| 1 |
The ‘acoustic health’ of primary school classrooms in Brisbane, Australia
|
|
|
|
Abstract:
Purpose: To examine the ‘acoustic health’ of primary school classrooms in Brisbane, Australia. Methods: An acoustic survey was conducted on 33 primary school classrooms in Brisbane, Australia. The classrooms were typical for the region being single cell or dual cells separated by a concertina divider, varying in volume from 69 to 378 m, and made predominantly from acoustically hard materials. Results: The unoccupied sound levels ranged from 25.7 to 50.0 dB L and reverberation times (RTs) from 0.34 to 1.26 s. This represented a 26% failure rate for unoccupied sound level and 79% failure rate for RTs against Australian Standards for teaching spaces in primary school classrooms. Closer analysis of 12 of the classrooms showed occupied sound levels from 49.8 to 64.8 dB L during quiet activity, and speech transmission indexes (STI) ranging from 0.35 to 0.80 (on a scale of 0–1). This represented a 92% failure rate for occupied sound level and STI against research recommendations for teaching spaces in primary school classrooms in Australia. Conclusions: The high percentage of classrooms returning unsatisfactory acoustic measures supports long-standing and ongoing calls around the world to systematically improve classroom acoustics. We conclude with practical suggestions to mitigate the identified acoustic problems in these classrooms.
|
|
Keyword:
2733 Otorhinolaryngology; 3310 Linguistics and Language; 3616 Speech and Hearing; Classroom acoustics; Primary school; Reverberation time; Sound level; Speech transmission index
|
|
URL: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:0434e82
|
|
BASE
|
|
Hide details
|
|
|
| 2 |
Investigating the acoustics of a sample of open plan and enclosed Kindergarten classrooms in Australia
|
|
|
|
BASE
|
|
Show details
|
|
|
|
|
