The social role of humour in classroom management: towards a theoretical understanding

Abstract

This theoretically-informed paper brings together the fields of education and humour studies to examine the complexities of humour in social interaction and relationships in school classrooms. We address the lack of understanding of humour in the classroom, and the nuances of education and humour, in examples of contemporary English education policy. We argue that education and humour are theoretically aligned in their social purpose of creating and disrupting social interaction and relationships. We illustrate that examples of English policy discourse that foreground behaviour management rather than classroom management are narrow and fail to consider important aspects of social interaction and humour. Humour’s social role provides a critical lens to examine the complexity of classroom interactions and social relationships that are crucial in classroom management. We conclude that humour is a part of the complexity of classroom management and challenge examples of reductionist regulatory discourses of behaviour management in current policymaking.