What If Your Next Professional Development Course Was Stand-Up Comedy?
What if your next piece of professional development wasn't a workshop on assessment or a leadership seminar, but a course in stand-up comedy?
It might sound like an unusual choice, but humour has a serious place in education. Used well, it can spark curiosity, support memory, encourage participation and help create a classroom environment in which people enjoy learning.
Humour can help learning stick. Research into emotional memory suggests that emotion can influence what we remember and how easily we retrieve it. Studies of instructional humour have also explored its effects on students' retention and recall. Humour is not a magic ingredient, of course, and a joke does not automatically make a lesson more effective. But when it reinforces an idea, illustrates a concept or gives students a memorable way into a topic, it can make learning more engaging and memorable.
Laughter can lower barriers. Shared laughter can help people connect, making a classroom feel more human and encouraging students to contribute. Research has linked appropriate teacher humour with students' sense of belonging, well-being and engagement. The important word here is appropriate: humour that brings people together is very different from humour that puts someone on the spot or makes them the butt of a joke.
The teacher matters, too. John Hattie's work on visible learning highlights the importance of teacher–student relationships and the influence teachers have on learning. Humour is not a substitute for subject knowledge, clear explanations or good teaching. It is one way of bringing warmth, personality and approachability into the classroom.
And what about staff well-being? Teaching can be demanding, and the ability to find humour in everyday situations, laugh together and occasionally laugh at ourselves may help us keep things in perspective. Humour won't resolve workload pressures or organisational problems, but it can contribute to positive relationships and a more enjoyable working environment.
So perhaps developing our sense of humour deserves a place in professional learning. Not because teachers need to become comedians, but because noticing the absurd, playing with language and finding an unexpected angle are skills worth cultivating. A stand-up comedy workshop might even offer a useful opportunity to practise timing, storytelling, reading an audience and thinking on our feet.
Education is about knowledge, of course. But it is about more than knowledge. It is also about curiosity, relationships and creating the conditions in which learning can take hold. Humour, used thoughtfully, is not a distraction from our educational mission. It can be one way we fulfil it.
Over to you: Would you consider attending a stand-up comedy workshop as part of your professional development? And what about turning up to class fully prepared—with your usual activities, slides and worksheets, but with a short comedy routine up your sleeve, too? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
- Gaudo, F. & Kaiser, M. (2020) — Lachend lernen: Humortechniken für den Unterricht. A practical guide to using humour in teaching, with techniques to encourage curiosity, motivation and positive classroom relationships.
- Banas et al. (2011) — A Review of Humor in Educational Settings. A review of four decades of research on humour in education.
- Garner (2006) — Humor in Pedagogy: How Ha-Ha Can Lead to Aha!. Explores how humour may support student learning and recall.
- Current Psychology (2024) — Is Teacher Humor an Asset in Classroom Management?. Examines links between teacher humour, student well-being, belonging and engagement.
- John Hattie — Teacher–Student Relationships. Explores the importance of teacher–student relationships for learning.
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