The Empathic Response in Teaching

Abstract

Much of literature in area of psychotherapy stresses importance of the quality of relationship existing between client and therapist as significant in eventual effectiveness of therapy. In particular therapeutic relevance of therapist offered conditions, or attitudinal qualities, of respect, or positive regard, genuineness and empathic understanding have been verified by a substantial amount of research evidence (Rogers, 1961; Carkhuff and Berenson, 1967; Rogers, Gendlin, Kiesler and Truax, 1967; Truax and Carkhuff, 1967; Egan, 1975). In education significance of nature of relationship existing between teacher and learner has been emphasized as a potent factor in promoting academic achievement and at same time growth of child's self-concept. (Combs and Snygg, 1959; Rogers, 1961; Moustakas, 1969; La Benne and Greene, 1969; Purkey, 1970; Hamachek, 1978). If relationship aspects of a teacher's performance are seen as inescapably involved in teaching process then courses in teachers' training institutions should be concerned with deliberately promoting growth of such skills, and should see any skill acquisition in human relations as a necessary part of teachers' professional preparation. Adams and Biddle (1970) in a plea for a reconciliation between 'educational exhortation and educational reality' suggest that better education is 'imminent' yet array of alternative approaches to curriculum construction and content offered teachers and prospective teachers is overwhelming in its diversity. A problem, as they see it, is to validate some of practices valued by training institutions and to provide empirical data for their justification as necessary parts of educational rhetoric offered teachers. Their concern, shared by author, is that what is offered to prospective teachers as part of their training, supposedly to fit them with skills and understanding suitable for practitioners, should be based upon what actually happens in classrooms. Though what happens in classrooms may not always be what some would want to happen, observation of classroom behaviour would seem to be a sensible place to begin if recommendations about what should happen are to be made. The present study was undertaken to determine level of empathic responding occurring in an unselected sample of teachers from a local government school. If significant levels of this type of responding were found then appeals to teachers-in-t raining to exhibit such behaviour might be redundant. If low