Two researchers at the University of California, Davis, are proposing that differences in sleep cycles between boys and girls help explain the gender performance gap.
That鈥檚 the interesting theory behind a new paper that was released this summer by the , a private, independent research institute based in Germany. It鈥檚 believed to be the first study to find a connection between later school start times and improved academic performance by boys relative to girls.
is one of the co-authors of the paper titled, , and a Ph.D. student in economics.
Lusher and fellow UC Davis doctoral candidate studied data from a group of middle and high schools in Eastern Europe where students alternate school start times each month. So, for example, one month middle school students would start class at 7:30 a.m. and high school classes would begin at 1:30 p.m. Then the following month they would switch with high school students starting class earlier and middle school students beginning later. This went on for the entire school year.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 pretty popular in less developed countries,鈥� said Lusher. 鈥淭hey did this for a variety of reasons. They wanted to be as fair as possible.鈥�
The researchers looked at all of the students鈥� grades from month-to-month and compared their performance in the afternoon versus the morning from 2008-2014. During each rotation, students had the same teachers and took their courses in the same order.
鈥淲e find that girls outperform boys overall, but when we look at the gender gap in the afternoon class assignments versus the morning class assignments. the gender gap is narrowed,鈥� said Lusher. 鈥淚n the afternoon, the boys catch up to the girls鈥攏ot entirely鈥攂ut the gender gap is closed partially.鈥�
Role of Sleep Cycles
He and Yasenov theorize this could be due to gender differences when it comes to sleep. Their work builds upon previous studies, which found that girls deal with sleep deprivation more successfully than boys and are more likely to be early risers, while boys鈥� circadian rhythms make them more likely to stay up later and wake later in the morning.
鈥淲e find that the effects are especially strong for first period classes as opposed to later period classes,鈥� said Lusher. 鈥淭he gap is narrowed the most in these classes.鈥�
Lusher acknowledges that there could be other forces at play here, and his paper is still going through the peer review process. But his findings do give schools something else to consider when it comes to start times. In recent years, we鈥檝e seen several school districts implement later start times in response to that school not start earlier than 8:30 a.m. in order to better align with the natural body rhythms of adolescents.
鈥淲hat this suggests directly, if the mechanism is sleep and a gender differential response to lack of sleep, policies like those would maybe differentially benefit boys,鈥� said Lusher.
But Lusher鈥檚 paper doesn鈥檛 make policy recommendations in this regard, and he notes that more research is needed.
鈥淚t鈥檚 not enough to say, 鈥楬ey, we should do afternoon schooling, or hey, we should split boys from girls,鈥� but it is a data point potentially in that direction,鈥� said Lusher.
Photo: Research has shown that boys struggle more to catch up after sleep deprivation than girls. (Getty)
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