EMPATHY. . .

EMPATHY. . . A Facet of Understanding

Presenters & Related Tasks:Filomena Rulloda: Handout

Teresa Givens: Exam Questions

John Anthony: PowerPoint

the ability to get inside another person's feelings, experiences and worldview.

The capacity to share the sadness or happiness of another human being.

Empathy

DEFINITIONS

- the ability to walk in another person’s shoes, to escape one’s own responses and reactions so as to grasp those of another.

Empathy

- the disciplined attempt to feel as others feel, to see as others see.

DEFINITIONS

Empathy

Gaining Insight Through Empathy: The Big Four Questions

I: How does it seem to you?

II: What do you see that I don’t?

III: What do I need to experience, if I am to understand?

IV: What was the writer, artist, or performer feeling, thinking, and trying to make me feel and see?

Empathy

Empathy: Examples and Counter Example:

Examples: + An adolescent empathizes with the restrictive

lifestyle of his bedridden grandmother. + From a British national exam: "Romeo and Juliet.

Act 4. Imagine you are Juliet. Write your thoughts and feelings explaining why you have to take this desperate action."

Counter Example: - A natural athlete becomes a coach and berates his

young players often because he cannot relate to their struggles to learn the game that came easily to him.

Empathy: as a way to gain insight

Scholars need empathy to understand the theories of their predecessors.

Students must learn to accept, with an open mind, ideas, experiences and texts that may seem strange and unfamiliar to them.

Empathy: more than tolerance

Requires respect for people different from ourselves. Out of respect for others, we accept, with an open mind, their beliefs, ideas, experiences and perspectives.

Empathy implies a “change of heart”, an escape from the bounds of egocentrism, ethnocentricity and present-centeredness.

Empathy

Implications of Empathy in Instruction and Assessment

Assessment needs to include summative forms that address whether students have overcome their own egocentricity, ethnocentricity and present-centeredness. These elements often give rise to misconceptions.

Instruction should motivate students to examine and confront, with an open-mind, the concepts studied. This type of instruction helps students understand the purpose of their learning.

Empathy: Question and Answers