Effects of Physical Noise on Instruction at One State University in Zimbabwe

This study sought to find out levels of disruption of teaching and learning through the effects of environmental noise at one state university in Zimbabwe. Emphasis was placed on soliciting information from the affected stakeholders who are primarily the students and the lecturers. Two schools from amongst five which comprise the state university are located in the industrial site. However, only one school was chosen for study mainly because the researcher teaches in that school. An auto-ethnographic design was used to decipher data from the sample. Participant observation was employed by the researcher as he is equally affected by the circumstances. Purposive sampling was used to choose respondents from both student teachers and their lecturers. An early childhood development education honours degree second-year students were specially chosen because they are taught one module by the researcher and also because they use two venues for instruction. Lecturers who teach large groups in the school were included in the study. Closed and open-ended questionnaires for both lecturers and students were used to gather data for the study. Amongst other, results show that because of the location of the school myriad forms of physical noises are negatively affecting the instructional process. Study recommends that school either relocates to a more suitable environment or heavily invest in noise-proofing it’s environ.