitor-centered experiences. What can museums do to help set the stage for these types of interactions between visitors, the museum, and works of art through programming and tours? In this article, the author…

This study examined whether instructional humor (IH) was not just another type of seductive detail when covariates such as humor pre-disposition, prior-knowledge, and working memory capacity were controlled. Participants were students (N = 228) from universities who were randomly assigned two stimuli conditions in the classic experimental design.…

The definition of education and learning has been changing in recent years, as the field experienced, and is still experiencing, many changes. One of those changes is a rise in adult learners in higher education. In order to cope with this particular change and set their classrooms up for success, it is vital for educators to be aware of and…

Employing drama activities in foreign language classes has proved to help language learners improve their skills. Within the context of drama course offered in an English Language Teacher Education program in Turkey, the present study suggests some drama activities based on well-known Nasreddin Hodja jokes. The study aims to find answers to…

The purpose of this capstone project was to design a course description on gelotology, the study of laughter, at a XYZ Institute. The course provides a detailed analysis of the background of gelotology, how the course was designed and how to put the course into application at the capstone site. The course was designed using a sample curriculum as…

With the Internet, foreign language learners can interact more easily with native speakers from other countries than in previous generations. For learners to develop the ability to function in foreign environments, it is vital to understand their experiences in postsecondary online foreign language classes. If educators and educational theorists…

Elementary school science is an often-neglected subject in the current literacy-focused political atmosphere. However, reading informational trade books about science in literacy class can help children increase their science knowledge. Incorporating humor through content-related cartoons is an effective way to engage students in deeper…

This serious look at humor for the practicing performance technologist reviews reasons for using humor in instruction, summarizes existing theories of humor, and outlines some steps toward a method for adding humor to instruction. Three tables illustrating heuristic approaches to humorous instruction are included. (Author/JL)

Provides a summary of research on the benefits and uses of subject-matter-related humor in instructional materials, and cites comments of five experts on how to use humor in the design of instruction. Thirteen references are listed. (MER)

This paper presents results of a survey that gathered information on the use of popular culture examples in college library instruction sessions, including the types of popular culture materials currently being used as examples, the types of courses in which they are used, the librarians' purposes in using the examples, and the librarians'…

This study of 58 first graders used audiocassette recordings of a familiar story to examine the effects of three integrated and contiguous instructional designs using incongruity humor on recognition and recall of information as measured by immediate learning and retention tests. Research methodology is discussed, and 68 references are listed.…

Examination of specific role of humor in college classroom and its effect on learning and communicative climate highlights academic classroom instruction, objectives of academic bibliographic instruction, positive learning environment and bibliographic instruction classroom, prevalence of humor in college classroom, and how classroom humor affects…