Teaching Pupils Empathy Measurably Improves Their Creative Abilities
The findings are from a year-long University of Cambridge study with Design and Technology (D&T) year 9 pupils (ages 13 to 14) at two inner London schools. Pupils at one school spent the year following curriculum-prescribed lessons, while the other group’s D&T lessons used a set of engineering design thinking tools which aim to foster students’ ability to think creatively and to engender empathy, while solving real-world problems.
Both sets of pupils were assessed for creativity at both the start and end of the school year using the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking: a well-established psychometric test.
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.
I’m not sure what other people’s exact experiences are, but I find there is some mental similarity between imagination, prayer, empathy, meditation, contemplation, remembering things, attention, mindfulness, self control inhibition/disinhibition, rhythm/drumming/repetition timing, motor movements, planning, predicting/anticipating. I’m trying to understand the little differences in meanings and experience and control of all of these words. It’s fascinating. It’s like imagination is a sandbox for almost anything to happen that shapes what we think of ourselves and the world around us. It tests the boundaries of our concepts of reality and challenges my preconceptions. It bewilders me and keeps me wondering more what’s in our imaginations and what is even going on?! I can appreciate that a lot and be amazed by it all daily. I’m trying to use imagination to really boost my creativity and cognitive ability (pre-practicing/simulating all kinds of life skills and meanings in my imagination to keep myself “warmed up” and ready to deal with challenges in life whenever they may come) so I can live a life where I can attempt understand reality to hopefully some degree and live meaningfully and helpfully.
I really like the idea of making word mind maps where – I think of two very different words. Say, PIZZA and ELEPHANT. Those are somewhat different to me. Then put those in two bubbles at two ends of a piece of printer paper. Then try to find all the “between” nodes. It’s a great idea for finding new meaningful bridging connections between words.
From PIZZA, okay maybe I will think about, restaurant, cheese, food, delivery, happiness
from restaurant, I might think businesses
from businesses, I might think of zoo, farm, animal caretaking
from cheese, I might think of nutrition, calcium, yummyness
from delivery, I might think of transportation, transferring, driving, passing on, service
from happiness, I might think of being with animals, being at a zoo, being with people
From ELEPHANT, I might think of zoo, ivory tusks, water, food, animal caretaking
from ivory tusks, I might think of calcium
So I got a few cool links here.
Elephant → Zoo → Business → Restaurant → Pizza
Elephant → Animals → Happiness → Pizza
Elephant → Ivory tusks → Calcium → Cheese → Pizza
Elephant → Food → Pizza
I think it’s nice to also find that there are some “hub” words. Like “happiness” is going to connect a whole lot of different things together. Or “business”, you could have a business for almost anything. Or “nature”, “social”. Most things interact with either nature or people or both.
Yes. I too think that imagery is very important. The main asset of almost all great scientists was exceptional imagery.
I prefer to find similarities between distant things. So I see an analogy between the cognitive functions of our brain and the expansion of the universe. Or between the memory of a computer and a human.
This is a great technique used by advertising copywriters too, fun fact. 