Abstract
The feeling of empathy is as old as the humankind. Empathy is an attempt to perceive the emotions and to understand the thoughts of other individuals and discern their point of view. Due to such aspects, empathy presents “a focus on other individuals”. In general terms, empathy was defined as “adopting a sensitive attitude towards correctly understanding the emotions and thoughts of another individual, encountering any event, through placing oneself in the place of that individual during the process of communication.”The present study was intended to determine the effects of the communication and immigration subjects in the 7th grade social studies course on the empathy skills of students through employing the didactic approach, which is one of the techniques for empathy development.Concurrent nested (embedded) design, a mixed research method, was employed in the present study. Mixed-method research is defined as the approach through which the researcher draws conclusions by using the advantage of integrating qualitative and quantitative methods, approaches and concepts in a study or consecutive studies with the aim to understand diverse research models. The quantitative data in the present study were obtained via the “Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescents”, whereas the qualitative data were collected through interview forms.Almost all students emphasized the significance of empathy and understanding the feelings of the migrants for understanding the causes and consequences of immigration throughout the activities related to immigration.
Highlights
Feeling of empathy is an important concept as old as the humankind and is even defined as the basis of good social relations
Several studies were conducted on the concept of empathy and various definitions were formulated by these studies
Concepts of empathy and empathy skills became an integral part of educational sciences, due to the strong emphasis that it was possible to teach these frequently studied concepts
Summary
Feeling of empathy is an important concept as old as the humankind and is even defined as the basis of good social relations. It was observed that the educational programs prepared to develop empathy skills of individuals focus on developing emotional and cognitive abilities including the empathy response These programs include cognitive elements such as recognizing, evaluating and identifying emotions required when empathizing (Yüksel, 2004). It was ensured that the students realized why an immigrant left his/her hometown and went to another country through placing themselves in their place to understand their emotions and thoughts In this respect, it was established that the course objectives were cognitive and affective. It was aimed to clarify the communication and immigration issues through providing theoretical information on healthy communication and empathy with individuals, employing the “didactic training technique” in the 7th grade social studies course and to examine the effects of this process on the students’ empathy skills
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