School acoustic design in the UK is traditionally concerned with the needs of the listener, rather than the voice ergonomics of the speaker. However, a recent survey undertaken by London South Bank University (LSBU) indicated that over 65% of the surveyed teachers had experienced voice problems during their career. This supports other studies suggesting that teachers have a significantly higher rate of voice problems than the general population. In an effort to better understand the influence of classroom acoustic design on the speech levels of teachers LSBU is currently undertaking measurements of teachers' voices in different classroom types. The measurements are being undertaken using an Ambulatory Phonation Monitor (APM) which measures voice parameters directly from the skin vibrations in the neck, thus eliminating the effects of other noise sources in the environment. The rooms involved are acoustically benchmarked separately to enable relationships between the voice data and acoustic parameters to be investigated. This paper presents results of the field measurements to date, with a brief summary of the data collected to date from the teachers' questionnaire survey, and discusses some of the initial findings.
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