During the pandemic, many educators worried school and nursery closures would impact children’s long-term development - not just academically but also socially and emotionally.
Those concerns seem to have been correct, with observations from colleagues, shared in staff rooms, forums and in media, indicating a concerning trend: children are demonstrating a reduced capacity for emotional regulation, compassion and empathy compared with pre-pandemic cohorts.
In fact, a 2024 Save the Children report found that “nearly 90 per cent of teachers believe emotional and social delay…is related to lockdown and remote learning”.
Proactive social and emotional learning
Of course, schools are working hard to combat these delays in various ways; for example, each week, our Year 2 team at St Andrews International School Bangkok holds an hour-long pastoral meeting to help address children’s behavioural needs.
We also have increased one-to-one support, breakout spaces and dedicated chat groups for children with social and emotional development needs.
However, while much of this is about reacting to the problems of the pandemic, I wondered if we could take a proactive approach to social and emotional learning by teaching these skills directly, just as we do for things like reading and writing.
After all, from the ages of one to four, the brain is highly neuroplastic, meaning it’s highly impressionable and shaped by experiences.
See, Think, Me, We
As such, when Nord Anglia Education offered a year-long metacognition action research project with Boston College, I saw an opportunity to engage in research that would help us unlock the best ways to do this and monitor the impact.
Guided by monthly webinars and research tasks, we learned that teaching specific metacognitive strategies, like Harvard’s Project Zero “Thinking Routines”, can improve information retrieval, overall performance and even behaviour.
In particularly, the ”See, Think, Me, We” thinking routine fosters deeper engagement with a topic, idea or text by encouraging pupils to first observe (“See”), then interpret their observations (“Think”), connect the stimulus to their own experiences and feelings (“Me”), and finally consider its broader implications and other perspectives (“We”).
This routine is particularly effective for younger children, especially for cultivating compassion and empathy, allowing them to link real-life scenarios to stories, images or videos, and consider the impact on friends, themselves and the wider world.
Cultivating compassion in children
Based on this, I developed a six-week PSHE programme that (I hoped) would effectively cultivate children’s compassion and empathy.
To do this, I used stories such as The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld and Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller, which focus on developing compassionate skills for others, and Ruby Finds a Worry by Tom Percival, which focuses on self-compassion.
I also used short video clips, including a scene from the movie Inside Out, when Sadness listens to Bing Bong, and a video about a man developing compassion.
Then, during our 30-minute PSHE sessions, we used circle time on chairs to discuss the weekly content using See, Think, Me, We.
Explaining emotions
Starting with the “See” phase, the children were prompted to observe and describe the stimulus through specific questions, such as naming characters, identifying details and describing actions. This structure ensured the activity was accessible, even for those with basic language skills.
Next, in the “Think” stage, children were prompted to explain emotions or infer what might have happened and to encourage open-ended ideas about the story behind the pictures. I guided them to connect expressions and actions specifically to emotions, drawing out their ability to notice and respond to feelings.
The “Me” section of the discussion encouraged the children to share reflection and their own similar lived experiences. Occasionally, I would offer some of my own experiences to help prompt the children.
Finally, the “We” section of the discussion was encouraging the children to consider how they might be able to react in a situation similar to the story to help another feel better.
Often, in the last two sections, we would use another thinking routine of “Think Pair Share” to discuss with the child next to them, so they all felt they had a voice, and we shared a few ideas.
Furthermore, throughout the week, we mirrored this by highlighting the children’s individual and group acts of compassion, and I openly praised their kindness without the use of extrinsic rewards.
I applied my own thoughts to the thinking routine, where I would explicitly say what I noticed, why I thought it was a kind action and how that might make someone feel.
Understanding empathy and kindness
To test the efficacy of the project, the children first drew pictures of what they understood compassion (kindness) and empathy (the ability to understand and share others’ feelings) to mean.
Using drawings as evidence allowed me to reduce language or writing barriers, and they described their pictures to me.
Examples of pictures the children drew included times when they had been compassionate or others had been compassionate to them, for example, helping a friend who fell to go and visit the school nurse or helping a friend find a lost water bottle.
Then, after six weeks, I asked the pupils to draw new pictures showing their developed understanding, especially highlighting recent instances where they had shown these qualities.
While “sharing” remained the main act of kindness that children recognised, some key shifts in understanding were that other acts were considered as compassionate, such as listening to others, including others in play and caring for the world.
To deepen this, I held focus groups with some children at the start and the end to openly discuss the concepts and their own experiences, which revealed a remarkable shift in children’s understanding of compassion.
Initially, they viewed “care” through a self-serving lens: “Babies need care so they don’t smell.” “Taking care of things around us saves us from spending money on new things.” “If I didn’t brush my cat, there would be hair everywhere.”
Deeper awareness of others’ needs
Post-programme, though, they demonstrated a deeper awareness of others’ emotions and needs, and articulated compassion as a desire to prevent loneliness or ease sadness.
“Talking is kind because you are not just ignoring someone; it makes them feel joyful.” “I decided to sit with my friend when her leg hurt, so she wouldn’t feel lonely when I got to play.”
For added confidence in my findings, colleagues assessed and compared the first and second sets of drawings using the ”No More Marking” comparative judgement tool.
These results revealed that the programme significantly broadened children’s understanding, as the variety of compassionate acts depicted in their drawings nearly doubled (from 10 to 18 types).
Some of the key shifts in understanding were that while sharing remained the main act of kindness, children recognised they also developed an understanding of other acts that can be considered as compassionate, such as listening to others and including others in play.
Crucially, caring for the world around us was also considered an important act of compassion after a lesson on looking after the environment.
Link between routines and deepening compassion
The study affirmed the link between using thinking routines and deepening compassion and empathy, and gives me confidence to develop more metacognitive programmes across the Year 2 curriculum.
We may never fully know if this has reversed the effects of lockdown, but my class undoubtedly benefited.
I saw a delightful group of children demonstrate deep kindness, care and consideration for their friends, teachers and the environment. I’m confident the programme contributed to this, helping them become more compassionate citizens.
Meg King is Year 2 leader and class teacher at St Andrews International School Bangkok
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