Use of Humor as a Pedagogical Tool for Accounting Education

Abstract

This article focuses on the use of humor to increase the effectiveness of teaching accounting by conducting a meta-analysis on the use of humor by business executives and professors in other fields. Exclusively for this study, the meta-analysis quantitatively synthesizes the results of similar studies that meet predetermined criteria on a variable of interest, the effectiveness of humor, by summarizing their common statistic, called their effect size. Results support the hypothesis that humor is more effective today than it was in the early eighties. No articles were found on the use of humor in the accounting classroom, but the results of this meta-analysis affirm that accounting professors may benefit as well. This article then goes on to provide strategies and illustrations related to the use of humor that may enable interested accounting teachers t0 develop humor consistent with their personal styles and the needs of their students