Children can be taught empathy at school and this can boost their creativity, a research study has concluded.

Year 9 students at an inner London school were tasked, during their design and technology (D&T) lessons, with making a pack to help a child under the age of 6 with asthma.

Their brief was that the pack should hold the youngster’s equipment such as an inhaler, and paperwork such as an asthma incident log.

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The exercise was designed to develop their empathy.

Those at a second school, also in inner London, followed curriculum-prescribed D&T lessons as part of the year-long University of Cambridge study.

Creativity ‘linked to students’ empathy’

Both sets of students were assessed for creativity at both the start and end of the school year, using an established psychometric test.

At the start of the year, the creativity scores of students in the control school, which followed the standard curriculum, were 11 per cent higher than those at the intervention school where the empathy exercise was used.

By the end, however, creativity scores among the intervention group were 78 per cent higher than the control group.

The researchers also examined specific categories within the test that are indicative of emotional or cognitive empathy, such as “emotional expressiveness” and “open-mindedness”.

Students from the intervention school again scored much higher in these categories. Researchers said this indicated that a marked improvement in empathy was driving the overall creativity scores.

Helen Demetriou, a lecturer in psychology and education at Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, said: “We clearly awakened something in these pupils by encouraging them to think about the thoughts and feelings of others.

“The research shows not only that it is possible to teach empathy, but that by doing so we support the development of children’s creativity, and their wider learning.”

The winning design, at the school given the empathy exercise, was a pack themed as a cuddly monkey.

The student who designed it wrote that it would give “comfort” to a young child.

As part of the exercise, children were given various creative and empathetic tools, including a video of a child having an asthma attack and data about the number of childhood asthma fatalities in the UK.

They also tested their design ideas by role-playing various stakeholders; for example, patients, family members and medical staff.

The research is part of a long-term collaboration between the Faculty of Education and the Department of Engineering at Cambridge called “Designing Our Tomorrow”.

Bill Nicholl, senior lecturer in design and technology education at Cambridge, said: “Teaching for empathy has been problematic despite being part of the D&T 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.”

The researchers also interviewed students who completed the empathy exercise and found that many used phrases such as “stepping into their shoes” or “seeing things from another point of view” when discussing patients and their families, suggesting that empathy influenced their creative decisions.

The authors say there is a need to nurture “emotionally intelligent learners”.

Dr Demetriou said: “Good grades matter, but for society to thrive, creative, communicative and empathic individuals matter, too.”

The study has been published in the journal Improving Schools.