Laughter of an art classroom: field research of humour in art education at schools of lower secondary education
Abstract
The study is based on tendencies of progressive pedagogy that consider benefits of humour for learning and teaching. Humour can be used as a compensatory mechanism, which enable teachers and students to cope with the demands of a school institution (Woods, 2012), it helps to disrupt rigidity of human behavior (Bergson, 1993) or to start creative divergent thinking. (Koestler, 1968; Ziv & Ziv, 2002) The aim of the empirical study is to map specifics of humour in art education, to describe their complexity with a typology of humorous situations emerging during lessons of art education and to indicate the educational potential of these teaching situations.
The research is inspired by school ethnography (Kučera, 1992; Woods, 2012) and ethnographic approaches used in previous research in art education. (Uhl Skřivanová, 2011; Brücknerová, 2011) Data were collected by direct observation of 52 art lessons of 5 teachers from schools of lower secondary education, by photo-documentation of pupils' artworks and by interviews with teachers. The qualitative content analysis according to P.
Mayring (2000) was used to interpret the research findings. It helped to formulate categories for various situational manifestations of humour emerging during lessons of art education.
The captured specifics of humour can be used in education, where art teachers can intentionally use humour to encourage pupils working on some creative task, and thus they can improve their teaching practice.