Smart Lighting and Mindfulness Interventions: Pathways to Better Health and Learning in High School Education

Adolescents worldwide suffer from severe sleep deprivation and negative emotional states, leading to diminished learning performance. It may be possible to increase students' sleep as well as improve associated emotional states (e.g., stress, depression) and learning performance (e.g., concentration, academic achievement) through non-pharmacological methods. Five classrooms of tenth grade female students in Taiwan were exposed to five different interventions meant to increase sleep duration over the course of a 19-week semester: control (conventional health course, typical indoor lighting), Group 1 (30 min of morning outdoor exercise), Group 2 (mindfulness-based sleep course), Group 3 (4 h of morning simulated sunlight exposure from a smart lighting system), Group 4 (both mindfulness-based sleep course and smart lighting). Sleep, cognitive, emotional, and educational outcomes were tracked. As compared to the control condition, morning outdoor exercise did not improve health or learning performance. The smart indoor lighting and mindfulness-based sleep course independently improved students' sleep duration, emotional states, and concentration. The combination of the mindfulness-based sleep course and the smart lighting system elicited the greatest changes in students' physical and mental health, including improving academic achievement. This study suggests that in the future, existing conventional health courses in schools could be replaced or supplemented with a mindfulness-based sleep course and classroom lighting could be replaced with smart lighting systems to provide better health and learning benefits for adolescent students.