記得要看我畫底線的片語和單字哦
文章中有出現 “中暑”的英文單字，你找到了嗎?
The study, published by the US
National Bureau of Economic Research, found that students
were more likely to have lower scores in years with higher temperatures and
better results in cooler years.
看來暑假比較不適合考雅思?!
There is a
"significant" link between higher temperatures and lower school
achievement, say economic researchers.
An analysis
of test scores of 10 million US secondary school students over 13 years shows
hot weather has a negative impact on results.
The study
says a practical response could be to use more air conditioning.
Heat wave
Students
taking exams in a summer heat wave might have always complained that they were
hampered by the sweltering weather.
But this
study, from academics at Harvard, the University of California Los Angeles
(UCLA) and Georgia State University, claims to have produced the first clear
evidence showing that when temperatures go up, school performance goes down.
Researchers
have tracked how secondary school students performed in tests in different
years, between 2001 and 2014, across the different climates and weather
patterns within the US.
The study, published by the US
National Bureau of Economic Research, found that students
were more likely to have lower scores in years with higher temperatures and
better results in cooler years.
This applied
across the many different types of climate - whether in cooler northern US
states or in the southern states where temperatures are typically much higher.
The study,
Heat and Learning, suggested that hotter weather made it harder to study in
lessons in school and to concentrate on homework out of school.
Researchers
calculated that for every 0.55C increase in average temperature over the
year, there was a 1% fall in learning.
Colder days
did not seem to damage achievement - but the negative impact began to be
measurable as temperatures rose above 21C.
The reduction
in learning accelerated once temperatures rose above 32C and even more
so above 38C.
Turning up the air conditioning
The study
also found the impact of the heat was much greater on low income families and
students from ethnic minorities.
There were
suggestions that wealthier families and schools in disadvantaged areas were
more likely to intervene if pupils were slipping behind and to find ways
to compensate, such as extra tuition.
But it says a
"simpler explanation" might be greater access to air conditioning in
more affluent families and the schools their children attend.
Joshua
Goodman, associate professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and
his co-authors provide evidence that the "heat's disruption of instruction
or homework time is responsible for the observed drop in test scores".
He says
students were incrementally more likely to be "distracted, agitated and
find it harder to focus".
But Mr
Goodman says it would have been harder to carry out similar studies in
the education systems in the UK, because the differences in weather conditions
would have been much narrower.
The wide range
of weather conditions in the US allows comparisons within the same year group
as well as with test performances in previous years.
Mr Goodman
says the findings also raise bigger questions about whether climate change and
global warming will have implications for school achievement.
The study
also asks whether heat plays a part in the huge regional differences in
achievement within the US.
Northern
states such as Massachusetts have very high levels of achievement in
international tests, such as the OECD's Pisa tests, which
compare teenagers' ability in reading, maths and science.
The
researchers also argue there are implications for the ethnic achievement gaps -
with black and Hispanic students more concentrated in hotter states of the US.
"We
argue that heat effects account for up to 13% of the US racial achievement
gap," says the study, because of where black and Hispanic students live
and because their test scores seem to be disproportionately disrupted by the
changes in temperature.
Mr Goodman
says the researchers also want to examine the long-term consequences of a hot
year on a cohort of students.
If students
happen to take important exams in a heatwave year, does that mean they are more
likely to miss out on exam results and university places?
Mr Goodman
says that policymakers and parents have under-estimated the significance of
temperatures in schools and overheated classrooms.
"Teachers
and students already know it's a problem - because they've had to live
it," he said.
Views from the public
Ananas Kumar in India: Weather always affects
the result of an exam. Having experienced both summer and winter exams I can
say that summer affects your performance more due to hot temperatures,
dehydration and sunstroke.
John Hammond: As a retired teacher, I don't think this
is news at all. The simple fact is that it is little to do with the actual
exams and far more to do with the weather in the run up to the exams and this
starts as soon as Easter. I taught in a school on the south coast and we
dreaded a good Easter because the pupils all went to the beach to revise rather
than stay at home and doing it properly. The study should have concentrated on
the IQs of the kids involved; usually the brighter ones were more capable of
resisting the pull of the beach.
Haidab Hany in Ghana: I would like to
challenge the Harvard research that heat-waves affect students during exams. I
live in Ghana which is a tropical country. We have very hot weather from
December to April and students in schools all over the country write exams and
do well. Some pupils of course don't do well, but that's not due to the heat
just poor preparation. I've studied in Ghana and during heat waves and had no
issues.
Afbell: As someone who took O-levels and A-levels more than 40
years ago, I have known this for over 40 years! I personally had the double
whammy of suffering from hay-fever so had to put up with warm weather and the
accompanying high pollen count. Antihistamines were considerably less effective
in the mid-70s so I just had to suffer. My recollection of this period also
includes trying to revise during very hot weather. This was actually worse than
the exams; exams had a finish time, revising seemed to be endless in the heat.
Joe Field: I have been teaching since 1972, I
have no doubt that test results during a heat-wave are lower than in cooler
weather. Learning in general is worse during a heat wave. This appears to be
one reason for the long summer school holidays in the UK, US and elsewhere.