Operationalizing the Application of Empathy in Student-Teacher Interactions With Young Black Men and Boys

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Striving for Sustaining and Relevant Pedagogy: Students, Teachers, and Social Justice

Abstract

Numerous studies document the persistent failure of US schools to adequately educate young Black men and boys. Scholars argue that empathy is an essential feature of culturally responsive pedagogy, and that empathy has the potential to reverse trends in Black male school failure. The proposed study connects evidence of empathy to examinations of effective teachers’ dispositions or trends in observable behavior. I characterize effective teaching, in part, as teachers whose interactions with Black male students tend to produce evidence of culturally responsive pedagogy. Through interviews with administrators, focus groups with Black male students, and video-recorded classroom observations of three teachers identified as effective, this study operationalizes the application of empathy in student-teacher interactions with Black boys.

Authors

• Chezare A. Warren, Vanderbilt University

• Tim Herd, University of California - Los Angeles

• Cierra Presberry, Michigan State University