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“The evening school shift is the least popular and little appreciated by people, yet it offers more benefits to learning than we think.”
Families have a widespread preference that their children attend school during the morning shift, whether due to coordinating their work schedules with their children’s class schedules, the extracurricular activities students do in the afternoons, or simply the social habit of attending school in the mornings. One of the few studies regarding double-shift schools was done by Cardenas (2011). Here, the evening shift has a higher percentage of students with lower economic resources, lower academic performance, higher rates of failure, older age, and higher school dropout rates than the morning shift, indicating a sizeable academic gap between the two school shifts.
The reality is that studies about the differences persisting in schools with double shifts (morning and evening) are scarce. Many differences are unreported or dismissed as not relevant. However, beyond these estimations, attending evening shift classes may offer more learning benefits than we realize. These differences are not just sociodemographic or educational; they are also biological and directly related to the student’s sleep-wake cycle.
“One of the main benefits found about the evening shift is that the students do not have a sleep debt compared to the morning shift.”
The need to sleep well
Sleeping is an essential physiological function of the body. It is essential for physical health, cognitive performance, and eliminating fatigue (Waterhouse, Fukuda & Morita, 2012). Sleep is also a circadian rhythm, the physiological cycles in physiology generated endogenously, lasting approximately 24 hours, and continuing this oscillation in the absence of any external environmental conditions. In addition, the circadian rhythm is modulated by various external synchronizing agents such as the lighting cycle (day/night, light/dark), the food cycle, and the social environment (Duffy & Wright, 2005).
Thus, sleep is a homeostatic process relatively independent of the circadian rhythm. It is a mechanism that allows organisms to compensate for sleep loss. People need to sleep at least 8 hours a day; otherwise, they are more likely to fall asleep due to the homeostatic pressure that induces it.
“Studies have shown that school schedules alter the sleep schedules of adolescents, making them irregular, shortened and with a constant delay in sleeping.”
Self-regulated student learning includes motivational aspects, self-awareness, goal orientation, social and physical environment influences, and the acquisition of self-regulation capabilities (Zimmerman, 2015). In addition, learning is modulated by biological processes of the prefrontal cortex. Therefore, in his or her academic activities, the student depends on his capacity to organize and structure his cognitive, behavioral, environmental, and biological processes to obtain satisfactory evaluations.
Studies have shown that school schedules alter adolescents’ sleep schedules, making their sleep irregular, shortened, and constantly delayed. Most youths start their classes very early, resulting in desynchronization of the circadian rhythm (Crowley et al., 2018). One of the proposals to improve this desynchronization is to change the school timetable to begin later. Several studies have shown that delaying school hours improves students’ physical and mental health and academic performance and even prevents traffic accidents (Marx et al., 2017).
Schedules do matter
Besides the physiological changes in adolescence, there is an increase in sleep duration and a delay in the sleep-wake cycle. Both effects manifest themselves when the adolescent can sleep freely, like on weekends and holidays. In these periods, adolescents sleep more, going to bed and waking up later. For example, in Mexico, middle school students have a school schedule that involves attending classes at 07:00 a.m. throughout the week; however, the delayed phase of the sleep-wake cycle makes it difficult for these adolescents to go to bed early, causing weekly sleep deprivation. So, during the week, there is sleep deprivation in the student, causing certain disorders such as daytime sleepiness and delayed-sleep-phase syndrome, which is incompatible with their daily activities (Carskadon, 2011).
“One of the proposals to improve the desynchronization of sleep in students is to change the school schedule so that it starts later.”
On the other hand, there are individual differences; everyone must choose their sleeping time. This is known as a circadian preference (chronotype). For example, the early risers (Type M, for Morningness) function best in the morning, and they go to sleep early. In contrast, late-night people (Type E, for Eveningness) get up late and are most active in the afternoons and evenings (Arrona-Palacios & Díaz-Morales, 2018).
According to Díaz-Morales and Escribano (2015), circadian preference correlates with the academic performance of adolescents. According to the evidence, optimal academic performance depends on two factors related to the schedules: 1) the synchrony between the time of day in which the student performs his or her academic activity and their circadian preference (Type M or E), and 2) if there are sufficient sleep hours.
The secret benefit
Recent studies about the differences in students’ sleeping habits attending double-shift schools increased, especially in countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Uruguay, have analyzed the possible benefits for students who study in the evening shift. One of the main benefits reported is that children and adolescents who study during the evening shift do not have a sleep deficiency compared to those of the morning shift (Arrona-Palacios, García & Valdez, 2015; Arrona-Palacios, Díaz-Morales, & Adan, 2021). Their sleep duration is optimal and aligns with the recommendations prepared by the National Sleep Foundation. In addition, benefits have also been found in their academic performance.
A study was conducted in Mexico on the correlation of circadian preference and sleep schedules with academic performance among high school adolescents by (Arrona-Palacios & Díaz-Morales, 2018) found that for adolescents attending classes in the morning shift to perform well academically, they needed to sleep sufficient hours and type M. However, it was noteworthy that in the evening shift there was no influence of circadian preference or length of sleep because those on the evening shift during the week slept more than those on the morning shift (9.14 hours vs. 7.16 hours.). Therefore, the results suggested that the morning shift students’ sleep schedules and circadian preferences would determine their exemplary academic performance. However, regardless of their circadian preferences, the evening shift students needed a sufficient daily sleep duration to optimize their learning processes.
Although people in countries having double shift schools do not appreciate and frown upon the evening shift, recent research indicates that the evening shift ultimately benefits children and adolescents more. It allows them to develop better according to thei
r physiological needs.
About the Author
Arturo Arrona Palacios (arturoarrona@tec.mx) is a Doctor of Philosophy with a background in Psychology, belonging to the National System of Researchers (Level 1) and currently a post-doctorate in the Writing Lab of the Institute for the Future of Education at Tecnologico de Monterrey.
References
Arrona-Palacios, A. & Día-Morales, JF. (2018). Morningness-eveningness is not associated with academic performance in the afternoon school. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 480-498.
Arrona-Palacios, A., Díaz-Morales, JF, & Adan, A. (2021). Sleep habits and circadian preferences in school-aged children attending a Mexican double-shift school system. Sleep Medicine, 81, 116-119.
Arrona-Palacios, A., García, A., & Valdez, P. (2015). Sleep–wake habits and circadian preference in Mexican secondary school. Sleep Medicine, 16, 1259-1264.
Cárdenas, A. (2011). Escuela de doble turno en México: una estimación de diferencias asociadas con su implementación. Revista Mexicana de Investigación Educativa, 16, 801-827.
Carskadon, M. (2011). Sleep in adolescents: the perfect storm. Pediatrics Clinics of North America, 58, 637-647.
Crowley, SJ., Wolfson, A.R., Tarokh, L., & Carskadon, M.A. (2018). An update on adolescent sleep: New evidence informing the perfect storm model. Journal of Adolescence, 67, 55-65.
Duffy, J., & Wright, K. Entrainment of the human circadian system by light. Journal of Biological Rhythms, 20, 326-338.
Díaz-Morales, J., & Escribano, C. (2015). Social jetlag, academic achievement and cognitive performance: Understanding gender/sex differences. Chronobiology International, 32, 822-831.
Marx, R., Tanner-Smith, E., Davison, C., et al. (2017). Later school start times for supporting the education, health, and well-being of high school students. Cochrane Database Syst Rev, 7, CD009467.
Waterhourse, J., Fukuda, Y, & Morita, T. (2012). Daily rhythms of the sleep-wake cycle. Journal of Physiological Anthropology, 31, 5.
Zimmerman, BJ. (2015). Self-regulated learning: theories, measures, and outcomes. In J. D. Wright (Editor), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (pp. 541-546). Elsevier.
Edited by Rubí Román (rubi.roman@tec.mx) – Observatory of Educational Innovation.
Translation by Daniel Wetta.
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