Case Study Work design for a primary school teacher

The employer is an elementary school under a public authority/community school board.

The man has a hearing impairment with bilateral tinnitus or annoying ringing in the ears, a back condition and knee joint damage. The hearing impairment with additional tinnitus is the cause of an accident at work. To improve his hearing he uses hearing aids with a tinnitus masker, which superimposes a second noise on the disturbing ear noises. The GdB (degree of handicap) is 100. The severely handicapped person's identity card includes the mark RF.

The man has completed a teacher training course followed by a traineeship at a primary school. He works or teaches 21 school hours on a part-time basis in the subjects of physical education and subject matter.

In order to reduce the workload, he has been authorised to reduce his working hours by five to 21 school hours.

The teacher mainly teaches in a specially equipped classroom with carpet, curtains and sound-absorbing materials on the walls to improve the room acoustics. Nevertheless, despite the hearing aids and the improved room acoustics, there are communication problems with the students. Especially in first and second grade, the students speak softly and shyly and he has to constantly ask questions to understand the content. Also during official meetings (e.g. conferences and assemblies) in other rooms, the teacher can only follow verbal communication to a limited extent. For this reason, an FM system (directional microphones, transmitter and receiver) was installed, which can be used in combination with the new digital hearing aids - the old hearing aids were not suitable for this. In the classrooms and during meetings, the teacher places wireless directional microphones with zoom function on the desks. The microphones align themselves with the incoming speech signal and can thus pick up and zoom in on speech signals from different directions. The transmitter in the microphone then records what is being said, e.g. by the pupils, and transmits it to the two receivers. The very small receivers are plugged into the hearing aids via an audio shoe or interface and transmit speech directly into the hearing aids without any background noise. The other background noise perceived by the hearing aids can be filtered using different programs of the hearing aids, which can be changed via a remote control. The remote control can also be used, for example, to adjust the volume for the hearing aids.
For conversations with only a few people, the teacher only needs one microphone, which he can place on the table in the middle of the group or attach to his clothing.
Due to the number of students, a disturbing and stressful noise level often develops for the teacher. With the help of a noise light this is measured and visually indicated. If it is too loud or the noise level is too high, the traffic light shows red and there is an additional acoustic indication. Often the pupils are not aware that they are too loud. The noise light is now simply to make this clear to them and remind them to be quieter.

Behind-the-ear hearing aids
Transmitter systems for radio frequency