Learning Through Comedy: What the Research Says About Humour in Teaching

Does humour help people learn? The short answer from more than four decades of research is yes, with conditions. Jokes that are connected to the material help students pay attention, feel less anxious and remember more. Jokes that are unrelated, sarcastic or aimed at the learners do nothing or cause harm. This page summarises what the studies actually show, looks at the best examples of educational comedy, and gives practical advice for teachers and video-makers.

It is about comedy as a way to teach other subjects. If you want to learn to be a comedian, see our guide to comedy education instead.

What the research shows

Humour in teaching has been studied since the 1970s, mostly in university classrooms. A few landmark findings:

Related jokes help memory

In a 1977 study, Robert Kaplan and Gregory Pascoe gave students lectures with different kinds of humour. Weeks later, students who had heard jokes directly illustrating a concept remembered that concept better. Jokes unrelated to the content gave no advantage. This "relevance" finding has been confirmed many times and is the single most useful thing to know.

Humour can raise exam scores

The Israeli psychologist Avner Ziv ran a well-known experiment, published in 1988, teaching an introductory statistics course with and without planned, concept-related humour. Students in the humour condition scored higher on the final exam, and a replication produced a similar result. Statistics was a deliberate choice: an anxiety-heavy subject where lowering stress might help most.

Funny things are easier to remember

Memory researchers, notably Stephen Schmidt in the 1990s, found a "humour effect": people remember humorous sentences better than ordinary ones when the two are mixed together. The surprise and emotional reaction seem to make the material more distinctive.

The big picture

A widely cited 2011 review by John Banas and colleagues, covering four decades of research on humour in education, concluded that appropriate humour tends to improve the learning environment, students' view of the teacher and attention, while inappropriate humour (aggressive, offensive or aimed at students) undermines all three. Instructional Humour Processing Theory, developed by Melissa Wanzer, Ann Bainbridge Frymier and Jeffrey Irwin in 2010, explains why: a joke helps when students notice the incongruity, resolve it and connect it to the lesson. If they can't resolve it, or it makes them feel attacked, it only distracts.

Why humour helps

The research suggests several mechanisms working together:

• Attention. A joke is a small surprise, and surprise grabs attention. Learners often re-engage after a laugh.
• Lower anxiety. Laughing together reduces stress, which matters most in subjects people fear, like maths or languages.
• Distinctiveness. Funny examples stand out from the surrounding material, so they are easier to retrieve later.
• Relationship. Students tend to rate teachers who use appropriate humour as more approachable, which makes them more willing to ask questions.
• Processing. Getting a joke requires understanding the idea it plays on. Resolving the joke is a small act of comprehension.

Great examples of educational comedy

Outside classrooms, comedians and writers have created a rich tradition of teaching through comedy.

• Sesame Street (1969-). Built from the start on research into how children learn, with comedy and celebrity sketches designed to keep parents watching too. Early evaluations by the Educational Testing Service found measurable learning gains among regular viewers.
• Schoolhouse Rock! (1973-). Animated songs about grammar, maths and civics, such as the one about how a bill becomes law, that a generation of Americans can still sing.
• Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993-1998). Bill Nye came out of the Seattle sketch show Almost Live!, and his science show used sketch-comedy pace, parody and sound effects to teach.
• Horrible Histories (CBBC, 2009-). Sketches, pop parodies and mock adverts about history, based on Terry Deary's books. Adults watched it as much as children (more on our family comedy page).
• Drunk History (2013-2019). Derek Waters' Comedy Central show had tipsy narrators retell historical events while actors lip-synced them. The facts were usually right; the delivery was the joke.
• Adam Ruins Everything (truTV, 2015-2019). Adam Conover's sketch-explainer show debunked everyday myths, with sources shown on screen.
• Philomena Cunk. Diane Morgan's character, created by Charlie Brooker, is a clueless documentary presenter who asks experts magnificently stupid questions in Cunk on Britain (2018) and Cunk on Earth (2022). It is a parody, but viewers learn a surprising amount from the experts' patient answers.
• Last Week Tonight. John Oliver's long segments on dull topics like civil asset forfeiture or credit reports are, in effect, lectures with jokes. They show how comedy can carry complex material (see comedy and activism).

Using comic characters in educational videos

The Cunk and Nye examples point to a useful technique for anyone making educational video: the comic character.

• The wrong expert. A confident character who gets things wrong invites the viewer to spot the mistake. Correcting someone is a powerful way to learn.
• The naive questioner. A character who asks the "stupid" questions the audience is embarrassed to ask, as Cunk does with real experts.
• The straight explainer and the chaos. One character explains while another misunderstands, a double act borrowed from classic comedy.
• The recurring bit. A running joke that returns in each video gives viewers a reason to keep watching and a hook for memory.

Improv as a teaching tool

Improvisational comedy has crossed over into education and professional training. The core principles (listen closely, accept what your partner offers, build on it with "yes, and") turn out to be useful for classroom discussion, language learning and communication skills.

The best-known example is the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, where the actor, best known for M*A*S*H, helped develop improv-based training for scientists and doctors to explain their work more clearly. Many teachers also use improv games to get shy students speaking. Our page on improv comedy covers the form itself.

Different ages, different jokes

What counts as funny changes a great deal as people grow up, and humour that helps one age group can baffle another.

• Young children respond to physical comedy, silly voices, repetition and obvious incongruity: a cow that says "woof", a teacher who "forgets" how to count. Songs and rhymes with comic twists are especially effective for memorising sequences like the alphabet or times tables.
• Older children start to enjoy wordplay, riddles and gross-out humour, and love catching an adult in a mistake. Deliberate errors on the board for students to spot are a classic technique.
• Teenagers are highly sensitive to embarrassment and to anything that feels like a teacher trying to be cool. Dry, understated humour and absurd hypothetical examples tend to work better than performed jokes, and letting them create the comedy themselves works best of all.
• Adults respond to irony, satire and humour that respects their experience. In professional training, comedy that names a shared frustration (the pointless meeting, the confusing form) builds goodwill quickly.

Language learners are a special case. Puns and idioms are hard to get in a second language, but understanding a joke in a new language is also a memorable milestone. Many language teachers use simple jokes as a deliberate challenge once students are ready.

When humour backfires

The research is just as clear about what does not work:

• Sarcasm and ridicule aimed at students damage trust and discourage participation, especially among students who already feel unsure.
• Offensive humour about groups alienates students and undermines the teacher's credibility.
• Too much. A constant stream of jokes can make the content feel unimportant or make it hard to tell what matters.
• Forced humour. A teacher who is not naturally funny and tries too hard can create awkwardness. A funny example, video clip or cartoon chosen carefully can do the job instead.
• Cultural mismatch. Wordplay and references that depend on one culture or language can exclude international students and second-language learners.

Practical tips for teachers

1. Tie each joke to a concept. Exaggerated examples, absurd word problems and funny mnemonics all work.
2. Use self-deprecation sparingly and the students never. Laughing at yourself is safe; laughing at them is not.
3. Borrow good material. A short clip from Horrible Histories or Schoolhouse Rock! can do more than a forced joke.
4. Let students make the comedy. Asking students to write a parody, sketch or meme about a topic requires them to understand it well enough to play with it.
5. Read the room. Humour that relaxes one class may fall flat in another. Watch reactions and adjust.

For the wider academic study of humour, see our page on comedy research.

Frequently asked questions

Does humor help students learn?

Research suggests it can, when the humour is related to the material and is not aimed at students. Studies going back to the 1970s found that relevant jokes improved attention and recall, while unrelated or hostile humour had no benefit or made things worse.

What is educational comedy?

Educational comedy uses jokes, sketches or comic characters to teach something. Well-known examples include Schoolhouse Rock!, Horrible Histories, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Drunk History, Adam Ruins Everything and Philomena Cunk's mock documentaries.

How can comedy characters be used in educational videos?

A recurring comic character, such as a clueless presenter or an over-confident expert, gives viewers someone to correct, which makes them think. The key is that the joke should be about the concept being taught, so remembering the joke means remembering the idea.

Can humor in the classroom backfire?

Yes. Sarcasm and jokes at students' expense damage trust, offensive humour alienates students, and too many unrelated jokes distract from the content. Researchers distinguish between appropriate, related humour and humour that targets students or groups.