By Felan Parker
If you ask any student who their favourite professor is, chances are they’ll choose one with a good sense of humour. All the world loves a clown, as they say. But how does laughter affect the learning process? Carleton University French professor Chantal Dion explores this issue in her doctoral thesis. Her thesis is an expansive study of humour and laughter in the classroom, which draws upon Dion’s own experiences in teaching students a second language.
Although for some students, laughter greatly facilitates the learning process, for others it is a source of discomfort and embarrassment. This unpredictability makes it hard to say whether laughter is a useful teaching tool or not. Dion combines education study, psychology, sociology, linguistics, cognitive studies and any number of other disciplines in her thesis, which asks many key questions about the nature of education itself.
Dion concludes that although laughter can be a very valuable tool, it must be used carefully and deliberately, in controlled doses–too much humour can hurt the learning process. “Education is the most important thing,” she says, and it must be treated seriously and responsibly. She hopes that her work can help future educators better understand how best to teach.