"Things They Can't Help but Be Appalled Over": Attempting to Teach Empathy to White Students

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Eleven
  In Roundtable Session: The Evolution of Educating: Pedagogies and Practices in Teacher Education (Table 5)

Abstract

This qualitative study sought to explore the difficulty of teaching and imparting empathy to resistant, white students in social studies classrooms that examine counternarratives and controversial topics. Specifically, this research examines the issues critically-oriented teachers face when attempting to have white students develop an empathetic position toward the lived realities of persons of color (e.g., Ultman & Hesch, 2011; Warren, 2015) while establishing best practices they developed to teach/develop empathy in their unique curriculums. A consistent pattern emerged where teachers spoke of the social importance of working to develop empathy in their white students by exposing students to the realities of persons of color and interrogating their deficit mindsets, all the while avoiding the development and spreading of “false empathy”.

Author

• Erik James Shaver, Ball State University
  Presenting Author