Glen M. Miller, University of Arizona

Abstract

Beginning in 1988, a project began in the Department of Agricultural Education, the University of Arizona to track the hearing acuity of teachers from graduation and throughout their career. Agricultural Education laboratories are equipped with tools and machinery which duplicate those used in the industry for which students are being prepared to enter. This equipment may include power tools such as: saws, planes, grinders, welding equipment, air driven power tools, mixers, and a broad spectrum of equipment used in industry. Industrial plants normally are highly controlled in the level of noise permitted, whereas multiple exposures to dangerous noise levels are frequently experienced in career and technical education laboratories. The majority of career and technical educators do not recognize the risks which noise poses to their students or themselves. Teachers lack basic information about the exposure levels they and their students experience in their instructional laboratories. The overall objective of the study was; A To determine the hearing sensitivity of seniors graduating from the agricultural education program at the University of Arizona and retest annually during their career as a part of a study of long-term hearing loss while serving as an agricultural education teacher”. To date, 56 teachers have participated in the testing program. Each teacher undergoing testing at the Hearing Clinic at the University of Arizona is counseled at the time of the test and a follow-up letter is sent in the case of hearing loss. This study addressed the following specific objectives:

1. To determine the hearing sensitivity of seniors graduating from the agricultural education program at the University of Arizona
2. To re-test the hearing sensitivity of seniors at the end of their first year of secondary teaching.

The water is very muddy in analyzing hearing acuity changes among first year teachers of agricultural education. The fact that most graduating seniors have never experienced a hearing test opens up the possibility of false positive and false negative results during the testing procedure. The problem of false positives and false negatives should disappear as data from subsequent tests (years) are analyzed. With a population of 56, it is assumed that we can trust the mean values have some degree of reliability. If even one of the positive measures of hearing loss is real, there is reason for concern and an obligation to act.