“YOUNG NOISE RESEARCHERS”: AN INTERVENTION TO PROMOTE NOISE AWARENESS IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Abstract

While little is known about how young children understand noise and its environmental aspects, this topic is suggested to be included in science curricula from early years on. To investigate if and to what extent preschool children’s level of noise awareness could be improved the ‘Young Noise Researchers’ educational scenario was designed, implemented and evaluated. Research design involved a pretest-posttest procedure. Participants were 52 Greek preschool children, who attended public kindergarten classes. The scenario involved 9 activities following the principles of context-based, socio-cognitive and multimodal teaching and learning, which were implemented by the teachers of the classes in a 4-week period. Prior to and after the intervention participants engaged in individual, semi-structured interviews. The results indicated improvement in children’s noise awareness in regard to acknowledging everyday noises, understanding annoyance and subjectivity of noise, adopting negative attitudes towards noise and acknowledging its health effects. Nevertheless, their noise awareness did not significantly improve in other crucial respects. Implications for teaching involve a more systematic focus on the distinction between sound and noise, noise subjectivity, the annoyance caused by noise in daily life and the possibility of more active and preventive protection measures. Key words: early childhood education, pupils’ noise awareness, science education.