Increased instruction time and stress-related health problems among school children

Abstract

While several studies suggest that stress-related mental health problems among school children are related to speci c elements of schooling, empirical evidence on this causal relationship is scarce. We examine a German schooling reform that increased weekly instruction time and study its e ects on stress-related outpatient diagnoses from the universe of health claims data of the German Social Health Insurance. Exploiting the di erential timing in the reform implementation across states, we show that the reform slightly increased stress-related health problems among school children. While increasing instruction time might increase student performance, it might have adverse e ects in terms of additional stress.

To Those Who Have, More Will Be Given? Effects of an Instructional Time Reform on Gender Disparities in STEM Subjects, Stress, and Health

“…This also becomes evident when inspecting further related literature. Among others, findings on this topic are based on quite heterogeneous reforms (e.g., Allensworth et al, 2009 ; Domina et al, 2015 ; Huebener et al, 2017 ; Marcus et al, 2020 ), based on randomized controlled trials (e.g., Meyer and van Klaveren, 2013 ; Andersen et al, 2016 ) or cross-sectional secondary data analysis (e.g., Lavy, 2015 ). Before generalizing results from our study to the general debate about learning time or other environments (e.g., other states or reforms), researchers and practitioners should carefully consider potential similarities and differences.…”

“…Both motivation and wellbeing were found to be relevant for student achievement, aside from their importance in and of themselves (e.g., Widlund et al, 2018;Watt et al, 2019;Eccles and Wigfield, 2020;Wu et al, 2021). In addition, these constructs might also be affected by school reforms, as shown in prior studies (e.g., Hübner et al, 2017b;Marcus et al, 2020). It is consequently important to investigate whether girls may be disadvantaged relative to boys by the reform-induced changes, particularly regarding motivation and wellbeing.…”

“…Studies that have focused on investigating school stressors found schoolwork pressure to partly explain psychological complaints and psychosomatic pain ( Hjern et al, 2008 ), and girls reported higher levels of performance-related stress at school ( Moksnes et al, 2010 ). Finally, prior research provides evidence that increasing learning time might lead to more stress-related health problems (e.g., Marcus et al, 2020 ). Related to this, Quis (2018) investigated gender-specific differences between G8- and G9-students on school-related stress and health among students at the end of upper secondary school.…”

“…Beyond this, further changes were implemented, which were required to increase instruction time per week, for instance new educational standards and school-specific curricula. Current research on the G8-reform is mixed in that some studies find student achievement to increase in lower secondary school (Huebener et al, 2017), whereas others find zero or negative effects on achievement, negative effects on stress levels and health, and delayed university enrollment of females (e.g., Büttner and Thomsen, 2015;Hübner et al, 2017a;Quis, 2018;Meyer et al, 2019;Marcus et al, 2020). Further studies are needed to investigate potential causes of these reported differences which may result from different samples (e.g., from different states) but also relate to the timeframe examined over which effects might accumulate or dissipate.…”

A Covid-19 e a volta às aulas: ouvindo as evidências

“…Ao mesmo tempo, a retenção do conteúdo anterior ficaria prejudicada por falta de prática (CEPEDA et al, 2009). Estudos realizados na Alemanha encontram efeitos negativos sobre a saúde mental dos estudantes após ampliação da jornada diária (HOFMANN;MÜHLENWEG, 2018;MARCUS et al, 2020). Na Coreia do Sul, onde a jornada pode superar 13 horas diárias, estudos associam períodos extensos a sintomas de depressão (LEE; LARSON, 2000).…”