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Communicating and learning in a classroom with poor acoustics is more difficult than in a classroom with good acoustics. Most Australian classrooms do not meet recommended acoustic standards, making it more difficult for students to attend and listen to the teacher's voice, and students experiencing difficulties processing auditory information can be further disadvantaged. This is an important consideration when teaching students on the autism spectrum who frequently have difficulties with the sensory processing of auditory information and may become overwhelmed. The Improving Classroom Acoustics project investigated the impact of sound field amplification (SFA) systems on the learning, communication, and participation of students on the spectrum. This chapter describes how SFA is consistent with the principles of Universal Design for Learning. A theoretical discussion on the importance of classroom acoustics to the auditory and speech processing abilities of students, their wellbeing, and classroom performance positions the reasoning behind the project. Student performance after periods of learning in classrooms with SFA and without SFA is reported, as well as ways in which teachers can readily evaluate the acoustic qualities of their classrooms and implement strategies to improve these qualities. Potential implications of poor classroom acoustics on teacher communication are also introduced.

Introduction: The Australian guidelines to reduce health risks from drinking alcohol were released in 2020 by the National Health and Medical Research Council. Based on the latest evidence, the guidelines provide advice on how to keep the risk of harm from alcohol low. They refer to an Australian standard drink (10 g ethanol). Recommendations:: •Guideline 1: To reduce the risk of harm from alcohol-related disease or injury, healthy men and women should drink no more than ten standard drinks a week and no more than four standard drinks on any one day. The less you drink, the lower your risk of harm from alcohol. •Guideline 2: To reduce the risk of injury and other harms to health, children and people under 18 years of age should not drink alcohol. •Guideline 3: To prevent harm from alcohol to their unborn child, women who are pregnant or planning a pregnancy should not drink alcohol. For women who are breastfeeding, not drinking alcohol is safest for their baby. Changes as result of the guideline: The recommended limit for healthy adults changed from two standard drinks per day (effectively 14 per week) to ten per week. The new guideline states that the less you drink, the lower your risk of harm from alcohol. The recommended maximum on any one day remains four drinks (clarified from previously “per drinking occasion”). Guidance is clearer for pregnancy and breastfeeding, and for people aged less than 18 years, recommending not drinking.

Purpose: This study aimed to determine if sound-field amplification (SFA) could be used as an inclusive classroom adjustment to support primary school students with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Methods: A two-group, randomised controlled trial (RCT) with crossover was conducted involving 13 students with ASD (9 males, aged 7.6 to 8.4 years) and 17 typically progressing students without ASD (7 males, aged 7.6 to 9.3 years) from 10 primary schools in and near to Brisbane, Australia. Eighteen of these children had an SFA system in their classrooms in semester one and 12 in semester two of their fourth year of formal schooling (Year 3). Potential proximate benefits were assessed using teacher questionnaire and video analysis of student listening behaviours. Potential distant benefits were assessed using measures of phonological processing in quiet and in noise, attention, memory, and educational achievement. Results: Potential proximate benefits were observed for all students with teachers rating student listening behaviours higher with SFA versus without SFA. Potential distant benefits were observed for students with ASD who showed greater improvements in one area of phonological processing (blending nonsense words in noise) following SFA versus no SFA. No other potential proximate or distant benefits following SFA were observed. Conclusions: SFA could be used as an inclusive classroom adjustment to support some primary school students with and without ASD by potentially putting those students in a better position to learn, but their learning must still take place over time and realistic expectations of what can reasonably be achieved by SFA alone are needed.

Purpose: To examine the ‘acoustic health’ of primary school classrooms in Brisbane, Australia. Methods: An acoustic survey was conducted on 33 primary school classrooms in Brisbane, Australia. The classrooms were typical for the region being single cell or dual cells separated by a concertina divider, varying in volume from 69 to 378 m3, and made predominantly from acoustically hard materials. Results: The unoccupied sound levels ranged from 25.7 to 50.0 dB LAeq and reverberation times (RTs) from 0.34 to 1.26 s. This represented a 26% failure rate for unoccupied sound level and 79% failure rate for RTs against Australian Standards for teaching spaces in primary school classrooms. Closer analysis of 12 of the classrooms showed occupied sound levels from 49.8 to 64.8 dB LAeq during quiet activity, and speech transmission indexes (STI) ranging from 0.35 to 0.80 (on a scale of 0–1). This represented a 92% failure rate for occupied sound level and STI against research recommendations for teaching spaces in primary school classrooms in Australia. Conclusions: The high percentage of classrooms returning unsatisfactory acoustic measures supports long-standing and ongoing calls around the world to systematically improve classroom acoustics. We conclude with practical suggestions to mitigate the identified acoustic problems in these classrooms.

This report presents the results of Project 2.028RS The Impact of improved classroom acoustics on autistic students from Program 2: School Years - Enhancing Learning and Teaching within The Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC).

BACKGROUND: At present, there are numerous caries risk assessment tools (CRATs) being promoted for disease management. However, the evidence to inform CRAT selection is unclear. AIM: This review aimed to assess the strength of evidence to inform the selection of CRATs for children ages 6 years and less. DESIGN: MEDLINE was the principal search database for this review. Other key databases, the reference lists of included articles, known cariology literature and experts were also consulted. Peer-reviewed papers describing CRATs and their development methodology were included. The COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) checklist guided the quality assessment. The reporting of the key measurement properties (reliability, validity and responsiveness) informed the quality assessment. RESULTS: The search resulted in ten papers, reporting on eight different CRATs. The identified CRATs were: Caries Management By Risk Assessment (CAMBRA), Cariogram, National University of Singapore CRAT (NUS-CRAT), MySmileBuddy, Dundee Caries Risk Assessment Model, University of North Carolina Risk Assessment Models, University of Michigan pediatric dental clinic caries risk assessment sheet and American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) CRAT. Common across all CRATs was the lack of information to determine the levels of evidence for the measurement properties of reliability and construct validity. Studies on tools that were assessed as having strong evidence for content validity, identified the relevant risk factors for caries in the population being studied, before developing and testing their respective CRATs. CONCLUSIONS: The evidence to inform the selection of current CRATs for children is mostly yet to be established. Overall, the NUS-CRAT studies reported the most information to inform the assessment of its measurement properties and as a result this tool attained a higher quality rating than other CRATs studied. This article is prot