Sleeping and Learning

Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill, Bill Clinton and Margaret Thatcher all got by on less than 6 hours a night, but most people need more sleep.

Earlier this year IB students took part in a survey to help improve their teachers’ understanding of how and when they learn. One of the areas investigated was the amount of sleep sixth form students got each night.

The results indicate that over half of BIS sixth formers get no more than 6 hours sleep a night. A lucky 7% got 9 to 10 hours sleep. The finding raises many questions. Do students get too much homework? Are social networking sites and other means of communication too tempting for students? Is a lack of sleep simply due to a habit of staying up late? Can improving work practices create more time for sleep? Are our students sleep habits indicative of future leadership potential?

 

This is an important issue because there is a great deal of evidence to support the notion that sleep is vital for learning. In one such study researchers found that students who went to sleep shortly after memorising sets of word pairs had better recall of the information than those who didn't sleep for several hours. This indicates that students may benefit from reviewing their class notes on a daily or weekly basis, shortly before sleeping. This is also supported by neuroscience investigations into the importance of repetition to the formation of long term memory. In another study, children with obstructive sleep apnoea required more time and an increased number of learning opportunities to reach immediate and long-term recall performances that were reduced compared with controls. Thus, both acquisition and retention of newly learned material was shown to be compromised.

When we sleep our brains are alive with activity, like night skies filled with fireworks. Our neurons are frenetically active, perhaps forming the connections that link in the brain the web of understanding necessary for us to commit learning to long term memory. Evidence suggests that a lack of sleep harms working memory, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, motor dexterity and the ability to stay focused. There is also evidence that a siesta is a perfectly natural response to a biological need, helping us to stay alert for the rest of the day.

So, sleep is likely to be very important to learning. I encourage parents to check that their children are prioritising a good night sleep to help them commit the theories and concepts they encounter during a typical day to long term memory. Moreover, a 30 minute siesta may be just what is needed to power through the evening’s homework. What easier way can there be to learn?

In the coming weeks the issues raised by all the survey findings will be discussed with students and I look forward to reporting back to you the solutions that they have identified.

 

Richard Arch

IB coordinator

 

Sources:

L. Kheirandish-Gozal, M.R. De Jong, K. Spruyt, S.A.J. Chamuleau and D. Gozal Obstructive sleep apnoea is associated with impaired pictorial memory task acquisition and retention in children
http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/36/1/164.short
 

Payne JD, Tucker MA, Ellenbogen JM, Wamsley EJ, Walker MP, et al. (2012) Memory for Semantically Related and Unrelated Declarative Information: The Benefit of Sleep, the Cost of Wake. PLoS ONE 7(3): e33079. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0033079   See: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033079