Sound Spaces: The Otology Educational Ecologies

• In Event: Sensual Curriculum: Making Educational Sense Through the Senses

Abstract

Drawing from a diverse array of fields that includes acoustics, physics, ethnomusicology, architecture, and history, the field of sound studies has demonstrated the importance and possibilities in listening to spaces and places (e.g. Blesser & Salter, 2007; Mueke & Zach, 2007; Thompson, 2002). Sounds not only delineate space in a more fluid and porous manner than physical boundaries, they also reveal important information about those whose lives move through spaces and places, the ideas and ideals that inform the sounds present within spaces, and the identities of both space and place (e.g. Brandt, Duffy & MacKinnon, 2009; Feld, 1982; Wilkins, 2007). As such, sounds simultaneously delineate spaces, reify sociocultural norms and values, and are a means through which social actors enunciate their agency (e.g. Erlmann, 2004; Feld, 1996). Similarly, sounds can be utilized as not only a site of study but also a means of study, sound as methodology (e.g. Bauer, 2000; Samuel, Meintjes, Ochoa & Porcello, 2010).

In spite of such theoretical, practical, and methodological possibilities, educational sounds tend to be divided into noise and talk. Where noise is almost always negatively connoted, the sounds that are thought to disrupt processes of teaching and learning (e.g. Crandell & Smaldino, 2000; Dockrell & Shield, 2006), talk is a central source for the study of education (e.g. Trueba, Gutherie & Au, 1981; Erickson, 2004). While this does not mean that all talk is welcome in educational ecologies like classrooms, unlike noise, talk is nonetheless understood to be of value. Yet, what of the myriad classroom sounds, their impact on talk, and what might be learned through their study?

This paper/sound piece focuses on this question in the context of a particular place, an urban middle grades classroom in northeast Ohio. As part of an ongoing collaborative research project that examines how urban middle grades students writing songs about science might serve as a curricular tool for bridging race and gender gaps in science, students and I have been collecting a variety of sonic data. This data ranges from field recordings of classrooms to students’ reflections about their songwriting processes. I then worked with students to assemble these sounds until they were organized so that reflect students’ understandings of what their science classroom sounds like. Once that piece of sound art was assembled, I asked students to listen back to the recording and another layer of sonic data, making audio recordings of their thoughts about what those sounds meant. The result is both a piece of sound art and a traditional paper that contextualizes those sounds.

This work is significant in the following three ways. First, it complicates and adds to current understandings of the purpose and possibilities for examining the sounds of educational ecologies. Next, this work demonstrates further possibilities for student voice and participation in educational research. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this piece provides an opportunity to listen to urban spaces and students, the embodied knowledge of an overlooked possibility.

Author

• Walter S. Gershon, Kent State University