Motivation

All close relationships around the student are essential for empathic development. Robust international evidence shows that parenting interventions that incorporate social and emotional skills development (empathy) have significant positive outcomes. This important process of socialization, which parents take care of, continues when the student begins school. Here, however, it becomes a merger – or collaboration between parents and teachers- about a common task. Neither parents nor school staff can be separated when it comes to influencing students. Therefore, it is a task that must be solved jointly, with the resources that  each adult brings into the student’s life.

Empathic teachers contribute to students’ capacity and motivation to learn. Empathic teachers strengthen their students’ sense of belonging to their schools and their relationships with teachers and classmates. Various international documents have stressed the importance of such ‘soft’skills. According to the Council Recommendation by European Commission, 2018 on Key Competences for LifeLong Learning, ‘soft skills,’ like cognitive (critical thinking and responsible decisionmaking), personal (awareness, drive, self-management), and interpersonal skills (communication, negotiation, cooperation and teamwork, inclusion, empathy, and advocacy are essential for a good and healthy life.

A meta-analysis of over 18 empathy training programs found that empathy training is effective. The findings suggest that empathy training programs are significant overall, and indicated that 4 factors were statistically significantly associated with higher effect sizes:

1. Training health professionals and university students rather than other types of individuals.

2. Compensating trainees for their participation.

3. Using empathy measures that focus exclusively on assessing understanding the emotions of others, feeling those emotions, or commenting accurately on the emotions.

4. Using objective measures rather than self-report measures.

The findings indicate that (a) empathy training tends to be effective, and (b) experimental research is warranted on the impact of different types of trainees, training conditions, and types of  assessment. Looking only at the teacher’s role in this toolkit, five prerequisites are crucial for  students’ optimal empathic outcome. These are:

• Their feeling of self-accord and motivation 

• Their ability to build good relationships with students

• How they deal with challenging situations

• Their awareness of building a safe classroom atmosphere

• And having a strong support system around

Teachers must know what motivates them to have authority and inner anchoring to build self-accord and create healthy relationships. These preconditions are necessary for a practical, empathic approach to positively impact the relationship and the student’s learning. This is to ensure an excellent classroom atmosphere sothat empathy can take place, even in difficult and challenging situations. This can only be done with a good support system around both students and teachers.