EFFECT OF NOISE IN AN ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT

Background to the Study
Proper learning and education depends on a number of concepts, which include, the appropriateness of the physical and social environment of class, motivation of teachers and students for teaching and learning, and students’ cognitive, emotional and motor preparation. Others are sound management of class by teachers, teachers’ mastery over the subject, and their passion for the work as well as students’ progress. The teacher tries to create a perfect environment for learning to the learner in order to prevent the formation of unnecessary behaviour and nuisance factors (Adams, 2012). Thus, the learning environment dramatically affects the learning outcomes of students. Noise, inappropriate temperature, insufficient light, overcrowded classes, misplaced boards and inappropriate classroom layout make up factors that could be confounding variables distracting students in class (Francis, 2011).

Noise refers to sounds that hinder an individual’s ability to listen to what they want or need to hear. Classroom background noise can arise from several possible sources, including external noise (such as traffic noise), internal noise (students running in corridors), and room noise, such as students talking (Staples, 2014). Studies have shown that noise has direct negative effects on student learning, with language and reading development particularly affected. There are also problems related to attention, memory and motivation.

In order to compensate for the noise level in classrooms, teachers often have to speak loudly while teaching. Such a speaking habit is known to be a risk factor that may lead to voice disorders in teachers (Murphy, 2014). It is crucial to address the background noise in classrooms so that both students and teachers may learn and work in a healthy environment. High-density, the lack of empty spaces, poor communication network and, the most importantly, ill-conceived planning, have all led to the development of educational spaces regardless of location, proximity, spread and compatibility principles and criteria.

In addition to the failure to comply with the principle of equal and fair access of student population to educational spaces, this problem reduces the students’ comfort, efficiency, and health and safety on one hand, and creates numerous problems for students, teachers and citizens on the other. In a recent study assessing the location of training centers in Ahwaz using Boolean logic, it was shown that 63% of junior high schools of Ahwaz were in the wrong location in terms of location criteria (Fyhri, 2015).

Education is the foundation of any social, economic, political, and cultural development in any society. Also, in each educational system, many factors act together to ensure the academic achievement of students. Every part of the educational system should be prepared in such a way that access to optimal efficiency and targets can be achieved, because if one part of the system stops, the performance of other components can be reduced and damaged.
By considering and analyzing inputs such as physical variables, planning can be made more consciously. In addition to physical factors, there are other variables that affect learning and academic achievement, and by doing research in this regard, we can detect their effects. When education systems do not have the necessary information in such basic fields, correct performance cannot be expected in various fields of education (Kang, 2014). On the other hand, in applied areas, understanding environmental factors affecting the educational process and considering them in planning increases mental health of students and reduces their stress, resulting in enhanced educational performance.

Noise has a detrimental effect on academic environment and learning behaviour of students. Activities affected by noise include memory, reading, motivation, and attention (Lercher, 2014).There is increasing evidence that poor classroom acoustics can have a particularly negative effect upon students with special needs such as hearing impairment.
The teaching and learning quality is highly influenced by the internal factors, e.g., the teacher’s performance, since teachers can affect their students’ achievements. Many researchers have suggested that teacher’s quality is an important factor in improving the student performance and high teacher incentives are associated with better student performance. Nevertheless, external factors, namely the environment factor, also affect the student performance as reported by most recent studies that the association between teacher’s knowledge and students’ learning has linear effects, and also involves external factor. The social atmosphere of a school is a potential and important contributing factor to the student outcomes (Shield, 2011).

Noise pollution is a major environmental problem. It was estimated that 10 million people in Nigeria were exposed to the excessive traffic noise, which may cause stress, illness and even fatal impact. A conservative estimation predicted the social cost of traffic noise amounting to 0.4% of total GDP. However, there is no model for estimating urban noise based only on urban variables and excluding variables related to traffic. (Lercher, 2014).