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The correlation between teachers’ humor and class climate: A study targeting primary and secondary school students

Authors :
Nanae Kojima
Tomoya Imura
Katsuhiro Ito
Ryota Tsukawaki
Yoshiya Furukawa
Source :
HUMOR. 33:405-421
Publication Year :
2020
Publisher :
Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2020.

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between types of humor (aggressive humor and affinity humor) of homeroom teachers, as recognized by their students, and five domains of class climate (mutual respect among the students, discipline, willingness, enjoyment, and resistance). The participants included a total of 500 students – 250 primary school students (fourth to sixth grade) and 250 secondary school students (seventh to ninth grade) in Japan. The students answered questions about their homeroom teacher’s type of humor and the climate of their class using a self-report scale. We labeled five variables of class climate as dependent variables, and two types of teachers’ humor as independent variables, and conducted a hierarchal multiple regression analysis with two steps. Findings showed that aggressive humor had a significant negative correlation to all positive class climates, and a significant positive correlation to negative class climates. Affinity humor indicated a significant correlation in the exact opposite manner to the above findings. Furthermore, the interaction effect of the two types of teachers’ humor was insignificant for every variable of class climate. The findings indicated that an ideal class climate could be created if teachers refrained as much as possible from using aggressive humor and used affinity humor.

Details

ISSN :
16133722 and 09331719
Volume :
33
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
HUMOR
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........6e23b91667bbd5c0d952e372a98cee5f
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2019-0021