Empathy is needed to be open to new and different perspectives as well as sparking interest in learning from others inside and outside the classroom. It allows one to understand sympathize with how others experience the world and learn from below. Two forms of empathy can be distinguished. Related to empathy, practicing intellectual empathy asks of learners to critically interrogate their own viewpoints and position in the world. At the same time, practicing intellectual empathy allows us to adjust our viewpoints, attempt to find common ground with others, and, together, work towards social justice. Doing so fosters a form of ‘onto-epistemological nimbleness’ necessary to recognize frameworks of understanding in others and oneself. This tends to facilitate navigating a complex and diverse world. In addition, personal empathy concerns a more familiar form of empathy between two people. Such empathy is created by having personal connections with people, and thoroughly understanding their frame of reference, especially when engaging with people of different backgrounds or with other viewpoints.
Tips & tricks
With these tips & tricks, you can introduce students to the skill in an accessible way.
Informal Introductions
Within the classroom it is important to create empathy between the students, so they will engage with each other respectfully and value each other’s positions and opinions. In the general structure of a course, this can be done by taking a considerate amount of time in the first session for people to get to know each other. To create empathy, this introduction needs to go beyond merely academic status and basic personal facts. Rather, students can be asked to bring something that reflects who they are as a person, such as an object, a music video, a story, or anything else they can think of. This allows the students to get to know and value each other in a more personal and creative way. The key part of such an exercise is that students see that their peers all have their own experiences and interests, which can strongly differ from their own.
Film screening
To enhance empathy towards people that are further removed from the students’ social circle, the use of storytelling media can be very effective. Film screenings, for example, can provide much human inside in the voices, narratives, and lived realities of people far removed from students’ daily lives. This is especially useful for courses that discuss topics relevant to marginalised communities and/or the global south. Instead of reading an academic text, a weekly reading can be replaced by a chapter from a fictional book. This will keep students more engaged and provide them with novel insights into the lives of others whilst subsequently allowing the other to narrate and inform the students’ perspectives. Ideally, this helps students broaden their viewpoints and create cultural understanding of the complexities of peoples’ experiences. Furthermore, it helps them to find more enjoyment in their studies, making content less abstract and easier to visualise.
Teaching activities
With these teaching activities, you can enable students to apply the skill concretely within your educational practice.
Video analysis of someone/something you don’t like
To enhance the empathy skill, a student can be given the assignment to find a video of someone who voices a perspective they, at first glance do not like, and then find at least one strength of this person or perspective. Doing so requires students to critically assess the perspectives of others, reflect on their own perspectives, and foster a feeling of connection even with those seemingly far removed from themselves. Additionally, it will help them broaden the spectrum of their academic knowledge, as they will have to critically examine a viewpoint that they otherwise would not have paid attention to.
Interview with an actor
In contrast to regular interviews, interviews with actors can be specifically shaped to help enhance students’ empathy. The actor should be prompted to represent someone with whom the student might not have much experience, or who shows behaviour the student is not familiar with. If the student is given clear instructions on how to perform the interview, such as specific steps and questions that can make the interviewee open up and share their experience, it will teach the student how to approach unfamiliar people and how to talk with them in a relatively safe training environment. The student can afterwards transfer the skills practiced with an actor to real-life situations and become better adapted to talking with people from various parts of society. This increased understanding and more appropriate communication are key in developing different types of empathy.
Assessment
With these assignments, you can encourage students to further train and develop the skill.
Film/book review
An important part of teaching empathy is that students will become familiar with different viewpoints and learn how to understand different life experiences. An easy way to do this is by asking students to write a review of a book or film that voices a perspective different than their own. Films and books present an easy way to get more acquainted with unfamiliar stories and histories and allow the students to become more empathetic from the comfort of their own home. The students can be asked to review a particular book or film chosen by the teacher or be allowed more freedom in their choice. A good compromise between complete freedom of choice and a prescribed analysis object is letting students choose their own film or book as long as it relates to a certain topic as decided by the teacher. The review can be prepared in writing, in the form of an essay, but also as a presentation or in video or podcast format.
Perspective paper
The idea of a perspective paper is to write an essay from the viewpoint of someone else, ideally someone that is affected more than the students themselves by certain societal problems. For example, when talking about sustainability and climate, students can be asked to write a paper from the perspective of someone from the global south, whose life is much more affected by climate change than that of the students. Analysing climate change from the perspective of a farmer in Bangladesh will be quite different than analysing it from the perspective of a Dutch university student. Though it might always remain difficult to fully understand and voice the perspective of someone different than oneself, practicing perspective taking trains students in developing empathy as they attempt to position themselves outside their own bubble. Furthermore, such exercise can be useful in grasping and interrogating students’ own positionalities as well as that of person from whose view you’re writing a paper.
Good practices
These examples provide insight into how students have successfully applied the skill in practice.
Transition to University (Inclusive and Emergent Leadership Minor)
This is a small exercise that aims to initiate a reflection on one’s position at the university, and to create empathy between students from different background. The exercise is made up of two parts. The first part consists of a reflection on one’s own transition into university, which struggles were experienced, and what parts were easy (for a full list of reflection questions see exercise description). The second part consists of an interview with a student from an underrepresented or marginalized group at university. In this interview the same questions are asked that were earlier used in the personal reflection. The final goal is to compare the different experiences, and to create an understanding of what others might go through during such an important transition period.
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