Panasonic WX-LAK12 Voicing Concern About Noisy Classrooms

Voicing Concern About Noisy

Classrooms

(Summary)

Karen L. Anderson

Association for Supervision and Curriculum

Development, pp. 77-79

April, 2001

Background noise and poor acoustics can lead to voice problems for teachers

and create unhealthy learning environments; however, solutions such as sound-

field amplification can help remedy the problems.

Teachers talk on average of 6.3 hours per school day. During most of this time

teachers must constantly raise their vocal volume to compete with background

noise. This vocal strain leads to teacher absenteeism which in turn leads to

financial implications of hiring substitute teachers.

Since the majority of classroom education is auditory, it is vitally important that

children receive the information clearly. Multiple studies show differences in both

performance and behavior between students working in quiet conditions and

students working in noisy conditions. Poor listening conditions not only

lead to masked properties of speech but also restlessness, decreased attention

span, and inappropriate classroom behavior. Additionally, overall stress levels

increase and group discussions become ineffective because students are not

able to hear the teacher or each other.

Students who have hearing problems are even more at risk. 30 – 43% of

elementary students have minimal degrees of hearing impairment and 72% of

special education students experienced some degree of hearing deficit. An

enormous amount of money is spent on hearing technology and learning

specialists for these students when research shows that these students could

have been learning in a regular classroom if the acoustic conditions had been

better.

Sound-field amplification systems contribute to a faster learning rate with less

repetition of information. Also, teachers do not have to raise their voice to

compete with interfering noise. One local agency that implemented sound-field

Continued…..