Humour beyond human: eco-humour as a pedagogical toolkit for environmental education

Abstract

This article strives to open a window on ‘eco-humour’, an umbrella term for diverse forms of humour targeting ecological and environmental issues. It encourages readers to consider eco-humour as a valuable, pedagogical toolkit for environmental education and communication. To this aim, eco-humour is, first, put into perspective of humour scholarship. In particular, I discuss the critical and corrective potential of humour to address and possibly redress environmental issues. Pedagogical benefits of humour are, then, touched upon to pave the way for a discussion of ‘humour-integrated environmental education’. The paper also addresses UNESCO’s 2030 roadmap of education for sustainable development and the ‘sustainability’ component of Australian Curriculum to further justify and contextualise the use of eco-humour. Moreover, several university-based initiatives to integrate echo-humour into environmental education are considered. Likewise, I briefly address ‘humour-integrated language learning’ as an emerging approach in language education that may offer valuable insights into eco-humour curriculum integration. Finally, the article points out several practical considerations and future directions in humour-integrated environmental education.

Playful Creativity in TESOL: Toward Humor-Integrated Language Learning (HILL)

“…In other words, further details or modifications may be applied to the educational content, materials sequence and procedure descriptions to meet the needs of different learners and language settings (e.g., level of L2 proficiency, age, cognitive readiness, time constraints, curricular priorities, etc.) (see also Beghetto, 2019;Heidari-Shahreza, 2023).…”

“…This way, playfulness can be employed in different teaching paradigms and task types. For instance, 'focus on form' (FonF) and fun (i.e., FonF + F) can meaningfully be put together in TESOL (Bell, 2012;Heidari-Shahreza, 2018a, 2023Prichard & Rucynski, 2022). Writing on the beneficial effects of playful creativity, Proyer et al, (2019) also point out Hugo Rahner's notion of 'Ernstheiterkeit' or 'serious-cheerfulness ' (1948/2008).…”

“…As Richards (2013) states three curriculum approaches and instructional designs can largely be assumed: Backward, central and forward (see Figure 1). While playful creativity can be put into practice through any of these approaches, the backward design has the notable advantage of planning before practicing (Bell & Pomerantz, 2016;Heidari-Shahreza, 2020, 2023. This foresight may aid in the fine-grained adaptation and integration of English language teaching (ELT) materials for playful creativity.…”

“…Based on a backward design and in light of the relevant literature (see e.g., Bell and Pomerantz, 2016;Heidari-Shahreza, 2020), the instructional cycle of HILL includes four stages of a) determining pedagogical outcomes, b) identifying indices of attainment, c) developing humorbased materials and, d) designing actual instruction (see Figure 2 for more information). HILL attempts to employ pedagogical humor in a systematic, disciplined manner, optimizing its embodiment into the instructional/curriculum framework of a given learning context (see also Chen et al, 2019;Heidari-Shahreza, 2021, 2023. A sample activity is provided below to make readers more familiar with the operational aspects of HILL.…”

“…Firstly, it levels criticism against the (intuition-based) assumption of humor as a trivial by-product of class interaction or metaphorically, a white elephant in the classroom (see also Bell, 2012;Heidari-Shahreza, 2022;Prichard & Rucynski, 2020). It also criticizes the more negatively-loaded assumption, construing humor as a disruptive, off-task behavior that should be best avoided or suppressed (Cekaite & Aronsson, 2005;Heidari-Shahreza, 2023;Qin & Beauchemin, 2022). Secondly, readers are briefly updated on more than half a century of rigorous research on potential benefits of humor in educational settings (see also Banas et al, 2011;Heidari-Shahreza, 2021;Oshima, 2018).…”