Acoustic Conditions and Student Perceptions in a Québec Classroom: A Case Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Although several studies have reported negative impacts of classroom noise on learning, few have examined students' subjective perceptions of their acoustic environment. This cross-sectional observational case study of a single classroom explored how adolescents aged 12 to 13 years evaluated their classroom soundscape and related perceptions to objective noise measurements. METHODS: Over 11 school days, several groups of students completed a questionnaire at the end of each class period (N = 957), indicating whether they felt annoyed/distracted, indifferent, or content/focused in relation to the acoustic environment, and providing free-text comments. Simultaneously, acoustic indicators (LAeq, LA10, LA90, LAmax, LA10-LA90) were recorded using calibrated sound level meters. RESULTS: Periods with higher LAeq, LA10, and LAmax values were significantly associated with fewer students feeling content/focused (r = -0.49 to -0.59; P < 0.05). At the individual level, correlations between acoustic measures and evaluations were weak (r = -0.14 to -0.19). Qualitative analysis of students' comments identified four perceptual modes of acoustic experience: intensity, soundscape, source, and autocentric impressions. Most students used only one mode and rarely made explicit connections between sound and learning. CONCLUSION: Findings from this single-classroom case study suggest that while higher continuous and peak noise levels are modestly associated with increased annoyance and reduced focus, these effects are limited. Because some student groups visited the classroom repeatedly, the data are not fully independent; and results should be interpreted with caution. This study highlights the need for larger, multiclassroom investigations combining subjective and objective data, and for tools supporting teacher noise management and student awareness.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".