Humor has received increasing attention in environmental educational research in recent years as it can have a variety of positive effects on learning atmosphere, outcomes, and student-educator relationships. In most cases, humor is used by educators while students act as consumers. However, this does not exploit the full potential of humor for…

Effective teachers engage their students in multiple ways, and engagement reduces disruptive student behaviors. However, teachers consistently report struggling with classroom management, and their struggle has been linked to teacher turnover. Currently, there is a small but growing body of literature on the use of comedy techniques in the…

How can comedy be used as an effective tool and truly help innovate the learning experience? This paper outlines how aspects of comedy have been creatively integrated into primary and secondary academic curricula such as English Language Arts, social studies, drama, as well as in areas of mental health and wellness. The essay demonstrates, for…

In this article, we explore the idea that comedy, with its often unorthodox ways of looking at, experiencing, and responding to the world, offers untold possibility for classroom literacy instruction. The article focuses on the potential of Improv comedy as socio-materialist literacy in the classroom. It provides an account of Improv as a form of…

This article shares the motivation, process, and outcomes of using humorous scenes from television comedies to teach the real world of tax practice. The article advances the literature by reviewing the use of video clips in a previously unexplored discipline, discussing the process of identifying and selecting appropriate clips, and introducing…

While humor has long been documented as a useful teaching tool, it is almost entirely untheorized in terms of its potential for multicultural education. Specifically, the learning opportunities that racial comedic media offer in multicultural and anti-racist coursework is a particularly under-studied area, while research in this vein has great…

We humans laugh often and it is not always because something is funny. We laugh in the face of the pathetic or the powerless; sometimes we laugh at our own powerlessness or pathos. In short, we laugh at both the comical and the difficult. Here I am especially interested in the laughter that is sparked by what is difficult and how that…

Oscar Wilde is one of the most hilarious playwrights in the history of English literature. And 'The Importance of Being Earnest' is his masterpiece. With Wilde's humorous and witty language as the starting point and aided by the concordancing software WORDSMITH TOOLS, a detailed analysis was carried out on this comedy from lexical level and…

Although contemporary dance improvisation techniques and comedy improvisation are seldom linked, the two forms evolved around the same time and have many similarities. Both forms exist in the moment, share a highly ephemeral nature, and make use of physical games and structures. Both forms teach students the skill of being present, so essential to…

Experience is a necessary component and complement for the intellectual and academic study of drama, and consciousness-expanding alternatives to the classroom are viable alternatives, representing conceptual organizations positive in value. Festivity and celebration can serve a dual prupose: to expand consciousness of the literary period outside…

Humorously advocates the revival of "clotheiognomy", the art of discovering temperament and character from apparel.(EL)

Presents five articles on humor in early child care: (1) "What Makes Young Children Laugh?" (David Elkind); (2) "Humor as a Tool in the Workplace" (Jerry Parr); (3) "Vincent's Vignettes" (Vincent Duffy); (4) "Family Humor" (Bill Strader); and (5) "Books to Tickle Funny Bones" (Karen Stephens). (SD)

This article presents arguments for including activities to develop students' sense of humor and related skills in the gifted curriculum. Cognitive skills, reading, writing, mathematics, communications skills, and self-concept are seen as beneficiaries of humor units. A group activity and projects for a school comedy club are described. (PB)

Situation comedy (sitcom) dialogs that are included in PLATO lessons for first year Russian students are described. These comprehension exercises make use of both the touch panel and the audio capabilities of PLATO. The sitcom dialogs were written by a native speaker of Russian and are based on the vocabulary in the textbook plus a small number of…