What do teachers think about noise in the classroom?

Abstract

Surveys were sent to 396 Orlando-area elementary school teachers to gauge their subjective evaluation of noise in their classroom, and their general attitudes toward classroom noise. The 87 responses were correlated with the types of mechanical systems in their respective schools: (1) fan and compressor in room, (2) fan in room and remote compressor, or (3) remote fan and remote compressor. Results were also compared to the results of a previous study of the same 73 schools that linked school mechanical system type with student achievement. While teachers were more likely to be annoyed by noise in the schools with the noisiest types of mechanical systems, they were still less likely to be annoyed than the research might suggest—and when teachers did express annoyance, it was more likely to be centered around the kind of distracting noise generated by other children in adjacent corridors than by mechanical system noise.