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It all makes sense now! Engineering, designing on hot summer days never working out as planned. The summer slowdowns. That feeling of wading through molasses.
A new study published by Konstantina Vasilakopoulou (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) and Matthaios Santamouris (University of New South Wales) explains how prolonged exposure to high urban temperatures, driven by climate change, negatively impacts students' cognitive performance, especially in tasks requiring complex processing like mathematics. While the short-term effects of heat on learning are well known, the study focuses on the long-term impact, which is less well understood.
The pair analyzed data from seven studies covering 14.5 million students across 61 countries. Six of the seven studies found a clear link between extended heat exposure and diminished academic performance. Socioeconomically disadvantaged students were hit hardest, due to several factors, including limited access to air conditioning, hotter urban environments, and fewer academic support resources.
The findings throw a spotlight on how climate change worsens educational learning abilities, which the authors found threatening to future human achievements and national academic progress. While most of us have experienced how excessive heat can affect our ability to concentrate and focus on the tasks at hand, prolonged exposure can be detrimental when it comes to learning and retaining new information.
To help mitigate the prolonged urban heat problem, the authors recommend instituting adaptive strategies, such as better classroom ventilation, cooling systems, and equitable access to learning resources, which can help reduce these effects. They also stress the urgent need for targeted policy changes and technology interventions to protect vulnerable students and lessen the social and economic consequences of global warming.
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