Children's Sense of Humor and Humor in The Classroom

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the lesson in which primary school students laugh the most and why they laugh in this lesson. For this purpose, the study was carried out according to the parallel design (Quantitative Data [Collection + Analysis] + Qualitative Data [Collection + Analysis]  Association  Interpretation) which was one of the mixed method research designs. The study group consisted of 227 primary school students (2-4th grade). The quantitative data of the study were collected through the “A Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale for School-Aged Children” and the qualitative data were collected through open-ended questions such as “In which lesson do school-aged students laugh the most? Why do they laugh so much in this lesson?”. The analysis of the quantitative data of the study was implemented with the SPSS 22 package program. The qualitative data were analyzed and interpreted through the thematic coding. According to the results of the study, the students' humor levels were moderate; there was no difference by the grade level in terms of humor score averages; the highest sub-dimension mean score was in the humor appreciation sub-dimension; there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the 3rd and 4th grades in favor of the 4th grade in terms of the mean scores of the humor creation sub-dimension; students laughed the most in the physical education lessons and they laughed the most in this lesson because there were funny, humorous and entertaining things in it.