Empathetic Practice Research Articles

Embracing the Surface: How to Read a Life Narrative

ABSTRACTTo teach life narrative is to teach empathetic practice. This requires teaching students that life narrative employs specific writing techniques. Through the practice of “surface reading”, students can take measure of their suitability for the role of addressee, or ideal listener, and calibrate their encounter with the text from there.

Making language: Impetus, workshop and visual languages

Abstract This article is based on the workshop, Making Language, although originally prompted by RCA research students and their grappling with translation. For example, despite a long simplification and westernization of Chinese language signifying moves away from pictorial origins based on nature, there still appears to be a great looseness about translation from Chinese to English. As with the world of images, there would appear to be more open choices. Conversely, translation of UK academic codes can be a daunting task in terms of what lies behind the surface meaning of words – the indirect and the ironic. The workshop saw an imaginative engagement with translating thought into image and then word, with partners guessing meaning and discussing what it felt like to communicate in this more visual manner – an empathetic practice then, too. The article describes a small foray only into what is a much larger area.

Building Empathy in Online Courses

This research study examined the empathetic practices of effective higher education faculty from seven universities that offer online programs. Using a phenomenological approach with a purposeful sample of fourteen faculty interviews identified eight common themes of practice that faculty employ to promote empathy in the online higher education arena.