Empathy, Teacher Dispositions

Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) offers elaborate empirical and theoretical

conventions for becoming an effective teacher of diverse youth. Empathy has been
found to improve classroom teachers capacity to (re)act or respond to youth in ways
that produce evidence of CRP. However, there are too few instructive models in
teacher education that help connect teacher candidates knowledge of students and
communities to development of efficacious physical habits, tendencies, and trends in
observable behavior or teacher dispositions. The application of empathy
operationalized through perspective taking is one such model useful to preparing
teacher candidates to make professional decisions that produce evidence of CRP.
Engaging teacher candidates in perspective takingadopting the social perspectives
of others as an act and process of knowinginvites them to obtain (and reason with)
new knowledge of students and the sociocultural context where she or he will teach.
Recommendations for modeling and practicing perspective taking in teacher
education are discussed.

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