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By: Darren Iselin

Jon Eckert mentions in his excellent and highly practical book Just Teaching that he once commenced an article with the sentence: “I teach to entertain myself”.[i] Rather than trivialising the importance of learning and instruction, such a posture, when used creatively and deliberately, has been found to significantly enhance and promote engagement and motivation in learners and build meaningful relationships between teachers and students. Catherine Price identifies the triad of elements that contribute to what she terms “true fun” as being playfulness, connection and flow.[ii] Such a framework provides teachers with a succinct scaffold that can be incorporated into classroom instruction and learning activities across any year level. There is a joyful, playful, and meaningful connection that occurs when teachers intentionally engage in a sense of playfulness, fun, and humour to promote and enhance meaningful learning in their classrooms. Far from being a fleeting happiness hit or an irrelevant diversion from “real learning”, such approaches when used well by teachers have the capacity to transform learning engagement, motivation, and student well-being.   

The themes that Jon unpacks in Just Teaching regarding the important role that fun and playfulness have upon both learning engagement and increased well-being have been reinforced in a recent longitudinal project investigating student flourishing in Australian Christian Schools that was undertaken by researchers from the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, Research Schools International and Christian Schools Australia.[iii]

This project used a longitudinal two wave survey design that sought to identify the specific practices that increased students’ levels of flourishing throughout a school year. The survey adopted the flourishing domains used in the Human Flourishing Program’s Adolescent Flourishing scale, as well a diverse range of validated adolescent relationships and character scales to measure the effect of a range of classroom practices on student flourishing. Over 22,000 students (12 -18-year-olds) from across 57 schools participated in this groundbreaking study.

Laughter and Student Flourishing

Modified longitudinal multivariate analyses of both surveys provided evidence that student flourishing scores increased the most when students laughed with peers at least once a month, with a staggering 22% increase in scores observed from Wave 1 to Wave 2 surveys when this practice was facilitated. Complementing these findings, the data showed a positive association between the frequency of laughing with other students and increased flourishing scores. Mean scores were highest for those who laughed with others daily. These findings confirm the wisdom of Proverbs 17:22 that states a cheerful (joy filled) heart is indeed good medicine.

Teacher Use of Humour and Student Flourishing

Furthermore, it was not only laughing with other students that brought increases in student flourishing scores in this study, but also the intentional use of humour in the classroom by teachers. Student flourishing scores increased by 9% between Wave 1 and Wave 2 surveys when teachers regularly incorporated humour into classroom instruction and activities. Consistent with these longitudinal results, the data also showed that student flourishing scores were much higher when teachers incorporated humour in class with their students on a daily basis, compared to when humour was never incorporated.

The Research Links Between Flourishing and Fun

Other research studies have also identified that humour can support and enhance student flourishing and learning. Neuroscience researchers have found that humour can improve memory and retaining of information in students [iv] whilst other studies have  shown that resilient secondary students often use humour to de-escalate stressful encounters and experiences and regulate socio-emotional functioning.[v] It has also been shown that humour can enhance students’ learning by encouraging active participation, reducing anxiety, and ultimately improving learning outcomes.[vi]

Playfulness and Playful Pedagogies

The Student Flourishing in Australian Christian Schools study also found that flourishing scores increased by 17% from Wave 1 to Wave 2 among students who reported that teachers incorporated a sense of playfulness and playful pedagogies into their lessons. The data also indicated a positive trend between frequency of teacher enacted playfulness and flourishing, with the highest student flourishing scores observed when these playful pedagogies were practiced daily. Numerous other research studies also support these findings and confirm the important link that playfulness can have upon student flourishing and engagement in learning. Furthermore, the active cultivation of these practices works most effectively when implemented within school cultures where flourishing and joy filled emphases are an integral thread amongst both staff and students.  

The findings from this recent large scale Australian project confirm what great teachers have always known – that teaching is a deeply relational, fun and playful process. Highly effective teachers cultivate a welcoming, joy filled presence within their classrooms, and seek to prepare a place for all students to belong, engage, play, laugh and learn together, as they actively participate in the deeply soulful and joyful practices of connection between the teacher, the student and the subject matter being taught.

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[i] Eckert, J. Just Teaching. Feedback, Engagement and Well-being for Each Student. (2023). Corwin. Thousand Oaks, CA. p.48

[ii] Price, C. (2021). The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. The Dial Press.

[iii] Iselin, D. (2025). Student Flourishing in Australian Christian Schools. Christian Schools Australia. Sydney.

[iv] Coronel, J.C., O’Donnell, M.B., Pandey, P., Carpini, M.X.D. & Falk, E.B. (2021). Political Humor, Sharing, and Remembering: Insights from Neuroimaging Journal of Communication, Vol. 71/1, pp. 129–161, 10.1093/joc/jqaa041

[v] Hinton, C., Hill, B. & Yemiscigil, A. (2024) Evidence-Based Interventions and Initiatives to Support Student Well Being in Schools. OECD publications

[vi] Elkhayma, R. (2021). An experimental study of students’ perceptions of classroom humour. International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, Vol. 6/1, pp. 443-451, https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels, not because of the fall slump, but because I know growth is on the horizon. 

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