Humour-Supported Instructional Approach: A Method for Generating and Maintaining Interest in Mathematics for Secondary School Students in South Sudan Re-settled Communities

Abstract

This article reports the findings from the main study that investigated relative effects of an instructional approach aimed at generating and maintaining interest in mathematics for secondary school students living in South Sudan’s displaced and re-settled communities. The study compared interest-generating effects of two different instructional approaches on two groups of Grade 11 students over a twelve-week period. While the Humour-supported Instructional Approach (H-SIA) was applied to the experimental group (E-group; n = 53), the control group (C-group; n = 59) was taught using Regular Instructional Approach (RIA). No significant differences were found in the two approaches’ effects in generating and maintaining interest. A four (4) week pilot study conducted prior to the main study produced similar results. However, some new insights from the main study suggest that teachers’ teaching traits play a heavier and more central role in both methods than had been initially realised. This led to the conclusion that the two methods (H-SIA and RIA) have similar effects on learner interest. The equivalence appears strongly dependent on the teachers’ teaching traits, characteristics and teaching qualities for marshalling teachers’ teaching techniques or strategies which include humour into their pedagogical toolkit. H-SIA method, however, is more recommended because the literature indicates-and this is confirmed in this study-that the use of humour in the classroom setting provides students with additional reason, motivation and inspiration to learn.

Types of Humour Categories Used to Generate and Maintain Interest in Mathematics Among Secondary School Students in South Sudan’s Displaced and Re-settled Communities

“…These five (5) categories are not too distinct as they appear to overlap in some cases (e.g., the noted similarities between mathematical puns and riddles). These categories are the types of humour used strictly both during the main study as well as the pilot phase (Tap et al, 2019(Tap et al, , 2020. All the five categories seemed to equally appeal to South Sudanese secondary school students living in displaced and re-settled communities.…”

“…While classroom humour such as mathematical humour can be used as a teacher's creative-effective teaching tool for the purpose of motivating, inspiring and helping students to develop and acquire a positive attitude toward mathematics, care needs to be always taken by teachers, especially mathematics teachers, to ensure that classroom humour does not serve the purpose of disguising what might be regarded as a superficial grasp of mathematics; but rather for attending to deeper-insightful and interesting mathematical approach (Gadanidis et al, 2005;Warwick, 2009;Durik et al, 2010;Weber, 2016;Tap et al, 2019Tap et al, , 2020.…”

“…The RCOS instrument was used by the researcher and research assistant to record students' reactions, utterances or any other observable behaviours (including signs of heightened interest, or any lack of it) during lessons. The researcher and research assistant sometimes switched roles in order to check on the extent to which the new method of instruction could be easily administered and implemented by any classroom teacher (Tap et al, 2019(Tap et al, , 2020. Students' reactions as indicators (evidence) of interest included, but were not limited to those associated with desirable classroom positive characteristics such as approval or happiness.…”

“…Instead of just discussing humour use in the classroom setting in its generality as is often the case with many prior studies, this study, however, is more specific in nature as it focuses strictly on the practical use of literature based humour types that are recommended for a mathematics classroom setting (Godbey, 1997;Gadanidis et al, 2005;Warwick, 2009;Durik, Matarazzo, & Delayey, 2010). Hence, mathematics related humour categories such as jokes (j), puns (p), riddles (r), related-stories (s) and funny-multiple choice items (mc) were used for this intervention (Tap et al, 2019(Tap et al, , 2020.…”