Teacher’s Perception of Humor as a Facilitator of Student Engagement

Classroom engagement is an excellent indicator of students' learning, grades, achievement, test scores, retention, and graduation. However, classroom engagement is heavily dependent on teacher-student interactions. Teachers' role in engaging students in the lesson learned is critical. Using a free and convenient tool, such as teachers' humor, can ensure student engagement in the learning process (Nienaber et al., 2019). The purpose of this study is to determine how schoolteachers perceive humor as a facilitator for student engagement at the classroom level. This study used a sequential mixed methods design to gain insights regarding the teachers' perceptions of the role of humor as a catalyst for student engagement. Survey and interview data were collected from a purposeful sample of K-12 grade teachers in seven private schools in Greater Houston, Texas. The study used an electronic questionnaire from 102 teachers working in grades K-12 and 14 follow-up semi-structured interviews to gather data on teachers' perceptions of positive humor as a facilitator for student engagement. The quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson's product-moment correlations, one-way ANOVA test, and independent samples t-test. The qualitative data were analyzed using thematic inductive coding. Results from the quantitative analysis showed no significance. In contrast, the results of the qualitative analysis strongly supported the use of positive humor as a powerful tool for student engagement if utilized appropriately.