by Katja Neumann, 19.01.2009
Where children a few years ago associated the term Pisa merely with a leaning tower in northern Italy, this word now makes students and teachers alike wince. Since 2000, the study of the same name has been commissioned by the OECD to compare school performance internationally. Germany regularly ranks in the middle to bottom in almost all categories, which causes an outcry among parents and politicians every three years. There are many reasons for this: an outdated school system, social problems, education policy and, last but not least, cash-strapped municipalities that can barely raise the money needed to maintain school buildings. The solutions are just as varied as the reasons.
However, a start could be made on improving the learning situation, as shown by a new study conducted by the University Hospital in Hamburg on behalf of Philips. The result: Both attention and concentration, as well as the activity of students can be positively and significantly influenced by the targeted use of the right light.
Long-term experiment in schools
For the study, which addressed the question of whether light can be used specifically to influence the learning behavior of students in the classroom, Prof. Dr. Michael Schulte-Markwort, Director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychosomatics at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, observed a total of 166 students between the ages of 8 and 16 and 18 teachers from several classes. The long-term experiment spanned a period of one year. Before the experiment began, Philips had already equipped some classrooms with installations for dynamic lighting, in which both the illuminance and the color temperature, for setting "warm" or "cool" light, could be adjusted. "Enable," "Calm," and "Focused Work" were the pre-installed default settings. This allowed teachers to select the appropriate lighting mood by remote control.
In the study, the research team led by Prof. Schulte-Markwort used scientifically recognized standard tests to measure attention and concentration. In each case, the results of the class with dynamic light were compared with the results of a zero measurement of the same class under standard lighting. Additional significance was gained by using a control group under standard lighting for comparison in each case.
The influence of light on learning behavior
The results were astonishing: For example, the reading speed of the students under dynamic lighting increased by almost 35 percent. On average, they read 1051 words in a given time - instead of 780 words in the zero measurement with conventional lighting. The results of the so-called D2 concentration test were even clearer. Here, the frequency of errors decreased by almost 45 percent - from an average of 17.45 errors to an average of 9.
Whether dynamic lighting also has an effect on aggression and hyperactivity was part of another module of the study. Although the decrease in aggression measured by observation alone was not significant, the data obtained by video recording was all the more significant with regard to hyperactivity, i.e. motor restlessness among the students. Motor restlessness decreased by up to 76 percent when the students had to solve math problems under dynamic light with the "calm down" setting - a value that was not even close to being reached in either the zero measurement or the control group.
Improved lighting quality and energy efficiency.
Classrooms are still usually lit by dismal and hopelessly outdated fluorescent lighting, which is not only unpleasant for students and teachers who spend many hours of the day in the rooms, it is also not very energy efficient. For example, fluorescent lamps are often still operated with electromagnetic ballasts and therefore flicker with the mains frequency. When lamps are operated with electronic ballasts, on the other hand, not only would the light be more uniform, but average energy consumption could also be reduced by around 20 percent, and even by around 50 percent per year with additional light control. Unlike the standard fluorescent tubes generally used in schools, which have a fixed color temperature and brightness, a luminaire for dynamic lighting allows both the brightness and the color temperature to be changed. This technology is now increasingly used in modern offices, as it allows natural daylight to be simulated very well.
The "Savio" luminaire from Philips used in the study is equipped with two fluorescent lamps with a color temperature of 17000 Kelvin and one fluorescent lamp with a warm white light color similar to that of an incandescent lamp. The lamps are controlled by light control electronics in such a way that any desired light color between 3000 and 13000 Kelvin can be set with the corresponding illuminance. Depending on the "mix," the result is a light that corresponds to the evening sun, for example, and has a rather calming effect, or a stimulating, "cold" light, as naturally occurs on a bright summer day at midday.
When students feel comfortable, this increases motivation, concentration and willingness to perform. And lighting can already make a significant contribution to this, as the study by the University Hospital in Hamburg shows. It would indeed be necessary to make higher additional investments to convert to modern lighting systems, which would amount to 40 percent more per classroom than with the standard solution. But for the operator, this investment often pays for itself in less than three years on average. And in addition to the financial and environmental benefits in terms of energy efficiency, modern lighting offers the concrete added value of improved attention and readiness to learn, as well as significantly better lighting quality and reading conditions.
Dynamic classroom lighting will not solve the educational emergency on its own, but it can demonstrably make a concrete contribution to better school results.
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