Humour Techniques for the Effective Teaching of Politics & International Relations

This research seeks to harness the pedagogical benefits and learning effectiveness of using humour in teaching, as evidenced by literature on the topic, in a politics and IR specific teaching environment. This research develops a subject-specific humour toolbox aimed at enhancing the delivery of engaging, interesting, and memorable Politics and International Relations (Pol & IR) modules at Higher Education Institutes. The existing literature on the use of humour techniques in cross-disciplinary teaching, despite some caveats on delivery and appropriateness, demonstrates clear pedagogical benefits for students’ enthusiasm and engagement. Using humour in teaching can, inter alia, facilitate comprehension (Garner 2006, Özdoğru & McMorris 2013), motivate students (Goodboy et al. 2015) facilitate rapport (Granitz 2009) maintain student interest (Hellman, (2007), increase students’ interest and retention (Helitzer & Shatz 2005) and relax students (Kehr et al. 1999). This research contributes to this literature and draws on the principle that political comedy is an internationally popular comedy sub-genre to argue that Pol & IR teaching lends itself to the use of humour techniques, albeit subject-specific Through the use of techniques such as mockery, parody and satire, political comedy provides a more critical analysis of political events than mainstream journalistic analysis. This is due to the enhanced ability of political comedy to scrutinize politicians and mainstream political views in an engaging and entertaining manner. This explains the popularity of infotainment-comedy programmes as a source of political information, such as The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, and The Mash Report. This research examines whether, and through the use of which techniques, Pol & IR lecturers can capitalise on the established relationship between comedy and political analysis for their pedagogical advantage by applying humour to not only enhance the student learning experience but also to develop students’ critical analysis skills. The research asks the following two questions: 1) What are politics students’ perceptions of the merits of using humour in politics teaching? 2) Drawing on existing literature and empirical research, what specific humour techniques can constitute the humour toolbox for Pol & IR lecturers for effective learning in politics? This research uses focus groups to collect in-depth and nuanced student-centred data from undergraduate Pol & IR students. This is a departure from the current literature on the use of humour techniques that address data collected from qualitative interviews with lecturers or quantitative surveys with students (Berk, 2016). Focus groups comprehensively elicit individuals' views but also capture the collective understanding of suitable and effective humour techniques through participants’ interactions, rather than relying on lecturers’ perspectives or narrow, positivist survey data that lacks personalised engagement. This research examines how politics-relevant humour can be applied to ensure effective learning through developing a pedagogically effective and subject-specific comedy toolbox for Pol & IR lecturers to increase student engagement and enhance student critical engagement and analysis skills. A secondary research phase will test the effectiveness of the toolbox, through controlled experiment lectures to an examination of information retention and survey student satisfaction.