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Institute
Noise in schools is considered a massive stress factor for teachers because of various reasons and can therefore lead to performance deficits in the job, but also to physical and psychological impairments. Consequently, research on school noise and its effects is essential. The three studies presented in this paper examined the immediate effects of noise on student teachers and the collateral effects on practicing teachers.
In the first and second study, two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of noise during breaks on stress experience, performance in a concentration test, and error correction of a dictation. Based on the transactional stress model (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), it was hypothesized that noise leads to an increase in stress experience. According to the maximal adaptability theory (Hancock & Warm, 1989, 2003), noise should initially cause optimal performance, but in the long run should cause performance impairment. For this purpose, in the first study 74 and in the second study 104 student teachers of the University of Passau worked on two different concentration tests and corrected a student’s dictation while listening to short, continuous, or no noise. In both experiments, continuous noise led to an increase in the experience of stress. Neither short nor continuous noise led to a deterioration in concentration performance. Further, different findings emerged: In the first experiment, a short concentration test in combination with continuous noise led to positive effects in dictation correction, i.e., subjects showed better performance in error correction. In the second experiment, a long concentration test combined with short or continuous noise resulted in negative effects, i.e., subjects made more errors in the subsequent correction of dictation. It can be concluded that school noise can, on the one hand, increase the experience of stress and, on the other hand, promote or limit teachers’ subsequent performance. The latest, however, seems to depend on the specific situation of the individual.
In the first part of the third study, the focus was on teachers’ coping styles and experienced stress. Since coping styles have been shown to have a major impact on mental health, it was reasonable to assume that the stress experience caused by noise would vary depending on the coping style. Based on the stress-strain model (Rudow, 2000) and the transactional stress model (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), it was hypothesized that teachers with risky coping styles experience more stress symptoms. Therefore, an online study was conducted to investigate whether there were differences in psychological and physical symptoms between teachers with different coping styles. For this purpose, 99 Bavarian elementary and middle school teachers were surveyed. Four professional coping styles resulted from the overarching scales of professional commitment and resilience. The healthy type (high commitment, high resilience), the unambitious type (low commitment, high resilience), type A (high commitment, low resilience), and type burnout (low commitment, low resilience) differed in terms of threat appraisal, noise stress, voice and hearing problems, and noise-related burnout. Compared to the healthy type, the risk types − type A and type burnout − exhibited higher stress experience and were generally more susceptible to school noise than the healthy type. This is the first study to show that school noise is particularly hazardous for teachers with risky coping styles.
The second part of the third study focused on the impact pathways of school noise. Associations between teachers’ individual characteristics and the consequences of school noise were hypothesized. Based on the simplified model of teacher stress (van Dick & Wagner, 2001), we examined 159 Bavarian elementary and middle school teachers to determine whether noise stress and vocal fatigue mediate the association between noise sensitivity and noise-related burnout. Results indicated that noise stress mediated the relationship between noise sensitivity and vocal fatigue; vocal fatigue mediated the relationship between noise stress and noise-related burnout; noise stress and vocal fatigue serially mediated the relationship between noise sensitivity and noise-related burnout. This is the first study to show links between noise-sensitive teachers and noise stress, voice problems, and noise-related burnout.