When teachers use verbal and nonverbal messages to elicit laughter and smiling from students, they employ a teaching strategy labeled instructional humor. Classic and contemporary scholarship on this topic has shed light on the benefits of teacher humor, how teacher humor relates to student learning, challenges of studying the relationship between humor and learning, and
In the year 2000, psychologists Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi were authors of an influential article proposing a new focus in the field of psychology: the positive psychology movement. Since that time, researchers have begun to explore the positive aspects or strengths of life such as satisfaction, optimism, happiness, and other positive emotions. Included in
Humor is closely related to play; indeed, it can be viewed as a form of “mental play.” When we engage in humor, we are playing with words and ideas. Compared with other forms of play, however, humor involves a more deliberate distortion of reality. For example, a child engaging in “serious” make-believe play might dress