Quiet Classrooms, Educational Soundscapes, and the Power of Silence

This highly novel book provides an exploration of the role of silence in the school setting and interrogates the value of silence and quiet in contemporary educational practices, looking at pedagogies and classroom practice to guide this increasingly popular subdiscipline of the history of education.

Arguably the first contribution written in English on the educational value of silence within the history of education more broadly, this book interrogates the way in which we encounter and label sounds and noises within the classroom, and the ways in which these have come to dictate relationships between teachers and pupils in our contemporary society. The chapters investigate sociocultural reasons for a Western problematization of silence and shyness of children, and the wider impact on class participation and treatment. The issues around children’s sense of identity and teachers’ authority are explored in relation to silence as a powerful tool for a progressive understanding of learning. Ultimately, the book will guide thinking around educational, acoustic surroundings and provide alternative vocabulary to talk about educational soundscapes and the real-term impact on our learning environments.

Providing a novel and nuanced framework for studying schools as acoustic or sound spaces, the book will be of interest to researchers, scholars, and academics in the fields of history of education, curriculum studies, and the theories of learning more broadly.

Translated by Emmeline Burdett on the basis of the original Dutch edition, Leuven University Press, 2022