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Schools & Classrooms
How Obstacles to Listening
become Barriers to Learning
Let's start with the
simple facts. We know that children spend roughly 45% of the
school day engaged in listening activities. We also know that
students who have good listening experiences tend to become
better learners.
Conversely, those
who have difficulty hearing and understanding often engage
in disruptive behaviour and are labelled as apathetic - or
worse.
Part of the challenge is
biological. We know that children's auditory processes
aren't fully developed until their teen years. So,
in order to comprehend what you're saying, students need greater
speech clarity than adults.
And since what teachers
say to students is, by definition, new and unfamiliar, your
students can't easily rely on context when they miss a word.
Unfortunately, typical classroom environments often compound
the problem because of the following list of factors.
1. Distance -
In simple terms, audibility
decreases as the distance from the speaker increases. We
know that students seated in the front row of a typical
classroom receive about 83% of your speech "signal." That
number drops to 66% in the middle row, and just 55% in the
back row.
2.
Noise - Chatting neighbours, air conditioning, squeaking
desks and traffic all contribute to a classroom noise level
averaging as much as 50 decibels (almost the same as a busy
street). Since your comfortable speaking volume is not much
greater, it's easy to see how students might have trouble
distinguishing your voice from background distractions.
3. Reverberation
- The smooth
desks, high ceilings, windows, and uncarpeted floors, common
to many of today's classrooms, can reflect all kinds of
distracting sounds. Reverberation, also called "echo," can
clearly have a negative impact on speech understanding.
Teacher Vocal Health
- Half of all teachers will experience
vocal problems during their career (vs. 5% for the general
population) - according to the University of Iowa 's National
Center for Voice and Speech , USA .
- The combination of frequency and intensity
of vocal use in a classroom contributes to general fatigue
- Voice projection has an effect on the
tone and subtlety of communication
Student Engagement and Behaviour
Studies undertaken in the United
States of America in Escambia , Orange , Pinellas, and Sarasota
( Florida ) districts compared over 2,000 K-2 students found
the following:
- 53% of administrators noted a decrease
in behaviour referrals among students in active learning
classrooms
- 96% of teachers noted improvement in
attentiveness, listening, and comprehension among active
learning students
- 95% of active learning students said
they could hear the teacher more easily
Rosenberg , Improving Classroom Acoustics,
1995
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