Development and validation of the empathy scale for teachers (EST)

Abstract

Empathy among teaching professionals is highly valued in the field of education. However, there is no suitable instrument to measure teachers' empathy in relation to their pupils. This paper describes the development and validation of an empathy scale for teachers (EST). The initial pool of items for the EST was generated by an open-ended survey of teachers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were employed to identify and confirm, respectively, the factor structure of the EST. The results show that the EST includes three dimensions: cognitive empathy, negative affective empathy and positive affective empathy, and the internal consistency reliability of the three subscales is satisfactory. In addition, the EST is positively correlated with perspective taking, empathic concern, prosocial behaviour and teacher-student relationships. Our study suggests that the EST could be an effective tool to measure the empathy of primary, middle and high school teachers in relation to their pupils.