“I Can Go Slapsticks”: Humor as Humanizing Pedagogy for Science Instruction With Multilingual Adolescent Immigrant Learners

Humor in Language and Literacy Classrooms

Over the past two decades, a rich body of research has explored the role of humor and language play in language and literacy classrooms (e.g., Bell & Pomerantz, 2016; Cook, 2000; Pomerantz & Bell, 2011; Qin, 2018; Waring, 2013). These studies show that despite the lack of attention to humor in the practice of language and literacy instruction, humor constitutes an important dimension of the social fabric of classroom life and serves important functions. Scholars argue that humor can not only support students’ development of language and literacy skills (Cook, 2000), but also “construct new possibilities for identity, critique prevailing norms, and reconfigure particular relations of power” (Bell & Pomerantz, 2016, p. xi). Rampton (1995) shows that the adolescents in one UK school often engaged in humor for building peer relationships and subverting school structures. Waring (2013) illustrates that adult language learners enacted playful language use to perform identities and subvert the asymmetrical relationships between students and teachers. Qin (2018) shows that the adolescent immigrant student in his study intentionally appropriated the classroom language practice to create humor and perform his racialized masculinity. However, his humorous languaging acts and identity performances were in conflict with the classroom norms of speaking, resulting in him being labeled as a problem student.

Most studies on classroom humor have focused on students’ jocular language use, and only a small body of research has attended to teachers’ use of humor and language play in K-12 school classrooms (Bell & Pomerantz, 2016; Forman, 2011; Matsumoto et al., 2022). While this body of work has underscored the importance of utilizing humor as a pedagogical tool and studied how students respond to teachers’ humorous acts, research has yet to rigorously theorize humor as pedagogy and unpack how humor generates affordances to teaching and learning, particularly with minoritized student populations like immigrant students. This lack is critical because scholars have underscored the importance of using humor, and suggested that teachers should try to introduce humor into their classrooms (Bell & Pomerantz, 2016; Cook, 2000).

Affordances of Humor with Adolescent Immigrant Students

Humor can be a particularly useful pedagogical tool in teaching minoritized youths like immigrant learners because they are often subjected to the pedagogy of poverty (Haberman, 1991) and subtractive schooling (Valenzuela, 1999). Such deficit-oriented pedagogical approaches and orientations–with an over-reliance on teaching basic skills, high stakes testing, and discipline and neglect of students’ social, linguistic, and educational needs–often lead to passive resentment, low engagement in learning, and antagonistic teacher-student relationships. In contrast, pedagogical practices that center emotion and affect in teaching and learning, such as using humor, humanize the schooling of immigrant students by recognizing the structural vulnerabilities they are subject to and the resilience, joy, and critical insights they bring into classrooms and schools. It empowers students and works to foster positive, authentic caring relationships in the classroom. Building such classroom relationships requires teachers to develop what Milner (2020) calls relational efficacy, or knowledge, skills, and mindsets that allow teachers to “connect with, care about, and empathize with students and co-create learning contexts where students feel safe, affirmed, whole, and loved” (p. 8).

Studies have shown that humor can also work to reconfigure relations of power in the classroom such as the hierarchical teacher–student relationships in which teachers have “power-over” students, and to reposition them as co-learners who engage in reciprocally caring classroom relationships. For example, Newcomer (2018) demonstrates how a bilingual teacher incorporated humor in working with his Latinx adolescent immigrant students by rewriting the lyrics to a song and singing his newly created lyrics to the students. Students in this classroom experienced the teacher as someone who not only cared for them academically but also wanted to make them laugh and experience fun in learning. Uses of humor such as the one described in Newcomer (2018) are more than just having a laugh; rather they work to construct what Valenzuela (1999) terms as educación in which students and teachers engage in relationships that go beyond an object orientation to build reciprocal, humanizing relationships for teaching, learning, and caring. Building on these lines of research, we examine how humor co-constructed by Jason and his students worked as a humanizing pedagogy. Our inquiry is guided by two questions.

How do Jason and his students co-construct humor and affect in relation to the science curriculum content in classroom interactions?

Humanizing Pedagogy

Humanizing pedagogy, originated in Freire’s (1970) work of emancipatory views of education, is a vision of teaching that takes into consideration the sociohistorical and political dimensions of educational inequalities that students face and that challenges them intellectually while treating them with dignity and respect (Bartolomé, 1994; del Carmen Salazar, 2013). Central to humanizing pedagogy are affect, empathy, and emotions through which teachers develop authentic caring relationships with students. Within humanizing pedagogical approaches, students are viewed as agentic, affective, and sociopolitically situated subjects, not just cognitive learners (Dutro, 2019; Ehret & Leander, 2019; Zembylas, 2007). A humanizing pedagogy “respects the human, inter-personal side of teaching, and emphasizes the richness of the teacher-student relationship” (Huerta & Brittain, 2010, pp. 385 − 386). Humor can work toward contributing to humanizing pedagogy as research has shown that humor can “construct new possibilities for identity, critique prevailing norms, and reconfigure particular relations of power” (Bell & Pomerantz, 2016, p. xi). It is in this consideration of the connection between humor and pedagogy that we examine the interactional construction and functions of humor in Jason's classroom. Our goal is to examine how humor contributed to relational efficacy, affect, and classroom culture that worked to foster authentic caring relationships.

Reading Humor Through a Lens of Languaging and Affect

We draw upon a languaging perspective (Bloome & Beach, 2019) and affect theory (Massumi, 2002; McManus, 2011) to explore the nexus of humor, relationships, and pedagogy. As a theoretical framework for understanding language use, the languaging perspective arose across a range of disciplinary fields, such as sociolinguistics (Agha, 2007), applied linguistics (Pennycook, 2004), and discourse analysis (Rymes & Wortham, 2011), where scholars work to understand how language is used in everyday life and what effect it has on the social. The core tenets of this theory center on the notion that language is not just a system of codes to be learned and used; rather we do things through language (Austin, 1965; Pennycook, 2004). Language constitutes relations, identities, and social structures. This view of languaging argues that meaning is socially situated, constantly negotiated, and jointly constructed through language. In exploring humor from this perspective, we are concerned with how humor is relationally constructed through classroom talk and in turn constitutes classroom relationships.

Drawing upon McManus’ (2011) concept of affective agency, we theorize affect as generated through relational encounters rather than as an individual, innate quality, and we locate affect as happening outwardly, in public, through languaging in social interaction. Informed by this notion of affect, we explore how Jason and his students co-constructed humor in affectively colored moments that departed from a typical, serious instructional tenor, and how affect produced through humorous languaging acts served as a “significant component in the production or prevention of greater justice” (Zembylas & McGlynn, 2012, p. 43).

Researchers’ Positionality and Methodology

This classroom discourse study drew on data from a larger multiple-case study (Yin, 2009) that utilized ethnographic and qualitative research methods to examine the linguistically responsive instruction of three science teachers of multilingual learners. Kongji served as the principal investigator of this larger project. After completing the data collection, he invited Faythe for collaboration to analyze the intersections of humor, affect, and pedagogy in Jason's classroom. As language and literacy researchers who are committed to advancing education equity for minoritized students, we share similar methodological and epistemological lenses. Our research, informed by interaction-based discourse analytical approaches, is anchored in the epistemological lens that language and social interactions not only reflect but also constitute the social reality. Our research interests overlap in understanding how teachers and students use language to negotiate meaning, perform identity, and foster relationships, and how equity or inequalities are (re)produced through classroom interactions.

Because of these shared research commitments and interests, in this analysis, we followed a methodological approach that involved both interactional analysis and ethnographic tools, similar to Erickson’s (2004) “ethnographic micro-analysis of social interaction” (p. viii). This methodological choice allowed us to situate our fine-grained interactional analysis of Jason's and the students’ humorous languaging acts within our ethnographic understanding of the culture of the school, classroom, and instruction.

Research Context and Participants

Metro High is a 9th- to 12th-grade high school in New York City. As a member of the International Network of Public Schools that serve recent immigrant and refugee multilingual learners, it has achieved success in preparing students for college and career through theory-informed instructional approaches that attend to their social, linguistic, and educational needs. Their approaches include project-based learning that builds on students’ strengths and collaboration for learning, culturally and linguistically responsive instruction that meets students’ linguistic needs and capitalizes on their funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992), and translanguaging pedagogy that values their multilingual assets and identities (García & Li, 2014).

Jason, a biology teacher in his early 40s, served as the head of the school's science department. Prior to Metro High, he worked as an environmental consultant in a corporate context that he describes as very detached from what he thought science is. Driven by his passion for teaching, Jason joined New York City's Teaching Fellows Program and became a biology teacher. His class we focused on included 22 students, all recent immigrant and refugee students. Most students spoke Spanish as their first language, and the rest spoke Chinese, Bengali, or Arabic. Some spoke more than two languages in addition to English. Jason spoke English as his first language. He made the effort to study Spanish (at the intermediate level) and Chinese (at the beginner level), the language of the two largest linguistic groups in the school.

Jason embodied humanizing pedagogy in his work with immigrant students. In the interviews, he stressed the importance of viewing students “as a person,” understanding their identity and concerns, and treating them with respect. He said, “If I’m treating them differently than I’m asking them to treat me, that's not the equal learning model … I’m teaching a person. I’m not teaching a blank person who has no life and no other concerns.” He commented, “this is a really, really hard job and they’re doing a super hard job too.” It was important for him to get “buy-in” from his students and for them to realize that “we are all part of this.” His humanizing pedagogy also reflects how he fostered empathy and respect among students, “I think I want my students to learn from me how to be civil with others, how to celebrate people even if they’re not necessarily successful.” He explained that he often guided his students to “look at the whole person in their classmates, and find something to celebrate in everybody, because if you can find something that's good about everybody, then you will probably never write somebody off.” He also explained that humor constituted an important dimension of how he showed caring and warmth toward his students, as explained in the introduction section.

Data Collection

Data Analysis

To analyze the relationships between humor, affect, and pedagogy, we adopted a multilayered analytic approach that combined constant comparison analysis (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) and micro-level discourse analysis of classroom interactions using analytic tools from interactional sociolinguistics and critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995; Gumperz, 1999). We chose to focus on two lessons from Jason's photosynthesis and scientific practices unit because they included rich classroom interactions through which Jason and the students co-constructed humor. In the first phase of analysis, after identifying all the humorous classroom episodes, we each individually coded the episodes to analyze the interactional construction and functions of the humor. After comparing and discussing our initial coding, we identified five types of humor: “sarcasm,” “self-deprecating,” “dramatizing,” “recontextualizing,” and “impersonating.” We also identified five functions of the humor: “defusing tensions in the classroom,” “building fun, caring relationships,” “connecting to disciplinary knowledge,” “disrupting prevailing norms,” and “ensuring affective equity.” The second phase of analysis included a line-by-line analysis of the classroom interactions to unpack how Jason and his students co-constructed humor through languaging acts.

When analyzing the interview data to understand the connection between Jason's use of humor and humanizing pedagogy, we adopted a deductive coding approach (Miles et al., 2014, p. 81), using the codes we generated when analyzing the functions of the humor. For instance, in interviews, Jason explained that he showed his caring and warmth toward students through humor, which is illustrated in our analysis of Episodes 1 and 4 in the next section. In these two episodes, he used humor to defuse tensions, fostering a fun, caring relationship with students. He also explained that humor with language learners needs to be straightforward, which indicated his slapstick humor aimed at ensuring affective equity. This orientation was evident across episodes, especially in Episode 3 in his use of dramatic performance for humor and accessibility to humor. In addition, Jason's pedagogical humor was intentional. In an interview, he explained that like Jerry Seinfeld he often tried out different jokes with students, “You just try it out with different audiences, and try different iterations of it, and eventually, if you find one that always lands really great, you hang onto that joke.” Another aspect of his intentionality was evidenced in his efforts to connect humor to disciplinary knowledge: he often used the target science vocabulary in his humorous languaging acts, as illustrated in all four episodes.

Pedagogical Humor for Defusing Tension in Classroom Management

Our analysis indicated that Jason often used humor to defuse tensions in the classroom, as illustrated in Episode 1. In this episode, the students are working with their experimental group to analyze the data on their plants’ growth. Jason is circulating in the classroom to check in with each group on their progress. When noticing that Maria's group is not working together, Jason raises the volume of his voice and draws their attention to this issue (see transcription notations in the appendix).

Episode 1

Instead of forcing them to work together, Jason uses a question to invite them to reflect upon their group work, “How well are we doing this job?” (line 6). Yiwen responds in a sarcastic tone, “Excellent” (line 7), which could be potentially read as unreflective of their action and resisting teacher authority. Jason pauses for a few seconds and starts to laugh. Instead of criticizing Yiwen, Jason sustains the sarcastic humor that Yiwen initiates and laughs, “You know you cannot control what I see, right?” while putting his fists near his eyes to indicate that he can see what is going on in the group. Thus, Jason's sustaining of Yiwen's humor defuses the tension. It is important to notice that while Jason's languaging acts are enacted with an authoritative tone, there is a hint of warmth in his tone and embodied actions—he is smiling throughout this classroom event. In addition, Jason's humorous languaging act connects to the science curricular content because he intentionally uses the science concept “control” that the class learned during the first half of the class.

This episode captures Jason's overall approach to classroom management. Instead of forcing students to behave through authoritarian teacher “power over,” he tends to enact “power with” to construct an authoritative approach with warmth, caring, and playful sarcasm that is often enregistered through humor. As he shared in the interview,

Everyone's got different personalities. Some teachers are just warm and loving, caring, and I show that in different ways than I think some other people do. Some people are okay yelling at students. Tried that. Don't like that. So, I got rid of that one. So, everyone's going to have to find their own [approach].

Using sarcastic humor in classroom management allows Jason to avoid direct confrontation with students and create a space for students to reflect upon their actions without explicitly threatening their faces. His humorous approach created a fun, caring relationship between him and the students.

Pedagogical Humor for Humanizing Learning and Disrupting Prevailing Norms

Our analysis indicated that humor co-constructed in this classroom also worked to humanize disciplinary learning and disrupt prevailing norms, as illustrated in Episode 2. In this episode, Jason is teaching the class the science concept of “proposal” because the students are going to develop their proposals for their photosynthesis experiment. To support students’ understanding of this science term, he first asks them to write down an example of a proposal in their daily life and then share it in the whole class discussion. Supporting students to understand the use of this word in everyday discourse provides students a scaffolding for understanding its disciplinary meaning.

Episode 2

After explaining the reasons for learning this word, Jason intentionally calls on Zeehan to share his example of a proposal. A couple of minutes prior to this episode and during the warm-up activity, Zeehan had asked Jason if the sentence—“Will you marry me?”—would be a good example. At that moment, Jason simply answered “yes” and went on to check in with other students. By inviting Zeehan to share his example during the whole classroom discussion here (line 1), Jason is intentional to appropriate Zeehan's answer for humor. After Zeehan shares his example—“Will you marry me?”, Jason pauses and replies, “Very nice proposal” (line 4). With another comedic pause, he then says, “the answer's no” (line 5). Therefore, Jason's elicitation of Zeehan's sentence is intentional because his responses turn the instructional event into a theatrical performance in which Zeehan's answer becomes a marriage proposal and Jason himself becomes the target of the proposal from a male student. His humorous languaging acts are recognized by the students, as captured by their playful yelling and laughing (lines 6–7).

This classroom episode illustrates that humor is often co-constructed and enacted in relation to disciplinary learning, which underscores the inseparability of affective and epistemic aspects of teaching and learning. Zeehan's example for an instructional task provides a linguistic resource for humor, which is intentionally taken up by Jason for language play. Jason's bid for humor in turn is recognized and taken up by students, which illustrates that humor is co-constructed. The interactional construction of humor between Jason and his students also works to disrupt rigid, hierarchical teacher–student relationships because Jason's languaging act turns the instructional event into a theatrical performance of a marriage proposal in which he becomes a courted partner of a student; it fosters a sense of fun, playfulness, and connection between him and the students. In addition, this humorous classroom event momentarily disrupts the heteronormativity that commonly shapes classroom life and instead suggests a marriage proposal between two men as a possible scenario.

Dramatizing Humor for Performing Identity and Ensuring Affective Equity

Another category of humor we observed in this classroom is constructed through Jason's dramatic performance of stories from his personal family life. This type of dramatizing humor, in conjunction with sharing his experience through narrative events of small stories (Georgakopoulou, 2007; Qin, 2019), allowed Jason to perform his identity and create a fun, humanizing relationship with his students, as illustrated in Episode 3. In this episode, Jason and his students are engaging a whole class discussion about the meanings of the science concept “control” (as the control group in a science experiment).

Episode 3

Jason starts the lesson by inviting the students to share examples of things or activities that they can or cannot control in everyday life. During the discussion, Adonis gives his example of controlling the time for eating breakfast (line 1). Building on Adonis's example, Jason enacts a slapstick, dramatizing humor through which he shares about his personal family life while illustrating the meaning of the word “control.” He performs the contrast between his two daughters in how much time they spend eating their breakfast (lines 7–10, 12–13). The humor is achieved through his dramatic performance: When performing how slow one of his daughters eats her breakfast, he slowly brings one hand to his mouth in a slow circular motion as if he is holding a utensil and eating (lines 7–8). When performing how fast the other daughter eats, he moves both of his hands’ palm side up and open toward his face in a rapid back-and-forth motion (line 9), and then declares his fast-eating child's typical reported speech, “I’m finished” (line 10).

This classroom episode illustrates how Jason brings into the classroom a slapstick, overly dramatized sense of humor about his own family life as well as his identity as a father, which works to build a more authentic teacher–student relationship. Jason's humorous performances serve as a pedagogical move that personalizes learning as a relational encounter between people who have lives beyond the classroom. Such pedagogical humor disrupts a narrow notion of the student–teacher relationship as hierarchical and humanizes the learning experience, as evidenced in how Jason as a teacher is willing to be a little silly and vulnerable with his students in dramatically acting out moments of family life. Jason's slapstick humor in this interactional episode also provides a straightforward sense of humor in classroom interaction through the affective moves such as his use of onomatopoeia and dramatic performances. Such straightforward humor constitutes an act of what we call affective equity because dramatic performances like this one allow all his students to access the humor, regardless of their levels of language proficiency. As discussed in the introduction section, Jason is intentional in making sure his humor is straightforward and everyone can get it.

Sarcastic Bantering for Building Classroom Relationships

Our observation indicated that Jason sometimes engaged in sarcastic bantering with students, a style mirroring the jocular teasing often observed among adolescent peer groups (Rampton, 1995), as illustrated in Episode 4. This type of sarcastic bantering works to reconfigure relations of power in the classroom (Bell & Pomerantz, 2016). In this episode, students are working on writing their experiment reports individually. Jason is circulating in the classroom to check in on individual students.

Episode 4

When noticing that some students are googling information to include in their report, Jason asks them, in a parentally concerned kind of way, to “stop googling stuff” (line 1). He then quickly switches to a playful sarcastic tone telling students that they are “ridiculous” (line 2), which tones down the directness of his previous languaging act. Jason's initiation of a playful, sarcastic tone is taken up by the students, as evidenced by their laughing (line 3) and José's bantering (lines 5–6). José's bantering features a stylized way of speaking—using Spanish pronunciation for the English language. Jason sustains this bantering by bluntly replying to José in a matter-of-fact tone, “You are ridiculous,” reflective of a dry deadpan sense of humor. Jason then pauses between the students’ laughter and then remarks, “I don't know if any of us can control that,” which indicates Jason's intentional use of the target vocabulary the students are learning—“control.” The back-and-forth bantering continues through José's translanguaging bantering (line 10) and Jason's exaggerated sarcasm (lines 11–12).

In this classroom episode, Jason engaged in a bantering style of communication for humor which we frequently observed in his classroom. Such sarcastic humor was used for toning down the directness of his languaging act used for classroom management and was also co-constructed with students as illustrated in the episode (lines 5–12). What is interesting is that by asking students not to google in a humorous way, he positioned the students as owning their own epistemic rights. This bantering style of communication works to foster a fun, caring relationship between Jason and his students.