Do later school start times improve adolescents' sleep and substance use? A quasi-experimental study.

OBJECTIVE: A later school start time policy has been recommended as a solution to adolescents' sleep deprivation. We estimated the impacts of later school start times on adolescents' sleep and substance use by leveraging a quasi-experiment in which school start time was delayed in some regions in South Korea. METHODS: A later school start time policy was implemented in 2014 and 2015, which delayed school start times by approximately 30-90 minutes. We applied difference-in-differences and event-study designs to longitudinal data on a nationally representative cohort of adolescents from 2010 to 2015, which annually tracked sleep and substance use of 1133 adolescents from grade 7 through grade 12. RESULTS: The adoption of a later school start time policy was initially associated with a 19-minute increase in sleep duration (95% CI, 5.52 to 32.04), driven by a delayed wake time and consistent bedtime. The policy was also associated with statistically significant reductions in monthly smoking and drinking frequencies. However, approximately a year after implementation, the observed increase in sleep duration shrank to 7  minutes (95% CI, -12.60 to 25.86) and became statistically nonsignificant. Similarly, the observed reduction in smoking and drinking was attenuated a year after. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that policies that increase sleep in adolescents may have positive effects on health behaviors, but additional efforts may be required to sustain positive impacts over time. Physicians and education and health policymakers should consider the long-term effects of later school start times on adolescent health and well-being.

Does Shadow Education Discourage or Encourage Creative Thinking? Evidence from South Korea (La educación en la sombra, ¿fomenta o desincentiva el pensamiento creativo? Evidencia de Corea del Sur).

Using longitudinal data for a nationally representative sample of fifth graders from the Korean Educational Longitudinal Study of 2013, this study examined the effect of shadow education-referred to as academically-oriented extracurricular activities mainly aimed to prepare for examinations-on students' creative thinking. To estimate the effect of shadow education, we used propensity score matching approaches. We found no significant shadow education effect on gains (or losses) in students' creative thinking between the fifth and sixth grades. This finding does not support the arguments that students' participation in shadow education discourages or encourages their creative thinking. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

Utilizando los datos longitudinales de una muestra nacional representativa de estudiantes de Grado 5, recabados ´por el Estudio Longitudinal sobre la Educación en Corea en 2013, el objetivo de este estudio es analizar el efecto de las actividades académicas extracurriculares complementarias (educación en la sombra), dirigidas principalmente a la preparación de exámenes, en el pensamiento creativo. Para estimar el efecto de la educación en la sombra, adoptamos el método de emparejamiento de correspondencia de propensiones (Propensity Score Matching). No se hallaron efectos significativos (ni positivos ni negativos) de este tipo de educación en el pensamiento creativo de los estudiantes de Grado 5 y Grado 6. Este resultado no corrobora la argumentación que sugiere que la educación en la sombra ejerce un efecto de fomento (o detrimento) en el pensamiento creativo de los estudiantes. Al final del artículo se discuten las implicaciones y limitaciones del estudio y las posibles direcciones futuras para la investigación en este campo.

Perception and Experience of Sexual and Gender Minority Korean Youth in School Counseling.

To comprehensively explore the school counseling experience of sexual and gender minority (SGM) youths in South Korea, we interviewed 14 SGM youths about their school counseling experience and the climate of their schools toward SGM. Results showed that a hostile school climate and the accessibility, confidentiality, trustworthiness, and LGBTQ competency of school counselors drove the reluctance of these youths to receive school counseling services. Implications for the role of school counseling services for SGM youths were discussed based on the findings of this work and the suggestions offered by the interviewed SGM youths. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10447-022-09490-0.