A pilot study on the relationship between primary-school teachers’ well-being and the acoustics of their classroomsShow others and affiliations
2020 (English)In: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, ISSN 1661-7827, E-ISSN 1660-4601, Vol. 17, no 6, article id 2083
Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Although teachers’ well-being and vocal health are affected by noise, research on classroom sound environment from the teachers’ perspective is scarce. This study investigated the relationship between teachers’ well-being and classroom acoustics. The possible influence of teachers’ age, experience, teaching grade and class size on the relationship was also investigated. In this study, well-being refers to self-reported vocal health, stress, burnout and self-efficacy. Twenty-three primary-school teachers answered questionnaires on well-being. In each teacher’s classroom, the acoustical properties were measured with the variables reverberation time, clarity of speech (C50) and ventilation system noise (VSN). A series of non-parametric correlations were run to determine the relationship between teachers’ well-being and classroom acoustics. Initially, there was a significant bivariate correlation between burnout and VSN, as well as voice symptoms correlated with VSN and teaching grade. Although the results became not significant after correction for multiple tests, the findings indicate that higher degree of burnout is associated with higher levels of VSN in classrooms, and voice symptoms increase with higher VSN. Teachers working in lower grades had more voice symptoms than those working in higher grades. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
MDPI, 2020. Vol. 17, no 6, article id 2083
Keywords [en]
Acoustics, Classroom sound environment, Teacher, Vocal health, Well-being, correlation, noise, primary education, quality of life, questionnaire survey, teaching, adult, age distribution, Article, class size, classroom acoustics, clinical article, environment, female, hearing, hearing impairment, human, job stress, male, occupational hazard, occupational health, physical well-being, pilot study, primary school, professional burnout, questionnaire, reverberation time, school teacher, self concept, self report, sound environment, speech clarity, teacher wellbeing, teaching experience, teaching grade, ventilation system noise, visual analog scale, voice disorder, voice parameter, sound, Humans, Pilot Projects, School Teachers, Voice Disorders
National Category
Health Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-199193DOI: 10.3390/ijerph17062083ISI: 000529342300273PubMedID: 32245168Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85082513489OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-199193DiVA, id: diva2:1693638
2022-09-072022-09-072022-09-07Bibliographically approved