Teaching children in a way that encourages them to empathize (产生共鸣) with others is of great significance to children’s creativity, new research suggests.
Pupils at two inner London schools were involved in the study. Pupils at one school spent the year following curriculum-prescribed lessons, while the other group’s lessons used a set of engineering design thinking tools which aim to develop students’ ability to think creatively and to cause empathy, while solving real-world problems.
Pupils at the intervention school were asked to design an asthma-treatment “pack” for children aged six and under. Pupils were given various creative and empathetic “tools” in order to do so: for example, they were shown data about the number of childhood asthma deaths in the U.K., and a video which describes a young child having an attack. They also explored the problem and tested their design ideas by role-playing various stakeholder (参与方) — patients, family members and medical staff.
Both sets of pupils were assessed for creativity at both the start and end of the school year. The results showed a statistically significant increase in creativity among pupils at the intervention school, where the thinking tools were used. At the start of the year, the creativity scores of pupils in the control school, which followed the standard curriculum, were 11% higher than those at the intervention school. By the end, however, the situation had completely changed: creativity scores among the intervention group were 78% higher than the control group.
Nicholl, the leading researcher of the study, said, “Teaching for empathy has been problematic despite being part of the National Curriculum for over two decades. This evidence suggests that it is a missing link in the creative process, and vital if we want education to encourage the designers and engineers of tomorrow.”
【小题1】What were pupils at the intervention school asked to do?| A．Watch the process of an asthma attack. |
| B．Gather data about asthma deaths in children. |
| C．Show sympathy for the young asthma sufferers. |
| D．Test their asthma-treatment “pack” on patients. |
| A．They preferred to study the standard curriculum. |
| B．They were smarter at the beginning of the school year. |
| C．They had little empathy for the young children with asthma. |
| D．There were less creative than those at the intervention school in the end. |
| A．Empathy education and creativity go hand in hand. |
| B．Empathy education was neglected in the creative process. |
| C．Empathy education is a must for future designers and engineers. |
| D．Empathy education hasn’t been included in the National Curriculum. |
| A．The standard curriculum limits pupils’ creativity. |
| B．Teaching pupils empathy improves their creative abilities. |
| C．Solving real-world problems promotes pupils’ all-round development. |
| D．An asthma-treatment “pack” was created by pupils at a London school. |
