探討動物保護議題之同理心教學對高中學生同理心與非形式推理能力之影響

Abstract

當人們面對爭議性議題時，常常需要在多元觀點中進行整合與分析，進而進行討論與論證，這類推理歷程即為「非形式推理」（Informal Reasoning）。然而，人們往往傾向維護自身立場，選擇支持與自身立場一致的觀點，卻容易忽略或嚴格審視對方立場之論點，進而使討論趨於對立、難以達成共識。此現象可能同理心（Empathy）能力有所關係。因此，本研究旨在探討同理心訓練對非形式推理能力之影響，期望培養學生站在他人立場思考問題的能力，促進其推理整合與換位思考的表現。本研究招募新北市某高中一年級20名學生參與，於訓練前後分別施測同理心量表與非形式推理問卷，以「是否同意餵食流浪動物」作為爭議性議題進行探討。課程歷時兩週，共115分鐘，內容涵蓋同理心概念教學與實際應用以及多個動物保護相關議題的論證練習。訓練後進行後測，以分析學生之能力變化。研究結果顯示，整體受試者在訓練後，其同理心能力皆有顯著提升，特別是在認知同理心層面（觀點取替與即時模擬）。在立場與態度上，高同理心組傾向立場弱化；低同理心組則有立場強化的傾向。而在非形式推理方面，整體受試者提出的己方論點數量有顯著之增加，展現出更明確的觀點表達能力；在提出另有論點的數量與面向之表現上，高同理心組於前、後測中皆顯著優於低分組，且有擴大其差異之情況，呈現富者越富之趨勢。綜合而言，本研究結果顯示同理心訓練有助於提升受試者的同理心與非形式推理能力，最後，本研究提出三項研究結論，並針對研究限制與教學實務提出具體建議，期能作為未來相關課程設計與研究發展之參考。When people face controversial topics, they often need to combine and analyze many different viewpoints, then discuss and argue about them. This kind of thinking process is called"informal reasoning." However, people usually like to protect their own opinions and support views that match theirs. They often ignore or do not carefully check the other side’s reasons, which can make discussions become arguments and hard to reach agreement. This may be related to a person's ability called empathy. Therefore, this study aims to see how training in empathy affects informal reasoning ability. It hopes to help students think from others' viewpoints, improve their reasoning, and practice putting themselves in others' shoes. The study invited 20 10th high school students from New Taipei City to join. Before and after the training, they took tests about empathy and informal reasoning, using the question "Do you agree with feeding stray animals?" as the controversial topic. The course lasted two weeks with 115 minutes total, including lessons about empathy and practice in arguing about animal protection issues. After the training, tests were done again to check changes. The results showed that overall, students' empathy improved a lot after training, especially in cognitive empathy (including perspective taking and online simulation). In attitudes, the high empathy group tended to soften their positions, while the low empathy group tended to hold their positions stronger. For informal reasoning, the number of arguments from their own side increased clearly, showing better ability to express opinions. The high empathy group performed better than the low empathy group in taking other viewpoints, bothbefore and after training, and the difference grew bigger, showing a"rich get richer" effect. In summary, this study shows that empathy training helps improve both empathy and informal reasoning skills. Finally, the study gives three main conclusions and practical suggestions for teaching and future research, hoping to help design better courses and studies in the future.