Is humour a feature of instructional quality?

Abstract Teacher humour is found an effective tool associated with different dimensions of instructional quality. However, its significance as a teaching characteristic has not been systematically investigated, particularly through a qualitative approach. Therefore, we conducted a qualitative study to investigate how teacher humour ranks relative to other teaching characteristics from teacher and student perspectives. The participants were 40 high school English teachers (Mage: 39.47, Mexperience: 10.68, female 63 %) in Germany and 989 ninth-grade students (Mage: 14.23, SD = 0.50, female 53 %). Teachers completed a paper-and-pencil qualitative questionnaire, while students completed an online questionnaire. Both groups answered two identical open-ended questions and one group-specific open question. Our results show that teacher humour is considered a salient characteristic of instructional quality from both teacher and student perspectives and relates to multiple dimensions of instruction. However, the role of humour in instruction is seen differently by teachers and students, especially compared to other highly prioritized instructional quality features. In addition, the most and least important characteristics of instructional quality were identified in comparison to teacher humour. We conclude that teacher humour functions as both a distinct feature of instructional quality and a potential contributor to various dimensions within this multidimensional construct. We discuss the results against the backdrop of the trainability of humour in the classroom.