For five years I was part of an extraordinary initiative to make empathy the new literacy in education. Part of my role was to build a network of schools in the U.S. that considered empathy as important a skill as reading and writing.
Here is a little of what I learnt.
Why Empathy?
Empathy is a little-known giant. It is naturally hardwired into our brain and when harnessed, plays a crucial role in innovation, changemaking, and solving systemic problems.
Empathy is fundamental to full human and social development. It is about more than just treating others better — it also means doing better. Empathetic people are better listeners, communicators, team-builders, problem-solvers, and leaders.
Empathy is what gives us both the will and the tools to be effective changemakers because it expands our social imagination beyond our own direct experience. It motivates us to imagine and then build something better together. It also ensures we build well: informed by a deep understanding and respect for others, working collaboratively across disciplinary boundaries, and creatively addressing problems at their root. In a world defined by connectivity and change, empathy is a key currency.
We hear a lot about grit, determination, and perseverance — because they are critical to successfully navigating our complex world. But they are also all about ‘me,’ the individual. Empathy is so powerful because it means looking up from your desk, looking around you at others, and taking ownership for the community you are in — whether it’s a classroom, a neighbourhood, a country, or our planet.
So empathy isn’t as ‘fluffy’ as it might sound! It can be learnt and developed, and, like with anything, it is best to start young.
Empathy Research
The role of empathy in education and human development has been the subject of in-depth study in a wide range of fields from sociology, psychology and, to neuroscience to evolutionary biology, economics and civic engagement. This research clearly shows that empathy matters, whether in relation to leadership development and the ability to function within a team, the perceived openness of doctors toward their nurses and patients, or a child’s capacity for prosocial behaviour and the ability to learn.
Human beings are wired for empathy: the presence of oxytocin, mirror neurons, and thousands of years of evolutionary biology all suggest that our brain circuitry has evolved with empathy at its core. The research also tells us that far from being something we can take for granted, our capacity for empathy — and indeed our basic neurobiology — is as much the product of culture, experience, and practice as it is genetics.
CASEL: Founded in 1994 by author Daniel Goleman and a host of leading researchers, educators, and philanthropists, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning has worked exhaustively to advance the science and evidence-based practice of social and emotional learning (SEL). After years of research and analysis, they have demonstrated the foundational role SEL plays in promoting positive behaviours such as conflict management, cooperation, and inclusiveness, and in preventing negative behaviours and outcomes. You can read more about their work and the benefits of social-emotional learning here.
Greater Good Science Center: The Greater Good Science Center studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society. Based at the University of California at Berkeley, the GGSC is unique in its commitment to both science and practice, sponsoring ground-breaking scientific research into the pillars of social and emotional well-being, and offering a host of tools — from an online magazine to extensive expert videos and blogs — to help you apply those findings to your own lives.
Developmental Studies Center: DSC is a non-profit organisation dedicated to children‘s academic, ethical, and social development, and the creator of the internationally-recognized Caring School Community program. They have produced numerous articles and papers on the benefits of a caring school community and its impact on academic achievement, reduced violence and drug use, and students’ moral and ethical development.
Teleos Leadership Institute: With his ground-breaking book Emotional Intelligence, author and psychologist Dr. Daniel Goleman forever changed the way we think of effective leadership in business — putting to rest once and for all the idea that emotional intelligence was the sole domain of those in humanitarian fields. Teleos has continued to conduct extensive research backing up the importance of empathy in business and leadership development, and developing award-winning training and programming to help leaders and staff use the four competencies attached to emotional intelligence to overcome organizational challenges.
Can empathy really be taught?
More like “caught,” as Ashoka Fellow Mary Gordon would say. Empathy is not something to be learned in a 45-minute lecture on the subject: it’s something all of us are born with, but it, like any other skill, demands practice.
Empathy Entrepreneurs
- Lesson #1: Feel. Imagine. Do. Share. Ashoka Fellow Kiran Bir Sethi talks about the role of empathy in design and problem-solving. Empathy is not simply about feeling for another person: it’s how we distinguish the real problem from its superficial effects, involve those served in the solution itself, and encourage others to feel and do the same way. [See Riverside School, Design for Change, Kids Take Charge…]
- Lesson #2: Parents — Start by sharing, not by asking. Empathy is something we can intentionally cultivate, not teach directly, says Ashoka Fellow Mary Gordon, founder of Roots of Empathy. For parents, that begins with sharing your own feelings and experiences, which grows with children’s emotional literacy.
- Lesson #3: Live it. Real social change begins at home, says Ashoka Fellow Eric Dawson, Founder of Peace First. So next time you ask, “how are you?” pause before rushing off without hearing the answer.
- Lesson #4: Validate every voice. Author, noted academic, and one-time high school English teacher, Tony Wagner shares the key to building empathy in every student.
- Lesson #5: Transform the helped to helper. The key to cultivating empathy? Enable others to pay it forward, says Ashoka Fellow and founder of Time Banks, Edgar Cahn.
- Lesson #6: Build Relationships. How to Change the World author and co-founder of Solutions Journalism Network David Bornstein shares the key to moral imagination. (Hint: Differences are a good thing.)
- Lesson #7: Practice before you teach. Forget formulas and textbook responses: empathy is about listening, says Teaching Empathy author David Levine. And that begins with teachers’ relationships to their students. See Teaching Empathy Institute.
- Lesson #8: Experience + response = outcome. Understanding others begins at home: Fresh Lifelines for Youth’s Aila Malik shares a powerful tool for facilitating self-understanding.
- Lesson #9: Unlock what kids are born with (play!). Look at what kids come with, not what they lack, says Katherine Dinh, Head of Prospect Sierra. Rally kids around a common goal for social good, and create a culture in which empathy is valued, measured, and pervasive.
- Lesson #10: Fill your teammates’ emotional tanks. Winning requires not just playing at your best, but helping your teammates play better too, says Ashoka Fellow and Positive Coaching Alliance founder Jim Thompson.
- Lesson #11: Reflect within, listen without. Our social systems often encourage us to suppress our innate capacities for empathy. Ashoka Fellow David Castro, founder of I-LEAD, shares what we can do to restore those skills.
- Lesson #12: Begin at home. Practicing empathy shouldn’t be confined to a classroom, says Ashoka Fellow and Founder of One World Now! Kristin Hayden. It’s something we can practice daily, through everyday moments.
- Lesson #13: Flatten hierarchy. Empathy is a lifestyle, not an event, says Ashoka Fellow and Founder of Threshold Collaborative Alisa Del Tufo.
- Lesson #14: Don’t react, absorb. How many times have you sat through a conversation thinking about what you’re going to say, rather than what’s being said? NoVo Foundation’s Robert Sherman has a simple answer for what mastering empathy means.
- Lesson #15: Integrate the personal and professional. Cultivating empathy is as much about modelling it yourself as it is developing it in others, says Mary Watson, Associate Dean at The New School. And that requires working environments that break down the walls between the personal and professional.
- Lesson #16: Infuse empathy in all subject matters. Empathy isn’t a subject you set aside for 30 minutes a day: it’s something that must be infused throughout the school day. Margot Locker, of Harvard’s GoodWork Project, gives us a window into how.
- Lesson #17: Listen to others’ needs. Empathy isn’t about presuming what another person needs, says Prospect Sierra’s Mark Basnage. It requires actively listening, and learning to separate your judgments from another’s person’s reality.
- Lesson #18: Articulate others’ feelings. Noted researcher — and parent — Chris Adkins explains the difference between “self-focused” empathy and “other-focused” empathy, and how to cultivate the latter, whether you’re a parent or a CEO.
- Lesson #19: Imagine. Duke University’s Robert Thompson explains the intersection between empathy, creativity, and imagination.
- Lesson #20: Serve. Robert Ashcraft of Arizona State University’s Lodestar Center shares one of the best lessons in empathy he received as a teen, learned at the foot of a hospital bed.
Around the world, hundreds of social entrepreneurs are employing a variety of innovative techniques designed to cultivate empathy skills. Those techniques include everything from literature and storytelling, to imaginative play for pre-schoolers (and indeed, play period), to exercises designed to build social fitness.
Measuring Empathy
Whether it is in our homes, schools, or workplaces — a key question of our time has become — how do we measure what we truly value?
If we agree that empathy matters in our daily lives as well as in society at large, then how do we assess it?
Researchers around the world continue to develop a variety of assessment tools to measure emotional intelligence, social-emotional competence in children (Devereux Student Strength Assessment), and more. The challenge is how to measure these seeming intangibles without flattening the qualities and experiences of the people involved into a single numerical value.
- Psychologist and Cambridge professor Simon Baron-Cohen, author of The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Human Cruelty, created a series of questions designed to measure a person’s “Empathy Quotient.”
- Nobel Prize Laureate and psychologist Daniel Kahneman pinpoints the Interpersonal Reactivity Index in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Developed in 1980, the tool measures everything from perspective-taking in daily life, to empathic concern, and a person’s tendencies to experience distress in response to distress in others.
While developing empathy is often considered the domain of parenting rather than schooling, educators are increasingly being called upon to develop these so-called ‘soft skills’ at school.
“Schools that help develop cooperative moral sentiments — empathy, trust, benevolence, and fairness — contribute a great deal to democratic education.” ~ Amy Gutmann, President, University of Pennsylvania
By promoting the importance of empathy in education, we are not advocating an increase to teachers’ and students’ already heavy load. The skills related to empathy exist along a spectrum, and parents and educators don’t have to start from scratch. Researchers and practitioners alike have begun to unpack the terms and distil it into specific behaviours.
- The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) has broken emotional intelligence skills into five core groups: (i) self awareness; (ii) social awareness; (iii) self management and organisation; (iv) responsible decision making; and, (v) relationship management, which have become the foundation of many of existing social emotional learning standards for schools. Due to their success across a range of settings, social and emotional learning has become a key framework for school improvement and an increasingly popular public health approach to education.
- Social entrepreneurs have also helped push the movement forward. The New Teacher Center, founded by Ashoka Fellow Ellen Moir, is working to simplify these critical skills into six key competencies that teachers need in order to promote social-emotional well-being in the classroom. They have spent years understanding what goes into a creating learning environments where teacher, students, and administrators can thrive, and have since supported hundreds of thousands of new teachers and teacher mentors across the country.
Those competencies — which include empathy, establishing healthy boundaries and limit-setting, taking a strength-based approach, and active and reflective listening — among others, have served as a basis for observation guides for teachers and principals alike.
Today, several organisations are working to define standards for whole schools, examining the set of conditions that must be in place in order to create a thriving learning environment where practicing empathy is the norm. (Turnaround for Children — indicators they use to measure a school’s ability to serve the social-emotional and learning needs of kids living amidst high-poverty).
While empathy can be taught through classroom instruction, it is even more important the adults also explicitly model the desired empathetic behaviours. Creating a supportive implicit environment is critical too. Daily rituals help routinize and normalise empathetic practices. Morning and closing circles create safe, open spaces for dialogue that build mutual trust; mindfulness and brain breaks offer a chance for feeling calm and connected; collaborative activities encourage communication and problem-solving; and empowering norms encourage students to take the lead. These positive cultural features foster empathy by creating the psychological and physiological conditions for meaningful learning.
Ultimately, some of the best assessments are those that give the person being evaluated a sense of their strengths as well as areas for continued improvement. As such, it is vital that any evaluations exist as much for teachers and principals as they do for students. Whatever rubric you choose to use, remember to measure the things that really matter.
Social Entrepreneurs Focusing on Empathy in Education
Roots of Empathy ~ is an evidence-based classroom program that has shown significant effect in reducing levels of aggression and bullying among school children while raising social/emotional competence and increasing empathy.
Playworks ~ is changing school culture by leveraging the power of safe, fun, and healthy play at school every day. They provide services for elementary schools and youth-serving organizations around the country.
Girls on the Run ~ inspire girls to be joyful, healthy and confident using a fun, experience-based curriculum which creatively integrates running.
Center for Inspired Teaching ~ is shifting the role of the teacher through transformative teacher training, building a future in which children are not taught what to think, but how to think.
World Savvy ~ is a national education non-profit that works with educators, schools, and districts to integrate the highest quality of global competence teaching and learning into K-12 classrooms, so all young people can be prepared to engage, succeed, and meet the challenges of 21st century citizenship.
FuelEd ~ improves student outcomes by equipping educators with the social and emotional competencies essential for building secure relationships in schools.
Embarc ~ is a three-year program that provides community-driven, experienced-based learning opportunities to low-income High School students to inspire and prepare them for college and career success.
RESOURCES
- Start Empathy Elementary School Toolkit — for teachers and parents.
- Rules of Kindness — Start Empathy & GenerationOn toolkit.
- The Case for Promoting Empathy in Schools.
- The One Crucial Skill Our Education System is Missing — Belinda Parmar.
- Empathy As a Way of Being: A conversation with Sonali Ojha, Ashoka Fellow and founder of the Dreamcatchers Foundation.
- Teaching the world Empathy by Bill Drayton.
- How Empathy Helps Students, Schools and the World from Harvard’s Making Caring Common Project.
- What is empathy? We asked some students at PS in the Bronx what empathy meant to them. Here are their answers.
- Empathy by Brené Brown.
