At NIE’s Science of Learning in Education Centre (SoLEC), research is more than data – it’s grounded in real classrooms. Dr Astrid Schmied, Dr Jack Fogarty and Ms Shermaine Lim from SoLEC share more about the research centre’s experience in fostering partnerships with schools and co-designing studies with teachers. In particular, they highlight a research study that explores how mindful breathing exercises support students’ learning and well-being – a prime example of how collaborative, evidence-informed research can translate into practical strategies that benefit both students and educators.

From left to right: Ms Shermaine Lim, Dr Jack Fogarty and Dr Astrid Schmied

Inside SoLEC: Research Rooted in Real Classrooms

“Our research at NIE’s Science of Learning in Education Centre (SoLEC) focuses on three key areas: metacognition, well-being and self-regulation,” Dr Astrid Schmied, an Education Research Scientist at SoLEC, shares.

The centre is also where the Science of Learning (SoL) is explored through a holistic lens, blending different disciplines such as neuroscience, psychology and education, and incorporating different methods and techniques to understand learning across the lifespan.

“Central to our approach is co-design – collaborating directly with educators and learners to shape research that fits real classroom contexts,” she explains. “We work closely with partners like the Ministry of Education, schools and community organizations to form research-practice partnerships – joint efforts between partners – and translate research into evidence-informed educational decisions.”

Co-design strengthens ecological validity, the extent to which the research findings can be generalized to real-world settings and situations. Co-design ensures that findings reflect what truly happens in schools, while also encouraging innovative data-collection approaches that build knowledge and capacity.

Another important feature of SoLEC’s research is its emphasis on naturalistic environments, such as classroom spaces. “Such spaces offer the best chance to generalize findings and bridge the gap between research and practice in Singapore schools,” she adds.

However, she notes that building strong partnerships with stakeholders requires time and trust. “It involves ongoing conversations to understand challenges, securing ethics approval and funding, conducting studies, analysing data and sharing results through reports, journals and conferences.”

Since its inception, SoLEC has partnered with many schools, including a recent project that examines how mindful breathing exercises support students’ learning and well-being.

“The project illustrates how we co-design studies in school environments and how we apply different methodological approaches in SoL research,” she shares. “The project uses three key research methods: self-report measures, physiological recordings and literature reviews.”

Self-Report Measures

“The research project was developed through a three-year partnership with a primary school,” Astrid says. “Since the school was implementing mindful breathing and breath-work exercises as part of their daily routine, we wanted to explore how these practices influenced students’ learning and well-being.”

Data from students in Primary 2, 4 and 6 was collected using self-report tools co-designed with the teachers, including questionnaires, scales and interviews. These tools captured students’ subjective experiences at specific moments, and the results were compared against a control group.

“The findings show that while the breathing exercises did not produce immediate emotional changes, students generally reported experiencing more positive than negative feelings. Another key finding was that although we assessed cognitive flexibility – how easily one can shift between tasks, we did not observe significant effects,” she explains.

Self-report measures, she adds, can provide schools with a clearer understanding of how their interventions shape students’ emotional and cognitive states.

Physiological Recordings

Dr Jack Fogarty, an Education Research Scientist at SoLEC, shares that there are two core branches involved in keeping our body in balance. The first is the sympathetic nervous system which helps our body activate its “fight-or-flight” response, while the second is the parasympathetic nervous system which supports relaxation and regulates essential functions such as digestion, heart rate and breathing.

“It’s important for these systems to work together effectively so we can stay regulated and meet the demands of daily life,” Jack explains.

In the study, wearable devices were used on the students to better understand how they were engaging in the slow breathing exercises. He notes that while observations or self-reports may overlook subtle signs of stress or cognitive effort, physiological data can capture these subtle responses more objectively. They can also help reveal if young students find controlled breathing exercises to be challenging, which may negate the potential benefits for mood and relaxation.

“Results showed that students were performing the exercises correctly. They experienced a significant shift in their parasympathetic arousal [indicating relaxation], as shown in their heart rate variability, while their skin conductance results also suggest that students do not find it particularly demanding to engage in the breathing exercise led by the teachers,” he shares.

Literature Reviews

“Following our project on primary school students, we embarked on a systematic literature review of mindful breathing and breathwork interventions on students from kindergarten to grade 12,” Ms Shermaine Lim, a research assistant at NIE’s Centre for Research in Child Development, shares.

The review aimed to answer three key research questions:

• What are the overall effects of mindful breathing and breathwork interventions on K-12 student learning?
• What are the effects on student well-being?
• What factors then make these interventions effective in schools?

The review surfaced 28 relevant articles, with studies mostly involving younger students in various settings like classrooms and homes. Findings showed that mindful breathing exercises and breathwork interventions can lead to improvements in attention, task engagement and a decrease in hyperactivity.

“The review also found that the breathing interventions have a positive impact on general academic achievement and mathematics performance. Mental well-being benefits include reduced stress and anxiety, while physical benefits relate to improvements in health and sleep quality,” she shares.

“For schools to implement these practices effectively, interventions should connect to students’ daily lives and be tailored to different age groups,” she advises.

From Data to Decisions: Enhancing Long-Term School Partnerships

“Combining literature reviews, self-reports and physiological data enriches our understanding of how research is conducted and the fidelity of the interventions carried out,” Astrid shares. “The physiological data confirmed students were indeed participating as intended but self-reports showed no immediate emotional or cognitive effects.”

This triangulation of different data sources suggests that the lack of expected effects was not due to poor adherence but may point to missing elements in the intervention. She advises that it is important to work with schools on a deeper level to refine and extend such intervention programmes for better impact.

“A key advantage of long-term research-practice partnerships with schools is that findings can be shared back in detailed reports, providing evidence-based feedback to support new initiatives,” she emphasizes. “In the end, such partnerships really serve to impact decision making in education through the use of research evidence.”