Lighting for SEN
Dr Shelley James - The Light Lady
Inclusive lighting design strategy for health and well-being, keynote speaker, curator, author, WELL Light Advisory Member
As thousands of schools close their doors the summer break, parents all over the world will be thinking ahead to where their kids will go when term starts again in September.
Most of the differences in academic achievement are due to non-school factors. But the environment where they will spend up to 21,000 hours between the ages of 6 and 21 is likely to count too - although that calculation from Quora was made before the pandemic so that number is shifting a bit.
For parents of students with 'Special Educational Needs', those concerns about where to send their kids will be more pressing than for most. That classification covers a wide spectrum of differences from the severely disabled to those with milder conditions that make it harder for them to cope with the 'classic' learning environment. It accounts for just over 15% of young people in the UK, over 800 million across Europe.
Students with Special Educational Needs are twice as likely to be bullied as 'typica' students and 45% of them will leave school without a qualification. By the time they are 27, the average SEN pupil is 25% less likely to be in sustained employment and 3.7 times more likely to be on out of work benefits than their peers. No wonder those parents have trouble sleeping at night.
A growing body of research suggests that giving a bit of thought to the lighting - including of course daylight - can give those special students a fighting chance of getting something useful out of those long, tough years at school.
Their unique sensitivity to light is down to a number of factors. Differences in the physical 'hardware' of visual perception: they are more likely to have myopia and difficulties with tracking, convergence, saccades and pupillary response to name just a few conditions that are more prevalent in this population. The systems that process light are different too: integration with other senses and regulation of a cascade of hormones that are involved with light including melanopsin, dopamine, serotonin.
Visual comfort
54% of Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder experience visual discomfort with a huge range of sensitivities that can vary over time. Visual discomfort for these special students - as with any of us - leads to poor concentration, anxiety and discomfort. Research shows a strong preference for diffuse daylight and shade and extreme sensitivity to glare from reflective surfaces, screens and windows. Flicker and the low-level hum from fluorescent lights are also a problem - students on the autism spectrum can be up to 1,000 times more sensitive than 'neurotypical' students.
Communication
Students with visual impairments rely heavily on lipreading to interact with others. The angle and contrast of the lighting can reduce lipreading accuracy by up to 41%. Higher colour rendering will help them to spot changes in facial expressions more easily and has even been shown to reduce depression, and improve mood and sleep.
Sleep
49-89% of students with Autism Spectrum Disorder,?25-50% of those with ADHD and 34-86% of those with intellectual disabilities suffer from sleep disorders and circadian disruption of some kind. This has the same knock-on effect on mood, memory, motivation and metabolism that it does on any of us. Access to daylight in the morning boosted with bright light to maintain alertness will help them to get the sleep they need.
Daylight will also help with Vitamin D metabolism, another vital ingredient for healthy growth and neural processing including memory formation. There is a well-established link between vitamin D deficiency and Autism Spectrum Disorder - and clear evidence that boosting those levels has beneficial effects on those students' behaviour and ability to concentrate.
When it comes down to it, we are all 'on the spectrum'. Creating spaces where they can thrive might just be good for us all.
领英推荐
'Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness, it is the key to growth'
Jesse Jackson
Links and references
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/730977/FSM_and_SEND_outcomes-statistics.pdf
https://schoolleaders.thekeysupport.com/pupils-and-parents/sen/managing/national-data-sen/#:~:text=Overall%20proportion%20of%20pupils%20with%20SEN&text=12.2%25%20had%20special%20educational%20needs,up%20from%203.3%25%20in%202020)
Scientific papers
Cajochen C, Freyburger M, Basishvili T, et al. Effect of daylight LED on visual comfort, melatonin, mood, waking performance and sleep.?Lighting Research & Technology. 2019;51(7):1044-1062. doi:10.1177/1477153519828419Erber, Norman P, Effects of Angle, Distance, and Illumination on Visual Reception of Speech by Profoundly Deaf Children Journal of Speech and Hearing Research Article1 Mar 1974 , https://doi.org/10.1044/jshr.1701.99
Dreer, Benjamin (2021)?Teachers’ well-being and job satisfaction: the important role of positive emotions in the workplace,?Educational Studies,?DOI:?10.1080/03055698.2021.1940872 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03055698.2021.1940872?journalCode=ceds20
Howe, F.E.J., Stagg, S.D. How Sensory Experiences Affect Adolescents with an Autistic Spectrum Condition within the Classroom.?J Autism Dev Disord?46,?1656–1668 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2693-1
https://www.quora.com/How-many-hours-of-school-do-we-spend-in-a-lifetime
Saad K, Abdel-Rahman AA, Elserogy YM, Al-Atram AA, Cannell JJ, Bj?rklund G, Abdel-Reheim MK, Othman HA, El-Houfey AA, Abd El-Aziz NH, Abd El-Baseer KA, Ahmed AE, Ali AM. Vitamin D status in autism spectrum disorders and the efficacy of vitamin D supplementation in autistic children. Nutr Neurosci. 2016 Oct;19(8):346-351. doi: 10.1179/1476830515Y.0000000019. Epub 2015 Apr 15. PMID: 25876214.
Tola G, Talu V, Congiu T, Bain P, Lindert J. Built Environment Design and People with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A Scoping Review.?Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021;18(6):3203. Published 2021 Mar 19. doi:10.3390/ijerph18063203
Wim Van Lancker, Zachary Parolin COVID-19, school closures, and child poverty: a social crisis in the making. Open AccessPublished:April 07, 2020 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30084-0
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1 年Lighting does impact educational outcomes. I agree with Neina Sheldon, Make light matter, and I add "Make artificial lighting a government matter." "Artificial lighting as an education problem", a thesis written in 1938! Why do governments do nothing? That's what I investigated for my PhD. My proposed book title is "ILLUMINATION. Marginalising Light Sensitive People. WHY GOVERNMENTS DO NOTHING". It's not just people described under a SEN label. Some Professors keep the lights off, or bring their own lamp to work. Artificial lighting is an equity issue. See also: Sloane, Mona, Don Slater, and Joanne Entwistle. "Tackling Social Inequalities in Public Lighting " (2016). Dr. James, I enjoyed your post. (BTW. My swimming club refer to me as "the light lady" because they've heard me bang on about this for some years, while doing the PhD).
Founder of Make Light Matter? | Digital Content Journalist at UMi | One of many? Certified Women's Coach
2 年Brilliant article, Dr Shelley James - thank you for this.