New Study Suggests Teaching Empathy To Students Significantly Improves Creative Abilities

A new study suggests that teaching young students in a manner that encourages them to empathize with other people measurably enhances their creativity and results in several other beneficial learning results.

According to Science Bulletin, the study findings have come from a year-long University of Cambridge research with Design and Technology or D&T year 9 students whose ages range from 14 to 14 at a couple of inner schools in London.

As indicated in the study, students at one school spent the year attending to "curriculum-prescribed lessons," while the other group of students had D&T lessons that used a set of engineering design thinking tools aiming to foster the ability of pupils to think creatively or artistically, not to mention stimulate empathy while they solve real-life problems.

Both groups of students were examined for their creativity at both the beginning and end of the school year by using the "Torrance Test of Creative thinking," a well-developed psychometric test.

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A new study suggests that teaching young students in a manner that encourages them to empathize with other people measurably enhances their creativity and results in several other beneficial learning results.

Significant Increase in Creativity of Pupils

The test results presented a statistically significant increase in pupils' creativity at the intervention school, where the thinking mechanisms were utilized.

At the beginning of the year, students' creativity scores from the control school, which followed the regular curriculum, were 11-percent higher than those at the intervention school.

Towards the end, though, the condition had totally changed. Specifically, scores of pupils from the intervention group were 78-percent higher compared to the control group.

The study authors analyzed though specific classifications with the Torrance Tests suggestive "emotional or cognitive empathy" like emotional expressiveness and open-mindedness.

Students in the intervention school again had a higher score in these categories, specifying that a marked enhancement in empathy was driving the general scores for creativity.

Empathy Improving Beyond Just Creativity

The researchers proposed that encouraging empathy doesn't just improve creativity but can deepen the general engagement of students and learning.

Remarkably, they discovered evidence that both boys and girls from the intervention school responded to the D&T course in ways that challenged customary gender stereotypes.

Boys exhibited a marked improvement in emotional expression with a score of 64-percent higher in that classification at the end of this year compared to the beginning.

Meanwhile, girls are found to have improved more when it comes to cognitive empathy, exhibiting 62-percent more "perspective-taking."

This study is part of a long-term alliance between the Faculty of Education and the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge known as 'Designing Our Tomorrow' or DOT, headed by Bill Nicholl and Ian Hosking.

Furthermore, the research challenges students to solve real-life problems by thinking about others' perspectives and feelings.

Nicholl, a Design and Technology Education senior lecturer who trains educators studying on the D&T PGCE of the University, said, "Teaching for empathy has been" a problem despite being part of the D&T National Curriculum for more than 20 years.

Such evidence published in the Improving Schools journal proposed that it is a missing connection in the creative process and essential if "we want education to encourage tomorrow's designers and engineers," added Nicholl.

In general, the study investigators proposed that such findings point to a necessity to nurture "emotionally intelligent learners," not just in D&T categories but across subjects as well, specifically in the context of developing more extensive scientific evidence that one's capacity for empathy drops as he gets older.

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