The concept of “empathic understanding” was introduced to pedagogy by Carl Rogers, a prominent clinical and educational psychologist, for naming a necessary (though insufficient) quality determining the teachers’ competence. This work is devoted to studying this ability in teachers. In our research, 60 graduate students, current schoolteachers, participated. They all attended the author’s online course Child Development and Learning in Cultural Context in 2023. As one of the homework assignments, they were asked to read a passage from N. Nosov’s novella about a ten-year-old boy struggling to solve a math problem and to interpret the child’s difficulties from the perspective of Leo Vygotsky’s theory studied in the course. The data was collected electronically and analyzed with a simplified content analysis method. According to the results, 52 students (87%) used the correct concepts from Vygotsky’s theory in their answers. However, only 18 students (30%) made a thorough analysis of the child’s problem, and what distinguished them from others was their ability to find adequate textual illustrations of the theoretical concepts they chose. The author concluded that theoretical knowledge, although it contributed to “empathic understanding,” did not determine it. Indicators of the ability studied were careful reading of the text, immersion in its content, and the ability of students to identify with the story characters. The author’s further efforts will be directed towards increasing the proportion of such practical exercises in child psychology courses. They will help students specializing in education develop the competencies needed for their everyday professional activities.

Authors:
Anna Toom, Touro University, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Anna Toom is a University Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer at Touro College in United States

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