Children’s Sleep is Associated with Teacher Reports of Students' Behavioral and Emotional School Engagement

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

There is a growing body of evidence implicating sleep as important to learning and achievement during childhood (Dewald, Meijer, Oort, Kerkhof, Bögels, 2010). These relations are often complex, and the reasons why sleep is sometimes related to achievement remain poorly understood. We aim to begin to fill this gap in the literature by examining if children’s sleep efficiency (i.e., percent of time spent sleeping while in bed), duration (i.e., the number of hours spent sleeping), and variability in duration are related to their teacher-reported engagement in the school environment. We expect these relations because poor sleep is positively related to negative emotions in school and difficulties concentrating (Berger et al., 2018; Dahl, 1996), whereas high quality sleep may facilitate children’s positive feelings about the school environment (Berger, Valiente, Eisenberg & Doane, 2015). The identification of a consistent pattern of significant relations would highlight a potential pathway through which children’s sleep may be related to their academic achievement.
Participants in this study were involved in a larger study designed to understand the relations between sleep, health, and social and academic functioning. Participants were 600 twins (50% female) who were on average 8 years old (SD = .69). Nearly 50% of the sample was lower middle class or living below the poverty line, and 29% were Hispanic. Actigraphy gathered over 7 nights was used to obtain objective indices of sleep, including children’s sleep duration, duration variability, and efficiency. Teachers used the participation (i.e., self-directed, cooperative), school liking, and school avoidance scales from the Teacher Rating School of School Adjustment to report on children’s school engagement (all alphas > .70; Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1996). Covariates included age, sex, ethnicity, and family socioeconomic status.
To examine if sleep was related to teachers’ reports of children’s school engagement, we conducted zero order correlations and then estimated three path models where we predicted the three measures of school engagement from the covariates and either sleep efficiency, sleep duration, or sleep variability. We estimated the path models in Mplus and accounted for twin interdependence (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2017). As shown in Table 2, results from these models showed that sleep efficiency was positively related to school liking and negatively related to school avoidance. The same pattern of findings was obtained for sleep duration, whereas sleep variability was negatively related to school liking and positively related to school avoidance. The measures of sleep did not significantly predict participation.
A growing body of empirical research indicates that children’s sleep is important to their academic success. Results extend the literature by showing that sleep is also related to children’s school engagement. The identification of a consistent pattern of significant relations highlights a potential pathway through which children’s sleep may be related to their academic achievement.

Group Authors

N/A

Authors

• Ariana Ruof, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Carlos Valiente, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Leah D Doane, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathryn Lemery-Chalfant, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author