On average, students spend 35 hours in school each week — totaling over 1,400 hours a year with extracurricular activities. Because of this, it is critical that our school environments not only promote active learning, but also provide a healthy learning environment for students and teachers.
Enabling Optimized Learning.
To understand how to create an optimal learning environment, we must understand how our brains work. Our body’s natural time-clock (aka circadian rhythm) influences many of our complex bodily functions, from regulating our body temperature, hormone releases, eating habits and digestion—even our breathing. Most notably, circadian rhythms control our sleep-wake cycle.
Sleep is crucial to overall health in many ways, particularly its impact on brain function. Consistent, high quality sleep has been shown to improve concentration, productivity, problem-solving skills, and enhance memory in children and adults. It also regulates our ability to focus on and retain incoming information. Proper alignment between the natural environmental clock and circadian time is essential, not only for sleep quality, but also for increasing cognitive performance.
Exposure to the right spectrum of light, at the right time of day, and for the optimal duration and intensity, supports the synchronization of our internal body clocks to our natural environment.
Figure 1. Degree of Focus versus Psychological/Cognitive Cycle in Adolescent and Pre/Postadolescent populations from 6am-10pm.
The process shown in Figure 1 depicts the psychological-cognitive cycle, a vital component to optimizing learning. Our circadian cycles must be reset every day. Figure 1 shows a trough in the afternoon—a direct result of our body’s circadian rhythms. During this trough time, teachers may experience fatigue or irritability, while simultaneously, students’ ability to focus and engage productively decreases.
Lighting as an integral component of our overall educational structure is completely overlooked. Our circadian rhythms are directly influenced by the light around us—warm white light enhanced with red wavelength light causes the body to relax and slow down, while cool white light enriched with an abundance of blue wavelength light encourages the brain to wake up, promoting alertness and visual acuity.
Utilizing light emitting diode (LED) and control technology, it is now possible to create artificial sunlight indoors, synchronizing our circadian rhythm clock with the natural environment’s clock to counteract the trough shown in Figure 1. This type of lighting is referred to as Spectrally Enhanced Circadian Lighting (SECL), and is designed to create a nurturing environment for optimal learning, improved health and well-being. In reality, SECL recreates the dynamics of natural daylight—indoors.
Lumen Impact’s Spectrally Enhanced Circadian Lighting, by efficiently harnessing the power of light, can positively influence school performance by promoting desirable behavior for different tasks.
SECL provides recommended lighting scenes for teachers to select. These scenes are automatically or manually produced by varying the balance between light intensity, color-temperature, and duration to create an ambiance best suited to specific objectives throughout the school day. Typically, these scenarios include a “Normal” setting which is designed for regular classroom activities, an “Energy” setting to invigorate students and teachers when needed, and a “Focus” setting to aid in concentration. Utilizing SECL, teachers can customize their learning environment using pre-programmed lighting scenes or manual adjustments to create the optimal ambiance for learning throughout the Psychological-Cognitive cycle.
The Role of Color.
With standard lighting, preschoolers have difficulty suppressing task-irrelevant thoughts and cannot sustain focus over long periods, requiring teachers to switch classroom activities every 15-20 minutes. High quality artificial light that mimics natural daylight has been scientifically proven to improve children’s visual, cognitive, and behavioral skills, lengthening the duration of focus.
Lumen Impact’s Spectrally Enhanced Circadian Lighting system allows teachers full control over one of the most influential elements in the learning environment, thereby enabling greater student participation and cognitive retention.
SECL offers proven results. In a year-long independent study, students:
Increased reading speed by almost 35%
Improved accuracy by 45%
Decreased hyperactivity by 76%
Other independent studies organized in the Netherlands demonstrated that students also:
Scored 18% higher in a concentration test (on average)
Demonstrated improved motivation
Were more cooperative in a calm light setting
Different types of lighting scenes can play different roles in enhancing classroom performance. Bright and/or blue spectrum enriched light has proven to help maintain a better mood during the day in both adolescents and adults. This enhances a student’s ability to concentrate. Furthermore, cool white lighting is recommended to improve reading speed and accuracy, as well as attentiveness and focus.
In addition to the development of children’s cognitive and behavioral skills, SECL can increase a child’s visual acuity, comprehension, concentration, retention and ultimately student achievement. Furthermore, cool white lighting is recommended to improve reading speed and accuracy, as well as attentiveness and focus.
On the other hand, warm white lighting can assist in helping students and adults work together, and minimize conflict. A study by Galetzka showed lighting can also improve children’s cooperative learning. Children were 20% faster in solving a puzzle together in the relaxed lighting setting compared to an intense cool white lighting setting.
The Quality of Light.
Flickering lighting, even when imperceptible to the human eye, can have serious negative effects on the human body and learning. Poorly constructed LED lights powered by low-cost, low frequency power supplies or drivers, can lead to fatigue, eye strain, migraines and even epileptic seizures. SECL reduces this impact through ultra-low flicker technology, providing the benefits of LED circadian lighting without the side effects of flicker.
SECL also provides dependable color consistency, even when dimmed. A study conducted by Mott found that high intensity and glare-free lighting during reading periods increased 3rd grade students’ oral reading fluency scores at a greater rate than normal lighting. Focus lighting also helps at-risk students catch up with their peers, whereas under normal lighting no improvement was observed.
Imagine a classroom where the teacher can implement light as a learning tool in concert with the human body’s natural rhythm to create the perfect learning environment.
Energy Savings.
In addition to improvements in academic performance, and social and behavioral issues, SECL delivers significant economic returns.
According to a study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, schools can anticipate a 48-69% reduction in their daily energy costs, with average annual savings of up to 57%. To put that into perspective, in the U.S., K-12 schools spend $8 billion in energy expenditures every school year. A 25% reduction in energy costs would equate to $2 billion—money that could be directed toward more pressing educational needs, i.e. more teachers, textbooks or technology.
Other impacts affecting the bottom line are documented in a European study by AT Kearney and include the following:
a 15% improvement in cognitive performance of affected pupils
teacher and staff retention increased over 2 years
Creating a well-designed, healthy learning environment is every school’s goal, but it usually comes with a hefty price tag. Improving student performance can be a Herculean task that seems unending, but is necessary not only for students, but also to secure funding as well.
Spectrally Enhanced Circadian Lighting has a promising future in education.
When compared to 33 other industrialized nations in reading, US students rank about average. However, the U.S. can and must do better than a “C” on the global grade card in order to equip our children to succeed in global economy. Educators and administrators rightly seek the most effective educational strategies, latest technologies, the most talented faculty and staff to help students excel. It is time to include improving the school environment in this search.
It is time to harness the power of the most essential and elemental resource, light itself.
The aim is ensuring alignment of the body’s circadian cycle with the natural environment to enable optimal learning and student achievement. School facilities must be carefully designed to create the most suitable space for student learning and teaching. Investing in SECL to improve learning and teaching is a vital investment for our future.
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