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

Abstract

While there has been appreciable consensus among humour researchers as well as classroom teachers that the use of humour in the classroom setting can be an effective teaching tool, there is still, however, a dearth of literature available that classroom practitioners could use as a guide in actual practice. Most of the literature currently available tends to address the potential use of classroom humour in general, and does not go into the specifics of exactly “what types of humour forms” are effective. This article addresses this question in the context of a secondary school mathematics classroom in South Sudan’s displaced and re-settled communities, where the lesson plans used in the intervention were infused and laced with instructional humour–humour related to the mathematics concepts being discussed–for the purpose of generating and maintaining student interest in mathematics. Using a researcher constructed observation sheet (RCOS) as the research instrument for capturing the desired qualitative data, five specific literature recommended humour types or categories (namely: mathematical jokes, puns, riddles, related stories and funny-multiple choice items) were used and identified as the ones that generated and maintained interest among the South Sudanese secondary school students. Classroom teachers who would like to use classroom humour for the purpose of motivating and inspiring their students may find the information contained in this article useful, as a practical-reference classroom guide.

Views of South Sudanese Secondary School Teachers about the Use of Humour in the Mathematics Classroom

“…The six (6) close-ended questionnaire items or statements were initially adapted from the literature-based Interpersonal Communication Competence Scales (ICCS) [17,24,26,29,37,[55][56][57] which were customised to form part of the Student Opinions Survey Questionnaires (SOSQ ), a 35 questionnaire items-instrument with both close and open-ended questions or statements (parts A & B) intended to measure South Sudanese secondary school student's overall interest in the course materials [1, 10]. These items were developed to assess teacher's communication competence as one of the components-dimensions of interest in mathematics from the perspectives of the students-learners and were adapted here to also assess South Sudanese secondary school teachers' opinions, attitudes or views toward the use of humour as a teaching and learning tool.…”

“…Storytelling, funny-humorous stories, or exciting narratives [5,[28][29][30] as an expressive-verbal form of humour is one of the many old known classroom techniques and strategies, but one that seemed to be used only by very few passionate, creative and effective classroom teachers to motivate or inspire their students in the learning process [31][32][33][34]. Using humour as a teaching and learning technique or strategy [16] is necessary even more so in an environment such as the mathematics classroom where things tend to be run in a machine-like-robotic fashion with little or no regard to human feelings or emotions.…”