News presenters, call centre operators, sports coaches – and, of course, teachers – are amongst a group of professions deemed ‘occupational voice users’, associate lecturer and PhD candidate Paige Abblitt from Flinders University explains.
“These are people who use their voice as a tool for their work – and we know that they can experience significant damage to their voice over time.
“So, vocal injuries are quite prevalent in these populations, which can then have flow-on and detrimental impact to all aspects of their life; their ability to participate in their job, social implications, financial implications.”
Abblitt is currently investigating how professional learning around voice care could better align with the reality of teachers’ jobs and daily schedule in schools.
Outside the speech pathology realm, not much is spoken about what healthy voice practices in the classroom look like, she suggests.
And yet teachers can often find they develop a sore or hoarse voice by the end of the school day.
Over time, repeated vocal habits that strain the larynx muscles can cause real problems, Abblitt says, and this is a common thing seen amongst teachers.
“We call these ‘phonotraumatic behaviours’. Persistent use of this type of voice [habit] can lead to excess strain in the muscle, which can limit the ability to vary the voice, but it can also lead to pathological developments such as nodules.”
Nodules on the vocal chords can occur organically, the expert adds, but they also can result from strain caused by misuse or overuse of your voice.
“The vocal folds are kind of coming together really harshly. I explain it like someone playing tennis or a sport where your finger or your toe rubs against the same spot and you get a blister or a callus. It’s essentially that same process going on with the vocal folds – we see a lot of muscle tension. We call that ‘muscle tension dysponia’.
“And then we can also see some more pathological or organic voice disorders (emerge in teachers), some of which result from that functional disorder.”
Teachers with voice injury can experience a wide range of symptoms and issues, Abblitt says, but essentially you’re looking at any kind of ‘deviant feature’ from the expected quality or pitch of your voice, taking into consideration things like age, gender and cultural background.
“But particularly for teachers, this might be things like an inability to increase their pitch – increase how high or low their voice can go – which if we think about, for teachers of young children that can be particularly detrimental to things like engagement and behaviour management.
“It could be inability to raise their voice or project and get louder, which again can be really important in particular classroom and class environments.
“There might be changes to quality, so we might start to hear more rough qualities to their voice, so a bit more noise in the signal that we’re getting through.”
Paige Abblitt is pioneering research in voice care for teachers. She says some of the common basics of voice care can be tricky to implement in schools.
General awareness about the importance of voice care amongst the profession could be strengthened, Abblitt says.
“We are seeing this broad kind of spectrum of awareness out there, dependent on different things like experience, exposure to voice injury, whether there are some people that have a singing background or hobby, [or are] involved in drama or things like that.”
What’s needed is a shift in culture here, she argues.
“It’s almost a matter of ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’.
“So, a lot of these teachers are doing these behaviours because they haven’t been taught any different, including myself when I started lecturing.”
Part of the challenge is that some common basics of voice care, such as staying well hydrated, are logistically tricky for teachers to nail throughout the average school day.
Abblitt says teachers have reported highly limited opportunities to go to the bathroom in-between classes and meetings, and a reluctance to drink much water because of this.
Nevertheless, providing educators with some foundational knowledge is a solid first step in bringing about behaviour change, she indicates.
“Some common voice care basics really come back to the understanding of voice.
“So, what I’ve been finding is providing teachers with that biology, the anatomy, and how the different areas work, just builds more awareness and consciousness about how they’re using their voice; how is it feeling, being able to identify when they’ve had a particularly tiring day and their voice is tired, but then also giving them tips on what to do.”
Taking deliberate ‘vocal rests’ throughout the day and avoiding food and drinks that have a dehydrating effect on the body are other 101 care tips that Abblitt recommends.
“We know that things like caffeine and spicy foods can increase dehydration and reflux symptoms, which we know can be damaging to the voice … but what’s been interesting in the research we’ve been doing is that there are so many barriers to so many of these current vocal care principles.
“Even though they work, it’s very contextual. There hasn’t been a huge amount of work done in understanding teachers’ experiences of them.”
This goes to the crux of the researcher’s current project. Abblitt is recruiting teachers to participate in a final workshop on September 12, the aim being to design a professional development offering that addresses voice care in a way that actually works for the profession.
A $100 voucher will be handed to those who participate, and interested teachers can express their interest here.
“…we have to get a little bit more creative, I think, in how we’re teaching this and how [voice care practices] can realistically be applied.
“I think with awareness and knowledge comes that capacity to change – and there’s definitely gaps there at the moment. But it’s that question of how do we shift a culture?
“How do we bring awareness across the board? I think that’s really that first step in being able to make change, and that’s what my PhD centres around.”
