Content, Positives, and Controversies of Academic Empathy and Motivation

Abstract

Greatness of current universities faces many difficulties and the complexity of dynamics typical by tremendous acceleration of social relations and ties. If academics and scientists want to help students and younger colleagues to handle the complexity and tempo of requirements arisen by a study and work at (least nationally) prestigious universities, empathy is a must. Empathy is a phenomenon with many meanings and contents. There exists a clash of empathy on the part of teachers, but at the same time, on the part of students in the academic practice. Despite the fact that empathy as a socio-relational competence and basis of commitment and facilitative processes help to understand and find the key to the heart and intellect of other individuals (students), it absorbs a lot of energy. This is often reflected in the fatigue, mood swings, and nervousness of the university teacher. This ‘imperfection of empathy’ in turn may lead to the situation that students begin to perceive the teacher as erratic and his or her behavior as controversial: once empathetic and full of involvement, and sometimes as cold and even aggressive. Assuming that the teacher serves as a role model for his or her students, teacher’s empathy is a model for the future (feed-backing) empathy of students towards the other teachers, classmates, and later also to the future colleagues at work. Therefore, on the basis of the analysis, comparison, generalization and synthesis of different views in the theoretical part, methodological part of the paper presents the results of a sociological questioning conducted on a sample of 300 students of University of Zilina, Slovak Republic. Students’ expressions on the positive evaluation of teacher’s empathy versus the negative assessment of teacher’s moodiness and nervousness in relation to the students are compared. Deeper comparison of the expressions of students at two absolutely different study programs: Management (150 students) versus Informatics (150 students) and results of a subsequent qualitative questioning focused directly to the area of empathy (on the sample of 40 students) are interesting too. Divergence of opinions, relating these ones to the linked foreign surveys and drawing relevant conclusions are completed by a set of proposed recommendations. These recommendations have the ambition to improve the management systems of universities and provide suggestions that could help the teachers and students when harmonizing their mutual expectations and reinforcing existing academic motivation. Keywords: content; positives; academic empathy ; motivation