Empathy is the ability to share in and understand the thoughts and feelings of others, and consists of cognitive, affective, and behavioural dimensions.1,2 In the context of education, instructor empathy is the capacity for instructors to understand students’ personal and social situations, feel care and concern in response to students’ positive and negative emotions, and to respond to students’ needs without losing focus on learning.3 Instructor empathy plays a critical role in the classroom and is a key prerequisite in fostering high-quality teacher-student interactions,3 improving student outcomes,4 and enhancing students’ sense of belonging.5,6 However, research on perceptions of empathy in education are limited, particularly in tertiary science (including chemistry) disciplines.
In this study, we present the preliminary results of a mixed-methods investigation with convergent design into science instructors’ and students’ perceptions of empathy at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney. We specifically highlight participants’ perceptions of empathy in chemistry to compare and contrast to other science fields, exploring how perceptions may differ between disciplines and between instructors and students. The quantitative questionnaires consisted of two validated instruments7,8 and were used to measure instructors’ self-reported empathy and students’ perceptions of instructor empathy. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were used to obtain in-depth views of participants’ perceptions and experiences of empathy in education and to triangulate results observed in the questionnaire data.
Outcomes of our study will help inform how and when tertiary chemistry teaching and learning can be enhanced through intentional and context-specific expressions of instructor empathy in the classroom. Understanding the role of empathy between instructor-student interactions will ultimately help to improve the student experience at university and the quality of science education.