Development of Empathetic Responses With Multicultural Literature

Abstract

This article reports a case study of a high school teacher's attempt to enhance students' development of empathy after guiding them to explore the cultural, political, and historical context of text. Empathy is defined as an other‐oriented perspective that is congruent with another's sociocultural values, political ideology, and historical background. The students who participated in this study grew up in a small town with limited exposure to diversity in their lives and in their school curriculum. During a six‐week unit, the teacher used simulation, lecture, poster analysis, and a movie to help students understand the context of a Chinese novella before they read the book. Students engaged in discussion and journal writing when they read the text. The data collected included videorecording of lessons, the investigator's field notes, teacher diary entries, students' assignments, and postinstructional interviews with individual students. The findings suggest that these students demonstrated five types of empathy: cognitive empathy, historical empathy, parallel emotional empathy, reactive emotional empathy, and crosscultural empathy. Students varied in their empathetic responses. Some refused to empathize with the characters; some accepted the characters' positions partially; only a few could and were willing to experience the feelings of the characters.

Pre-service teachers’ negotiation of identity and figured worlds through the reading of multicultural literature

“…Whereas similar research offers possibilities for student and pre-service teacher transformation through the reading of multicultural texts (Haddix and Price-Dennis, 2013;Ambe, 2006;Thein et al, 2007;Louie, 2005), this study, in bringing together the phenomenon and relationship among emergent identities, figured worlds, and perspective-taking, offers a series of complications and tensions embedded in classrooms like this, where white students read multicultural literature for the purposes of change and social justice in an educational context -the tension between the student-as-student and the student as-future-teacher, the contradiction between oral and written discourse as connected to identity and positioning, and the role or "power" of the multicultural text itself These tensions offer a number of considerations for future research and literature pedagogy.…”

“…Similarly, Haddix and Price-Dennis (2013) argue, "critical encounters with urban and multicultural children's and adolescent literature can shape [pre-service teachers'] learning to teach processes" (p. 248). Whether using these texts with children and adolescents (Thein et al, 2007;Rasinski and Padak, 1990) or pre-service teachers (Haddix and Price-Dennis, 2013;Ambe, 2006;Louie, 2005Louie, , 2006, scholars concerned with individuals' authentic engagement with multicultural texts see value in in perspective-taking as a pedagogical approach because it "suggest[s] that learning and change happen when students are taught to embrace conflict between their status quo knowledge and new ideas" (Thein & Sloan, 2012, p. 314). Thein, Beach, & Parks (2007), for example, argue that multicultural literature instruction "must be about changing students' cultural perspectives and helping students better understand their lives and the lives of those around them" (p. 54).…”

Empathetic and Pro-social Awareness in Primary School Students: A Case Study

“…Other methods recommended by them to enhance E & P behaviors are storytelling and biography, group discussion, role play, self-awareness and self-regulation, self-reflection and goal-setting, artistic expression and cooperative and small group learning. Louie [21] is also of the view that when students develop personal connection with literature, empathy may be a specific form of such aesthetic response. Galda and Beach [11] are of the view that texts, readers, and contexts are inseparable from one another.…”

Fostering intercultural understanding through secondary school experiences of cultural immersion

“…Importantly, learning about other cultures or about the experiences of people with diverse social and cultural backgrounds should also happen in conjunction with a deeper understanding of one's own cultural practices and beliefs. The existing literature demonstrates that engaging in culturally reflexive processes through skills such as perspective-taking and empathy is crucial for students to have the capacity and ability to understand people from different cultural backgrounds (Louie, 2005;Molina, Brigman, & Rhone, 2003;Tettegah & Neville, 2007). As Allport (1954) pointed out, "The fundamental premise of intercultural education says in effect, no person knows his own culture who knows only his own culture" (p. 486).…”