How acoustics of classrooms affect teachers

How acoustics of classrooms affect teachers:

Professional voice users such as singers, teachers or call center agents rely on the performance of their voice. The acoustics of a room can restrict or support the singer or speaker and improve the sound of the voice and the intelligibility of speech. Previous studies found that teachers suffer more often from voice disorders than non-professional voice users. Our pilot study tries to find out whether disadvantageous acoustics in class rooms contributes to these findings. Professional voice users such as singers, teachers or call center agents rely on the performance of their voice. The acoustics of a room can support the singer or speaker and improve the sound of the voice and the intelligibility of speech. Previous studies found that teachers suffer more often from voice disorders than non-professional voice users. Our study tries to find out whether disadvantageous acoustics in class rooms contributes to these findings.

For several reasons, the room acoustical conditions in class rooms are often not well adopted to the teaching task: poor sound insulation to school yards, corridors and neighboured rooms can produce additional noise which adds to the sound produced by the pupils in the class room. Often, the floor is not sufficiently or not at all covered. Some rooms show strong reverberance or even echoes which can make communication difficult. When the room acoustical support is rather weak, the voice performance can be strongly reduced, and more effort of the teacher is necessary to convey the speech to the listeners. The problem for the pupils is a reduced intelligibility of the teacher's speech which often causes a lack of attention and concentration resulting in worsening of the learning conditions. For the teacher, in a long term, this additional voice load can result in voice disorders such as hoarseness, voice fatigue and even force teachers to retire early from their profession.