Classroom Acoustics In The Social And Emotional Development Of Primary School Children

A few notes on classroom arrangements

Classrooms, in the public schools of Romania, almost always look the same: a room with a black/white board in front, windows on one side of the room, rows of two or three desks in a line, seldom cabinets on the side or at the back of the room and the teacher always has the desk in front of the children. This wouldn’t constitute a problem if the room was properly ventilated, big enough to accommodate the children or would be fitted with the proper teaching instruments. There is always a problem with the number of desks in one classroom and the number of children, which in many cases exceed the number allowed in a classroom to function in optimal conditions. The teacher has to struggle to be understood and the children are having a hard time concentrating. Knowing the child’s interest for learning, in primary school a child can be at times too loud or to eager to find out right then the information he’s looking. This can be problematic as the teacher has to interrupt the lessons and continue to explain on the point of interest and this is not a desirable situation. Most teachers manage to control a proper classroom environment and teach the proposed information for the school day.

The classroom in itself should be a tool that the teacher could use in his/hers and the children’s advantage. The way the furniture and informational material is arranged, but also the way the room is structured and build is an important factor for teaching lessons in the classroom. Most schools in Romania do not have the required materials to support the teacher in his/hers teaching endeavours. If the teacher isn’t having the proper material support then he/she can’t hold his/hers lessons accordingly and this results in a frustrated child and incomplete information delivery. The social and emotional development of the child starts at the very beginning and is a process that lasts through his years of school and with the suitable upbringing and the appropriate informational transfer the child can become a person with developed social and emotional skills needed in his/hers strife in life.

Room acoustics and legislative regulations

An important aspect of the classroom is the acoustics of the room the lessons are being held. There is a concern regarding the acoustics of the classroom in various countries: Finland, Iceland, Germany, Portugal, India etc. According to the “Handbook on the Implementation of EC Environmental Legislation” environmental noise constitutes an issue in the European Community and the number of people that suffer from this problem is large and increasing with each year (Regulations concerning noise protection). In Romania STAS 6161-3 and STAS 6156-86 has the following requirements for sound levels in regards to functional units in buildings for educational purposes (see Table 01 ) (Handbook on the Implementation of EC Environmental Legislation, 2014). Even though the requirements are stated in the legislation the demands of the classroom are changing with every new technological introduction in the teaching process. Teachers use a preponderance number of technological tools from PC monitors, laptops, tablets, recorders, video projectors, speakers etc. With this new era of technologization there is a demand for fitting conditions in the classroom for this equipment to support the teacher in his/her ventures (Pääkkönen et al., 2015).

Classroom acoustics

Recent studies suggest that regulations are not properly used in order to confer a decent indoor noise level and therefore acoustics for the teaching process. A study was carried out in Nagao, India to determine if the noise pollution is contributing to the negatively performance of students and teachers. It was determined that all the buildings where teaching-learning processes were performed were not suitable for this kind of process and that road traffic was a major problem and contributed in a vast majority to this aspect (Debnath et al., 2012).

Sound levels are not always an exterior factor and a comparison between public preschools and a “tighter pedagogical control of discipline” affirmed that the noise levels are different, in a sense that in public preschools noise levels made by children were much higher than the other school system. This also reported that the teachers in the public school were more fatigued and didn’t have such a good control over the children noise productions (Jonsdottir et al.,2015). There is a difference for the noise levels between the types of schools. In primary schools the levels of noise is higher than in secondary schools and so the primary school children are more affected by the noise levels than other pupils (Bhardwaj et al., 2013). Using measurements of sound levels, reverberation time in classroom and sound insulation a study determined that a number of schools don’t embrace the requirement for good acoustical classrooms (Pinho et al., 2016). The study also acknowledged that only two of the eight buildings tested had the required acoustic.

The learning process is very much influenced if the teacher is being heard even from the back of the classroom by the children. The classroom surfaces and floors create the proper or improper environment needed in the classroom. If these are not made by the right materials the sound can reverberate more than necessary and create annoyance or distractions. It was found that carpets on the floors were a positive aspect and shaped the room as suitable for learning functions (Pääkkönen et al., 2015). In the teaching process not only the child has to suffer from improper acoustics of the classroom but also the teacher as well. Teachers that must undertake teaching tasks in a poorly ventilated or inappropriate acoustical room have more voice organ problems than others. The result of one study suggests that indoor environment influences the voice and therefore resulting in health problems (Rantala et al., 2015).

The teacher has to make effort in order to be understood in a classroom with young children and it was found that the levels of speech intelligibility vary between different ages. First grade pupils require with 7 dB better speech-to-noise ratios than grade 6 students (Bradley & Sato, 2008). An interdisciplinary study has proved the importance of good acoustics in the classroom and the team consisting of acousticians, occupational health scientists and pedagogues measured the communication behaviour relative to classroom acoustic measurements in two elementary schools. In a classroom with fitting acoustics provide high absorption of noise and high speech intelligibility and this translates to teacher and children alike don’t have to talk aloud to be heard or understood (Tiesler et al., 2015).

Participants

We have contacted primary school teachers at a school in Cluj-Napoca about the intention of the study and there were willing to cooperate. The study was applied to 293 primary school children (Nfemale=159, Nmale=134) with ages between 8 and 12 with Mage=9.369 years (Mage female=9.37, Mage male=9.36). The children were from three levels of grades in the Romanian school system: second, third and fourth.

Design

A semi-structured questionnaire was design with ten closed single-option answers and at the end there was an open-ended question. The questionnaire was implemented during break hours in school days and it didn’t interfere with the classroom schedule of teaching. All children answered the questionnaire in their own time, there was no timing and they all marked their answer individually with no collaboration from their peers. The ten closed single-option answers were analysed descriptively and for the last question there were themes identified and then categorized in six separate themes accordingly.

Results

The data collected were entered and were processed using the SPSS statistical software. Below, we present a visual summary for the answers of the questionnaire that was applied.

Questions three and four regarded the levels of noise in the classroom and in the school and the results are as follows. The results revealed that 10.2%of children think that there isn’t noise in the school, 7.5% think there is rarely noise, 48.10% there is sometimes noise at school and 32.10% answered that there is often noise in the school. Concerning the noise in the classroom 16.4% answered that there isn’t noise, 13% think there is rarely any noise, 38.6% answered that there is sometimes noise and 31.1% think there is often noise in the classroom. (see Figure 01 . and Figure 02 .)

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The next two questions were about the sources of noise during class hours and also during break time. Result show that during class hours 41.6% think the noise is produced by their classmates, 50.2% think the noise is from outside sources, 2.7% answered that the noise is from other classroom and 5.1% think the source of the noise is from elsewhere. During break time 47.8% think the noise is made by their classmate, 8.5% of the children have answered that noise is from other classrooms and 6.8% think the noise comes from elsewhere (see table 02 ).

The results for question seven concerning how does noise make them feel when it occurs are presented in table 03 and also correlated with gender. The preponderance of answers displays the fact that children most often can’t concentrate if noise occurs during class hours. In figure 03 the answers are displayed with regards to the age of the participant.

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The results for the question regarding their well-being were divided by age and the answers are as follow in Figure 04 below. The majority of the children don’t think that noise interferes with their well-being t school.

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Considering the last question where the children were asked to give solutions to noise problems, we analysed the answers qualitatively and divided the answers into six themes (categories). The results are illustrated in table 04 . At this question we had 27 missing answers out of the 293 cases recorded and the total cases that were analysed were 266.