Speaker
Description
Auditory development is a lifelong process, beginning with prenatal exposure to acoustic cues and maturing through late adolescence as a complex intersection of biological, cognitive, and social factors. While biological maturation provides the hardware for hearing, the reflective, active engagement with one’s acoustic environment requires an intentional pedagogical framework. We argue for a continuous soundscape curriculum from pregnancy through high school, using a foundational study with children to demonstrate the necessity of early educational interventions for lifelong sonic awareness. We employed a child-appropriate method with three workshops with 12 students (ages 7–8) at the International School Delft (NL). Utilizing the ISO 12913 frameworks, activities included sound-walks, perceptual mapping, and sound visualization. Findings indicate that while primary-age children are highly sensitive to salient sound events, such as mechanical traffic or human vocalisations, they initially perceive such sounds as isolated occurrences rather than a soundscape. However, repeated listening exercises and creative mapping (using colour and abstract forms) successfully shifted student perception toward understanding the auditory environment as a collective, integrated system. These results suggest that because primary-age listeners are still constructing the ability to interpret auditory scenes, continued education is vital. As students transition into middle and high school, curricula should evolve from basic event identification to the critical evaluation of varying degrees of impact of sound and soundscapes on humans. By fostering soundscape literacy early, we prepare children to move from passive reception to active ownership of their urban sonic environments.